Originally posted by gareth_24
yes i do, but its not a big issue - lets just discuss the issues that really count. if his policies are the right ones, this shouldnt
matter.
- Come on, we were asked what we thought about this specific point surely?
well firstly this depends on the figures you choose! Which is why stats, so often are a pile of tripe. there is no doubting that levels of
violent crime are increasing.
- Of course, that is why I referred to overall crime levels.
But we should also not get things so out of proportion that we stop recognising the violent crime, up or not, (like gun crime in the UK) is at a very
very low level compared with many developed countries and not something most encounter often if at all.
again this depends on your background, eg.where you live, but i would suggest the majority of streets in britain are less safe than 8 years ago
- this is certainly true of where i live.
- OK, I can see that you might believe that. All I can say is that I have walked the streets of London in the dead of night, I used to live in and go
to some supposedly
very dodgy areas (Brixton, Archway, Hammersmith, Forest Gate, Dagenham, Hoxton, Deptford, Clapton and Hackney to name a few)
and whilst I have no doubt these were crime (and violent crime) 'hot - spots' I never once saw or was involved in anything.
Ditto with some scary parts of Belfast during the troubles when I was in my teens and early 20s.
OK, bit stupid this one but it remains the truth that I have traipsed the streets of Belfast in the early wee hours (won't give anything away as to
why but no prizes for guessing!) and again never had a problem.
I'm not denying that these places have more than there fair share of trouble but I am saying that it is not quite as some imagine 24/7.
and blairs government is doing NOTHING, that i can see, to tackle the root causes of crime.
- I'd call the huge strides made in tackling the bulk of the UK's youth unemployment problem a major and effective tactic in dealing with the
causes of crime (which is skewed mostly toward the young).
and those root causes lie in the fact that society in the UK is getting worse and worse, mainly through cultural changes in our youth. i would
be interested to see stats on crimes committed by under 18's since labour took over.
- So would I......but it means a trawl through the Home Office stuff!
the problem is, not the system of policing or our crime laws. it lies in our culture shifting more and more towards american
culture.
- I agree, there is a lot in this.
I also see no good reason for us to tolerate this in view of the harm it is doing us and I think we should refocus on our manifest and many cultural
links with continental Europe.
the european culture is different to ours, and until we have a culture where the youth have respect for others, then we cannot implement left
wing policies towards crime.
- I think it is more a matter of political will. Sadly I can't really go too far backing Labour's crime policies as I don't see much difference
from the tory approach.
It sure as hell isn't a European approach and the prison population is either at or just under the highest it has ever been. This ludicrous 'dutch
auction' between tory and Labour over who can be the harshest on crime with their ever more (ineffective) hard-line is to me as depressing as it is
futile.....counter-productive even as it creates a climate unhelpful and more brutal in wider society IMO and I see nothing of value for any of us in
this in a more brutalised society.
i would personally like to see a much more right wing attitude - things like increased censorship should be put in place. the government
should take begin to control what our children see and hear on the TV, radio and computer games, etc. controversial hey? but something has to be
done.
- Hmmm not sure I would call it censorship as such.
I agree that elements of the 'I want it all and I want it now' society can and should be tackled.
My view would be to adopt several measures - starting with something like the Scandinavian approach where they ban advertising to children.
children who are getting arrested, expelled etc when theyre young are currently not dealt with in the correct way - "give them a written
warning and a meeting with a policeman" - what a joke!!!
- ....and yet for some that works. For some that is all it takes. For some it ios absolutely not a joke. My brother many years back had to go se the
local Police chief with our dad because of his age (16) over a traffic offence, he sure as heel didn't think it was funny and by God our dad removed
any thoughts that it was a mild and ineffective thing.
But why misrepresent this? This 'idea' is simply broadening out what has existed for years - under many tory years too.
I don't think anyone sees that as the entire strategy, do you.....really?
these children are not being taught respect by their parents or by anyone else in society- so someone else has to do it.
- But when this gov introduced 'parenting classes' for exactly this kind of problem the tory party and their pals in the press (the Telegraph
included) started raving on and on about the 'nanny state' and this gov's apparant 'control freakery' and their intrusion into the great British
homestead!
Talk about a deeply unhelpful attitude and trying to have it both ways, surely?
boot camps (based upon a new, british style model, not the american model that most will associate boot camps with) should be implemented.
controversial
- Again for some - but only some - they work. But again they can hardly be the be-all and end-all of the anti-crime strategy now can they?
The tory party loves to trot this one out as the solution to all our ills.
I guess you are too young to have heard of Willie Whitelaw and his promise of the 'short sharp shock' camps where ex-military sargeant-major types
were going to instill respect and if not the fear of God into the nation's wayward youth?
It's all been done before and sadly it doesn't, alone, bring the enormous benfits you imagine.
but i said in another post i was right wing in my attitudes toward crime! come on then sminky, i know youre gonna have a lot to say about
this!
- Then I'm glad to oblige you with some responses!
thats true, but we are in a very different economic age. the recessions that came around were on the back of worldwide recessions.
- Ok, there is some truth in that but it cannot be denied that compared to the US and the then western European states the British experience was
longer, deeper and worse that theirs due to the policies the gov then followed.
the way the economy is handled is very different now, and seemingly much more effective through lessons learned.
- ...and yet the tory party have claimed a disasterous -
worst ever! - recession is due any moment since day 1 of this Labour gov since
1997.
can you not think of anything positive to come out of the thatcher government???!
- The truth?
Not a lot. A lot would have happened anyway IMO and much of what 'good' they did was spoiled by their inerring ability to go so waaaay to far with
it to the point where the benefits were lost.
