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And you will fix this how, exactly? – politicalbetting.com
And you will fix this how, exactly? – politicalbetting.com
Criminal justice, especially for sexual offences against women and girls, is much in the news lately. See Labour’s ad accusing the Prime Minister of being soft on child abusers, remarkable since Sunak has been PM less than 6 months, not enough time for a sex abuse case to be investigated let alone go to trial. Not to be outdone, during his election campaign, Scotland’s new First Minister, promised to uphold women’s rights. He showed how much he meant it by being photographed with a large pink heart and the look of one who, having forgotten his partner’s birthday and wedding anniversary, hopes that a vulgarly large card with the reduced price sticker removed will allow him back into the marital bed. It is also because of some recent cases and what they tell us about the reality.
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Didn't know you were a micro-gricer
We come back to the question for which I can't find the answer - Why are we paying more in tax then ever before yet our public sector / services are so dire...
Money might not solve all problems, but quite a few problems could be ameliorated for relatively little money on justice. But in a GE talking tough is all that really matters.
Not a fan of gutter politics, and sad that the UK is going down the US route of extreme attacks on opponents. It shouldn’t be particularly difficult to come to a consensus on the issues facing the Justice department. Thankfully, the UK has not yet gone down the route of elected DAs, and executive appointment of judges along partisan lines.
The question is why do governments not treat criminal justice as being important?
Dominic Raab could potentially face proceedings for contempt of court after high court judges ruled that he acted unlawfully by stopping prison and probation staff in England and Wales from recommending whether a prisoner was fit for release or transfer to open conditions.
The justice secretary made the change to the Parole Board rules last year, claiming they would ensure there would be one “overarching” Ministry of Justice (MoJ) recommendation and avoid conflicting views.
However, the amendment, which was criticised by unions, was successfully challenged at the high court by two prisoners, Adrian Bailey and Perry Morris, with Lady Justice Macur and Mr Justice Chamberlain finding that it was unlawful.
The two judges also said refusing to answer a question posed by the Parole Board as to whether a prisoner was suitable for release or transfer to open conditions could amount to contempt of court. They further raised the prospect that Raab could be guilty of contempt of court if he was deemed to have instructed witnesses not to answer.
In a written judgment, published just before the Easter weekend, Macur and Chamberlain wrote: “We concluded in our first judgment that guidance issued under the authority of the secretary of state instructed HMPPS [His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service] witnesses to refuse to comply with the board’s directions and to refuse to answer its oral questions in circumstances where the refusal could amount to a breach of the witness’s legal obligation.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/11/dominic-raab-could-face-action-for-contempt-of-court-judges-say
The whole public order and safety budget is £42bn.
If state pensions had gone up by 5% that would have allowed an extra £5bn to increase public order and safety by more than 10%.
These are choices that are made, not dead ends that must be arrived at.
Empty bluster. - which is what quite a few of us said when the poster was originally published.
I don't know what realistic hopes one might have of an incoming Labour Home Secretary.
Cooper has at least chaired the Home Affairs select committee for five years, and is old enough not to be a realistic contender to succeed Starmer, so has little need to pander like a Braverman.
And it's notable she had no knowledge of the poster campaign.
She might even surprise us.
I’m aware of a former Cabinet Member who, at the age of 15, decided that his 10 year old sister was too old for dolls.
So he hung them* from a branch and shot them
* to be clear I meant the dolls…
Find a small number of high skilled and well motivated people. Let them lose.
There is never a review of what governments *should* be doing. They just do what they did last year and add a bit more. Costs inexorably creep up and performance declines. It’s now reached a point of real stress. But no one is brave enough to advocate for meaningful change - inertia is the strongest force in the universe after all.
I sometimes dream of a world where governments determined what they *should* be doing from an outcomes perspective and then figure out how best to implement and find those objectives.
https://twitter.com/haveigotnews/status/1645728443848433667
Then a friend told me that a stuffed toy in the window is a signal that pedophiles use to tell other pedos they are there
I hastily removed it in a panic. I have no idea to this day if he was winding me up, or repeating an urban myth, or telling the truth.
No, not privatisation.
