Jail: Unfit For Human Consumption?

The Home Office announced in January 2007 (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,1997589,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1) that it had reopened a prison wing that had been condemned as unfit for human inhabitation less than a week before to ease overcrowding and to house remand prisoners.

Surely being a remand prisoner means that you have yet to be found guilty, in which case do these people necessarily deserve to be housed in squalor? And will this open the floodgates for prisoners demanding compensation because their human rights have been abused?

Jails: Overcrowding

Our jails are becoming increasingly overcrowded, to the point where it now difficult to find room for people as they get convicted. As the crime rates have continued to increase under Tony Blair’s leadership, so, accordingly, has the number of people needing to be sent to jail.

Couple this with the fact that between 1992 and 2004 the reconviction rate among former prisoners rose from 51% to 67%, meaning that the concept of penal reform is carrying less and less weight. We are now getting to the point where, as a recent situation with a paedophile exemplified (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6300565.stm), convicted criminals are being handed Get Out Of Jail free cards simply because there is nowhere to put them, while early parole to ease prison congestion is leaving criminals with the message that future transgression won’t necessarily be met with just punishment.

It used to be said that if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Now it’s “If you can’t do the time, don’t worry. You’ll be out soon anyway.”

The NHS IT Debacle

According to SourceUK's website 7th March 07 (http://www.sourceuk.net/article/0/6/latest_dispatch.html) “NHS’s IT programme started at £2.3bn, has risen to £12bn+, but independent experts estimate will end up over £32bn.” I guess one wonders how many hospitals or nurses this represents? Or whether the program will just disappear at the end of Blair’s term?

One may ask, have any Government IT initiatives ever been delivered on schedule, on budget and met their objectives? I suspect that one of these days someone may look at the DirectGov project, which cost tens of millions a year and has been overtaken by technology with no measurable benefit and is now miles away form its original objectives!

Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown, the Man who would be King, whose great dealings lead to him selling our gold reserves off and losing £2bn in the deal. (see The Times' article from March 2006 at http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/china/article695733.ece)

The man whose idea of keeping deficits off the Government’s books has invented PFI whereby the NHS can line the pockets of private investors to the tune of £52bn for hospitals that cost only £8bn. Couple these two facts with the UK’S record (and widening) deficit and ask yourself: would you trust this man with your investments?

Iraq: 36 Lies

There is an interesting article detailing the 36 lies that led to the Iraq War, which can be found here: http://middleeastreference.org.uk/ios030711.html

Iraq: Weapons of Mass Distraction

There is no evidence that Iraq ever had weapons of mass destruction, or that the scaremongering seen before the conflict started was based on genuine intelligence rather than mere tub-thumping to get the western populations behind an unjust war. Certainly, no WMDs have been found since the coalition forces assumed control of the country, and certainly no evidence that Hussein was ever capable of launching them with only 45 minutes notice.

The alliance with the USA resulted in the total destruction of a nation that had no war with the UK, despite what we were told to the contrary. Instead, it made Britain political pariahs in the international arena as we bypassed the United Nations resolutions arguing against invasion and went ahead and did it anyway. It has also fueled anti-western sentiment amongst some elements of Islamic society, and gave the July 7th bombers an excuse to attack the London Transport System.

Iraq: The War In Error

In spite of over 1m voters taking to the streets in protest, with no mandate form the UN, and with only suspected (and suspicious) evidence with regard to Hussein’s capabilities and intentions, Blair decided to go to War.

Round Two of The War on Terror kicked off in 2003 with three main objectives: to oust Saddam Hussein and his baath party, to remove his weapons of mass destruction, and to free the Iraqi people. There were, and are, problems associated with these aims.

The removal of Hussein destabilised the country and created a power vacuum that has still to be filled. Iraq, though enjoying a long history, is actually an artificial country created by Britain who had been ceded the area of Mesopotamia by the League of Nations after the first world war. As such, it has no single ethnic basis but instead consists of a variety of racial backgrounds including the Kurds, Assyrians, Mandeans, Iraqi Turkmen, Shabaks and Roma.

Once Hussein was removed, these factions were free to resume their quarrels with each other which now consists of daily bombing attacks on populated areas, and has helped propel the number of Iraqi civilian deaths to nearly 65,000 in the last four years.

Freedom for the Iraqi people apparently doesn’t stretch as far as the freedom to go shopping without worrying that you’re going to get blown up while British commuters have been brainwashed into having the same doubts when travelling on the Underground or flying. Billions of pounds have been wasted in order to turn a nation into a bloodbath with no obvious benefit for anyone other than we (and, by that, we should say “The Americans”) now have control of one of the most lucrative set of oil fields available, which means that we shouldn’t be short of petrol that Blair can tax us on.

If one can find anything that the Blair Government have done to genuinely benefit this Britain, could it even go partway to balancing the real cost of this disastrous episode in British history?