Crime And Drugs.

The Sentencing Guidelines Council has come up with a bright idea:

Burglars and thieves could escape jail if they commit their crimes because of addiction to drink, drugs or gambling, under proposed sentencing guidelines.

The recommendation is contained in a consultation on how judges should punish those convicted of thefts and burglaries.

Undoubtedly there are people in prison who have addictions that should be dealt with, to the extent that it is possible, if they are to stop committing crime, however addicts should not get lighter sentences. The most obvious reason is that all that will happen is that every burglar who is caught will claim to have an addiction, it really isn't difficult to fake needle marks or collect a few old betting slips.

Drug and gambling addicts who have managed to avoid funding their habits through stealing would be entitled to be a bit miffed to learn that they could receive free treatment if they broke into people's homes and stole their belongings.

The assumption that if someone is an addict who also steals then it must be the addiction that makes him steal isn't necessarily the case. Crime is a highly impulsive form of behaviour, focusing on the perpetrator's immediate self gratification at the expense of his long term interests. Addiction is often a symptom of the same short term reasoning, in other words if you treat a drug addicted burglar's drug problem then the end result is a burglar who has something else to spend the proceeds on.

{Via}

Staying & Going.

How our immigration system works- general feebleness punctuated by bouts of cruelty to pretend that the system is tough. Take these two cases, an Islamist nutjob who came here illegally and incites terrorism on the one hand and a man who was here legally up until the NHS managed to butcher his wife. The Islamist:

Qatada - who had been in prison pending deportation - has been given a 22-hour curfew by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), the Home Office said.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary said she was "extremely disappointed" at the decision and would "take all steps necessary to protect the public

The widower:

A Filipino man has lost his right to remain in Britain - because his wife was killed by an NHS blunder.

Lawyers for Arnel Cabrera, 39, have confirmed the Home Office has refused his application to stay in the UK.

The verdicts in both these cases are travesties of justice and common sense.

Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham.

And why not, it's his kind of town!


His awed reaction to an over 40s disco dancing competition doesn't quite convince.
{via}

Panderer Population Explodes.

It's not just on oil prices that politicians are pandering, free trade is also coming in for a battering. Strangely enough despite the USA's image as being a right wing nation support for free trade has always been much lower than in the UK.

Despite this it seems that both Obama and Clinton believe in free trade, Obama believes it is one of the things that bitter small town like to attack whilst they cling to their guns and Hillary Clinton never opposed trade whilst her husband was signing NAFTA. In fact a belief in free trade is a core belief for the Clintons as Mark Steyn once put it:

With hindsight, Clinton had two bedrock convictions: he believed oral sex didn't qualify as adultery and he believed in free trade.

Hillary only agrees with Bill on one of those points I should add.

Obama's proposal is to offer:

a “Patriot Employers” plan that would lower corporate taxes for companies that did not ship jobs overseas. …Mr Obama’s plan would lower the corporate tax rate for companies that met criteria including maintaining their headquarters in the US, maintaining or increasing their US workforce relative to their overseas workforce, holding a neutral position in union drives among their employees and providing decent healthcare

Right, aside from being unworkable shouldn't he also be demanding that foreign companies stop creating jobs in the US if he wants to be consistent? In fairness there is one exception to the list of countries that Obama wants to stop the United States trading with, Cuba.

Hillary on the other hand.... oh hang on, she's toast now so there's no need to consider her pandering at all.

Fuel Prices & Political 'Solutions'

The rising cost of oil seems to have turned US politicians into idiots, as opposed to being exponents of Solomonesque wisdom that we expect them to be. First up Hillary Clinton's ludicrous proposal, sadly also acked by McCain, for a 'tax holiday' for a couple of months which has been universally panned. Now the Senate Democrats have come up with the brilliant idea to combat fuel prices by er raising taxes on the oil companies. It is, in many ways, impressive that two contradictory can both be so idiotic, you'd imagine that by dumb luck one proposal would be a good one.

This comes down to the mistaken idea of the left that every 'problem' requires massive government intervention to provide a 'solution'. Fuel prices are rising and the only thing that will change that is increasing the supply, and the Democrats almost universally oppose oil exploration in Alaska, or lowering demand which the market is taking care of without the need for government imposed 'solutions'.