Have 2 (or more DVLAs). You can pick which DVLA you renew your driving license with. Their budget is literally how much work they get from the customers.
No customers, no money.
Did I mention by the way that Yorkshire were not favourites for the second division title?
(Now I've said that Gloucestershire will lose by an innings on Saturday.)
Every Trumper goes to their bank and asks to withdraw all their money.
This will lead to bank runs.
Received this in a working briefing paper a few hours ago.
I would say that the current legal definition is a significant contributory factor in the difficulties in prosecuting these crimes and the consequential low conviction rates, and this needs to be taken in to account in any prospective reform. If the goal is to increase prosecutions, the one obvious change I can think of would be to change the test from 'beyond reasonable doubt' to one that is based on the 'balance of probabilities'. Obviously though that would be a fundamental change to the legal system, and not a path to be embarked on lightly.
That's what the stats may show. I might tentatively suggest (and with knowledge that I might shouted down) that reporting of sexual attacks on men - by either men or women - are dramatically under-reported. The latter particularly: after all, a young lad having sex with an older lady is cool, isn't it, Mrs Robinson?
I mean to take nothing away from girls and women who are sexually abused by men. It's just that I have strong suspicions (from anecdotes) that the reporting of sexual abuse on men are under-reported. And whilst I have little doubt they are also under-reported on women, I do wonder about the differential.
She is right of course that politicians of all stripes will the result but not the means. I can only speak about Scotland but I suspect my experience is replicated south of the border.
The Crown are putting huge resources into prosecuting sex crimes. More than 80% of all cases prosecuted in the High Court are now sex crimes.
The police have got much better at dealing with such crimes. They go looking for corroboration from previous partners and they often find it, funnily enough.
It remains extremely difficult to prove a single complainer rape. How do you prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilt in what is typically a he said she said situation? Multiple complainers change the odds markedly. Prosecutors slightly cynically talk of the rule of 3. 3 complainers = conviction almost every time.
But so many other parts of the system are creaking. For the system to work defence counsel are at least as important as prosecutors. But legal aid rates were fixed ( in Scotland) for nearly 20 years and then there was a below inflation increase. It’s really hard to make good money at the defence bar. Sex offenders are not allowed to do their own cases. No defence = no trial.
The prison estate is stretched and clearly affecting sentencing.
No one, let alone the present governments in Holyrood and Westminster, wants to spend money on these things. Let’s just argue for harsher sentences instead.
A lot of the spending on the right hand of the pie simply is what it is. Pensioners gonna pension. The NHS is generally accepted to be pretty good at cost control. The left hand side of the chart is pretty low-fat. Not perfect, but pretty low on things that can be cut without removing services.
Bottom line is that we've had four decades at least where, looking back, it might have been better to pay more tax than we did. We spent various windfalls (favourable dependency ratio, North Sea hydrocarbons, privatisation receipts, end of Cold War Peace Dividend and so on) as if they were recurring boons, not a one off bonus.
And now the music has stopped, and I'm not entirely sure where the money went.
Goodness only knows how we get out of this politically, because any party campaigning on that basis will get utterly tonked at the polls. Normally it takes complete catastophic failure of a nation to shake it out of delusions like this, and I'd rather not live through one of those, and I'm too old to emigrate.
See also REITs limiting investor redemptions.
Labour really ought to be restructuring the tax take so that it extracts less from people on lower incomes and more from higher income households and from asset wealth, with a substantial overall net increase that can be used to begin repairing public services and making social security less stingy. A big part of the reason that they won't do this is their terror of upsetting the wealthy pensioner vote (even though wealthy pensioners are the Tories' base, not theirs, and they really oughtn't to give a flying wotsit about their opinions,) but Labour's apparent timidity and desire to ape Conservative fiscal policy goes well beyond the inexplicable desire to dole out endless triple-locked state pension hikes to the multi-millionaire septuagenarians of the stockbroker belt, and their acquiescence to the abolition of IHT on all but the richest estates. Why in the name of God has Reeves not announced the alignment of CGT and income tax bands as policy? Might resurrecting the 10p starter rate have some value? Instead of merely demanding a council tax freeze of the Tories, why not pledge to replace it with something more progressive (yes, cue screaming from pensioners in overpriced houses, I know...)
