Get The Police Back To Policing
Senior figures in the police force are not dense to public opinion. They are getting the sense that very recently, the law has been too focused on “hate crime” and not enough on true crimes against person and property. In a time of a huge uptick in violent crime in inner cities, forces seem to have been preoccupied with policing people’s Tweets. The Met police chief agreed with senior officers that this was ridiculous, whilst reminding us that there are hate crime laws on the books.
This bit was strange to me, she said:
“ … in my view, we should be focusing on the things that the public tell me they care about most.”
This is sure to make conservatives reel – the police’s job is to uphold the law, not pick and choose what to focus on based on the public’s whim. The problem is that the laws are wrong. We can’t expect the police, whose job it is to enforce the law as it stands, to distinguish between which laws are more relevant than others. Ditch the hate crime laws and watch them focus on real crime.
Speaking Of Hate Crime: The Anti-Semitism Thing Gets Serious
Did you think that the Labour anti-semitism row was just a manufactured scandal to draw attention away from a fractious Conservative Party that’s making a pig’s ear of Brexit? It’s probably still that, but it’s this too: the police are getting involved. They’re investigating Labour members who have posted “hate” messages on social media. It’s fairly uncontroversial that there are anti-semites within the far left – it’s disturbing and wrong. That said, saying disgusting things about Jews is still within the bounds of freedom of speech.
David’s Back?
Earlier in the year, we were threatened by a return of Blair and Brown in a deep state party to run this country properly. Now there are rumors abound that former Prime Minister David Cameron is ripe for a return to frontline politics, and Labour MPs are not happy. Cameron was an Obama-esque soft Tory. It’s difficult to see why Labour would get uppity about it except that it represents real competition to May’s government, and therefore not an automatic win for Jeremy Corbyn if it came to a general election.
The Best Story In A While
Some dude tried to steal the Magna Carta. A 45-year old man tried to smash the glass case the 803-year-old document is housed in Salisbury Cathedral (it’s all happening in Salisbury lately, isn’t it?). It’s not known why this man tried to do this.
Children In Care Slip Through The Net
*Daily Mail Disclaimer*, but Department of Education statistics show that more than 10,000 children in care went missing from the system last year, from a week to months at a time, as concerns about child trafficking increase. There are fears that these children are being dropped into grooming gangs a la Rotherham, where over 1,000 girls were raped.
Anyone under the illusion that it’s the state’s job to ensure the safety of children should look into this further, as it becomes more and more clear that placing children into state care is actually endangering them. Child trafficking is this country’s great secret scandal.
You can read more from James Smith on Think Liberty here.
