The Script Is Written

It was

a) the fault of the incomptetent and disorganised Russian security forces (cue SAS man in studio to say how much better we'd have done it)

b) anyway, such attacks are inevitable because of what the Russians are doing in Chechnya (© one Lord Judd, who seems to be all over Radios 4 and 5)

c) anyway, Putin, Bush and Sharon are the real terrorists. As Isabel Hilton so rightly points out in the Guardian "As the drama of Beslan was entering its final hours, George Bush was bidding for re-election on the promise of security to the American people, a security premised on the willingness to use overwhelming military force. It was the same promise that Putin gave to the Russians and Ariel Sharon to the people of Israel. All three have used violence freely in pursuit of electoral reward: Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple of the Mount that triggered the second intifada, Putin's reckless adventurism in re-launching the Chechen war in 1999, and the Bush invasion of Iraq."

I'm particularly impressed with her insight into the moral equivalence between a peaceful visit by a Jewish head of state to a Jewish religious site and the deliberate slaughter of hundreds of innocent children, teachers and parents.



UPDATE - Following Isabel Hilton's description of a visit to the Temple mount as 'using violence freely', Joan Smith in the Indie takes things one step beyond.

President Vladimir Putin's contribution to the war against terror, prosecuted with wanton violence in Chechnya, has created carnage: in less than two weeks, Chechen terrorists have blown two passenger planes from the sky, bombed a metro station in Moscow and murdered hundreds of men, women and children at a school in southern Russia.

Leaving aside the valid criticisms that can be made of Russian policy in Chechnya (after Friday's events it's obviously much too soft), such a sentence turns logic on it's head. All the acts of which Ms Smith writes were carried out by Putin's enemies. In Ms Smith's world the perpetrators aren't responsible - Putin made them do it. If only she'd been around in 1940.

Prime Minister Churchill's contribution to the war against Hitler, prosecuted with wanton violence in Norway, has created carnage: in less than six weeks, German forces have overrun France, burned thousands of soldiers at St Nazaire and forced Jewish men, women and children into the Lodz ghetto.

Mary Whitehouse Was Right II

Following in the footsteps of Yasmin Alibhai Brown, John Humphrys wonders where it's all gone wrong in his MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Festival.

Humprhys acknowledged that his comments could be characterised as "coming from the collected works of Mary Whitehouse", the veteran clean-up campaigner. "She said television was on a downward moral spiral. Foul language and fornication would become routine if nothing were done to stop it. They said she was wrong. Was she?"

Of course she was right, John. Let me tell you why. When you, and I, and lots of young people, and some not so young, cheered on the defendants in the Lady Chatterley and Oz trials, mocked Mrs Whitehouse and the Festival Of Light (I remember counter-demonstrating as the 'Festival Of Life'), we'd all been brought up in what was still a Judaeo-Christian culture. We were under the illusion that you could open the floodgates just as much as we wanted and no more. Mrs Whitehouse, with an explicit Christian analysis, correctly reasoned that without a Christian culture (or a strong culture replacing it) there were potentially no limits to what was permissible.

Christianity and the other major world religions have been around a long time. They understood, accepted and respected the power of sexuality, which was precisely why it was bound in with all manner of prescription, proscription, culture and custom. Procreation, the link between sexuality and the family, then and now still the chief transmitter of culture between the generations, was similarly attended.

Then two things happened - the decline in religious belief coincided with the invention of cheap and reliable contraception, an invention which appeared at the time to sever the link between sex and procreation. Sex could become, according to your nature, a means of deepening a fulfilling relationship, good fun, better than sleeping alone, or something different to all of these. The choice was yours.

If you have no religious perspective and sex is a pleasant leisure activity, why should you not explore its dimensions, watching, participating, selling, buying ? After all, these dimensions have been around for a very long time. Mrs Whitehouse would have been well aware of these issues. As time passes the Humphrys view (1960s version) looks more and more out of touch with reality, and the Whitehouse version more and more realistic and worldly.

What's happening now is different. This is a battle between people who are concerned about society and those whose interest is simply to make programmes that make money. Those who fought for the word f*** in Lady Chatterley didn't do it to make money. Now the cash registers go ker-ching every time there's a fumble beneath the bed sheets.

How naive can you get ?

