Cameron plays to the gallery on sex crime

A right to appeal for sex offenders can't generate genuine outrage

David Cameron says he is outraged that the Supreme Court, using powers under the Human Rights Act, has allowed the right of appeal to those placed on the Sexual Offences Register for Life.

Proclaiming outrage merely on account of the idea that someone can appeal against a judicial measure is nothing more than playing to the gallery. Cameron is manipulating the issue to court the Daily Mail and to discredit the Human Rights Act.

That politicians misrepresent events to their advantage is their trade. But people should note that Cameron is stepping into the gutter by wanting to deny even the most basic procedural rights to these modern-day social lepers.

Sadism against prisoners is wrong

British Justice Minister, Jack Straw, wants to restrict prisoner's rights to participate in theatre.

It is a statement of the obvious that those who commit serious crimes against the person or private property should be off the streets and in prison. It also seems to me to be common sense that, as these people will eventually emerge again into society, anything that can “humanise” them is an advantage to them and everybody else too. On these grounds alone Jack Straw’s attempt at populist sadism should be rejected.

However for me there is an ethical point too: it is always wrong to hold that the suffering of a human being per se, however evil he may be, can constitute moral value to society.

Brown to target parents of ‘anti-social’ children

The death agonies of New Labour are truly ugly. In a last ditch attempt to scrape a few Daily Mail votes Brown is planning a host of coercive and repressive measures against the Britain’s burgeoning underclass.

Few deny that in Britain’s broken society - now more unequal than at any time since 1945 - steps need to be taken to provide jobs, social help and wealth distribution for those inhabiting junk estates and the inner cities. Yet the swelling of these ghettos is the direct result of New Labour’s market fundamentalism, a policy resulting in mass unemployment, inadequate and insecure housing leading in turn to family breakdown and crime.

For Brown to court so-called Middle England voters by kicking the working class victims of New Labour’s own policies just about sums up Brown and his party.

Denying the obvious

Propaganda and spin under New Labour is all embracing.

Today the media acquired a confidential internal Home Office briefing letter sent to Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. The message of the letter was that the economic downturn which is causing rising levels of poverty and unemployment would in turn be accompanied by an increase in crime and other related social problems.

The BBC News political correspondent Gary O'Donoghue said that although it comes as no surprise that ministers expect crime to rise in an economic downturn, there will be embarrassment that these thoughts have become public.

Two issues seem to me to arise from this sorry episode. First for what possible legitimate reason is ‘advice’ of this kind to government ministers kept confidential in the first place? Second, to what depth has government propaganda sunk – along with popular expectations of government behaviour – when something as obvious as “recession equals higher crime” can’t be acknowledged by the government. What started off under Alistair Campbell as “spin” as the key to all government communication – i.e. a policy of perennial propaganda in government speech – has now led to situation where citizens expect their government to misrepresent and deny the obvious. Is this one of the so-called British values that Mr Brown is so keen to promote?


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