I Blame Global Warming

It was a nice day today, but by combating climate change we can ensure a return to the grey and overcast summers that we are used to.

Quote Of The Day.

Martin Kettle writes about Labour's potential candidates for London mayor in 2012:

If Labour is to have a hope of ousting Johnson, it is going to need a big name. Ideally it would like someone with the politics of Polly Toynbee and the public profile of Jeremy Clarkson. That's why, in the absence of a politician, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the following names were floated in Labour circles over the coming months - Ross Kemp, Arsene Wenger, Ian Blair, Alistair Campbell, Andrew Marr, Cherie Booth, Shami Chakrabarti. Other suggestions welcome.

Labour are doomed.

Update: In the comments 'Killing Time' comes up with:

Diane Abbott would do it for me. Principled, cool and foxy too.

Alcohol Like Substance Found In Alcoholic Drinks.

A couple who allegedly passed out drunk while their children were taken into care in Portugal may have had their drinks spiked, a councillor claims.

Can anyone think what substance that seemingly mimics the effects of alcohol, could have been used to spike the alcoholic drinks they were consuming?

I Might Be Insane.

George Monbiot attracts a fair bit of ridicule from some quarters, mostly because he's nuts. His latest big idea seems to have inspired yet more ridicule, we should replace planes with airships.

The thing is though I've been thinking that it's time for airships to make a comeback as well. At the back of my head there was a feeling that the idea was insane and the fact that George Monbiot is on board doesn't exactly reassure me that I'm not.

Okay, his idea of bringing them back for passenger transport is very unlikely to happen because they are too slow and unpredictable, no one is going to be willing to spend two or three days crossing the Atlantic. However the potential for transporting large cargo to looks perfectly realistic to me. Some area of the world are simply inaccessible to large cargo planes, such as mountainous areas, jungles or the polar regions so there is a potential use there. Similarly sometimes transporting abnormal loads by road causes a great deal of inconvenience to traffic as the roads need to be closed and police escorts provided so why not simply lift the load with an airship?

Like I say, there is a vague tingling feeling that the idea is insane but it looks pretty good to me.

How To Blog.

Mark Wardman highlights a popular alternative method of blogging, one that will guarantee that you reach a wide audience:

This may sound like a strange idea, but there can be considerable benefit in letting part of your blog be hosted on somebody else’s site - in their comments box. You get the benefit of a possibly wider audience - and therefore lots of attention.

Chris Paul has had a “sceptical about Tories” blog since before I started, and it is hosted in Iain Dale ’s comments box. I reckon that he gets his largest readership from this “alternative” not the real one hosted at Labour of Love; it has something like 350 entries.

There certainly are advantages to this approach, notably that you rich a ready made audience.
My favourite practitioner of this method is probably Benji's Place, hosted by Harry's Place website.

On the subject of blogging I'm intending to revamp my links list today or tomorrow. As I'll be creating a category for sites that link here, even if they are Italian sites that I can't understand, please let me know if there are any sites that I do this which I don't already have on my sidebar.

Thanks To The Unique Way The BBC Is Funded....

I'm unhappy that my money is spent on this crap, well I'm not but I would be if I actually had a TV license.

Time For Comprehensive Supermarkets.

Ministers are creating "ghetto schools" by letting parents choose where to send their children, teachers have warned.

Policies to increase parental choice over schools are undermining attempts to improve community relations, according to members of the National Association of Head Teachers.

Yes this makes a lot of sense. Think of how in the supermarket industry, for example, free choice has led to a situation where all the leading supermarkets monopolise the best customers whilst the under performing ones get lumbered with the poor shoppers. This creates a situation where all the best cashiers and managers are taken by the best shops. Wouldn't it be better if we ran supermarkets like schools?

Every store could be assigned a catchment area where they would have exclusive territorial rights to the shoppers who live in that are, comprehensive supermarkets would stop wealthy shoppers opting out.

People don't really want choice when it comes to shopping, they just want a good local supermarket. No doubt the free market fanatics will claim that choice drives up standards for all shoppers, but what they really mean is that they don't care about the less well off.

Gloating Over.