There has always been a clash between freedom, especially freedom of expression, and the conservative wish to preserve values. In the 60s, Mary Whitehouse was taken apart by the liberal elite, who defended Lady Chatterley and the Oz publishers, arguing - in my view rightly - that it was not just censorious but stupid to pretend that sex happened only in the marital bed. This was a genuine debate between different views of what was good for society.

I'm beginnning to see a picture here - that it was alright when my mates were opening the gates, but now the peasants have all rushed in. Let's have a look at two parts of that argument.

" ... it was not just censorious but stupid to pretend that sex happened only in the marital bed." I don't think anyone, even Judge Griffith-Jones, ever pretended that sex only happened in the marital bed. The point of the Chatterley trial was more the (for the time) graphic descriptions of the sex than the fact that it was adulterous. And hang on a mo. What did you write a paragraph earlier ?

"You can't use people with real lives and real problems and real children as "just entertainment". Well, you can, but it's corrupting. The first time I watched Big Brother live there were two men lying on beds and talking about women. Or rather "f*****g women". And talking about their responses to them. Or, rather, "my f*****g stiffy". My, how we've pushed back the boundaries of television. How proud we should be."

I hate to say it John, but it is not just censorious, but stupid to pretend that some men don't talk like that. Why is that speech, apart from a certain inarticulacy, so much worse than Lawrence's description of a tumescent Mellors ?

"This was a genuine debate between different views of what was good for society."

Your point being ? In a post-Christian culture, it seems generally agreed that giving people what they want is good, and there can be no doubt that people like watching sex and fighting (not usually simultaneously).

The old culture was quite comfortable with the idea that what people wanted wasn't necessarily what was good for them - or as Humphrys puts it "in the bad old days we had paternalists trying to capture the masses for what they believed in their patrician way to be good". Wrong again, John. By the 1960s the ruling elite didn't give a toss, and it was the despised lower-middle and respectable working class who provided the bulk of Mrs Whitehouse's support.

But without a Christian or other religious culture I really can't see how you can object to Stu and Shell on grounds of anything but taste. This is probably only a beginning. Humphrys has called for assisted suicide to be made legal. I'm sure there are people who'd pay good money to watch the death in real time - with perhaps a lottery involved, the lucky winner to remotely operate the barbiturate driver from their PC or mobile. Poor countries which still retain the death penalty have a sure-fire media earner. And how long before sex is classified as a sport ?

Taking Children Hostage

The house we rented for the last week had a book collection frozen in time somewhere about 1970. There was a shelf of World Books from the early 60s, some of which I remembered from my mother's collection but had never read. So forty years on I read Adrian Hayter's story of navigating single-handed to New Zealand, Eric Ambler's gun-smuggling tale Passage Of Arms, and CE Lucas Phillips' The Spanish Pimpernel. This turned out to be a true (though I thought I detected a hint of embroidery) tale of a Brit banker in Madrid during the Civil War who devoted his energies to helping people escape from Republican Spain.

For those of us brought up on Orwell and Hemingway the book's something of a rude awakening. Democracy under the Republic was decaying to the point at which political assassination was a commonplace. Lucas Phillips describes the protests in Parliament of the Conservative Senor Sotelo, and the bitter response from lefty icon La Pasionara.

"You have just made your last speech" she spat at him. He was assassinated a few days later. At which point Franco raised the standard of revolt, and Republican Madrid started arresting and shooting without trial anyone suspected of right-wing views, sympathies or family connections. Tens of thousands were killed in Madrid alone. As Churchill put it, Franco's forces then repaid the Republicans 'with interest'.

But the story which stuck in my mind was the siege of the Alcazar, the Military College, at Toledo, fiercely defended by the young cadets until Franco's troops relieved them.

The Republicans had arrested the teenage son of the Alcazar's commander, General Moscardo, and put him on the phone to his father to tell him that unless the fortress surrendered his son would be shot.

They bred them hard in those days, though I wonder what Senora Moscardo thought - for according to Phillips, Moscardo replied as follows:

"My beloved son, I order you to die like a hero. May your last words be 'Long live Spain and Christ the King !'"

I Forgot To Mention ...

That along with the new records for abortion, HIV and injecting drugs, we've got record immigration. It also appears that the 'independent' government Office Of National Statistics has been timing its releases of information to minimise the political fallout - and that the Home Office has set up a rebuttal unit, paid for by the taxpayer, to combat the independent immigration monitoring organisation Migrationwatch. Apparently the BBC, Immigration Advisory Service and the other 20-odd publicly-funded immigration lobby groups just aren't doing a good enough job.