I think the almost 20yrs of tory gov brought major influences and changes to the culture of the UK (some of which are directly related to what we have
been saying in relation to crime above) which we could have done without. Thatcher's slavish adoration of Reaganite America and all things Reaganite
American was not the best idea IMO.
I'll go along with the idea that the balance in Labour relations had swung maybe too far towards the unions and that that needed sorting out.
Thatcher in particular took this waaaay too far and caused, IMO unnecessary and mostly completely avoidable, massive hardship almost like a badge of
pride.
On balance I think she did more harm than good.
Even her supposed 'great military acheivement' of the Falkland's war was caused by her pig-headed refusal to listen to what would happen if she
insisted in removing the Royal Navy's patrol ship HMS Endurance - we even know from the Argentinians memoirs that they lept at the chance this would
bring them, and they did. You might stand a chance of writing that off as conjecture were it not for the fact the matter had been looked at a fewyears
before in the mid 1970's and abandoned because wiser council saw what it was almost certainly going to lead to.
Still it all worked out for her, she went from 20-something in the polls and a dead cert to be out on her ear to a landslide win in 1983. Shame about
the cost.
.....and some tories have the gaul to criticise Blair over Iraq!
im not an expert on her time in charge, but im quite happy with things such as privatisation
- I have no doubt that 'privatisation' has it's place too but once again it was taken way too far.
Do you know about the privatised RAF maintenance contracts? Saved the MOD around a hundred million and cost it a few hundred more due to the damage
the contractors caused!
That is the mentality.
Look at the health bug MRSA, totally connected to the privatisation of hospital cleaning where cost and not quality is the prime motivator.
Enjoy.
economic measures implemented such as using the interest rates to control the economy as opposed to the money supply.
- Er, hang on.
It was Thatcher than introduced this monetarism BS.
She was a fan of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics and tried to introduce a rigid control of the money supply as the tools of
economic policy (oh the joys of studying the movements of M1 and M3 25yrs ago!
).
That led to their jacking up interest rates through the roof in an attempt to sustain the £ at a far too high level which slaughtered 20% of Britains
manufacturing base (20%!).
This gave us, at a time of a world dip, the 1st, early 1980's, severe tory recession and which led to it being deeper and more prolonged than
anywhere else in the western world.
Once that had been discredited she was forced to ditch monetarism and go along with Lawson in shadowing the D-mark (at 3Dm's/£ back then), this was
another disaster as interest rates were cut to maintain the £'s value against the Dm when they should have been understanding the building consumer
boom needed scalling back, not accelerating through too low interest rates.
So they practically did everything they could to accelerate the boom until it was too late. Oh the joys of the (then) London Evening Standard telling
us all our houses were leaping in price by £57 a day (that was their headline on night)!
So the crash came as interest rates skyrocketed.
Major & Co. then forced her to go into the ERM at a (then) ridiculously high and unsustainable rate - it was the usual tory trick, never mind
sustainability, expedient politics was the order of the day and a quick fix mentality - and we had ultra high interest rates for another grossly
extended period before defending the indefensible became too great and the Bank of England and HM Gov found out just how little 'sovereignty' they
actually had alone and had to leave the ERM.....which in tory eyes became all Europe's fault!
Anyhoo, they promptly dumped her as she got more loopy and likely to lose them the next election in 1992, Major won in 1992 under his 'I'm not
Thatcher and see how we've changed' act and ended up saddled with the inevitable consequences of her 'reign'.
You try owning property with a mortgage and experience a Bank of England base rate (which mean lower than the commercial rates) of 10%+ and
tell me all about how using interest rates as the sole means of regulating the economy is a great thing.
The public quickly saw through Major, hated the Major experience and basically if you look at the polls have hated them with a passion ever since.
.....and seeing as so many were hurt for so long by them it'll be a long long time until the experience is forgotten.
Tough luck if you're a tory but there's the truth of it.
i do honestly believe that her government laid the foundations for the successful economy we've enjoyed over the past 12years.
- If the tories had managed a run of more than 3 - 4 good years in their near 20yrs you might have a point, the trouble is they didn't.
They also left office with the UK having record levels of debt which was accelerating at a record rate. Hence the first 2yrs where Labour was forced
to keep spending nailed down.
Also they have been dead set against everything this Labour gov has done since 1997, so no, I don't give them any credit.
......and how come it's ok to try and claim a little credit on what you imagine has gone well but beyond reason for Labour to point out the
deep-seated nature of many of Britain's problems, hmmm?
not a huge fan of the council tax, but lets face it - its the labour councils where we are seeing the hugest council tax rises.
- Not so.
You have to be only talking about band e and above to make that claim stick.
For most people's housing (band a - d) Labour councils do well in comparison to the tory councils.
if we were seeing equal increases in the benefits of how its being spent then fine. but by and large, i dont believe we are.
- It's certainly not heaven on earth but I do not believe that anyone can now seriously doubt the improvements in the public services but whether
your local authority is making the most of the much improved central gov funding settlements they have been given in recent years isanother matter -
and possibly indicative of the parlous state they were on not so long ago.
thats the 64 million dollar question.
- Well so far we've had 2 tory attempts at it and neither seem particularly popular - and just wait until there is another property revaluation,
that went down well in Wales in 2003 I believe, not - but if anyone else has any bright ideas lets hear them.
of course it did, but not by the same proportion as its going up now.
- I think you'll find that that is simply not true - for most.
When Major was shifting the burden from central gov as much as he could I recall huge rises after the couple of 'honeymoon' bedding in years.
