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Remember the May 2017 locals when TMay was totally dominant and conquering all before her – politica
Remember the May 2017 locals when TMay was totally dominant and conquering all before her – politicalbetting.com
Yesterday I attended, online. what was one of the annual political events before the pandemic – the briefing on the coming May elections by the Tory peer, Lord Hayward. There were no elections last year and in England and Wales there have not been any local by-elections.
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I understand the county counts will be on the Thursday night but the district count will not be until the Saturday, so the story may be good for Starmer overnight on polling day but improve for the Tories at the weekend
As I've pointed numerous times recently the new laws make front page news and people think - nice. The implementation is completely irrelevant unless you are unlucky enough to be a victim of crime.
Sadly most people aren't victims of crime so don't know anything beyond the nice headlines.
Misleading statistics aside, he's merely saying that the bill doesn't go far enough in protecting women. If that's controversial well god help us.
Deception: because it won't work.
Cruel: because it gives victims false hope.
Cynical: it allows them to claim to be tough on crime while being the total opposite and paint their opponents as soft on it. And that is all they really want to do: fight a silly culture war and get one over on their opponents.
Dealing intelligently with the problem is way down on the list, assuming it's on the list at all.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodydatafortheuk16march2021
Average sample date is middle of Feb so a month out of date, but has a figure of 34%, up from 20% 1 month earlier, so we're likely somewhere near 50% coverage at the moment.
And Boris really is only interested in things where the money can be shown to have been spent. So we get new Police Offices (people until Saturday did like the idea of more Police Officers) but not courts and prisons for that isn't sexy and the Mail hates lawyers earning money.
So all in all being a criminal is a good career opportunity now.
(Sarcasm mode off now, just in case anyone was wondering.)
https://twitter.com/tc1415/status/1371770237532659713
The only reason some of the Microsoft scams are being closed down is because MS are doing everything they can to kill them off.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9365159/Michelle-Obama-urges-Harry-Meghan-forgive-royals.html
https://twitter.com/BBCRosAtkins/status/1371765775426592770?s=20
So the stories about the Libs ignoring the restrictions other parties agreed to are wrong?
Firstly, the connection between the offence and the punishment, already often tenuous given the long trial period became virtually non existent. Secondly, almost everyone (except the more serious solemn cases where the sentence ran to a number of years) was on bail. This caused a plethora of problems from absconding, being overtaken by subsequent offending, a reluctance on the part of the court to send someone back to prison for a relatively short period of time, especially if he had got a job, etc etc.
Some resources went into the process which was also improved by a sift which weeded out the more hopeless appeals. The result was a substantial reduction in the time taken by the appeal, less bail and far, far fewer appeals. It was win, win, win. I fear with Covid some of that gain will have been lost.
What I also found in my days as a fiscal prosecuting in the Sheriff court (quite a brief period some time ago now) is that there was a clear correlation between the speed with which things could be brought to trial and the conviction rate. I don't have statistics for that but the correlation was strong. People who knew each other could still ID of course although all too often they had made up. Those who didn't know the accused were entirely understandably somewhat hesitant.
Fast justice is better justice, cheaper justice and more effective justice. Resourcing our courts to process the Himalayan mountain range of cases now pending is far more important than anything else that could be done for the criminal justice system. My guess is that a lot of the more trivial stuff will just never make it to trial.
https://twitter.com/SteveBakerHW/status/1371753776391020545
A Labour Government/Administration would, quite rightly, be castigated as morally and fiscally corrupt. Why are this Government allowed a free pass?
"More than 40 million people are expected to vote on May 6...."
Hint guys: 32 million voted across the UK in the 2019 general election. Your expectations are going to be dashed!
It's in marked contrast to the vomit-inducing statement of the odious Hillary Clinton, who demonstrates all the tact and judgement in hers that explains why she failed to make it to the White House. Twice.
Boris in Macmillan. He likes doing things which are fun, and which aren't a bore. I have heard too many examples of things he has done which will never get headlines. He's bascially PM for the lols.
Which is probably a better reason to be PM than out of sheer rage (Brown), because he thought he'd be rather good at it (Cameron), or what I can only imagine was some sort of masochism (May).
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
The statute thing (clause 46) has rightly been ridiculed. The whole public order section 54-60 is deeply problematic as is the whole idea of "serious violence reduction orders" 139-140, I really don't like minimum sentences as a concept and their wider application to whole life sentences for certain classes of crime is going to be a massive headache for our Prisons in 10-20 years.
All in all it strikes me as authoritarian, populist and unwise. If Gove did get moved to the Home Office I suspect most of it would disappear.
"During a debate on Austrian television on Sunday, EMA board director Christa Wirthumer-Hoche said it is not known whether the vaccine is safe and effective.
"I strongly discourage the approval of a national emergency authorisation," Wirthumer-Hoche stated, adding that certain European countries that were already using Sputnik V were "comparable to playing Russian roulette"."
Did the Russians get their apology?
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210308-eu-medical-official-warns-of-sputnik-jab-russian-roulette
My only bet so far is on Discordantly @ 12/1ew in the 2.40
This is a thoroughly depressing conclusion. It's too early for that, and I'm not about to start drinking yet.