In Migrationwatch chairman Sir Andrew Green's Times piece he makes a telling point.

"The Government’s policy has been described as “talk tough and let them all in”. They will deny it of course but, as politicians, they cannot be oblivious of the fact that immigrants vote overwhelmingly Labour. They will deny this, of course, but they must know that, in 1997, 83 per cent of black and Asian votes went to Labour."

Dame Shirley Porter was fined squillions of pounds and fled the country after it was disclosed that she tried to get a few dozen more Tory voters into council houses in some Westminster wards. Naughty girl. Yet it's apparently OK to import a few million extra Labour voters, find them housing, then ask why the Tories can't win in the cities any more.

There are a couple of worrying codas to the record abortion and HIV statistics as well. The first is that, following Joanna Jepson's success in gaining a review of the decision not to prosecute doctors who killed a baby because it had a cleft palate, the Government abortion statistics have dropped the breakdown of late-term abortions by type of foetal disability. This seems to be a purely political move designed to suppress the information which enabled Ms Jepson to take legal action. The second is that HIV figures are rising in the regions as a direct result of the government's dispersal of asylum seekers.

If the Tories, with their manipulation of unemployment statistics in the 1980s, can be said to have started the corruption and politicisation of independent civil servants, Labour have taken the policy to new depths. As whistleblower Steve Moxon said of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate "we were an extension of the government’s efforts to supply spurious information to the Office for National Statistics (to downplay the immigration problem)."

Crime, asylum, immigration, available beds, waiting lists - you name it, they'll fiddle it. The Soviet Union may be dead, but its statistical techniques live on. And at least the Soviets did actually make a few tractors.

A Sensitive Tribute

To Paula Radcliffe - by Barry Beelzebub.

"Suddenly it all goes wrong. Ms Radcliffe, far from steaming home a league ahead, jacks it in just three miles from home after being dropped down to fourth place. Then the Beeb's commentators lose all sense of perspective.

"Poor Paula", they wail. "Fancy having to run over that hilly track in such terrible heat."

Well excuse me. I didn't notice it bothering the Japanese woman who won the race in style. Even worse, while the worthy winner is entering the stadium the Beeb, instead of honouring her triumph, are conducting a hasty post mortem into the Golden Girl's demise, who at this point is sitting in the gutter with snot and vomit running down her chin.

It's very shabby. Even my Grandad, who had little time for the Japs unless they were on the end of his bayonet, would have shown more grace. "

Hat-tip to Barry's discoverer - Mr Free Market.

And Another One

Readers will be aware that one of my hobby-horses is the phenomenon of right-on rebels or PC exemplars who, when the kids come along, up sticks from the vibrant multicultural melting pot of the city to a leafy, conservative area. May I present the latest recruit, one Jah Wobble, late of Public Image and full many another alternative musical project.

Five years ago, they moved with their two young sons from the East End to leafy suburban Cheshire. “I know the inner city, I know those estates, and it ain’t got no better,” Wobble says. “I wouldn’t like to be an old person living in Bethnal Green.”

Thank heavens he can afford to get out of the paradise he's helped, in his own small way, to create. Pity about the people who can't.

Well that was nice ....

a fortnight with no newspapers or TV, and only occasional radio. Instead - biking, walking, climbing, fishing, sleeping. I did find an internet connection in Brodick Co-Op (only 50p/hr with your dividend card) but didn't get the time to blog. House prices are at silly levels, but Arran is still beautiful, the sea still clear and you can see seals on the rocks as you drive into town.


Jellyfish in the clear water of Corrie Harbour.

So what did I miss ? The announcement of record levels of abortion, HIV infection and drug abuse - nothing new there. Still trundling down the broad and pleasant road.

The greatest excitement seems to have been the Mark Thatcher brouhaha, where papers like the Guardian, Indie and Mirror have been able to vent their hatred - a hatred based purely on who Mark Thatcher's mother was.

Isn't that a kind of racism ? As Churchill said to Hitler's aide "Putzi" Hanfstaengle in 1931, "what is the good of being against anyone because of their birth ? How can anyone help how he is born ?"

