Two wrongs don't make a right

It’s remarkable really. The government is to reduce the compensation payments it makes to its victims so that it can increase the compensation payments it makes to other people’s victims.

Doesn’t that strike anyone as a little odd?

Yes, I know, the judiciary is independent of the state but you really don’t want to go through that territory. Down that road lies questions about culpability for believing the judiciary and imprisoning the innocent on their request. Only following orders? Yeah, that’s going to work.

It's hard to work out what the government is trying to achieve here given that the compensation figures are so low. Having said that, if you were a nasty piece of work in a government hell bent on removing the checks and balances that can prevent miscarriages of justice wouldn't you be looking for some pre-emptive way of reducing the impact of your mistakes in the future?

The wanky arm of the law

Astonishing. And to think that I didn't know it was illegal. Just imagine how many thousands upon thousands of other laws I must be in ignorance of.

I blame politics

The law is a fascinating subject made even more so by the simple fact that those who interpret it and in many cases understand it (law lords, judges etc) are not the same people who create it (elected politicians) who in turn are not the same people who enforce it (police) who are generally not the same people who chatter about it and sometimes suffer under it (the public).

The above is a very good reason why the law must be crafted very carefully, enforced equally and fairly and why it is in constant danger of being seen as an ass. Carefully crafted law is beyond the capability of our politicians in many instances and equal and fair enforcement seems, from the perspective of the pubic, sometimes to be beyond the capabilities of the police force.

Ask a man in the street what he thinks about the arrest of a young woman for reading out a list of dead soldiers at a war memorial and what he thinks about a police escort for marchers who call for the beheading of people who insult a religion and you will get a perfectly reasonable answer. Namely, that the law is an ass.

He has no interest in politically motivated demonstration exclusion zones and no interest in the finer points of legislative acts of parliament. All he is interested in is whether things seem fair. Reasonable. Right.

Increasingly they don’t seem to be and there is great danger in that because bad law, seemingly unfair law and seemingly inconsistently enforced law serves only to weaken the respect that people have for the law in general.

Those who are responsible for law in the United Kingdom used to know that, but they seem to have forgotten it somewhere along the line.

Oi, you can't do that to us

This from Ian. A farmer discharged a shotgun during an attempted robbery at his home. The attitude of the criminals as they fled (how often do they flee these days) seems to have been one of incredulity:

"They sped away and had the cheek to say they were going to phone the police."

The criminals in this case have no fear of the police, they are breaking the law in the first place by being on the farm and trying to nick a quad bike, they try to use their car as a weapon and when someone returns fire they feel that the police & the law will be on their side. In this case they may be proved wrong the police have asked the farmer and are happy that he was acting in self-defense and are now looking for the real criminals, but is does show just how well protected the criminals feel in this country.

LA on the radio

David Carr, from the Libertarian Alliance and samizdata.net, puts in a strong performance on the Jeremy Vine Show (mp3) broadcast this morning. His point is that he cannot see why creating extra legislation to protect members of the Emergency services will make any difference to the behaviour of the thugs and vandals who are already breaking the law. Those supporting the new legislation fail to explain their reasoning and fail to make their case.

He can't hear you

Hands up who thinks the blogosphere has been silent on the subject of the police and terrorism. No? No takers? Well it seems that Sir Ian Blair, top cop in the met, needs to broaden his horizons:

Making his first public comments since the government's failed bid to extend the time terror suspects could be held without charge to 90 days, Sir Ian voiced "frustration" at the public "silence" on what it wanted the police to do.

Of course we don't actually know what he means by 'public' as he hasn't made that clear. Indeed it is hard to know what kind of public forum would satisfy his concerns. A phone in? A government appointed focus group? A referrendum? A tally of all letters sent by the public to their MPs? A visit to the local pub?

The Guardian elaborates:

In his lecture, Sir Ian is expected to say policing is hampered by the fact that there is little dispassionate, thought-through public examination of just what it is we are here to do in the 21st century - to fight crime or to fight its causes, to help build stronger communities or to undertake zero tolerance." Britain needs to articulate what kind of police it wants. "The silence can no longer continue."

...

"My central thesis is that the the British people need to decide what mechanisms they need to work out what kind of police force this should be, otherwise it will drift into doing it on its own, and that's not right."

Actually it all sounds eminently reasonable.

Labour party activists

Before The Englishman said Read that last sentence again I already had. An astonishing use of important policemen by the government to lobby democratically elected MPs.

Blair doesn't seem to understand the relationship between the state, the police and the public. Using the police in government politics is habit forming and dangerous as is the expectation of the police to be used in this way. It gradually alters their view of their position in our society. Who is doing the slapping down these days?

The House of Commons yesterday perhaps but that is a single knot on an extremely greasy rope.

