It never ceases to amaze me how our politicians can come up with dippy idea after dippy idea and yet always fail to address the problems that really concern the electorate. In many areas of the country law and order has broken down completely, the prisons are full, the police fail to respond and the streets are packed with illegal immigrants so what do we get? How about banning plastic bags and hiding fags from the kids so they won't want to smoke!
Don't get me wrong my generation know only too well the perils of smoking and the plastic bag phenomena should have been curbed years ago but they are hardly priorities when we have so many other problems. Last week a smirking Jack Straw was told by a prisoner that the prisons were better than holiday camps and since then not one single idea to reverse the trend. Indeed his only idea to buck the trend is to ask the judges not to hand out custodial sentences. Consequently figures revealed yesterday confirm that two murders a week are carried out by criminals freed on bail! This is mass murder and the Justice Minister is responsible. He is charged with ensuring that our legal system safeguards the public and yet he routinely fails to act which means that he doesn't care and that is dereliction of duty.
In any other walk of life he would be at the very least be sacked but have you seen the NoLab front bench these days? So many have had to resign through improper conduct that there is probably nobody left who Gordon Brown would trust to keep his/her trap shut.
I would sleep a little better if any of the opposition would address the problem but they remain depressingly reticent. Someone one day will have to bite the bullet and address the problem which causes so many young people to commit crime. There are families now where three generations have never had a job. This, despite all the lame brained attempts to help them along the way. It doesn't work! Holiday camp prisons don't work! Soft sentences don't work! Tagging doesn't work! Bail for violent criminals doesn't work! For years the hanging and flogging brigade have been denigrated by our wet politicians but I tell you something - that would work!
3 comments:
But is it the problem of the long-term jobless? I do not think it is.
Up until the mid 1970s, there was relatively low unemployment. Up until 1979 I was in a very well paid job. Then Callaghan and Thatcher (different sides of the same coin) screwed up the economy.
From a well paid job I went to a series of low paid jobs, eventually going to college to get a degree.
Even now in 2008 my earning power of what I earn now is only a fraction (in "real terms") of what I earned in 1979.
Take for example a family who lost their main source of income in 1979 when an industry was destroyed at a stoke.
Before the jobs went south (in many cases they did go south, from northern Britain to the south of England) it was the bread winners duty to get an income for his family. That was his job.
After the jobs vanished it was still his job to gain an incomer for his family. No jobs? Well, if he was too honest to take up a life of crime, he would have to investigate the benefits system to see how much he could obtain in benefits.
Getting money for his family by using benefits became his job. His children and their children followed on in this tradition in much the same way earlier generations all followed their parents to the shipyards, down the mines, to the foundry, the steelworks, etc.
If it suited the purposes of Callaghan and Thatcher to put people on the scrapheap, why are the politicians shocked that they are still their, right where they left them?
I tend to agree but I do not think that successive governments have not even tried to address the problems of the long term unemployed. My main focus on this blog was the denegration of law and order in this country but there is no doubt that the two are interlinked.
I was reared on a Council Estate but I gained a scholarship to a grammar school in the fifties. This avenue is not open to the kids of today and so virtually nobody escapes from their natural environment. The clever kids turn to crime or play the system. The girls become baby factories. In my opinion responsible government should be seeking ways to break the cycle but there are never any relevant initiatives from the main parties. 'New Deal' was a joke and I know because I was working at my local Job Centre when it was rolled out. I left the army in 1987at the age of 44 with no support whatsoever but I still managed to re-enter society and support my family and I don't live in the south. I appreciate your interest and I accept many of your points but we must do much more to stop the benefit culture.
I am not going to address comments about Thatcher destroying industries in Britain, quite frankly that is all ancient history in the current context.
The only true remedy for people is to be self-sufficient. Making excuses for them about having lost their jobs and there not being anything else is just so much window dressing. Why have so many foreigners come to this country and been able to find jobs? Because they have a work ethic. I'm sorry, but why should taxpayers pay benefits for people who are not willing to help themselves in any way?
I have had several periods of being without of work since leaving the Army. My answer was to get out there and find a new job, not since on my backside and moan about the cruelty of society. With a good education and a secure and supportive family there would be far fewer lost children in this country. Paying out £180 billion a year to people to lie back and have babies is just insane.
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