Mark Thatcher may not (or may, for all I know) be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but remarks like George Monbiot's 'too thick for anywhere else' are in Scott Burgess' phrase 'breathtakingly elitist'.

The Monbiot article tells us that "Africa, to the British upper classes, remains an adventure playground", and quotes the school and university of various upper-class individuals.

I guess Monbiot knows of what he speaks, and he certainly has the genuine upper-class hatred of the respectable working and lower-middle class, though his website is surprisingly reticent about his own school and university.

Doubtless mater and pater sent this horny-handed son of toil to the local comp followed by the polytechnic. I think we should be told.

The Indie's editorial on mercenaries is white liberal racism at its best.

"Black Africa is no longer willing to accept the use of white mercenaries to upset governments, however repellent some of them may be"

Just switch that around, say with reference to the Gurkhas and the French Foreign Legion.

"White Europe is no longer willing to accept the use of black mercenaries to upset governments, however repellent some of them may be".

Imagine that in the Indie ? I can't either.

What Am I Doing Here ...

Car's packed, milk stopped, wife and three are long gone up the M6, son and I remain until the cat, who escaped from the house this morning, deigns to return (when he'll be imprisoned for the duration).

As I listlessly browse I see that david at Harry's Place is troubled by some of the content of Egyptian magazine Aquidati, as translated by MEMRI.

"Murdering non-Jews pleases God, because the flesh of non-Jews is the flesh of donkeys and their sperm is the sperm of animals."

Now I'm not sure about murdering Jews, but the last part is the prophet Ezekiel's opinion of Egyptians.

Ezekiel 23 is a lament for Samaria and Jerusalem, who have turned away from God. The prophet expresses this poetically as a parable of two bad girls :

19 Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.

20 For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

'Flesh' is a slightly euphemistic translation for the male organ, comparing it to that of a donkey, and they've translated 'issue' into modern English.

I'm somewhat surprised the Egyptian Tourist Board don't use the verse to attract female visitors. It might also have been appropriate at a certain Royal funeral.

Away To The Hills ...

Followed by the Islands. Blogging will be light to non-existent for the next two weeks, unless I can borrow the PC from a right-on relative ('we saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in Penrith last night - really good') or there's an internet cafe here.



There's a lot of new blogs to catch up on, so apologies for the cursory shouts for Squander Two (liked the post on the burglar but don't seem able to link to it), Blithering Bunny (with great post on the unknown-to-me Keith Windschuttle affair), Boston blogger John R Pierce, European Weblog Review - a good idea, but could an RSS-powered site do the same job ?, and Assistant Brighton - the weblog of Jonathan from the band Assistant, who surprisingly are from Brighton. Demos available (at 5 meg I'll wait for broadband) and posts about Brighton Gay Pride. You are linking to the right blog, aren't you ?

British Sea Power - what a great name for a band.


And London had better watch out. Latif is coming.

Self Hating White Anglicans II

Neat post by George Miller.

Susurration, a blog that's been around a while (but I've only just found), has the follow-up to the Bishop Stephen Lowe story - the inevitable Guardian letter.

However good its tune, the real problem about I Vow to Thee My Country, like all aggressive and male-oriented hymnody, is that, in an age which has effectively relegated the second verses heavenly ways of gentleness and peaceful paths to a fairly painless insurance policy, an emasculated dreamlike world is wheeled out to sanctify whatever current war effort. Why not keep the tunes, but with some revamped non-patriotic, non-violent lyrics?

David Partridge

Oxford

Male-oriented - well, you can't get much more aggressive and fascistic than that, can you ? He must feel awful trapped in his gender.

David Partridge is a retired Anglican priest who works for the Oxford-based International Interfaith Centre, which "facilitates networking, encounter, education and research between religious and spiritual individuals, organisations, and communities throughout the world". He works on the "Palestine/Israel programme, Religion, Community and Conflict, in co-operation with Hope Flowers School, Bethlehem". At least the Hope Flowers School looks like a cause we could - and should - all support.

He also runs Clergy Against Nuclear Arms and in his spare time takes part in what Independent Catholic News calls "nonviolent civil disobedience" and what you or I might call politically motivated vandalism.

