Crime And Punishment

 Politics  No Responses »
May 082010
 

Many people believe that those who commit crimes should be punished as a sort of simplistic attitude – after all we punish children when they do something wrong – and for old testament style vengeance. Perfectly understandable, and to some extent I agree as I would quite happily see those who burgled my flat locked up for a very long time in a small sewer.

But does it work ? No, of course it does not.

After all these are adult criminals we are talking about, and prisons to them become little more than criminal universities where they take a brief break from a life of crime. And what is more, it is expensive keeping criminals locked up not just in terms of what it actually costs to keep them in prison, but also because prisoners are not ordinary productive members of society contributing to the cost of society (through taxation!).

Going back to the prison conditions, there are those who will have you believe that these are almost holiday camps with all sorts of funky facilities to make life pleasurable. Perhaps (although I would dispute that), but the cost of providing a prisoner with a place in prison is dominated by the cost of security.

Those woolly liberals would have you believe that non-custodial sentences where offenders serve some other kind of punishment such as community service, and especially are provided with a means to correct their life choices are more effective. This is particularly important when it comes to drug addicts – help them with their drug addiction and they no longer have to commit crime to support their habit.

Being nice to criminals is not something that sits easily with the vengeance brigade – they would rather see them suffer. But if being nice to offenders achieves results, I say it is worth doing. I would rather see the number of victims of criminals fall than to see the punishments made worse.

UK Election 2010 – A “Hung” Parliament

 Politics  No Responses »
May 082010
 

So after some 36 years, we have a “hung” parliament again with no party in overall control. There’s a joke in there somewhere to do with hanging politicians from lampposts, but I cannot quite see how to fit it in. Except to say that the politicians should sort out some sort of consensus government in a fairly short order.

The overall effect of the way that the public voted is that we effectively voted for a coalition government – no single party obtained a majority so the only stable government will be a coalition government. There are people going around saying that only the Tories have the moral right to form a government because they are the single largest party (on just 35% of the popular vote!); those that believe that misunderstand that we are in a “balanced parliament” situation where it is the largest coalition that has the votes to form a government.

Without second guessing the results of the negotiations, there are some obvious possibilities.

Conservatives On Their Own As  Minority Government

This is the option that could quite easily see the Conservatives in the electoral wilderness for another generation. Everyone can see that the only sensible option for a stable government would be to form a coalition to ensure a relatively stable majority. Opting to go it alone, would indicate that the Conservatives are unwilling or unable to share power with any other party despite it being in the best interests of the country.

A minority government of this kind is likely to be so unpopular with both the other politicians and the public that it would be unlikely to last for very long and quite possibly would result in the Tories being pushed to third or fourth place in the polls at the next election.

Frankly it does not seem very likely – I would expect that if the Liberals cannot get a good deal with the Conservatives, they will go across the road to Labour.

Con-Lib Pact

This combination seems a little unlikely to be honest – a coalition between unrepentant reactionaries and progressives ? The discussions are going on as I write this, and it is quite possible that some sort of agreement could result in such a coalition government. But there is a fundamental conflict between the two parties – Liberals are very interested in electoral reform, and the Conservatives are very much in favour of the current system which has seen them form the majority of governments in the 20th century.

If such a coalition forms, I see it as only lasting until electoral reform has taken place … or when the Liberals realise that the Tories promises on electoral reform were just a big con. It is also likely to be a coalition with a considerable level of bad feeling – whatever the leaders might feel, the ordinary MPs and ordinary supporters just are not going to like it very much.

Lib-Lab Pact

These two parties are almost natural allies in forming a coalition government as both are progressive parties. And the resulting coalition government is likely to be more stable than a Lib-Con coalition. There are those who would say that that such a coalition would be ignoring the will of the people who have voted Gordon Brown out.

Well, they would have a point if Labour were attempting to form a minority government, but that is not what this is about. Between them, Labour and Liberal have more than 50% of the popular vote, so can quite legitimately claim that as a coalition they have a more legitimate claim on government than the Conservatives alone who have just 35% of the popular vote.

The question would be, would the Liberals go back on their word not to work with Gordon Brown, or would Labour ditch Gordon Brown and elect a new leader to work with the Liberals ? It would certainly make some kind of sense for Gordon Brown to go as a sort of symbol of the end of the Labour government. After all, whilst nobody has “won” in the old fashioned sense of getting an overall majority, it is certainly the case that Labour has lost it’s overall majority.

But the biggest problem with a Lib-Lab pact is that it would have to be a “rainbow” coalition of essentially everyone who does not want to see the Tories back in charge. This adds up to around 329 MPs including the nationalist MPs from Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland (but ignoring Sinn Feinn who do not take up their seats). Whilst the nationalist MPs may not work with Labour on their own in their respected countries, they very well may support a rainbow coalition as the best way to prevent the Tories from getting in.

Con-Lab Coalition

Well it makes sense numerically, but can anyone really see this one being a realistic possibility ? Not likely.

It is fun to contemplate what may happen, but the only real answer to all the speculation is to wait and see what happens. There is an interesting possibility of electoral reform, which may very well be finally accomplished – if the Liberals stick to their guns and insist on it as a precondition for their membership of a coalition government.

And indeed it could well the that insistence that breaks any coalition between the Liberals and the Conservatives. Various comments leaked by the Conservatives indicate that they at least do not believe in electoral reform, or believe how important electoral reform is to those who believe it is vital.

If we end up with a coalition government (or a less formal arrangement that amounts to the same thing), we will end up with a government much more like governments in countries with less unfair and far more sensible voting systems. We will end up with a government much less likely to resort to extremist policies and a government much more likely to reflect the collective will of the people.

