Law and Order UK - Police to prosecute

"I've got a bigger postbag than you!"

The Crown Prosecution Service is getting its workload reduced and by implication its staffing numbers. Home Secretary Theresa May has announced proposals aimed at reducing police bureaucracy. She said her plans marked a "watershed moment" in policing and could save up to 2.5 million police hours each year.

Basically the Home Office's idea is to allow police officers, rather than the Crown Prosecution Service, to decide whether to press charges in up to 80% of cases, with some people being charged by post. I'm assuming they will have been arrested and subsequently interviewed beforehand. "Will you be charging me, then?" "Not today, the charge will be the post!"

The police should be "chasing criminals not chasing targets," said Mrs May. I agree, but she better make sure that the police are involved in real chases and not paper chases.

No wedded bliss under New Labour regime

In some ways the New Labour regime mirrors the US Episcopal Church as some kind of secular PC alternative. They are all for a bizarre idea of equality, thrusting alternative lifestyles at us in place of married bliss and generally failing to help the disadvantaged and the wronged because they have a blanket approach to it all.

New Labour heard that some sub-continental brides had been sold into marital slavery and abuse in order to obtain cash dowries for the grasping grooms. At first this was dismissed because no self-respecting New Labour apparatchik could bring himself/herself to accept anything untoward from the Asian community. Then they were forced to admit that forced marriages needed acting upon. Of course, being New Labour, they couldn't construct an act that dealt with the problem. No, they had to include every race, creed and human being possible into their law. So it is that totally innocent people get caught up in this legal minefield.

The Home Office is diligently applying the rules and regulations with vigour. British bride Amber Aguilar, from Friern Barnet, north London, faced the dilemma of having to choose between her career ambitions in the UK or living abroad with her Chilean husband because of the policy. The ‘heartbroken’ 18-year-old chose to live with 19-year-old Diego Andres Aguilar Quila, who had to leave the country recently after his student visa expired. The Home Office has been labelled heartless. I'd say they were just a bunch of jobsworths with a penchant for momentary lapses into jobsworthlessnesses (like losing computer data!).

It is not what Britain should be about. The sooner this lot go the better for all of us!

Jacqui Smith "not up to being Home Secretary"!

Jacqui Smith told Total Politics magazine that she feared she was not up to being Home Secretary and wished she had been better trained for the role. She said she had "never run a major organisation" before accepting the job in 2007. "I hope I did a good job but if I did it was more by luck than by any kind of development of those skills," she adds. A great scoop for Total Politics but I'm afraid she's given politics a totally wrong impression.

A Cabinet member is not there to "run a major organisation". They are there to effect the collectively agreed policy of the government. Civil servants run government departments. Jacqui Smith's role was to see that policy was implemented and that the Home Office was run properly - by other people. But heaven help us, it was NOT her job to micro-manage it!

If we are drifting into the realms of career politicians who see themselves as hands-on CEOs we will all be the poorer. As it is, this lot leak stuff to the press before the House of Commons hears of it. If Jacqui Smith was at fault it was because she had policies that were hopelessly inadequate, because she didn't ask the right questions or because she appeared not to be in control of her brief all the time.

Getting hook-handed terrorists off the streets is the job of a motivated politician. Whether one has run a whelk stall or the largest business in the world is neither here nor there.

Home Secretary in homes row!

Jacqui Smith is a right one to be in charge of those trying to keep law and order when she's running a racket on the side herself! She's been caught out claiming her sister's house as her own main residence and pocketing £116,000 in Commons expenses into the bargain. New Labour, Old Sleaze.

More about it here from the Daily Mail.

Big Sister is watching you!

The government's wonderfully worded Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) will make available our emails to any public body which makes a lawful request for them. From March all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year. On BBC Breakfast News this was discussed. Some naive emailer responded with the classic "if you haven't done anything illegal what have you to hide" line. But this is stupidy of the first degree.