Stephen Lowe and David Partridge worry about patriotic, 'male-oriented' hymns and nuclear weapons. If only they could focus on male-oriented evil a little closer to their front doorsteps. In the newsletter of this Oxford Unitarian Church, after notification that David Partridge will preach about Peace on 26 January, there is a portrait of a chapel member.

Suzanne was the first pupil from her State school in Watford to win a place at Oxford University. She began reading for a degree in physics at St Hilda's College six years ago, attending Sunday services in Manchester College chapel, but spending most of her spare time doing unpaid work for 'Oxygen', Oxford's student radio station ... At the start of her second year at Oxford, in November 1997, Suzanne was attacked without provocation by a gang of youths late one night in Cowley Road. The head injuries that she received impaired her memory and concentration, and made reading difficult for her. She had to withdraw from her physics course and has only recently - after four years of recuperation - resumed her studies. During her long struggle to reclaim her life, she lost most of her school and college friends, became homeless, and suffered depression.

The perpetrators were doubtless "some of the most abused and brutalised people in our society" (© Johann Hari 2004).

Which brings this rambling post to the current issue of New Criterion magazine, devoted to religion. I recommend Christie Davies piece "The death of religion & the fall of respectable Britain".


Finally - you couldn't make it up - Labour MP Martin Linton appears on BBC Radio Four's Today to discuss a proposed new set of lyrics for 'I Vow To Thee My Country' by English patriot Billy Bragg, a man who believes his political opponents should be beaten up in the street.

Hacking Billy Bass For Pleasure And Profit

Dr Azizi (PBUH) links, I'm not sure why, to Middle East Times, who have this old story, which links to this site. The ingenuity of the Linux community never fails to amaze. The ultimate project goal - being able to videoconference via a talking fish - is one we can surely all support.



They also link to this tech blog, which has a link to these free games. Not Java or Shockwave either - real ones.

419 letters ...

Those fascinating offers one gets from a total stranger in Nigeria with 60 million dollars to share with you ?

I've had the Zimbabwean White Farmer variant, from "Timothy Kruger" ...

"Two weeks ago, our headquartes in Harare was attacked and looted by black protesters and in the process burnt down the whole building. Fortunately, they did not get access to the huge funds kept in the strong room which belong to the co-operation. This cash was kept at the secretariat rather than in the bank for fear of seizure by the government. Now I have the funds in my possession and would need to get it invested in a viable business venture in Europe."

Now, courtesy of "Adule Azizi", (who, like Mr Kruger, has a UK email address) is the Iraqi variant.

"The total amount involved is (USD114.2million) ONE HUNDRED AND Fourteen Million, Two hundred thousand United States Dollars only. I am revealing this to you with faith In Allah ,that you will never let me down in this business, You are the first and only Person that I am contacting for this business, So please reply urgently so that I will inform you on the next step to take urgently. With My influence, all will be safely handled and well done. At the conclusion of this Business, you will be given 40% of the total amount ,60% will be for me. We have to make haste to avert this fund being written off as excess profit and being channeled to the Islamic Terrorist Purse.

Awaiting your prompt and Positive response.

Yours Truly,

Dr.ADULE AZIZIs,ACCA,FCIA."

As Dr Azizi has only written to me, and I already have more dollars than I know what to do with (thanks to Mr Kruger), I'm happy for any reader who wishes to help him to do so. Anything but fill the Islamic Terrorist Purse (my daughter wants to know what they look like and if she can have one).

"... there no longer is a left with a coherent message of hope for the human race ...

The always interesting Mick Hartley links to this more-in-sorrow-than-anger Nick Cohen piece.

Scott Burgess punctures uberliberal John Humphrys perfectly.

Tim Worstall has links to tales of GWBs flying and rugby careers (apparently he flew a plane, the F102 Delta Dagger, with an accident rate which made serving in Nam a safer bet).

And Timmyhawk has a roundup of reaction to the self-hating Bishop.

Self Hating White Anglicans

It's difficult to satirise the Church of England these days ... but Bishop-bashing is such an enjoyable pastime ...

"An Anglican bishop wants to ban the hymn I Vow To Thee My Country - because it echoes Hitler's Germany and is "heretical".
The Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, attacked English nationalism in a diocese newsletter.

He compares the hymn - which was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales - with right-wing attitudes. "

The sad thing is that the Bishop doesn't appear to be able to read.

"... it actually says that my country's approach to things must be my first call on myself and that my relationship with God or what I believe to be right or wrong is secondary to that."