I've been looking forward to the film release of V for Vendetta but I fear the longer it takes to come out the closer it will resemble a documentary.

Bah! Giles notes that the film has been delayed.

A tool of compliance

I was listening to a very interesting news item today on Radio 5 Live. The subject matter was some kind of suggestion that tasers should be made available for wider use within the police forces in Britain rather than being limited to use by qualified firearms officers as an alternative to lethal hardware.

As part of this programme they played an audio snippet from an altercation within the United States where a police officer had stopped a female motorist for an unspecified reason and demanded that she terminated a telephone call that she was having. She refused. The officer asked her a number of times to end the call and each time she refused. At some point the officer started stating that if she did not end the call he would taser her. She continued to refuse and he continued to threaten the use of the taser. The audio ended in a number of long screams from the woman as the officer fired his taser and deliberately delivered a number of shocks to her. It was a shocking piece; the woman was clearly in a great deal of protracted pain.

This has been seen as mission creep where an alterative method to lethal force has been used (on a number of occasions apparently) by the police for situations where lethal force should and would (hopefully) never be used.

The term banded around during the broadcast, and I think it’s an excellent and accurate term, is that tasers are increasingly being used as tools of compliance.

This was the argument that was put forward by an interviewee who was against the wider issuing and use of tasers by the police within Britain. It was a compelling piece and a compelling argument. Let us not forget that tasers have two reasons for their application. Firstly to incapacitate an individual and secondly to cause an individual pain. It should never be used simply for the later but, as is apparently happening in the United States, its application as a method for delivering pain is a compelling and attractive property of the device for some officers.

One man's security light is another man's limelight

It's a sorry tale:

We don't need more laws. We don't need new initiatives. We don't need more statistics. We don't need more police powers. We need our police off their arses and out on the streets. We need police who understand who they REALLY work for. We need the laws we have always had rigorously enforced, and all "binge legislating" (as Andrew Marr tellingly described it) of recent years ignored until public order has been restored.

Photographing the police

Here's a story about the lengths that some police officers are prepared to go to when a photographer witnesses them practicing various Vulcan death grips.

Violent crime up 6%, but don't worry

The Home Office said the figures for violence reflected better recording of crime and more proactive policing.

What, again?

Youth seeks girlfriend, love

Gareth points out that English Blogs seems to have been hacked. The message left on the front page indicates a certain xenophobic mind set ("f*ck english") which, frankly, harks back to the bad old days of the school playground where anyone with an unusual skin tone would likely be subject at some point to similar verbage.

In this progressive age it seems that someone has been left behind.

When the tools are available

...they often have many uses:

The fuzz have taken down all the particulars – and are probably, even now putting out an A.P.B. on the slap-headed desperado…..

Whoa! There's more:

"Whoa there Tiger", I replied. A standard ‘sorry you were offended, but the phrase was taken out of context’ letter simply would not do. Cable made an outrageous comment – and I require satisfaction. If this were 18th century France, I would be dressed in a frilly shirt, with my faithful Second at my side and tooled up with a pair of duelling pistols demanding satisfaction from that snivelling wretch of a LibDem..

Blogopheric Amber Alert

Any US readers out there with a blog please help spread the word about Jordan.

I guess it will also help if all blogs, regardless of location, help to spread this.

Good luck to you and yours Kim.

Via Scott.

Parliament Square Police Summonses

From the Countryside Alliance:

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has now summonsed three further Metropolitan Police Service officers as a result of the Parliament Square inquiry, making a total of five officers to date to receive a summons.

The IPCC is using its own investigators to inquire into complaints made against officers policing Parliament Square last September, during the final stages of the bill to ban hunting with dogs.

A total of 31 Metropolitan Police Officers have been served with notices advising them that they are subject to a disciplinary investigation, 15 of these have now been withdrawn. To date, 17 files have been submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, five officers have received summons, four are awaiting further advice and the remainder have been returned to the IPCC marked no further action. The IPCC has submitted four files to the MPS for consideration of disciplinary action.

I wonder if any of this extra activity has been prompted by the fact that the IPCC has finally managed to get access to information previously withheld by the Guardian Media Group.

My CCTV did exactly the same thing!

It’s really annoying you know. I recently installed a few CCTV cameras at the front of the mansion to record anyone coming to the front door. I then hired a small team of maintenance workers to ensure that the cameras remained in working order and I also got a management team to draw up a best practice document and a suitable maintenance schedule. These cameras were cleaned, checked, reviewed, pampered and oiled for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and all I got were a few tapes of passing cats and dogs. Then someone put a brick though my window and that’s exactly when the equipment decided to fail. The tapes were blank. BLANK!! Sometimes I don’t know why I bother.

