Hailing a taxi and a criminal

In the West Midlands, and no doubt the rest of the UK, if you hail a taxi you may also get a convicted criminal as your driver. Now it could be that convicted criminals make exceptionally good drivers but I would not think that that was the first thought on the minds of the box tickers that dream up all this vetting and checking.

The BBC programme Inside Out West Midlands has revealed that criminals with convictions for offences such as indecent assault and drug dealing are knowingly being licensed to operate as taxi drivers. Knowingly! That's the whole shameful way we are run today, by self-serving bureaucrats who genuflect daily to an altar composed of political (in)correctness, red tape and a desire to run away from responsibility.

This is just a good example of such nonsense. A spokesman for Wolverhampton City Council said the licensing of private hire and hackney carriages was taken seriously. "The council has received no complaints regarding this driver since the private licence was granted in 2006," he said. So no complaints mean it's OK to grant a license to someone who may be tempted to do something indecent or worse.

I always knew the vetting business was a sham. It's got nothing to do with decency but EVERYTHING to do with bureaucrats not being sued by some lunatic under some law of lunacy. Not only have the lunatics taken over the asylum, they are indistinguishable from the lunatics who ran it in the first place.

A taxi driver should be viewed by the public as being someone in an honourable position. Sounds high fullutin', I know, but having been involved in the taxi business at one time I can see how the public come to expect low service if they think all taxi drivers are ex-cons. Now I am not against someone with a criminal conviction obtaining work. However, a sense of proportion needs to be adopted. Wolverhampton Council have obviously lost the plot, with proportion being a word they cannot comprehend.

Taxi driving is a vital service in a modern economy. It is a business creating thousands of jobs and serving people day and night. Customers need to know that their driver is properly licenced and that all insurances are paid. Taxi drivers need to know that we respect their business and their services.

When it comes to a general election I hope we can vote in people who will get rid of all these wretched box tickers and collectivist backsliders. Otherwise we will just carry on with this parlous existence of having the politically incorrect muck up our lives.

New Labour fright regime carries on the vetting

New Labour is a preposterous outfit. All keen to vet everyone and anyone except their wretched selves. It is perfectly OK to have morally questionable ministers in the government, but woe betide a decent citizen wanting to help other peoples' children.

The Great Nosepoker Balls is so keen to vet every person in the land that he has come up with a new category of potential paedophilic monsters. These are the exchange student parents. "Don't worry Pierre! Daddy is very nice and has been completely checked over by Mr. Balls". What on earth is Pierre and all the other young students to make of it.

Balls keeps up the mantra of wanting to safeguard children. Instead he is like a carcrash heading towards a time when every parent will be devoid of any desire to pass on experience of their life for fear of being "labelled". It will be a society without love and compassion. Each will have been vetted, each will be recorded, to little or no avail. None of this actually stops paedophilia. It all runs on a one strike and you're out routine. Each time a paedophile is convicted, the police remark, "He was under the radar, you know!" as if to confirm what a ridiculous situation it all is.

Paeodophilia is a matter that needs addressing. New Labour is clueless on the subject. One day I suppose a scientist will explain whether it is a mental condition, a pyscho-sexual condition or just something that prison will fix. At the moment the latter appears the favoured option, although I think a few in authority think otherwise. Their fears lie in the fact that if paedophilia was unravelled, then other sexual proclivities could also be. Now that would be something.

No man wants to be a primary school teacher it seems. I certainly wouldn't if I were younger. It's bad enough in Sunday School. The vetting issue creeps over us like a frightful character from George Orwell's 1984. In fact, Ed Balls and his parrot chatting wife would make a good 1984 couple.

Balls better open a few more lunatic asylums. By the time the vetting of the whole country is over we will all be nervous wrecks.

Mum's police check for school run

In the "I can't believe they're that bonkers" department comes a letter of the law edict from Merthyr Council in South Wales. It is becoming self-evident that local councils up and down the country are shelving common sense and acting as craven stooges to the whims and fancies of the New Labour regime.

Jayne Jones, of Aberfan near Merthyr Tydfil, used to travel with her son Alex, 14, in the council-provided taxi when she feared he may have a fit. Because it is provided by the council, she is seen as an "adult acting as an escort who could be viewed as acting with the full acquiescence of the council and hence with its implied authority". So they are insisting she must stop going with him until she has undergone a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check. What moronic thinking is this? Of course the official couldn't comment when asked. It is all too absurd even to dream up a reply that would be deemed sane enough. Are we all to be examined in this way if we find ourselves in a similar situation? And what of Alex? Is he now to be left to travel alone, or is some caring soul from the council going to be brought in at great expense to act as a convenient chaperone?

So the foolish council insist on her getting checked in case some person in the street, who thinks suddenly that they have seen a potential molester in a cab (which they may or may not know is contracted out to Merthyr Council) and that alarm bells should be sounded at the first opportunity.

It is outrageous and we need to stop these stasi-like control freaks before they ruin the country.

Only us criminals!

In order for me to be a Junior Church helper, I've had to undergo the "robust" checking of the Criminal Records Bureau. Thankfully they did not get me mixed up with somebody else with a similar name who has a string of convictions. On BBC's Watchdog there were a number of people that were not so lucky.

I am now the proud owner of an Enhanced Criminal Record Certificate. It all sounds so Orwellian, but then that's par for the course in New Labour Britain. Anybody coming into the country for the first time and being shown such a document would think that we are all potential crooks and miscreants. I've passed OK on all five categories. The first category is the "Police Records of Convictions, Cautions, Reprimands and Final Warnings". It is all a bit reminiscent of school. "This is your final warning, I won't tell you again!".

Doesn't it all some up the sorry pass we've come to. The assumption is that we have to prove we are innocent of a crime, and then get a certificate that makes us feel as if we actually were a wrongdoer and we begin to doubt are own being. It does seem to me all a bit cart-before-the-horse but I readily appreciate the need for caution and care in matters regarding children and vulnerable people.

I just think they could call the certificate something else!