Have another look at the first line, Bish.

I vow to thee my country, all earthly things above.

See the bit that says 'all earthly things above' ? 'Earthly' is the key word, old boy. Means God still comes before country, as proven many times in our history, from 'that holy blisful martyr' to the Protestant martyrs under Mary and the Catholic martyrs under Henry and Elizabeth.

But alas, God - and truth - comes a poor second to getting liberal brownie points.

Stephen Lowe - no relation to the playwright as far as I know - is almost a caricature of the trendy liberal.

Gay rights, global arms trade, relaxing the drug laws, criminalising parents who smack the kids, the 'eco-diocese', the useless talking shop ("Identify and disseminate examples of good and problematic practice in the development and investment by faith organisations and their members of ‘bridging’ social capital ..") - there's nary a bandwagon goes past but he's on board.

What's amazing is that the Church still has one or two saints.

The Approved Method

Of getting away with mass murder - from God Save The Queen, who also links to this blog.

Bullets were pinging off our armor all over our vehicle, and you could hear multiple RPG's being fired and flying through the air and impacting all around us. All sorts of crazy insane Hollywood explosions bull**** going on all around us. I've never felt fear like this. I was like, this is it, I'm going to die. I cannot put into words how scared I was. The vehicle in front of us got hit 3 times by RPG's. I kind of lost it and I was yelling and screaming all sorts of things. (mostly cuss words) I fired the .50 cal over the place, shooting everything. My driver was helping me out and pointing out targets to me over the radio. He helped me a lot that day. They were all over shooting at us. My PLT was stuck right smack dab in the middle of the ambush and we were in the kill zone. We shot our way out of it and drove right through the ambush. The street we were driving down to escape, had 3 to 4 story high buildings all along each side, as we were driving away all you could see were 100's and 100's of bullets impacting all over these buildings.

Kind of puts - 'I was driving home and I didn't like an item on "PM"' into perspective, doesn't it ?

More Freudian Dynamite ...

From the Brothers Grimm.


It was my mother who murdered me,
It was my father who ate of me.
It was my sister Marjory
Who all my bones in pieces found
Them in a handkerchief she bound
And laid them under the almond tree
Kywitt, kywitt, kywitt, I cry
Oh, what a beautiful bird am I !


This one's pretty judgemental too.

Let The State Protect You

From the Government's Crime Reduction Strategy

Intruders

If you think you have an intruder, only you can decide how to deal with the situation. Think about what you might do now – you might not be thinking clearly in a real incident.

You may respond differently if you are alone in the house, or if there are other people there.

You could make a noise and hope it puts them off, or keep quiet and hope they don't come into your room.

You could keep a phone in your bedroom so you can raise the alarm. This may also make you feel safer.

It is generally best not to challenge an intruder.

Brilliant. Do nothing yourself, try and hide, feel safer by calling the police. Great.

Fat lot of good it did them.

The Horror .. the Horror ...

I enjoy Johann Hari's work. But he doesn't half write some nagombi on occasions. Ok - strap in and hang on for a trip on "The suicidal 14 year-old who exposes the moral bankruptcy of Blair's prisons policy".

We start with the a mention of 15 year old Philip Knight, who killed himself in Swandea Jail '14 years and 1,006 prison suicides ago'. Apparently tackling prison suicides was 'top priority' for then Home Secretary David Waddington.

Fast-forward.

"And now? The Tory policy of jamming ever more prisoners into already packed jails has been brought to a climax by David Blunkett. Tonight, there will be twice the number of prisoners there were when Philip Knight last took breath. Our prisons have received almost no extra cash. Politicians have been warned repeatedly that overpopulated prisons cannot deal adequately with depressed, despairing inmates."

Leaving aside the infelicity of that first sentence (no - don't go there ...), Johann has a point. I'm not sure it's a point he wanted to make though. This government have maintained the sentencing policies of the Howard regime, which proved successful in reducing crime post-1994, but blinked when it came to the neccessary business of building more places. As I wrote last year

"The prison population has risen continually since Michael Howard's reforms first started to reduce some crimes ... At some stage it was obvious that either the trend would have to be reversed, or new prisons would have to be built. Both Straw and Blunkett have sat hypnotised as the prison population rose, and have refused to sanction the major building program which was neccessary. They are left with no option but to try to send fewer people to jail."