Oh no. Here we go around the unhappy circle of virtue again

Social services spokesman says:

"We need wider understanding and acceptance that the principles of sentencing are not just founded on punishing offenders."

Of course, this all means fewer prison sentences, more early release, more crime and more victims. You may not believe me, and that's fine. We should just wait until the next round of social services style rhetoric comes from the usual quarters. Trust me, their motivation will be high crime, their analysis will be that criminals just need a little help to change, their conclusion will be less punishment and more happy, happy, clappy.

It's easy to criticise, you might think, and in truth it is. But that's not my fault.

My suggestion? Don't treat criminals as if you are answering a cry for help. Attack those things that entice the innocent into crime in the first place. Work harder on changing the effort to reward ratio offered by crime and by that I mean increased crime solving rates and successful prosecutions (note - not detection rates).

Instead we have a situation where the ratio is going in the other direction. Crime should be hard to commit successfully and, when unsuccessful, the criminal should know in no uncertain terms that it was far more trouble than it was worth.

Meanwhile, in local news

"I then saw a police car going up Kingsbury Avenue. The passenger side door was open and a policeman was leaning out with what looked like a Kalashnikov rifle."

Bwahaha. Yeah, right.

A little too late

She told them so.

Spray to disable to protect

A good article in the Times by Robbie Millen (via Citizen Stuart) on pepper spray, a self defence product designed to be non-lethal which is legal in many civilised countries but not in this one. Millen makes exactly the right point about the current state advice to, effectively, run away from criminal thugs and then to report the whole running away incident to the police:

Others object that if people fight back, more incidents might escalate into violence. Instead, we should follow the Met’s advice of flight, not fight. But the result of this advice is not virtuous; it means that neighbourhoods are ceded to hoodlums, making the streets ever more vicious.

Exactly.

A bed named disrepute

Gone are the days when people could say “well, if you break the law you deserve everything you get” and automatically occupy the moral high ground. It is becoming increasingly important to actually look at the law that is being broken before one can pass judgement.

Sometimes it is hard to believe

My conclusion is that these two police officers were either extremely brave in deciding to approach this gun wielding individual or they knew the gun was a toy and decided to get all drama queen on the kid. Either way they were clearly to lazy to actually put their desk sergeant’s money where their mouths (or asses) were.

"One officer spoke sharply to my son and said that he could arrest him, but because he was going off duty it would be too much paper work.

"We have always told our children the police are here to help us. But I think our son finds that hard to believe at the moment."

In reply to criticism about the incident police said:

Mr Astley was welcome to lodge a formal complaint.

We used to say similar things in the playground at school, though we used to phrase it differently: Come on then, let's see you try it mate.

Gunnnnssss! GUNNNNSSS!!

This particular Obsever article on (and I'm making an educated guess here) BB Guns ranks somewhere near the top of the most confusing and trashy gun articles ever written.

Reality meets face

You may remember this little diatribe by Katie Grant:

Where the English are unattractively soft, the Scots are endearingly tender. Where the English are yobbish and aggressive, the Scots are manly and tough. Where the English are insufferably arrogant, the Scots are grittily stubborn.

Well, via Freedom and Whisky we see that somehow Katie's world view has recently been subjected to some unfortunate and deplorable revision:

ON FRIDAY morning, I looked out into our small garden to find a certain amount of chaos. Pots had been smashed, the bench overturned and all manner of climbing greenery pulled off and scattered. Yobs had invaded, tempted, no doubt, by the piles of scaffolding irritatingly left outside our back wall by the firm constructing new flats opposite.

She reflects:

THIS trifling story is not nearly as exciting as recent ones concerning toddler vandals with spray guns or disrupted funeral processions. Having a plant pot or two broken is hardly the equivalent of being "happy-slapped". It does, however, illustrate that mistake of thinking that yobbery is confined to one section of society.

One section or one nationality Katie. Keep repeating that.

Phew, what I don't know about crime could fill a small country

Andy introduces me to a new definition I had not heard of before. It’s a humdinger and I thank him for correcting me on my obviously stale opinion on what I thought it meant. Apparently, and for some reason this passed me by, law-abiding means anybody who isn't working class committing a minor crime. I can now dodge that particular bullet with confidence.

It's the law don't you know

Apparently the peasants are preparing to take the law into their own hands. The unfortunate thing about this is that these particular peasants, feeling the need to arm themselves against a threat they believe to be all too relevant to them, have been purchasing various items which, to their surprise, are illegal to own. Some come with a mandatory minimum five year prison term.

