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Ed Balls has made the following pronouncement on the criticisms of his Governments silly proposals on knife crime.

"I think politicians who say their judgement
is better than judges' are playing fast and loose with the liberal
principles of our society."

Is this the same Balls who now wants to lock up suspects for 42 days?

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I had to raise a smile this morning when it was announced that the top cop that the Home Secretary has put in charge of knife crime is called Alf Hitchcock. I am sure he is the best man for the job but there must be someone with a sense of humour in the Home Office. I also wonder whether he had cleared his proposal to bring back uniformed national service?

The idea that making the perpetrators of crime go and see the victim of knife crime in hospital is going to lead to some widespread fall in the rate of knife crime seems ludicrous. What is even more surprising is the way the Prime Minister has seemed so keen to attach himself to the issue of knife crime. I am sure there were some in his office who would countenanced leaving it to Boris and let him take the flack.

But what should we do?

I am afraid that the only course of action is the time consuming one of searches on the streets. If you want to go into any night time venue then it must surely be in the interests of your own safety for this to happen. That said, a knife is but one weapon and as this interesting article relates broken bottle are also a weapon of choice for those looking to hurt or harm. However, if you are caught then the presumption for possession must be that you will go to prison.

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The question is now will Labour put up a candidate? It seems to me they
will have to or be accused of running away from the debate.

Even Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty has come out supporting him.

There is a very good post by Iain Dale on this issue.

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, last night made an urgent appeal to magistrates to send fewer people to jail as the prison population in England and Wales soared past 82,000 to an all-time high.

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. That's what Blair promised us. What he did not tell us was he was going to be weak on punishing those who do crime. Even with their ludicrous early release program this Government has failed to plan for an increase in prison numbers. They seem more than capable of finding places for those pensioners who do not pay their exorbitant Council Tax - courtesy of this Government - but not for murderers who we are letting out early and then have them go on to murder again.

Hat tip to Conservativehome for this story in the Daily Mail from December:

A man murdered his girlfriend after he was released early from prison to ease overcrowding.

Andrew Mournian had already served five jail terms when he was jailed for 20 weeks for attacking Amanda Murphy.

But eight weeks into that sentence, he joined the roll-call of 11,000 other inmates given their freedom early.

And five days later he beat Miss Murphy so badly that the mother-of-two died in hospital of her injuries.

Send fewer to jail, Straw urges courts | Society | The Guardian

This is an interesting concept that takes the opportunity to exploit the differences of age as a method to possibly preventing anti-social behaviour. It is an interesting debating point but its use is deeply flawed. Its main problem is that this is a totally indiscriminate way of controlling anti-social behaviour as both those causing ASB, as well as the innocent bystander, are swept up in the problem. I suppose, in many ways, this is like the idea that every car should have a speed limiter fitted to prevent you from exceeding the speed limit - it falls into the prevention by banning category where the innocent get swept up in the rush to crush the guilty.

However, there are apparently some 3,500 of these 'Mosquito' devices being used across the country in shopping centres and parks - watch out if you are under 20 and visit Newcastle! Is there a place where these can be used effectively? I am not sure I know?

You can read the report on this below - the website of the manufacturer can be seen here.

The Press Association: Campaign to ban dispersal device

This is an interesting concept that takes the opportunity to exploit the differences of age as a method to possibly preventing anti-social behaviour. It is an interesting debating point but its use is deeply flawed. Its main problem is that this is a totally indiscriminate way of controlling anti-social behaviour as both those causing ASB, as well as the innocent bystander, are swept up in the problem. I suppose, in many ways, this is like the idea that every car should have a speed limiter fitted to prevent you from exceeding the speed limit - it falls into the prevention by banning category where the innocent get swept up in the rush to crush the guilty.

However, there are apparently some 3,500 of these 'Mosquito' devices being used across the country in shopping centres and parks - watch out if you are under 20 and visit Newcastle! Is there a place where these can be used effectively? I am not sure I know?

You can read the report on this below - the website of the manufacturer can be seen here.

The Press Association: Campaign to ban dispersal device

What this is really about is civil liberties and the right of the state to imprison someone without charging them.