Now that Ken Livingstone is off to spend more time with his family families, it's time for the gloating to cease. So these are my serious points about the local elections:

• The GLA elections held under a form of proportional representation demonstrate something that the Liberal Democrats haven't realised in their advocacy of PR. Third parties don't suddenly become major forces to compare with the big two, what happens is that you end up with one main party of the centre right, one of the centre left and lots of small parties as the protest vote is split.
• It's a shame that local elections are tied so closely to national politics, even though watching Labour take a kicking is enjoyable. This is partly because local authorities have little power compared to central government. It is also because the parties are national entities that don't allow them to adjust to suit local concerns.
• George Galloway's electoral humiliation is great news, it's a shame that it had to happen on the same day as Livingstone's ousting really. I now know what children who have their birthdays on Christmas day feel like.
• Regardless of one's feelings about London's mayoralty, the introduction of mayors elsewhere has been pretty successful, even when it is a bloke in a monkey suit, and should probably be extended.
• Labour really should ditch Brown.
  

Embitterment Watch.

It seems hard to believe but some of those on the left don't take defeat very well as both Julia (at her new blog) and Mark have spotted.

I'll add this bloke over at Liberal Conspiracy to the list he writes:

So, it’s the weekend after the week before, and an alliance of gameshow fans, 4×4 drivers, suburban curtain-twitchers, BNP second-preferences, Labourphobes and the thoroughly fed-up, mostly from places that don’t even count as London, have foisted a Thatcherite mayor on our generally left-leaning city.

I am particularly enjoying the Kenite resentment towards London's more suburban boroughs who had the temerity to vote against the newt, which has been quite noticeable in the last week or so. What makes it rich is that up until they realised that the suburbs weren't going to back Livingstone, it was taken as axiomatic that Margaret Thatcher was terrible for abolishing the GLC and giving power to the boroughs and if anything the boroughs should be abolished and powers concentrated in the mayor.

Oh and incidentally why all the reference to Boris's appearances on 'Have I Got News For You'? Livingstone appeared on there several times during the 1990s, even if his stints were less memorable than Boris's.

The Classic Returns.

Enough London related posts for now, ( okay maybe one big gloat fest at the weekend once the most embittered Ken loving articles have been published).

Over at the Guardian Sasha Abramsky writes:

The crime rate in the US has plummeted since the 1990s, so why is the incarceration rate reaching staggering new heights?

Dunno Sasha, it beats me.

Congratulations London.

It looks like Londoners have finally kicked out the IRA supporting, Islamist loving, race baiting sleazeball that is Ken Livingstone and installed Boris Johnson, whom I suspect will confound those sceptical about his competence.

This caps a fantastic night for the Conservatives and David Cameron deserves a lot of the credit for that, but there is one thing that isn't being mentioned much today. Of course if he had got his way late last year and given Greg Dyke, the Liberal Democrat supporting ex beeboid, a free run then his party would have been thrown away the biggest prize of the night. Perhaps he should show more faith in members of his own party.

Official In Depth Analysis Of The Local Elections.

#Points at Gordon Brown#

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

Parody Is Dead.

Yesterday I attempted to parody the commies, race baiters and luvvies in their unhinged denunciations of Boris Johnson. Unfortunately my attempt at lunacy is quite tame when compared to the real thing.

For instance I attempted to satirise the snobbery and disdain shown by Ken Livingstone backers towards suburban Londoners, but I couldn't come out with anything as pathetic as Will Self:

"If Johnson were elected? I'd feel that he had neither the acumen nor the gravitas to resist becoming the teddy bear of the 4x4-driving, Laura Ashley headscarf-wearing, inherently inegalitarian and snobbish denizens of Chelsea."

I thought that threatening to kill a puppy would send up the ridiculous moral blackmail that Kennites attempt, but Arabella Weir makes puppy killing look moderate:

"I will go on hunger strike and throw myself in front of the next horse at Ascot if he wins."

Everything I parodied is taken to even greater extremes, the repeated references to Eton and the Bullingdon Club, the attempt to link Boris with Bush, the scaremongering over race and religion, the hordes of b list celebs, the sense of entitlement. How can I possibly compete with this?

Via Stephen Pollard.