”How can it be so?” they wonder. ”I certainly don’t feel like a criminal” they say. But that’s the thing isn’t it? It’s all well and good turning a blind eye or presenting a completely disinterested front when the state shakes its warn out ban stick at one group or another from a window in Westminster, after all it’s no skin of your nose. But it sure grabs your undivided attention when all of a sudden there’s a policeman in your face for the first time in Lord knows how long and he’s staring at you. Pointing, even.

”Sorry sunshine, that’s illegal.”

”But……”

”Don’t you but me matey. You’re nicked!”

”But……”

”Tell it to someone who cares.”

”But…….”

”Look, both ACPO and the government have been campaigning for years to ensure that this kind of stuff does not find its way onto the streets….”

”It was for my bedroom.”

”….onto the streets, or into your bedroom. Years I tell you. This kind of stuff is for the police only.”

”Who are ACPO? I didn’t vote for them.”

”Now let’s not have any of your cheek. Mind your head when you get into the car.”

And so it goes on. I suppose these criminals can take solace in the fact that the number of policemen they are about to see in their daily lives will improve immeasurably. After all, low numbers are something they’ve been complaining about for years.

As an aside, did you know that the experts at the Times say replica handguns, which, using materials that can be bought at any DIY store, can easily be converted into lethal weapons? I have a number of replicas at home and have been giving this matter some thought. I’ve come to the conclusion that if I strap an iron mallet to the side of one of my replicas these Times reporters could well be right.

The Times feels it neccessary to clarify the law regarding the legal use of an illegal firearm.

Also, I'm wondering, are these the first signs of an emerging gun culture in the UK? No, not that gun culture, this gun culture. I doubt it.

It's written here, look, in our working practices documentation

Police and emergency services help youth gunshot victim in complete safety.

More examples of proper working practices here and here.

This from the Times, which I am sure must be quoting out of context or something:

A police spokesman said that when shots are fired and someone is injured police had to make sure the gunmen were not still in the area before moving in.

I mean, it must be. Surely.

Data protection business scam

We (our new company) have just received a letter from the following company:

D.C.S (ENFORCEMENT SECTION)
CITY BUILDINGS
21-23 OLD HALL STREET
MERSEYSIDE
L3 9BS

The letter begins:

DATA COLLECTION SERVICES
(ENFORCEMENT SECTION)
NOTICE: NEW BUSINESS
NOTIFICATION UNDER THE DATA PROTECTION ACT 1998

Our records show you have not yet submitted Notification to the Information Commissioner in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. This act replaces the Data Protection Act 1984.

Failure to register is a criminal offence: on conviction an offender is liable to a maximum fine ot exceeding level five on the criminal justice scale. At present this level is no greater than £5,000.

The Data Protection Act 1998 requires every business processing personal data to register. The Commissioner maintains a register and general description of businesses storing data. If you are processing personal data, (data which relates to a living individual who can be identified) for the following purposes you must register immediately.

The letter goes on to detail these purposes and then says:

Complete and return the form overleaf with your of £95 payable to D.C.S to commence registration immediately.

This company, D.C.S (or DATA COLLECTION SERVICES) are, in my opinion, SCAM ARTISTS. They have nothing to do with any official agency and are just trying to scare businesses into handing over cash for no reason.

Apparently, and we know this because we phoned the official government agency responsible for data protection registration, they have already been subjected to two successful prosecutions but no one has managed to close them down yet.

Scum is a suitable word for these people. If you are a blogger and run a small business (or even a large one) I would appreciate the spreading of the word before any other (and you can bet there have been some) unfortunate individuals fall for their disgraceful tactics.

ASBO - It's great - can be used anywhere

I'm not sure if I could make this up. You know those Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO's) brought in by this government to deal with anti-social behaviour (noisy neighbours and the like)? Well, people are beginning to get somewhat creative in their application.

You see, anti-social behaviour is a rather broad area:

On Thursday, magistrates sentenced her for three public order offences after deciding at an earlier hearing that throwing herself into a river did constitute disorder.

The Asbo seeks to prevent her doing anything which could cause alarm or distress to the public.

It was clear from the start that the current voluntary option of not throwing ones self into a river was failing and, thankfully, the state and its judiciary have now stepped in.

United front

Well, I have to say that this is a fine idea.

I've never tried playing Online Poker. I've played the real game and I am curious how Online Poker holds up against it, but not curious enough to find out.

I suspect that, in truth, Online Poker is actually a more crappy version of proper poker.

Talking about poker, my mum used to play quite a bit in the old days but I'm not sure Online Poker could hold a candle to the sight of five or six Italian dinner guests sitting at a large table containing piles of money. Man, the shouting.

Online Poker must be rubbish in comparison.

Filed under crime and crime prevention.

PS. Online Poker.

