Friday 29 January 2010

Criminal Injustice

Election campaigns tend to be an opportunity for our political representatives to posture themselves as the toughest on crime – who can forget Blair’s 1997 pledge of “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. In practice New Labour were neither, but at least they started with lofty aspirations to attack the root of criminality; however this soon descended to “zero tolerance” when David Blunkett cherry picked a report on crime prevention from New York and applied one narrow aspect of it, without adopting the vast majority of the techniques used by the New Yorkers. This ‘zero tolerance’ approach was cheer led from the sidelines by the conservative press, which is to say, in essence all the press; a policy which flew the face of decades of research which have shown this approach has never worked.

Enter David Cameron into the fray, with a pledge to stop the government's early release scheme. This rash promise has led to the Conservatives proposing the reintroduction of prison ships, which when last used were described by the then Chief Inspector of Prisons as unfit for purpose. Cameron has condemned the government's early release scheme, citing that since Gordon Brown’s premiership 75,000 prisoners have been released early, with 1,500 offences being committed by inmates on early release. So, that is a massive 2%; clearly this is a political decision attacking the policy in general, to whip up support from the True Blues and the media.


The question our politicians should be seeking an answer to is; why are British prisons so full that we have to release prisoners early in the first place?


Britain has the largest prison population in Europe. About 70% of the detainees have two or more diagnosed mental disorders; about 60% have a reading age of less than that of a six year old and conservative estimates show at least a quarter of inmates are heroin addicts. New Labour has been obsessed during its tenure to criminalise British society, creating over 3,000 new offences with about half warranting a custodial sentence. When analysed many seem incredibly minor, with the Home Office’s zeal for sending people to jail for bad driving, petty crimes such as shop lifting, or as part of the ill conceived war on drugs.


The simple truth is that tens of thousands of prisoners in British jails just simply shouldn’t be there; in the Eighties the Conservative's inspired policy of ‘care’ in the community dumped thousands of severely mentally ill patients in small unsecured units, although in reality on the streets. Many now find themselves part of the prison population. Drug addicts should be rehabilitated, as this has been shown repeatedly, over and over again by countless studies to reduce crime and re-offending rates; New Labour’s response was to reduce the number of treatment centres in the UK. The prisons are too full to have effective education programmes to equip inmates with the skills necessary to be a worthwhile participant in society and then everyone throws their hands up in the air when the latest re-offender figures are released as though it is a mystery; then our intrepid political masters suggest being tougher or buying a couple of boats to solve the problem.


In British society an unvirtuous circle has evolved between politicians, the media and public opinion; which has taken us down a path where the best interests of our society are seldom served. It starts with a populist conservative sentiment based on ignorance and prejudice; the right-wing media then feeds on this sentiment, criticising the politicians for not immediately bowing down to it in the most reactionary way possible; the weak politicians then make policies to get applause from the press, and so we descend. Once when journalism was about reporting the truth, and politicians made their decisions based upon facts, public opinion could be changed and society improved. Capital punishment was abolished in the face of overwhelming public opposition, such a thing could not happen today, due to the debasement of our politics and press; maybe the Enlightenment has finally ended?


If petty criminals, the addicted and the insane were taken out of the prisons then those convicted of serious crimes could receive the punishments that they deserve and serve sentences that reflect the harm they have caused. The vast sums of money saved could be used to fund secure hospitals where the mentally ill could receive suitable treatment and drug rehabilitation centres could be built to help the helplessly addicted, as well as developing effective prevention programmes.


Our current justice system is a thing of deep collective shame, an indictment on our society where we lock up the deranged, the weak, and the feeble and offer them no realistic chance to redeem themselves after our retribution. We all feel good because justice has been seen to be done, we have reinforced our prejudiced opinion and the fact is we have not made society one jot safer.

Thursday 21 January 2010

No to nuclear: not so clear

I have often been left somewhat confused by the contradictory messages from environmentalists regarding the use of nuclear power. In one breath we are told that climate change will destroy us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels immediately; yet we are then told that the low carbon energy source of nuclear power is not even an option, for it is dangerous, dirty and terrorists will blow us all up. Instead we are told that we should move to renewables as these are safe, clean and it will probably make you your tea if you ask it nicely.



Fine, but is this really true, is this what science tells us, or is there something else driving this debate?


If we look at renewable energy as it stands, then there is an immediate problem with the green lobby message. It cannot meet our energy needs; even if Britain was bristling with wind turbines, like the spines on a hedgehog’s back, lights would still go out, factories would have to reduce production and shock-horror, we might even have to turn our televisions off! I expect as time goes by, given enough financial backing, renewable technology will improve to bridge this energy gap; technology usually does, my x-box makes my eighties Sinclair look positively prehistoric. However “you can’t put the cart before the horse” as my Dad is fond of saying, so until renewables are in a position to meet our energy needs, why not use nuclear?


The argument against nuclear is a flawed one. Firstly nuclear power does not equate to a nuclear bomb; this seems to be a fairly obvious point, however in this debate the obvious and rational have too often been forced into the background. Those against nuclear power will also point you towards Chernobyl, usually in semi-hysterical tones. Let’s be absolutely clear, in terms of technology, Chernobyl is to power stations what the Trabant was to the automotive industry. It was shamefully underfunded by the USSR and safety was non-existent; the disaster was an indictment of the people who ran the plant – not nuclear power. Returning to my x-box metaphor from earlier, the technology of today’s nuclear power plants has massively advanced; the plants of the eighties are arcane in comparison with those being built today.