The Labour party have argued that no one can be detained unless they are seen before a judge. But if that was such a great check on the powers then why are they not arguing people can be detained indefinitely without charge, just so long a sa judge approves it. Ours is an independent judiciary and that should be enough. I would not back that change but one can see where their arguments eventually lead - from where we are to Guantanamo Bay is not a very long journey. When is indefinite detention, indefinite detention?

There has been no evidence that the current 28 days has been breached and until that evidence emerges then the Government should not be making this argument, and picking a fight they may well lose, over such an issue. What with this and their sleaze problems you would have thought Brown would want a quiet life!

Jacqui Smith plans 42-day terror detention limit - Times Online

"Brian Paddick, the former senior Metropolitan Police officer, joined calls for his former boss, Sir Ian Blair, to quit as the force's commissioner as he launched his campaign to become the Mayor of London."

And now here's a Lib Dem who does not know one end of a policy from another and, like the last post, for whom consistency is something you apply to custard and not politics. This is the fool who only last Thursday, on Question Time, was putting up a defence for Iain Blair and said he should not resign. He was even challenged on this by Dimbleby who said that he was at odds with his own party - he agreed and sort of said "tough".

Then, here we are, 5 days later, when nothing new has emerged that he, as a former senior police officer, was not aware of, and he is calling for Blair's head. Why?

Probably he has done this because on Tuesday he became the Lib Dem Mayoral candidate, chosen from a pretty awful field of nobody's, and he got sat on by the Clegg monster!

I want Blair gone, but you have to feel sorry for the bloke with such fair weather former friends and colleagues such as this.

No wonder the Lib Dems are going backwards.

Paddick joins mayoral race with calls for Blair to quit - Independent Online Edition > UK Politics

Local environment will suffer from this new stealth tax say Conservatives

Families across Yeovil face the prospect of new bin taxes on top of council tax, Kevin Davis, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate warned today. After confusion in Whitehall, Labour Ministers have finally confirmed, in today's Queen's speech, that new taxes for bin collections will go ahead.

It is currently against the law for town halls to charge for standard collections of household rubbish. In July, a cross-party Parliamentary Committee savaged the bin tax plans, warning of more fly-tipping, neighbourhood bin wars, non-payment by the public; it said that the plans would raise the overall burden of taxation.

News of higher taxes comes as new official figures published by the Government have exposed that fly-tipping across England is soaring. In Yeovil (South Somerset DC) the incidence of fly-tipping has increased 176% since Labour came to power in 1997. In total, cleaning up after fly-tipping across South Somerset has cost local taxpayers £176, 822 over the last three years – an increase of 215% in three years . The Keep Britain Tidy campaign is warning that new bin taxes will make the problem even worse.

Kevin Davis said:

“Fly-tipping is becoming an expensive and growing menace for Yeovil. The Government have announced today that they want to make it worse by introducing trials for bin taxes. Only the Government appear to think this will not lead to even more fly-tipping, as well as forcing up the taxes of residents who just cannot afford to pay Brown's bills any more. Families now face the double whammy of record council tax bills and new bin taxes.

“Yet the soaring costs of waste are yet another example of how Whitehall and EU burdens are being imposed on Somerset. The answer is not to create new local taxes. Labour Ministers must stop imposing unfunded obligations and red tape on local communities and cease hiking up local taxes by stealth.”

It calls for the government to adopt a twin strategy of increasing tax and reducing the easy availability of alcohol.

This was inevitable. Having managed to ban smoking in public places - which was of course something that directly affected the long-term heath of others - the health police are now moving on to alcohol.

We have an alcohol problem in the UK because it cannot be right that alcohol can be so freely available to fuel the vast majority of anti-social behaviour that blights so many city centres and is responsible for 40% of all visits to Accident and Emergency departments.. However,  is raising the tax on alcohol going to make the slightest difference to consumption? Like petrol and cigarettes it will do nothing that line the coffers of the treasury.

What really needs to happen is to find a better way of controlling drinking in city centres by the rigorous imposition of alcohol free zones and much greater attemts to stop the purchase of alcohol by minors, in act the fines imposed should be large enough to close down a business that does commit the offence.

BBC NEWS | Health | Campaigners want alcohol tax rise