The Last Ditch

Is this how the Crown Prosecution Service would treat you?

One of the best things about Britain used to be that the police had no special powers or privileges. Sir Robert Peel's original conception was of people employed to do professionally what any public-spirited citizen might do. The genius of this vision was that citizens need not fear their police. They were just exercising every citizen's rights; fulfilling every citizen's duty. The Jean Charles de Menezes case is clear evidence that we must fear them now. They have been set above us.

If you killed a man on the Tube, believing him (on slight evidence and that contradicted by his being too lightly clad to conceal a bomb)  to be a suicide bomber, you would be prosecuted. The police and the CPS would say that it was "for a jury to decide" whether your defence was a good one. The family of the man you killed would expect a trial. Quite rightly, justice would be done and would be seen to be done.

There is no shadow of justice in today's, all too predictable, news. The stark fact is that one set of the State's agents has protected another. So much so, that we do not even know the killers' names. Compare and contrast that with the coverage of alleged crimes committed by those who are not the State's privileged agents. Their names are bandied about for all to remember long after their acquittal.

I do not know that a jury would convict these policemen. I suspect it wouldn't. I don't think the CPS is protecting the killers for their own good. I suspect the objective is to avoid public discussion of the, probably illegal, instructions given by the the Home Office in the wake of the 7/7 bombings.

Of all the dark stories of the New Labour years, this is perhaps the most sinister. I cannot understand why the public is unmoved.

Let's be tough on the real causes of crime

Link: The Home Counties boys who planned murder | Uk News | News | Telegraph.

This gentleman speaks directly to Toynbee, Blair and all those other Guardianistas who seek to excuse crime and terrorism by reference to its "social causes"

Omar Khyam's uncle told the Daily Telegraph: "You read in the papers, 'Ah, well it's because of lack of opportunities.' "Rubbish, what part don't you understand? What lack of opportunities? They had a reasonable education, they come from reasonable families, with very stable backgrounds, financially sound.

Thank you, sir. The twin "causes of crime" in Britain are (a) criminals and (b) Guardianistas who hold "society," not criminals responsible. As Theodore Dalrymple says (writing of an emerging Indian underclass in Britain)

In fact, they have assimilated to the local cultural and intellectual climate: a climate in which the public explanation of behavior, including their own, is completely at variance with all human experience. This is the lie that is at the heart of our society, the lie that encourages every form of destructive self-indulgence to flourish: for while we ascribe our conduct to pressures from without, we obey the whims that well up from within, thereby awarding ourselves carte blanche to behave as we choose. Thus we feel good about behaving badly.

The politicians cannot make people feel responsible for their own actions. All they can do is consistently treat them as if they are. Doing the opposite for decades has created the lie that Dalrymple describes. It will take decades of truth to reverse the damage done.

Yesterday, a British jury and a British judge ignored the excuses and special pleading. They held criminals responsible for their choices. Is it too much to hope for the politicians to do the same - and not just for those whose crimes are political?

Don't be smug about V-Tech killings

Link: BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US university killer was S Korean.

Britain's anti-American media were all over the sad story of the V-Tech killings. They tore gleefully into America's "gun culture" and its people in general. Let's get this straight. This horror didn't happen because the killer was American. It didn't happen because he was ethnically Korean. It happened because the poor young man was mad.

"Ah, but he had such easy access to guns." Yes, he did. Unfortunately, since the university authorities had made the campus "gun-free," his victims did not. There was no-one there to return fire. Most of the victims would be alive today if the university had not banned guns.

Some Britons seem to enjoy it when something like this happens in America, but Britain has no moral standing to judge America harshly.  Violent crime is declining in America and rising in Britain. The risk of being violently attacked in England & Wales is already higher than in America and rising. In Scotland, the situation is worse. Many killed or injured with knives or other weapons in Britain, would be alive and unharmed if their assailants had feared they might have a gun.

The main disadvantage of widespread gun ownership in America is that suicide is easier. 58% of America's gun deaths are self-inflicted, which is one reason you have to be careful when gun control advocates choose to compare "gun deaths" rather than homicides. Only 38% of America's "gun deaths" are homicides and some of those are justifiable (e.g. self-defence).