Yes, but what about clarification

Can I deliberately keep a weapon, say a baseball bat or a household knife, in a suitable place so that if I am woken in the night by a burglar the weapon comes easily to hand? If I use this weapon on the burglar will the fact that I had premeditated access to it be used against me or considered in any way whatsoever when deciding if I should face prosecution?

Those two questions are simple enough and important enough to warrant clarification. Yet, the recent publication by the Crown Prosecution Service which attempts to teach misguided householders their rights fails to do so.

Reasonable Force - a letter from the local paper

This is a scan of a letter which appeared in the most recent copy of my local newspaper. I include it here because it relates to issues recently discussed on this site. It is the first time I have seen a letter in the local paper that suggests firearms can be anything other than tools for the wicked.

Who do they think they are kidding?

You know those figures about the number of householders prosecuted for hurting burglars? Yes, the ones you heard on the TV on the weekend. Well it turns out that they don’t actually mean very much:

"There are no statistical details of these cases - they aren't kept. It is not a particularly accurate list and we never said it was. It is quite possible that there are other cases."

The Telegraph found another 7 cases in an hour. Still not very high but that is not the point. The point is that it was known that the statistics provided were not a true and factual representation of the picture and yet the lie was used on TV, on the radio, in the papers and in the halls and chambers of Westminster by the few to justify their position on the law affecting the many.

Why would they do such a thing?

Couple the rubbishing of these statistics with the fact that the prosecution of householders is not the only measure to consider and we see that the government’s position is not as credible as they would like us to believe.

On the question of trust and the social contract we have with the state to protect us this is a backward step. On the subject of self defence in the home some, if not many, members of the public feel disadvantaged. The government’s answer to this is to trot out things that can kindly be described as half-truths and to state that householders are confused.

This weekend we were subjected to a TV programme showing dramatisations of legitimate householder defence. In one dramatisation a burglar is stabbed to death while rifling a draw in a kitchen. The householder, hearing the noise, grabs a knife which he has been keeping under his bed, creeps downstairs and stabs the burglar in the back without warning. The experts told us how this was perfectly legal.

Another showed a burglar running from a house with an armful of booty. The householder shouts at the guy and then chases him out onto the street, smacking him on the back of the head using a golf club (was it a one iron? I think it might well have been). He collapses. The experts tell us again that this was a legitimate use of force to protect property.

Yet we know from what we have seen and heard with our own eyes that such actions have been the beginning of long, hard and often ruinous periods of threatened and actual litigation by the state upon householders that have done very similar or exact same things.

They try to address our confusion with facts and scenarios that are so obviously not true that we have to question their motivation. What do they like so much about the current situation? Why do their fear actually empowering the householder? Why do they come out of this looking more confused than the rest of us?

Crime is down, but there are more criminals somehow

So now Judges should avoid jailing criminals if prisons are considered overcrowded. Colour me surprised.

I wonder what other solutions might be available other than the swapping of a prison sentence with a community sentence, fine or motor sport day trip? Perhaps someone in the building trade might have an answer?

More interesting is the following little snippet:

The jail population at present is 73,085 but longer-term projections expect it to be between 93,000 and 109,000 by 2009.

I thought that the government said that crime was down and that we were just scaring ourselves rather than being scared of any actual, you know, real life crime.

Less crime, more criminals. I'm not good at statistics so someone help me please but does this not mean that one or more of the following are true:

1. Criminals are generally being given longer sentences for the usual crimes.
2. More serious crimes are being committed hence longer sentences.
3. There are more criminals but less crime because each criminal is now committing fewer offences.
4. Something to do with a general increase in the population (stop having criminal babies, ok).
5. Someone is telling porkies.

Prosecuting householders is not the only measure

In this BBC report we see that Michael Howard, leader of the Tory party, accuses Tony Blair of performing U-turns over rules on using force against burglars. Expected and not particularly interesting but what did catch my eye was this little snippet in defence of current legislation by the director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald:

only 11 householders or occupiers of business premises have been prosecuted in the last 15 years.

He would say that wouldn't he, probably because he knows the figures better than most.

What he doesn't mention is the number of householders who have felt persecuted by the police after offering up violence to an intruder. Take Derek Godfrey-Brown for example who spent nine and a half months under the spectre of a trial for grievous bodily harm only to have the case dropped by the CPS a week before the trial was due.

It's not all about prosecutions.

Blogger ransacked

JacobsRoom has been violated. After you receive your crime number from the police Giles I suggest you call the pyjamahadeen head office and ask for their ninja department. Justice will be swift and factually rigorous.

Sincerely though, I hope the bottom feeders are caught and you get your kit back.

Public service announcement

If you live in the UK and would like to report a minor crime to the police you can do it online here.