The second complaint is that the waste produced is too expensive to dispose of, and it remains dangerous for thousands of years. If handled responsibly, nuclear waste can be safely stored. France generates over 75% of its energy from nuclear power and by using ‘the closed fuel cycle’, where the waste is reprocessed to be used again, the amount to be disposed of is greatly reduced. In fact, extrapolating from Department of Trade and Industry figures, an average household would produce a teacup full of high level waste over a seventy year period, indeed all of the high level waste produced over the last fifty years would fit inside the Albert Hall, leaving enough room for another thirty years worth at current production. So, we are hardly swamped with the stuff.


We are also told that terrorists could somehow target a nuclear plant, although how this scenario would play out is never expanded. If they flew a plane into a reactor, they would kill those on board, as well as any plant workers on the ground; however this would NEVER cause a containment breach. They could steal some fuel, however as I have already pointed out, a nuclear power station is not a bomb, if they stole the fuel it would still need to be enriched to be weapons grade. So this argument is perhaps the weakest of all, why go to all that trouble when they could attack a soft target for less effort and greater effect.


So if nuclear is not as dirty or dangerous as the propaganda tells us (if you don't believe me, ask a physicist), renewables cannot possibly meet our current energy needs and we accept that climate change is putting us in peril – why on earth are environmentalists opposing it. From a rational and scientific stand point, their position just doesn’t make any sense. This is the problem with green politics; it isn’t just about saving the environment, it is riddled with politicking, even when this leaves them supporting a view which whilst perhaps well meaning, is contradictory, naive and they are left looking like fools; my suspicion is that as the green movement evolved out of CND and the far left during the seventies; the ‘ban the bomb’ and ‘no to nuclear’ rhetoric has proven just too hard to give up, so hard in fact, they cannot differentiate between a power plant and a bomb.

Monday 11 January 2010

Disrespect or Dystopia?

It came as no surprise today that the lunatic organisation of Islam4UK announced that they won’t be holding their inflammatory march in Wootton Bassett after all. What a bombshell it was to hear that swivel eyed moron, Anjem Choudary, after creating a storm of publicity, decided that trampling on the grief of the bereaved; as well as the wishes of a quiet little community was no longer necessary.



Let me share a little secret with you all – They were never going to hold a march.


Their only motivation was desperate publicity seeking: to gather as many of the conspiracy theorists; religious zealots; Islamist right-wingers; and misfits to their tawdry little club. Islam4UK is a pathetic organisation, full of grandiose plans to destroy Britain’s secular society, install Sharia Law and create a fundamentalist Islamic state. It is like an amalgamation of the BNP’s politics, spiced up with bible-belt faith creationist values, being ran by schizophrenic ex-pats.


"His (Choudary’s) attempt to demonstrate at Wootton Bassett was set out to provoke hatred between communities and is not welcomed in the Muslim communities," Mohammed Shafiq, from the Ramadhan Foundation is reported by the BBC to have said, before adding "He and his cronies have no support in the British Muslim communities."


In much the same way that Nick Griffin and Sarah Palin do not represent mine, or majority British opinion; Choudary and his band of bigots do not represent the views of British Muslims.


The problem for them now, is that they have boxed themselves into a corner after reaching publicity-stunt-critical-mass (as it were); for Islam4UK have played the “we are going to hold a controversial march” card before, to muted media attention. However after the furore this time, they in future will have to actually carry their threatened crassness through to its end in order to garner so much press attention.


As David Mitchell rightly pointed out in the Observer, the winners of this debacle are the press, who got to be outraged, whilst confirming the views of the little-Englanders; that Britain is going to hell in a Muslim hand cart. At the same time Islam4UK and their ilk get unfounded publicity and are able to claim confirmation that Britain is repressive towards Islam.


The loser in all this is free speech, for the general public reaction was to call for the proposed march to be banned. Whilst I totally sympathise with the sentiment, I don’t agree this would be the appropriate or desirable course of action. We, in theory at least, live in a free society, the foundation stone of which is freedom of expression and free speech. If we lose this right, then we are separated from the essence of being human and take another step towards an Orwellian dystopia.


The price of our freedom is that anyone can express their view, however ludicrous, unpleasant or disrespectful that view may be; it is their right. If someone wants to hold a march supporting the notion that the Moon is blue, so be it. I would think they were insane and it is my right to tell them they are idiots; or to ignore them; or as David Mitchell suggests, tell them to “fuck off”. The argument that ‘they wouldn’t allow you to do that in a Muslim country’ as is often spouted by right-wing bods is not really a particularly intelligent one - You can be stoned to death for adultery in some states, should we adopt that one too?


The next time Islam4UK threatens to march, (through the Normandy War Cemeteries or pissing on the Cenotaph are about the only options to up the ante I guess?), we could collectively ignore them and then the fuel of publicity would be extinguished. If we’d said “let the morons march then”, with no one acknowledging them, free speech and liberty could be served. If our 24 hour news media could control its desperate need for hype and controversy; see Islam4UK for what it is, and tell them to fuck off; then this whole episode could avoid being repeated. 

 I'm not going to hold my breath though.