Back to Johann.

"Both the Tories and Labour have ignored these facts and continued a populist prescription of jail, jail, jail. (Michael Howard yesterday called for even more people to be jailed, attacking the Government for stopping at 80,000.) "

I do love these democrats who hate populism. I have a democratic mandate. You are a populist. When will the Johanns of this world understand that the number of people imprisoned should be a function of the crime level. That, and that alone, should determine the number of prison places available. Having said that, it is obviously wrong to pile people into overcrowded prisons. So build more !

"As a direct result of this policy, six women have to be cut down from their home-made nooses by prison officers in Holloway every night." And all six are totally fed up with it.

"David Blunkett is right, however, about one thing. It is not enough merely to condemn this. Critics of the Government's policy of over-crowded, suicide-infested jails need to offer a serious alternative."

You got it. Build more prisons. Single cells where desired. Don't put young people in with adults (or, if the suicide rate at Feltham is anything to go by, with each other).

Uh-oh. That's not what he means.

"In the reactionary soil of Blunkett's law and order policy, there are the fragile seeds of an authentically progressive alternative."

Johan is still a very young man - 24 ? 25 ? Let this cynical old fogey tell him that I've been reading about such alternatives in the Guardian since 1971. The play scheme doing such a good job - and just about to lose its funding. The dance workshop/car repair centre/theatre company/community arts group/co-counselling project/encounter group/you name it - always about to revolutionise aftercare/turn the bad boys onto art/revitalise the estate - and always underfunded. And then never heard of again. Change David Blunkett to Keith Joseph and that sentence would fit into a 1970s Melanie Phillips piece.

What's the recipe today, Johann ?

"One third of prisoners in Britain are released to "No Fixed Abode" (NFA); in some jails it is as high as 70 per cent ... NFA is virtually a revolving door straight back to prison.

Staring into this black hole is a key factor in the suicide rate in our jails, and in the decision of 60 per cent of the surviving prisoners to reoffend within two years of their release."

I see. One third of prisoners don't have homes to go to on release - so two thirds of them continue to commit crime.

Perhaps those who do have a place commit crime in solidarity with those that don't ?

"(Ex-prison officer Gary) Thurgood is keen to link these new homes with developing the work ethic in prisoners who have often grown up in families where nobody has ever had a job. Liverpool has the largest amount of vacant housing stock in Britain, so Thurgood approached the local council to see if prisoners training in bricklaying, plastering and construction could work on derelict or run-down housing stock and then move into the houses themselves on release.

The project has already begun; prisoners will move into their first homes later in the year. Thanks to the culture of hope this fosters, the suicide rate is falling."

I see. Give the prisoners building skills and their own houses to do up. It could just work, after a fashion. Imagine a whole area redeveloped by the ex-prisoners. Not many bags of cement or paving slabs would go missing from in front of those houses. Whether the same could be said of the private development a mile away remains to be seen.

Street crime might be low, too, in the immediate area. Where every house contains a conviction for ABH it may be that unruly youth would congregate elsewhere.

There are all kinds of possibilities, good and not so good, in an entire community of ex-offenders. But they're all unproven ones. "So why isn't this approach being rolled out to every prison in the country?" Because, Pollyanna, it costs a lot and we don't know if or how it'll work.


Britain has a choice. We can have a smart, sleek prison system on the 21st-century Liverpool model that seriously rehabilitates (at most) 40,000 prisoners. This would cut crime and heal the lives of some of the most abused and brutalised people in our society.

A sentence like that last one makes me sick. How about the people who are abused and brutalised but DON'T commit crime ? Or the people who have been abused and brutalised by the guys banged up in Walton ? You're spitting in their faces.

Theere is one sense in which many criminals are victims - they are far more likely to come from what used to be called 'broken homes' or never to have had two parents. I look forward to Johann's next piece raging against divorce, cohabitation and promiscuity and in support of marriage - must have missed the others.

Or we can have the 19th-century status quo: 80,000 prisoners warehoused like battery chickens, where prison officers barely have time to cut down prisoners as they twitch on a rope. To go for the second option is suicidal not just for prisoners but for every one of us. We are all more likely to be mugged, burgled or raped when unrehabilitated and uneducated prisoners return to our streets.