The England Project - Everyday life made easy

Clarity is a shady business

So it seems that the law governing how householders should treat visiting burglars will not be changed. All that is needed is for the current law to be better explained to all concerned, especially for householders. I assume that burglars are already well versed in their rights hence the lack of need to have it especially explained to them too.

Here is an early indication of quality of the explanation that us householders are waiting for with baited breath:

Information would shortly be published and advertised to the public so people were clear "that the current law ensures that appropriate steps to protect themselves, their family and their property will always be justified".

Take that you burglars!

Erm, any idea on what they mean by appropriate. Isn't this the very heart of the issue?

How to police the hunts

Some people have raised the question of how the police can actually implement the new law on hunting when (and whenever) it comes into force if fox hunters are determined to ignore it. We now have an answer:

I've asked the Chief Constable recently about how we're going to police this if it does break down - you know, civil disorder, the rest of it - and he said it will be exactly the same as when we dealt with the miners.

My only advice would be to put different tyres on the vans, you know, ones with deeper tread. Oh, and also for the police to train their cavalry to jump ditches and hedges and the like at a full gallop. Otherwise, good plan. Can't fail.

And what were they supposed to do about it?

You can't legislate against this kind of incident. What you can do is legislate to stop the victims from being able to do anything much about it. An England Project white flag award to the first politician or campaigner to bring up this incident as an argument for more useless law.

The case of the missing conviction

Neil Herron joins Prisoner JW7874 in pointing out that demands for payment via fines without first achieving a conviction are not compatible with the Bill of Rights 1689 which states:

That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void.

Now, I don't seriously expect these objections to go very far but, frankly, I can't put my finger on why. As Mr. Herron points out:

As stated in the ‘Metric Martyrs’ Judgment in the Supreme Court of Judicature, Queen’s Bench Division (18th February 2002) by Lord Justice Laws and Justice Crane (I will paraphrase, but have included a full copy of the Judgment with the relevant sections 62 and 63 highlighted):

62 “We should recognise a hierarchy of Acts of Parliament: as it were ‘ordinary’ statutes and ‘constitutional’ statutes. The special status of constitutional statutes follows the special status of constitutional rights. Examples are Magna Carta, Bill of Rights 1689, The Act of Union, the Reform Acts etc.”

63. “Ordinary statutes may be impliedly repealed. Constitutional statutes may not…”

As you are no doubt aware, Sunderland City Council went to quite considerable lengths to achieve the Metric Martyrs Judgment and the precedent set by Lord Justice Laws is clear and unambiguous.

Mr. Herron should know, because he was there when the judgement was made.

Who and how many is not the issue

Some of you may be beginning to notice postings on other blogs about this issue of how homeowners can treat or should be able to treat burglars. Things like how this is only on the agenda because a rich white man was killed during a break-in or how the current calls by some for a change or clarification of the law should be addressed by mentioning the fact (not withstanding any increase in hot burglaries) that burglaries are actually dropping.

I think that this reveals some negative prejudice in these commentators. Firstly, it reveals their belief that those bringing up the issue are overly concerned with the makeup of the victim without providing anything but very loose and highly improbably circumstantial evidence.

Secondly it implies that the rights of victims and of burglars should in some way be dependent upon the number of burglaries that are committed each year.

I don’t recognise either of these two points as significantly legitimate with respect to what the correct legislation should be. Poor black victim, rich white victim, one hot burglary a year, five million hot burglaries a year.

The legitimacy of a homeowner’s method and intensity of resistance or retaliation is not and should not be dependent on those issues.

Home defence and security

Here's a little more from Sir John Stevens on self defence in the home:

"The bottom line is that everyone from the public to the politicians are behind it, apart from one or two lawyers."

Sir John also backed people's right to arm themselves at home in order to defend themselves.

"People do have baseball bats to defend themselves, after all they are in their homes and it is not an offensive weapon. I draw the line at firearms but people are entitled to be in possession of such things in their own homes.

Also, don't miss this Mark Steyn article in the Telegraph in which he suggests that the increased security used generally in our homes simply helps to encourage determined burglars to go for the easy option ie the front door when someone is there to answer it.

An Englishman's home is not his castle, but his dungeon and ever more so - window bars, window locks, dead bolts, laser security, and no doubt biometric recognition garage doors, once the Blunkett national ID card goes into circulation.

All this high-tech protection, urged on the householder by Pc Plod, may make your home more secure, but it makes you less so. From the burglar's point of view, the more advanced and impregnable the alarm systems become, the more it makes sense just to knock on the door and stab whoever answers.

An interesting point of view and one that I think has some merit.

The Prime Ministers Official Spokesman says that we are all a little confused. We have been granted by the government all the rights that we need and just need a little clarification on the whole burglar thing. Part of that clarification is to tell us that we should not 'actively retaliate' against a home intruder.

