Vox Polis

Grant Shapps, Conservative MP, has released research revealing that 5 out of 6 police officers have been assaulted in the past 5 years. He was on Today this morning claiming that this meant that society was crumbling and that we should all take a long hard look at ourselves:

“It is only by rebuilding a sense of social responsibility that we can hope to tackle this truly deep-rooted problem. Preventing our officers from being assaulted requires a change in attitude towards our police.”

It’s certainly not good that a lot of police officers have been assaulted but, frankly, this discovery is equivalent to the shocking news that most soldiers have been shot at. The police spend their time arresting (mostly) guilty people; criminals, shockingly, don’t like being arrested and tend to fight back. Would Mr Shapps be happy if we had only gentleman criminals who, when caught, exclaimed “Bother! Well it’s a fair cop guv’” and handcuffed themselves? If you’re going to bemoan the collapse of society at have some relevant data before you do it.

It takes real effort for a government to be “not fit for purpose”. It’s not just the big headline grabbing stuff like losing criminals and filling prisons to bursting point the small things count as well. Rubber stamps for instance:

When a government department can’t even rubber stamp stuff you know there’s trouble. At the time of posting it’s unclear if this stamp shortage applies only to stamps for the mystical “Untied Kingdom” or to our own country as well. Whether the big split will make a jot of difference remains to be seen.

Blair really is doing badly. His approval rating is actually lower than George Bush’s (28% compared to 39% for Bush).

Well I’m sure the troop withdrawal announcement yesterday will change all that.

Great moment on today’s Marr show. In Andrew Marr’s interview of Tony Blair he gave him a hard time over Iraq, which clearly left Blair rattled.

The other interesting thing was the look on Tony’s face when Marr said Cameron reminded him of Blair in the 1990s, when Blair was shadow Home Secretary. (A point taken from his colleague Nick Robinson) Blair’s reaction was priceless. It looked like he blushed and smiled. He really is proud of the Cameron he helped to create.

In a ruling yesterday a judge found the government’s energy review “misleading”, “seriously flawed” and “procedurally unfair”. The challenge to the consultation was made by Greenpeace. I raised my own concerns about the government’s conduct of the review last July.

In response to the ruling Greenpeace called for the government to “go back to the drawing board”. Tony Blair said the judge’s findings would have no effect on policy.

Given the strong language of the ruling it seems likely that the government will have to, at least, make a token effort at a second consultation but I doubt this will change anything. Energy policy has already been decided at the highest levels of government and given the top-down nature of the current administration it’s hard to imagine and amount of consultation leading to a change of course.

Time is running out to replace our aging and unsecure power supplies and nuclear energy, for all its faults, has the advantage of being ready to go immediately. What’s really needed, instead of crowing by Greenpeace and the opposition parties, is for someone to present a coherent, accurately costed alternative to the nuclear route as soon as possible.

Millions of voters think Labour are more sleazy than the Major government according to today’s poll in the Sun.  I love the spin on this.  Out of a poll of 968 (just under the Sun’s millions) only 24% think Labour are more sleazy.  The majority (50%) think both governments are as bad as each other- this demonstrates the lack of trust in Government as a whole rather than Labour being any worse.

If you look at the trends, you can see that more people think Labour are more sleazy than 6 years ago.  Not surprising when you consider all the fuss over the Loans scandal.

The Sun then tells us that only 15% think Cameron will do any better.  True, but they forget to mention that 17% think Brown would be better.  The majority (54%) think they will be no difference.

It looks like the Sun is trying to make more out of this than they need to.

Oh dear what a banana! David Miliband made a great slip up on Question Time tonight. Miliband’s not going to be getting a job with Brown now- assuming that he ever was.

I challenge Miliband to find me anyone in 6 months time who’s saying it would be great to have Blair back- that’s assuming he’s left by then.

I’ve been following the French election campaign for some time; over the last year we’ve seen the excitement of Chirac’s protege de Villepin destroying his chances of standing for President over the CPE fiasco, Chirac’s false hopes of standing again (he came 17th in a recent poll as who should be the next President), and Royal’s controversial nomination campaign. But this is the first time i’ve got round to writing about it. Why? Well this is when it begins to get exciting, even though campaigning doesn’t officially start until April.

My money has always been on the “poisoned drawf” Sarkozy winning the election. Not because he would make a better President but because he is more ambitious and more determined. Don’t forget he’s wanted to be president since he was a teenager. But also because I think Royal’s “post-modern listening experiment” will eventually fall on deaf ears.

Royal’s campaign strategy sounds great in theory but they will not work in a political environment consumed by distrust, presentations and sound bites. Royal wants a deliberative campaign where she listens to everyone’s concerns, makes notes and then comes up with some great policies. Great in theory- some of the best political campaigners have pretended to be been listeners. Remember Bobby Kennedy or Bill Clinton! But you can’t using these processes to formulate policy, it will ultimately upset those who’s ideas were not used and those who feel the new policies don’t go far enough.

Such a process is making her appear weak in comparison to Sarkozy, who has effectively seized the initiative and is currently setting the agenda of the political campaign. Royal’s listening phase of the campaign has been overshadowed by gaffes, the revelations by aides and her lack of concrete policies. She’s got alot of convincing to do in the second talking phase of her campaign if she hopes to win.

Looks like the “post-partisan” Arnie has been watching himself in Hercules again reading up on his ancient Greek history. In his annual state of the state address, Arnie said that California is the “modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta. California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta”.

California has Athens’ ideas of democracy that, we can see, have led to the election of a populist ex-action actor who often struggles to articulate a coherent sentence and probably just like the city state of Athens has seen the sentencing and execution of innocent men (remember Socrates?).

It also has Sparta’s strength, which came through its corrupt military and complete subjugation of it’s citizens in a totalitarian state. Well California may not be quite there on this one, but Arnie clearly has his sights on it. He even referred to California as a “nation-state”. You’ll clearly need an army to achieve that one Arnie. I am so glad he can’t run for President.

Not feeling fearful enough of your fellow man? Worried you’re losing touch with the world from inside your terrorism-proof bunker? Well the Ministry of Love MI5 have a helpful new service just for you. All you have to do is sign up on the MI5 website and a helpful spook will email you whenever the UKs threat level changes.

All very comforting. Having said that, our protectors don’t have a great track record when it comes to predicting terrorism. The threat level was lowered prior to the July 7th attacks and John Reid’s warning that a terror attack was “highly likely” over the Christmas period came to nothing more than a fireworks display. So, if the warnings are so frequently wrong why bother in the first place? Because as a hawkish home secretary or a budget minded spy you can’t lose. Say the threat level’s low and there is an attack, well that proves how sneaky the terrorists have become and justifies a budget increase for security. Get the threat level too high and have no attacks - you’ve proven what a good job you’ve done and (guess what) justified a budget increase for security to keep us even more safe. The thing to take away from this, in my opinion, is that (not unlike terrorists) threat levels are best ignored. Stay watchful citizens.