As the Earl of Northesk, a Conservative peer on the House of Lords science and technology committee, says "This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life. People have to worry about the scale, the virtuality of your life being exposed to about 500 public authorities". He is very right. This is not about some avunculur schoolmaster looking out for his pupils, or a priest taking in information of a sensitive nature and not revealing it to third parties. This is about simple data with not a lot of clarity (no content will be revealed, yet!) being washed around Whitehall for transient ministers and contract staff in government agencies to wade through. What exactly they will make of it I do not know.

Emails can be sent to anybody. Are we to ask about the moral fibre of every recipient of the emails we send out? I'm waiting for the knock on the door because some person the police or security service is interviewing has me on their email list. It's absurd nonsense. This will tell them nothing. I suspect it is more about securing data for their own purposes. It will waste time weeding out all the people who "haven't done anything illegal so haven't anything to hide".

The Earl of Northesk also says "Under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental right... it is important to protect the principle of privacy because once you've lost it, it's very difficult to recover." Hear, hear to that!

PCs to hack into PCs! How PC is that?

It never ceases to amaze me. One reason why I think New Labour likes the European Union so much is that each has a mutual nosepoking philosophy. Lord Mandelson is chief amongst this breed of busybodies. Quite keen to go sniffing around other people's business, but very sniffy when it comes them being checked out.

So it is no surprise that the "remote searchers" of the New Labour regime will be licking their lips. What quite distinguishes a remote searcher from a hacker is unclear. Answers on a postcard to Gordon Brown, I'd say, or rather email for those so inclined.

It is all part of this catchall type approach we experience today. It's all this warrantless intrusion into our lives that the ruling elite think is so acceptable. It isn't. What keeps a democracy apart from the others is the rule of law. If the rules allow for below-the-belt stuff, then we will lose a lot.

An amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 made hacking legal if it was authorised and carried out by the state. So who does the authorising? The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said such intrusive surveillance was closely regulated under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. A spokesman said police were already carrying out a small number of these operations which were among 194 clandestine searches last year of people’s homes, offices and hotel bedrooms. That is all very fine, if we can trust their word, but it may not be so. Unless this is enshrined in law, all manner of "agencies" can go eavesdropping on a whim.

As usual, Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, has made some very sensible comments. He is someone I could have a lot of faith in as Home Secretary, as opposed to Jacqui Smith, where words fail me! Grieve agrees that the development may benefit law enforcement. But he adds, “The exercise of such intrusive powers raises serious privacy issues. The government must explain how they would work in practice and what safeguards will be in place to prevent abuse.”

Yes, explain now and concisely. Any delay will be monitored!

Jacqui Smith talks up her border patrols!

I'm not sure whether I follow what Jacqui Smith is on about. I don't think Jim Naughtie on the Today programme did either. She's got this new agency (she starts one a month, it appears!) called the UK Border Agency. It a mishmash of customs wallers and visa checkers. What she hasn't said is who of us is going to be checked. Is it dodgy looking Osama bin Laden lookalikes or will it be your average Joe Bloggs? Are we all going to be questioned on our return to the UK? Just holding a British passport doesn't prove anything. I could have left the country by boat and come back by plane. I could have lived overseas for a time, which I did. She wouldn't have a clue where I'd been!

So the big question is this. Will it work? All these new powers she's giving to her minions are going to be useless unless they can excercise them. Who is going to be stopped? Is it all of us on a random basis? That could work. Ginger-haired people just as much as burka-clad females. No discrimination! Will it be just foreign passport holders? Or those with requiring visas? Who knows?

Jacqui Smith doesn't fill me with great enthusiasm. She appears to be a jobsworth. If she doesn't check those leaving the country how does she get her figures matching up? She doesn't, that's why she has no clue as to how many illegals are here, some of whom have been cleaning out her office!

I bet it'll be like Tony Hancock berating his landlady in the Radio Ham. She has complained about him going in and out of the house. "I don't keep on going in and out! I came home, I went out, and now I've come in again. I don't call that "keep going in and out". You saw me go out, you must have expected me to come in again!" Exactly. That's what we should say to these Border Agents!

Jacqui talks turkey!