No advice was offered as to why 'active retaliation' was a bad thing.

Sir John Stevens has given his support to the Tories for their plan on the issue of home defence. Some critics of the plan suggest:

...it could create a "have a go" culture among some householders.

No news yet on what the negative aspects of have a go culture might be.

Never forget that the primary reason for the unreasonable farce we find ourselves in is the desire, which is irresistible for some, to protect the burglar from the home owner.

A mini crime spree

Via Mugged by reality, via Blognorregis we have this story in the Jerusalem Post:

Two intoxicated female British tourists who were sexually assaulted by their Jerusalem Arab taxi driver fended him off with blows which left him hospitalized, police said Tuesday.

The incident, which took place late Sunday night, began after the two tourists, who are in their 20's, were picked up by the driver from the city's popular Underground Disco and asked to be driven to the youth hostel in the Jerusalem community of Shoresh.

On the way, the driver pulled over on a darkened patch of the road, and started to commit an indecent sexual act on one of the tourists, police said.

The two fought back, beating the driver and even damaging his cab.

The surprised driver – who was so badly beaten that he required medical treatment at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Hospital at Ein Kerem – was placed under arrest.

He was later released on bail.

The two tourists involved in the incident were questioned by police, and are still in Israel, police said.

I can't help but wonder how this incident would have been dealt with over here in the UK. Being so distant and, of course, not having all the facts it would be easy for me to judge harshly but I gotta say it looks like a mini crime spree. Sexual assault, grievous bodily harm (or perhaps actual bodily harm), criminal damage and, perhaps, something to do with being drunk for good measure. Lots of arrestable offences, all in such an enclosed area. Bargain.

Historical vandalism

Via Guido at dodgeblogium we see that vandals have wrecked a memorial commemorating the local Fartown and Birkby servicemen who fell during the Great War.

The people who did this then added further disgrace by scrawling Die 4 no reason, long live Hittler on what was left of the monument.

I find it hard to understand how anyone could do something like this, but then again things go on every day that I find impossible to fathom and vandalism in general goes on all over the country, every day of the week. But this particular brand of vandalism goes far deeper than most for me.

It is historical vandalism that belittles the sacrifice made by so many of our men and boys. It reaches far back and wrenches at some of the very things that define our nation's place in the modern world. I don't for one minute think that the people who did this actually understand the meaning of the local monument, which is just one of thousands that stand in the villages, towns and cities of the United Kingdom, blessed and at the same time burdened with the names of the men who once lived in those communities.

They don't understand because if they did they would not have shown such disregard and disrespect. How could they?

So why don't they understand? Why can't they empathise with what the memorial stands for? Not for war, but for sacrifice.

Because these individuals have no reference within themselves, no check or failsafe that would or could have stopped them in their tracks for even contemplating such a disregarding act.

The toppling of that statue, that bronze copy of a first world war soldier, was to them a symbol of their 'struggle', their beliefs and their desires. Them, them, them. These are the very people who are completely lacking in the exact qualities represented by that statue.

It has been toppled, vandalised, and daubed with insulting remarks and it still contains in each name engraved onto its surface, more value than is contained within the hearts of the thugs that tried so hard to destroy it.

Of reasonable force

So close and yet so very far. This time it's England's most senior police officer Met commissioner Sir John Stevens who believes that burglars are feeling emboldened by the current state of self defence laws in England. At the moment we are entitled to use "reasonable force" to defend ourselves and our homes. Stevens says:

My own view is that people should be allowed to use what force is necessary and they should be allowed to do so without any risk of prosecution.

Necessary, reasonable, meh.

Currently if one were to, say, smack a burglar in the mouth for manhandling ones TV it would be seen as using unreasonable force (protection of property in this country using violence is only possible if one is willing to break the law and be punished if caught or if one is a certain type of state employee) and I doubt that Sir John Stevens intends this to change.

We will increasingly see, I am sure, more of these old fashioned policemen, clinging to ideas that are out of step with the needs and the desires of the population, talking fast and cheap on subjects like this. It is my hope that never being able to step over their own liberal lines in the sand will be their eventual undoing.

Tim Worstall is a bit more upbeat about Sir John Stevens' comments:

This would bring us back to the rather comforting situation where an Englishman’s home is his castle. We may not be allowed to change a light bulb in the kitchen but we can beat up or kill someone threatening us.

I suppose my above little diatribe does seem somewhat over zealous in the circumstances, given that I do welcome the remarks made by Sir John Stevens.

Maybe I was wrong when I wrote I doubt that Sir John Stevens intends this to change on the subject of the thumping of TV carrying burglars. Stevens did say that:

those who defended their families and property should only face prosecution over injuries to intruders in "extreme circumstances", where they could be shown to have used gratuitous violence.