'"It's crass beyond belief," Piers said, before speculating on whether US network CBS would ever agree to postpone it. "If something, god forbid, happens [to Prince Philip] they'll want to exploit it."
A stunned Susanna exclaimed: "No!"'
'It's going to be a two-hour whine-a-thon," Piers fumed' as part of his 2 year whine-a-thon about Meghan.
The more likely explanation is that he's using data from the England and Wales Crime Survey (used to be the British Crime Survey). This survey focuses on victims of crime, on the basis that reported crime statistics are, by their very nature, unreliable; most crimes are not, in fact, reported. Most criminologists take much more notice of the Crime Survey than they do of reported crime statistics. So a crime survey will pick up, for example, a much higher incidence of (unreported) domestic violence and sexual assaults against women.
If I'm right, it would have been helpful if Starmer had explained that in his tweet.
"Nancy is a junior secretary,
In an advertising agency..."
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheHappyApple
In terms of winning and retaining power, it's not a bad strategy. The loyalists are stuck with you anyway, and some of them will be so happy with Winning that they never notice that the winning doesn't deliver them much of what they wanted winning to achieve. So the way to maximise your vote is to identify the swingable voters and superserve them.
There's nothing new or especially shameful about that- Thatcher reached out to the C2s of Stevenage, Blair kept Mondeo Man in mind. What's different is the degree of targeting- an absurd amount of speechifying and a barrelful of pork on an ever-more minute sliver of the population.
This may be a terrible government largely consisting of appalling people, but it's a damn good political operation. Irresistible force, meet immovable object.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/thenatureofviolentcrimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2020
I agree we should use the Crime Survey for the reasons you outlined.
This is the first time I have really followed it for some time - via Youtube. Watching a couple of match-racing boats whizzing around Auckland at 60mph is diverting.
But the traditional problem - who to support now that we have been knocked out?
We have the largest brains!
Nope, that's elephants!
We have the largest brains as a proportion of size!
Nope. Dolphins.
We have the greatest degree of encephalisation?
... fine.
Huzzah! Humans are the smartest!
If the figures were reversed he'd be using the other set of figures. Men as victims are unfashionable.
I assume it can't be done for jury trials.
It would probably take an entire 5 year term to see results that the public actually noticed (so there's little chance of any serious reform under the current lot), but investment in a working criminal justice system, and properly resourcing (for example) fraud investigation and prosecution would in time prove more popular than the current cynical mess.
A person is guilty of an offence under subsection (4) or (5) only if—
(a) in the case of a public procession in England and Wales, at the
time the person fails to comply with the condition the person
knows or ought to know that the condition has been imposed;
(b) in the case of a public procession in Scotland, the person
knowingly fails to comply with the condition.”
So in Scotland we will still have to prove actual knowledge of the conditions imposed upon the procession. In England and Wales it is enough that you ought to know.
The idea of someone being guilty of a criminal offence because they "ought" to know is deeply unattractive. One only needs to think of the ever more Kafkaesque provisions brought in under the public health Acts in relation to Covid to see that "ought" is going to have to be looked at pretty carefully. It is one thing to say ignorance of the law is no excuse but ignorance of conditions given to someone else which may be lengthy and complex? Nah.
https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1371789160927932424?s=20
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1371789135678205955?s=20
https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/1371789367124099074?s=20
There is also the very dodgy stuff about "hate incidents" (ie not offences) where "recording" was pioneered by the loopy Constabulary of Nottinghamshire a few years ago. The former Chief has been all over TV as a talking head for the last few days. Doubt whether these make the Crime Survey.
(I expect a labour hold).
Labour should pick Peter Mandelson as their candidate for the lols
So far these provisions have been used for simpler trials involving 1 accused and a limited number of witnesses. There is huge pressure to agree evidence on both sides but to me this is completely unfair on the Jury who are not lawyers and cannot be expected to take all the nuances of a joint minute setting out agreed facts.
Anecdotal evidence is that acquittals are much higher with a lot of not proven verdicts. My opinion is that this is in part because people are used to seeing things on screens that are not true, the agreement of evidence makes it less "real" or visceral for the lay jury and they are just more remote from the proceedings psychologically as well as physically.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/22/labour-mp-fails-in-bid-to-remain-anonymous-in-sexual-assault-case
However, I have found this table:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/thenatureofviolentcrimeappendixtables
And Table 1 shows that in the year to March 2020:
2.0% of males were victims of violent crime (1.0% with injury)
1.3% of females were victimes of violent crime (0.6% with injury)
Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales
However, Table 9 shows the male/female split for police recorded crime (41 forces):
All violence: 44/56
Homicide: 73/27
Violence with injury: 51/49
Without injury: 40/60
Sexual offences: 16/84
Rape: 10/90
Other sexual offences: 19/81
Home Office - Police recorded crime and Homicide Index
1. Police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics. In accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, figures from the Homicide Index have been re-assessed against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics and found to meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics.
So, you pays your money, you takes you takes your choice.