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.

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.

Sad news! Ian Richardson has passed away today.

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.

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.

The Civil Service is planning strike action over poor pay, redundancies and plans to ship them all out of London to the regions. Most voters have little sympathy for civil servants, who are perceived as benefiting from rock solid job security and generous pensions; certainly these strikes will do little to change that attitude. But the Government is clearly scared. Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, took the unprecedented move of sending a letter to all staff urging them not to strike. An interesting move considering that it is unlikely to change people’s minds and it actually helps feed the story. In fact I’d be more likely to strike if my boss told me not to.

John Reid quietly admitted last Monday that of the 3.46 million people on the National DNA Database, 1.14 million have committed no offence. The latest figure is one million higher than Home Office figures released in March. The number of innocent people on the database is the result of a policy which allows the police to take and store DNA samples from anyone they arrest regardless of whether the arrest leads to a caution or conviction.

Given that the database contains a disproportionate number of samples from people from ethnic minorities as well as the records of (as of January) 24,000 innocent children, it’s pretty clear that what we have is not a database of criminals but one of people the police don’t like the look of. For the time being we have have a pledge from the Home Office Minister Andy Burnham that the database would not be extended to the whole population but in light of recent calls from Tony Blair to acquire the “maximum number” of samples an incomplete database could turn out to mean everyone apart from politicians and those with enough money to claim that they would be at risk if their information was stored in a leaky government database. I can only hope that the investigation by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics will provide enough evidence against the database for someone to put the breaks on the pernicious harvesting of our most personal information.

Via The Register.

People had to take more active steps to get back into the labour market. And for those who won’t do so, then there should be consequences, including less benefit or no benefit at all.

No it’s not an old quote from Norman Tebbit but part of what John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will say in a speech to the IPPR this week.

This is a new direction for New Labour. In the past the Government has adopted an enabling policy (the New Deal) towards the unemployed, giving them benefits, training and skills to help them into the job market. But there has always been a “hardcore” of people who have gone through this system and still not got a job. The Government’s even tried more expensive and elaborate schemes, but to no avail (see the StepUp scheme pilot which cost £40m).

So the Government’s gone for what many taxpayers would argue they should have done in the first place - cut their benefits. That’ll stop them sponging off the state.

In his speech, John Hutton’s also going to compare the attitude of the lazy British to that of the dynamic and hardworking Central and Eastern Europeans who have come to the UK. I suppose that this fits nicely with the Government’s policy on Romania and Bulgaria, which has placed limits when they join in January. The Government message is that there’s lots of jobs, we’re not allowed to fill those with Romanian and Bulgarians, (because the Daily Mail said it’s bad) so you lazy British will have to scrub the floors and serve burgers instead.