I dare say they can get some of what they want done through the magic wand of legislation and structural reforms, but at the end of the day the entire public realm is decaying and putting it right - creating services that can cope effectively, particularly with the immense burdens of an increasingly aged, ill and obese population - is going to cost a lot of money. Labour can only repair the state and relieve the pressure on poorer households through redistribution on a large scale. It should devise a series of major projects and aims, explain how they are going to be achieved and at what cost, and demonstrate that the burden will be borne by the wealthy and not by minimum wage earners. If it can gather together a voter coalition larger than that of the Tories - by inspiring young people, lower income households, poorer pensioners (who don't have assets, can't afford private healthcare when the NHS fails them, and could use means tested help,) working men and women who struggle to cover their costs and raise children, the vast legions of renters who face never being able to afford to retire - then it can win an election and enact wide-ranging and meaningful reform. And we're talking something rather more significant than a few state-owned wind turbines and replacing the House of Lords here.
Except I don't think Labour wants wide-ranging and meaningful reform. I think they want token change for the sake of appearances, to leave the existing settlement in place because ripping it up would be too much like hard work, and their ministerial salaries, offices and cars.
Strangely, when there is the possibility of competition, in schools and hospitals, people take their custom to the least shit one.
Imagine yourself in the dock in such a scenario and think about that.
The solution is more migrants, preferably highly skilled and culturally assimilable ones.
But that comes with an obligation to provide the supporting infrastructure and to make the cost of things like housing and childcare non-crippling.
Otherwise, the example of Japan (best case) and Italy (medium case) are what the UK has to look forward to.
Anyone brave enough to suggest what the optimal or accepable ratio might be?
As horrible as it is for the innocent person, I think it is perhaps somewhere around 1 the innocent person for 100 guilty people area.
I just file it under my ever growing list of things that make me wonder how the hell civilization even exists today.
I think we spend far too much on social protection, for what it's worth.
Which both main parties are committed to ratcheting up at the expense of workers.
Another superb piece by @Cyclefree for which many thanks.
As is often the case, I’m left with the observation this is a set of related problems which need to be tackled as such and arguably as a non-partisan issue or series of issues.
The sexualisation of culture and society is in itself an enormous question which isn’t easy to resolve but when you get into questions of criminal justice I’m left to wonder why we have a politics where successive Home Secretaries compete to sound “tough” on crime.
It is, I suspect, one of those issues where rhetoric has supplanted reality and perception is everything. Fear dictates policy - the fear of not sounding tough enough and losing public support.
At street level in East London, I see no shortage of Police effort but I see that effort diluted by a lack of operational stations, a shortage of translators and an operational policy which requires a rapid mobile response but which has reduced or removed the community focus.
Yet I struggle with the question of why we should respect the Police when some in the community have no respect for anyone but themselves?
It's one reason I sometimes enjoy the Trans-TERF wars in a guilty way. The man-hating feminists getting beaten up by men using their own hysterical, genderwoo logic
I have no doubt that their stories were true; in the case of one, the lasses dad admitted she had told him.
None of these were reported. So I do believe underreporting, especially historical, is rife.
It's just that I've heard similar stories from men as well.
Fortunately for women society has mostly moved on. Back before (say) the 1970s, abuse of women was pretty much accepted. Like John Lennon, you could abuse a woman and it would be shrugged off by society (physical abuse, not sexual, in his case). John Peel got lauded when he died, despite his history. Such behaviour is now frowned on, and rightly so IMO.
I fear when it comes to men being abused, a different mindset kicks in amongst some. You get beaten up? Why, you should have been a 'man' and fought back! You have sex with someone in a situation you were uneasy about? Why, you're a stud!
In a way, it’s another permutation of the problem that old people have a death grip on the political system.
Old people don’t want new housing, both in theory and in practice, and they vote against it in droves.