That first sentence is just risible. And the second again shows that Johann has a point - again not one he'd recognise. It's true that prison - that punishment - alone is not enough. What is necessary is the cultural drive to condemn crime and criminals the way we can condemn smokers and racists. The two things - attidudes to criminals and their punishment - react on and reinforce (or weaken) each other.

Take Saudi Arabia, where murder is punished by beheading and robbery by amputation. Were we to introduce such punishments to the UK, crime would fall, but not to anywhere near Saudi levels. The existence of such draconian punishment is a reflection of a culture that has no time for thieves and murderers. It's the culture that makes the crime rate low - the punishment reflects and reinforces the culture.

Our culture reflects a world where thieves and murderers are always at worst victims of circumstance ('the most brutalised and abused ...'), at best some sort of hero.

As long as the Howard League can always get a slot on Today, pro-criminal charities outnumber pro-victim ones by 20 to 1, and people pay columnists to write 'don't be nasty to criminals - you'll only make them worse', crime will continue to run at historically high levels.

A few last things. Victims of crime commit suicide too.

According to Home Office figures (p22), approximately 40 suicides a year are of the chief suspects in homicide cases. Assuming half of these are on remand in custody, that's 280 people - more than a quarter of your 1,006 suicides. You can also add the suicides of convicted murderers. Mourn Fred West and Harold Shipman if you like - I'll pass on that one.

Finally - for information on prison suicides, why not consult someone who gets closer to them than most - a prison doctor ?


UPDATE - Dan of Jackalope Pursuivant has the complete answer to overcrowded jails. As he says, why build when you can put up a tent ?

Cash for Good Causes

Like the Diana Fountain saga, which demonstrated the unique blend of sentimentality, fantasy and incompetence characteristic of much public spending, the Lottery Rapist story lights up the state of British 'justice' like a lightning flash.

Incompetence.

For many years prisoners on release have been forbidden to enter licensed gambling premises. Meanwhile British culture has changed - the State lottery now enables gambling in the filling station, the post office, the supermarket. The rules for prisoners haven't changed though - our rapist is free to keep his £7 million.

Sentimentality.

The judge at his first trial in June 1973 jailed him for three years. In a British prison you never serve your full sentence - that would be too harsh. Hoare was released early and by November 1975, when he should still have been inside, he was back in court for another attack on a woman.

Fantasy.

He had been released early once, only to offend again and be convicted. Surely that would be an end of early release ? But to the probation officers and social workers of the Criminal Justice system he was still capable of redemption, of being reformed. Give him another chance. Sentenced to four years in November 1975, less that THREE years later he was back in court charged with assault and indecent assault - crimes again committed when he should have been in prison. This time he got four years.

We must assume he was let out early and avoided being convicted again until June 1983, almost a year after he should have finished his sentence. This time the charges were rape and indecent assault, the sentence seven years. Naturally he was released early, and only five years after sentence was attempting to rape a retired teacher.

This time the judge had had enough.

"Paramount in my mind is that every moment you are at liberty some woman is at risk and I believe it to be my duty to protect, so far as I am able, women from the risk you represent.

"This is the last in a long line of appalling offences committed against women and the only sentence I can pass is one of imprisonment for life."

Life ? Fifteen years and he's on day release. He'll be out soon.

The superannuated hippies who make up the modern British probation service are convinced he won't reoffend. I wonder what odds you'd get at the bookies ?

BBC Radio ...

Not a good morning. Woke up to Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote worrying about police racism (no one from Operation White Vote was apparently available), then on to the evil Italians and their failure to give a warm enough welcome to illegal immigrants, before we hear Dennis MacShane on why we are so evil, racist and xenophobic.

Xenophobia literally means 'fear of strange things' but is generally translated as 'fear of foreigners'. You'd think the last thousand years of our history and more recent soccer violence would have taught even a Scotsman that whatever crimes you can lay at the door of the Brits, fear of foreigners isn't one of them.

Then it's time for the lady who's handing back her MBE because we discriminate against travellers.

Radio 5 at 9 am discussed 'is there a decline in behaviour and respect' with one John Harris, whose only qualification seems to be that he writes about rock for the Guardian and drops t's and h's in true mockney style.

Home again to the PM programme, where New York correspondent Andrew Sykes interviewed three 'staunch Republicans' - all of whom were voting Kerry.

Just another day on BBC radio.