Britain's only statistical advantage in the field of crime is that our homicide rate is lower. America counts all reported offences. We remove homicides from the statistics if all suspects are acquitted (although the victim remains dead). We might not show the V-Tech killings in our statistics at all, if they were found to have been committed by a mentally-disturbed person (see Home Office Statistical Bulletin 02/07). America's statistics more accurately reflect the total number of victims.

It's hard to say what the statistical difference would be if comparable figures were available, but it seems reasonable to suspect that some of Britain's advantage would be lost.

Burglaries are twice as common in Britain as in America and 53% of them (because of improved household security) now take place when the homeowner is present. In America only 13% of burglaries take place while an occupant is home. American burglars do not have the benefit of a government guarantee that all properties are undefended. Would anyone in America have frightened my wife like these guys? I don't think so. They would have been afraid that she or some kindly neighbour  would have shot them. That fear would have neutralised all their advantages of youth, strength and disregard for reputation.

To carry a licensed gun in America, you must - in every State - have a clean criminal record. Am I naive enough to expect American criminals to obey America's gun control laws? No. The naive ones are those who expect British criminals to abide by Britain's. They simply don't. While, by definition, no law-abiding citizen in Britain is armed; one-third of young criminals own or have access to a gun. There may be as many as four million illegal firearms in Britain.

For most of my life, I shared the common British view that America's attitude to gun control was crazy. However, disarming the law-abiding has proved to be disastrous. The British State can't or won't protect us. We were stupid to let it disarm us.

Can we please just shut up about V-Tech? We have no leg to stand on.

Apology for 'idiots' election ban

Link: 'Apology for\'idiots\'election ban'.

If indeed idiots were ever banned from public office in Britain, that ban seems to have been remarkably ineffective.

Another conspiracy to pervert the course of justice?

Link: News of the World - Online Edition.

I apologise to Guido for thinking his theory about the injuncted email contrived. It seems that police sources have alleged to the News of the World that Number 10 did leak the email itself, presumably so as to try to engineer a mistrial.

I am no expert on current criminal law, but it seems to me that if true this would, in itself, be another attempt to pervert the course of justice. It could form the basis of a completely separate charge.

The "cash for peerages" story is really now irrelevant. If, as some allege, the Prime Minister's team has destroyed evidence, lied to the police and now deliberately leaked an email to the press to compromise a criminal trial, these are much more serious offences. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice carries a theoretical maximum sentence of life imprisonment, although 10 years has been the longest sentence to date.

Frankly, if the office of our head of Government had really been involved in such a crime (which I am reluctant to believe) it would be time for the judges to break that record. The culture of "spin" which has grown up around Tony Blair is utterly despicable. There is no question that he and his staff are habitual deceivers.

Let us hope that habit has not been carried over into the world of criminal justice.

H/T Dizzy Thinks

Does this remind you of anything?

President Hugo Chávez was granted an Enabling Law by the Venezuelan National Assembly on January 31, 2007.

The Enabling Law vests the President with legislative powers for 18 months in several areas, including nationalizations, hydrocarbons, electric utilities, telecommunications, taxes, social security and public finance, among several others.

Comrade Hugo has had the decency to restrict himself to 18 months of such powers, and to limit them to certain areas of law. That doesn't make him any more of a constitutional democrat than his friends in Britain.

Comrade Hugo is also more honest in his choice of name for his law.

It is really interesting to review the history of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, and to compare the undertaking given by Jim Murphy with that given by Adolf Hitler in advance of the passage of his Enabling Act.

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one."

The UK Bill has been toned down considerably, but its original form tells us all we need to know about the instincts of our rulers, which is that they are closer to those of Comrade Hugo than to those of Parliamentary democrats.

Several Cambridge University law professors wrote to the Times on February 16 last year on the subject (which I believe I have the honour of having been the first to blog about). Sadly the rehash of Times Online has trashed the online copy of their letter, but they pointed out that (as reported at the Save Parliament website)

a minister would have been able to abolish trial by jury, suspend habeas corpus (your right not to be arbitrarily arrested), or change any of the legislation governing the legal system.

I still find it hard to believe that, in the country which pioneered the concept of the rule of law, it is a seedy scandal over party finances that seems likely to bring down a government with such tyrannical instincts.