I was in Bangkok airport a coupla weeks ago and noticed that they now have robot cleaners vacuuming and cleaning the floor. They do it really well, they do it tirelessly 24/7. You used to see women doing this, and quite a lot of them, presumably underpaid despite the tedium of the task. They've all gone
This process is going to repeat across economies and across all jobs, from humble cleaners to well paid solicitors to just about every job apart from vicars and hookers. And even the hookers are looking worried
So the optimum population levels for societies will plunge. Japan may have made exactly the right choice. Avoid the horrors and costs of mass immigration, keep society cohesive and crime free, automate everything. Bingo: a much nicer society, and a greener country, with lots more space
Inflation eats away at the real value of debt every year. To a certain extent, the interest charge is just a balance to that.
Now, consider next that...
*accounting for housing costs (and yes, many pensioners still rent, but most are outright owner-occupiers,) the average pensioner household already has a higher income than the average working household
*increases to the state pension, courtesy of the triple lock, will be greater than wage rises in most years, so that gap will continue to grow
*taxation of earned incomes is considerably heavier than that of assets, especially properties and inheritances
*both Labour and the Tories will keep ramping the taxation of earned incomes to fund pensioner benefits, whilst leaving assets well alone
*the mean age of the population is still creeping inexorably upwards
The political class, collectively, is so bloody terrified of the grey vote that it will do nothing about any of this.
We, as a society, have basically had our chips.
I've been on PB for well over ten years. AFAICR I've said that anecdote several times over the years.
Now, you can either challenge that view, directly, or be a pathetic little shit and carp about a serious issue.
I guess you've chosen the latter approach.
Saying: "men get abused as well" should not take anything away from the experience women have. In fact, both may have common roots in societal issues and views. But I guess that's a little too complex for you to contemplate.
Generally, I think people should look after themselves. I don't see that as heartless, I see it as individual responsibility which I think is better for a more prosperous and robust society.
I'd far rather invest public funds in science, education, skills retraining, defence, justice, foreign affairs and just a basic safety net.
Seems like it will only escalate from here.
I might be of those retired and having fun in their early 60s but, generally, if you're retired you have physical ailments, and constraints, less income, can't do what you used to do, with death around the corner. Not sure it's that fun.
I'd far rather be young.
That said, I think that it's right not to announce detailed policy, on CGT or anything else, 18 months before a probable election. We'll see what the party is made of next year.
A lot of countries have even worse demography but the electoral system of the UK, the universal benefits system, and potentially the media set-up, makes it an especial problem I think.
Just shows how screwed up politics in the former Soviet bloc can still be.
Sounds like nothing an infinite amount of immigration can't fix.
Sort of logical.
I'd be amazed though if labour party don't increase legal aid rates. Starmer will understand these issues well.
Lammy has some plan to force law firms to do a minimum amount of pro bono hours to be eligible for govt contracts.
Sounds a bit contrived/complicated to me - any thoughts on whether you think that will work?
I don’t see many (any?) countries that are delivering a more cost-effective NHS, even if might do a better job on overall quality.
Labour is not going to get anywhere by wibbling in vague terms about reform and promising cost-free legislative tinkering to address deep-seated societal problems. I understand the desire not to give the Tories too much ammunition (or, indeed, ideas that they can steal if they prove popular,) but reform can and should be proposed in areas where Sunak and Hunt dare not follow. CGT is a classic example: show how much money can be raised, identify which priorities can be addressed with it, and dare the Tories to defend lenient treatment of the investment profits of their rich supporters, at a time when many households with two adults in work still have to go begging for scraps at food banks.
The entire Corbyn episode was a tragedy. A more credible leader, with better costed plans and free of all the fringe Middle Eastern baggage, would surely have seized enough seats from Theresa May to dismiss the Conservatives four years ago.
Men might allow their better (sober) judgment to become clouded by lust. They might well have superior physical force to enforce that lust.
The law then has to, er, insert itself and try and untangle that mess. It's hardly surprising that large numbers of prosecutions never happen. You could perhaps ensure that prosecutions happen if you have a legal assumption that if a woman says she wouldn't have consented in those circumstances, then she hasn't. But is that justice for men? No.
Perhaps we need a new offence that falls short of the draconian consequences of rape. One where consent cannot be ascertained, because one or both were not in a position to know if they had given it/received it. Where people (women) might be more inclined to prosecute
The problem is, that's not an excuse. In fact, it's almost a definition of ?most? rape cases.