UK Election 2010 – The Banana Republic

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May 062010
 

So the election is over bar the counting.

What is clear so far, is that this election has been a complete farce. So far reports have come in from a number of constituencies alleging :-

  • Large queues of people wanting to vote locked out at 22:00 (which might be legal).
  • Large numbers of people turned away because the polling station lists were out of date.
  • People allowed to vote after 22:00 if they happened to be inside the polling station at 22:00 (which might be illegal).
  • Inadequate resources at some polling stations leading to some of the conditions above.

This election has been interesting in one respect – the amount of discussion on the inadequacies of our current voting system in that it allows governments to be formed with a total share of the vote as low as about 35%. What we now see is that the actual mechanics of organising an election need to be thoroughly reviewed.

One of the most obvious changes to make is to move the polling day from Thursday to a Saturday or Sunday. Whilst people do work at the weekend, the majority do not which allows for a more even level of traffic unlike the current position where those who work are effectively forced to vote before they go to work, after they finish work, or in rare circumstances vote at lunchtime.

I have commented before (before I started blogging but well after I started ranting) about how there is no real reason for voting on a Thursday except for the suspicion that it is convenient for the politicians, and that it is a historical legacy of a time when sneakily trying to stop the working people from voting may have been popular.

Going back to those who have been denied their right to vote; the obvious solution is for those MPs who have been elected in the relevant constituencies to resign their seats in a month or so, and to have another election. Even where the numbers denied their vote would not make a difference to the current result.

The Nazi Holocaust: The Other Victims

 History, Politics  No Responses »
May 032010
 

Most of us know that Hitler’s Nazi’s exterminated approximately 6 million Jews in what became known as the Holocaust (or sometimes preferred amongst the Jews, Shoah). However the total killed by the Nazis in methods and reasons similar to the Jews total around 11-17 million. Let us take that lower figure of 11 million. If you remove the total of Jews from it, you are still left with a total of 5 million men, women, and children which enough to deserve the word “holocaust” no matter who the victims are.

Some argue that the Jews are special because they were the only ethnic group to be targeted by the Nazis. I am not sure why being part of a particular ethnic group makes state murder any worse than being murdered for some other reason, but it’s also wrong. In addition to the Jews, the Nazis also targeted the Romani population, and Slavs. Nazis finally decided that the Romani be placed “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.”.

The Nazi attitude towards the Slavic population of the countries they invaded was more or less “we’ll deal with them later” although many hundred of thousands were killed.

Although we are concentrating on the genocide where the Nazi’s attempted the complete “ethnic cleansing” of populations, the other victims need remembering – the mentally ill, the disabled, the homosexuals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Left. Plus of course any others the Nazi regime might find “inconvenient”.

The Porajmos (the Romani “shoah”) killed somewhere between 200,000 and 700,000. Doesn’t sounds so many in comparison does it ? Perhaps not, but a single victim of government killing is one too many. And when you start to look at the effect on the ethnic population as a whole something different begins to emerge.

Country Jewish Casualties (%) Romani Casualties (%)
Poland 90 26
Croatia – 98
Germany & Austria 90 75 (Germany), 58 (Austria)
Estonia – 100
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania 90 100
Luxembourg 20 100

It is perhaps easy to get carried away by statistics – especially when talking about genocide. The numbers are incomprehensible, and the percentages just as incomprehensible. It is worth noting that despite the enthusiasm with which Nazi’s undertook the “Final Solution”, nowhere did they fully succeed in exterminating Jews; whereas they accomplished a “successful” genocide of the Romani in 5 separate countries.

As to why we hear so much about the Jewish Shoah – and quite rightly as this blog entry is not about attacking those commemorating the Jewish victims of the holocaust – and so little about the other victims, I really do not know. In the case of the Romani, part of the reason is that in the countries where they survived, they were still subject to official repression including forced sterilisation.

And of course there is a secrecy tradition amongst the Romani that stops them from telling their story made worse by many of the things that happened to them being taboo. But is that any reason for us to forget them ?

Perhaps it is simply film that is the answer. I have seen numerous films and documentaries covering the Holocaust and most simply ignore the “other” victims or at best mention them almost as an aside. We need to redress this balance and cover all of the victims of the holocaust.

Gordon Brown and the “Bigoted Woman”

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Apr 282010
 

So this lunchtime, Gordon Brown was being interrogated by an ordinary voter. Fair enough. But later after getting into his car without checking his microphone was off, was heard calling her a “bigoted woman”. He has already apologised, but the damage has allegedly been done.

It is certainly the kind of mistake no politician would like to make – an easy boost to all the others.

It has been seized on as an example of how Gordon Brown has no sympathy with the interests of common people. Possibly.

But it could also be his way of dealing with stress – to insult someone in “private” (and he thought it was in private) is a way of letting off stream. Anyone who has worked in IT will undoubtedly be familiar with the strategy. And a politician meeting with a member of the public who is asking aggressive and unscripted questions is likely to get a little stressed.

And who is to say he is unique in this ? Gordon Brown has been caught out by making two mistakes – expressing his feelings out loud, and not making sure he was really in private. Other politicians have so far in this election have not been caught out, but who is to say that they do not do exactly the same ?

Looking back a day later, and what now ? I would say that nobody is really interested in Brown’s “disastrous” mistake – despite all the fuss in the media. Is his mistake more an opportunity for the media to make a fuss ? The subject hasn’t come up in conversation and nobody has encountered this page through a search. Perhaps to the ordinary voters out there, there are other factors far more interesting than whether Gordon Brown sometimes is a little less than diplomatic in private (or what he thought was private) ?

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