Obviously we are down to loose definitions of extreme circumstances again but I accept and welcome the comments as trying to help redress the balance in the current state of affairs.

This leader in the telegraph accuses Sir John Stevens of a certain muddled thinking with his comments on the Tony Martin case:

But in his interview today, Sir John betrays a certain muddled thinking. He cites the case of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who shot dead a 16-year-old burglar, as one that has skewed the debate about the rights of homeowners. Sir John emphasises that the burglar was running away when he was shot, and that Mr Martin was using an unlicensed gun, thus suggesting that Mr Martin is therefore undeserving of sympathy. (It became clear during the trial that Mr Martin had suffered numerous burglaries of his farmhouse before the lethal event.)

If Sir John's argument is that there should be a presumption in law in favour of the householder in his dealings with an intruder, then surely it is irrelevant whether or not the gun was licensed. Sir John appears to be suggesting that a homeowner who detects a burglar should submit to the intruder if he remembers that, say, his shotgun licence has expired. If there is to be a presumption in law in favour of the householder, it must be almost absolute.

Overreaction

Do not let your children play in the street with toy guns. Why?:

Many of the guns are very realistic and we cannot take the risk that they are fake when we are called to an incident.

Of course, the police established very early on that the guns were .99p toys which begs the question why keep one of the kids locked up for five hours?

I have a letter from the Home Office at home somewhere in which an official tells me that new laws were not there to prevent children playing cowboys and indians and the like but, instead, to help the police put a stop to dangerous criminal activity.

Now I accept that the police were right to act upon the call from the member of the public but I think that there is a tendency to overreact.

The overreaction Puts me in mind of this incident from last year:

But they had noticed her seven-year-old son Jake's plastic sword lying on the back seat, and, she says, threatened to arrest her for displaying what looked like an offensive weapon.

They said she could be arrested if she did not put the foot-long object in the boot.

Armed and somewhere

Hey, we all make mistakes. I blame the lack of ID cards.

Make the punishment fit the crime

We need more prisons in this country. Specialist ones that concentrate on making the punishment fit the crime. New swanky buildings that glimmer in the moonlight built with the local community in mind by offering it low cost sporting facilities, cinema screens, bars, amusements and excellent eating facilities. All subsidised by the products and services provided by the incarcerated.

One of these new specialist prisons should be reserved for people like this (Cambridge police nab UK spammer). It would classify as having specialist status because of certain regimes followed internally.

For instance, the only protein available on the diet in SPAM prison would be, unsurprisingly, SPAM. As much of it as one would care to eat in fact. When not eating SPAM the incarcerated would be asked to sit in front of a computer for 3 hours of each weekday filtering through computer generated e-mail inboxes. The exercise would require them to remove any SPAM they might find without deleting any real mail and they would need to do this by just looking at the subject, to and from lines. A poor rate of filtering or poor accuracy would be punishable by additional servings of real SPAM, the consumption of which in this case would be compulsory.

The remaining hours of the day would be spent in production of various items for sale, the generation of electricity (exercise) and the provision of whatever services can best be provided by overweight SPAM averted individuals with excellent typing skills. Profits would help subsidise the local community services attached to the prison.

If David Blunkett, in the time that he has left, includes such an idea in a future policy statement remember where you heard it first.

After the fact

This is just a guess at this stage but it looks like the police tidying up exercise is going rather well:

A man is being questioned in connection with the murder of a City financier who was stabbed to death in his own home.

It is a great comfort to the rest of us to know that in times like these (that is after the fact) we can rely on such a great service.

Protection rates

In this very recent exchange between Blair and Howard on crime rates our politicians fight over rates of offence and detection rates. One thing they will never discuss, because it probably isn't even on their radar, is protection rates. How many successful instances of protection by the police of members of the public were there last year, the year before, this year? These should only include protection during a violent crime in progress and should be expressed not only as a count of successful protection events but also as a percentage of the total number of violent crimes in the same time period.

The UN rides to the rescue, of some

The UK government has been urged to review its policy of detaining foreign terror suspects without trial, by the United Nations Committee on Torture.

But of course the UN would urge this review. No sign yet of them urging a review of the UK government's Civil contingencies bill.

Drake wades into the Civil Contingencies Act over at The Edge of England's Sword.

No crime number

Of course, by today’s modern day sophisticated standards this is assault:

The villain clutched his chest and screamed "I've been shot!" and his "friends" dropped the bag and ran off.

The shot man fell on the floor then jumped up and run off yelling into the distance at which point, the guy shot him again in the back of the head.

He fell writhing on the ground and his mates came back and dragged him into the van which then sped off.

But then again, someone learnt an important lesson that day.