Friday, February 16, 2007

Cameron speaks out


I don't know where to turn. Watching the spectacle of Labour and David Cameron jousting over yoof gun crime has a certain grim fascination, but what is appalling is the recourse to statist control at every turn:
Tory leader David Cameron has called for more powers to "compel" fathers to look after their children in an effort to tackle gang culture.
What's he going to do? Shackle them to their children? Publicly brand all sperm-donors?

John Reid said
he was looking at ways of toughening gun laws.

"I have also asked my lawyers, the home office lawyers, to look at ways of possibly strengthening legislation and where appropriate, sentencing," he said.

They haven't been arrested, John, they've been shot. Dead! When you finally realise that the reason that Parliament allowed the police force to be established was to prevent crime rather than to detect it you might be some use as a Home Secretary, until then you're about as fit for purpose as a Scene of Crime Officer at Auschwitz.

Then Cameron called for a
"complete change in our values".
Amazing how politicians keep calling for this, isn't it? If we listened to them, by now we'd presumably be using the zloty, counting in hexadecimal, speaking Attic Greek, wearing clogs and yodelling. As it is, we've had a nearly complete change of values foisted on us by stealth, but it's taken nearly 60 years and it's not going to be changed simply by someone calling for it (or legislating for it, for that matter).

He said: "I believe in marriage. I believe in people making a commitment to each other and staying together and trying to bring up their children properly."

Children were often attracted to gangs if they lacked a father figure, he added.

Mr Cameron said: "We have got to sit up and realise we are running things by the wrong values. We need to support families."

That's from a sitting-up position , is it?

It leaves me speechless.

A Unicef report published this week put UK children at the bottom of a well-being league table of 21 industrialised countries.

Mr Cameron told a youth organisation in Oxfordshire this meant society was in "deep trouble".

Oh no! Failed another exam. We'll have to take a resit. Lucky these UNICEF things are always modular.

I don't know which is worse, listening to Margaret Thatcher deny the existence of society or Cameron cosying up to it in the hope of being elected. The state has enacted and institutionalised a whole raft of attacks on the family as an oppressive and failed institution. In the way of bad governments, most of these have appealed to some large special interest group which means they are now very hard to repeal. Any attempt to make more than cosmetic changes would have people racing for the Human Rights Act, yet, without radical amendment, little will change. In short, it looks like more political knockabout with the electorate receiving all the custard pies.

2 comments:

Freedom Fighter said...

Hello, Canker..greetings from this end of the pond!

I realize that it is anathema to most of our cousins, but a realistic strategy for dealing with criminals who use guns to commit acts of violence is to simply allow the law abiding populace to arm itself.

I live in California, where people are allowed to own firearms for home defense and there are numerous instances on file of homeowners protecting their loved ones using the superb tools like a .357 or a Defender pistol grip 12 gauge.

The mere *click* of an over and under has been known to give a perpetrator second thoughts.

Even better, in the South and western states like Texas, citizens are allowed to carry concealed weapons, and crime rates are well down because of the awareness of certain undesirable elements of the populace that robbing a convenience store or a shop might just result in an untimely demise from a .38 some matronly woman pulled out of her handbag.

Coupled with vigorous law enforcement, that might just be the ticket.

Food for thought....

All Good Things,
FF

Clovis Sangrail said...

Freedom Fighter,
I would like to see this option taken. Indeed there are people in the UK blogosphere who argue that the (UK) Bill of Rights confers this power and that it's never been repealed (I wouldn't risk it with British police though).

But, my point here is that the UK police force is focusing entirely on `detection' when their job should be prevention. I, and many others, believe that zero tolerance and a dramatic decrease in paperwork for the bobbies would produce phenomenal results.
It would be nice to see some senior British pols acknowledging that this is the main problem with policing in the UK.

Thanks for the comments!