The political Right throughout the Western world is baying to lock up all opponents of genocide. The very notion of free speech is under fundamental attack. We need to take a long hard look at the question of imprisoning people for saying things.
Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old mother of a 12-year-old, was imprisoned for 31 months on 17 October 2024 under the Public Order Act 1986 for publishing material intended or likely to cause racial hatred. There is no doubt that she did this. In an immediate reaction to the stabbing to death of three young girls in Southport, she published a tweet calling for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers, specifically with the inhabitants still inside. This is a textbook example of hate speech directed at a vulnerable group.
Connolly’s remarks were part of an emotionally charged social media storm in the immediate aftermath of the murders, which included false allegations about the killer’s status and religion. There is no doubt that Connolly crossed a line of incitement to violence. She is an avowed racist – she has a history of racist tweets – but I do not think she should be in jail.
PRISON DOES NO GOOD
My first argument is that prison does no good whatsoever, and it will likely reinforce Connolly’s racism.
When imprisoned for four months for publication myself, I learnt that our overcrowded prisons are chock full of the left-behind members of the working class – 80% of them addicts by official reckoning, and still higher in my experience – born into poverty and addiction, and ill educated.
Many were there for domestic violence yet they were now locked into a community which supported and reinforced their violence. I personally witnessed inmates recounting their crimes against women to other prisoners, who sympathised and told them the world was crazy when you could be locked up for keeping women in their place or punishing them for infidelity. The general consensus was that women needed to be kept down more so they would not go to the authorities.
We punish people by locking them into the one community which is guaranteed to support and encourage their wrongdoing: then we are alarmed at re-offending rates. Over 50% of prisoners who serve sentences of less than three years, are caught re-offending within six months. I have no doubt that Lucy Connolly has found the company of those who are fuelling her racism and hate. What good is this doing to anybody?
Our system of criminal justice, with massively overcrowded jails and the highest proportion of our population in prison in all of Europe, is a Victorian abomination, a senseless retributive regime. Anything that you have ever heard about education or rehabilitation in jails is a lie. In practice no such functioning schemes exist.
The authorities are concentrated entirely on ever-greater movement and living-condition restrictions for prisoners, to keep a lid on the overcrowding powder keg and try to staunch the flow of drugs into jails. To give one example, books were forbidden to criminal prisoners in my jail lest their pages be soaked in drugs.
Prisons are themselves a form of institutionalised violence. The beds made from solid iron sheet and two-inch-thick non-resistant foam mattresses are a deliberate corporal punishment – I am left with permanent back pain.
This is an inappropriate, worthless and brutal regime. In Lucy Connolly’s case, I make no apologies for saying that when you separate a mother from her child, you are also punishing the child, and imposing an anguish upon the woman which men can only partially comprehend.
Imprisonment should be a last resort to protect society from those who otherwise pose a definite risk of physical violence to others.
A rational society would find far more useful means to punish Lucy Connolly.
Community service would let her still be with her child and provide an element of restorative justice. She should also be made to spend a substantive amount of working time – as in several months – in the company of immigrants and learning about their lives, perhaps in some of the Mosques that play a large part in our communities. She should meet asylum seekers and hear their stories.
Education and restoration should be central to any form of justice. The irony is, of course, that Lucy Connolly’s supporters are, by and large, the last people who would support such reform in general. That should not deter us.
THE LIMITS OF FREE SPEECH – IMMEDIATE HARM
The classic position in western jurisprudence is that free speech should be limited where it is liable to cause immediate harm, which cannot be countered in reasoned debate by other arguments because there is no time. That is the basis of the famous judgment by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1919 that
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic
Here it is not stating a falsehood which is the problem. It is doing so (assuming knowingly) in circumstances which may cause immediate physical harm through the effects of panicking a crowd. This judgment established the “clear and present danger” test.
Which is the same principle as set out by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty:
No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.
Here it is plain that immediacy and context are important. Saying something in one circumstance may be acceptable but the same words may not be acceptable in another circumstance. It separates debate from direct incitement to violence.
This nuance is completely lost, for example, in the UK’s Terrorism Act. The proscription which is in train will make it illegal to argue, even in calm debate, that Palestine Action is engaged in legitimate protest and ought not be banned. Just expressing that opinion, even in an academic setting, might get you imprisoned. Mill would be appalled.
Superficially, Mill’s example may seem to indicate that Lucy Connolly is indeed highly culpable. She was urging people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers, and right-wing rioters did in fact attempt to do just that. But it is not quite that simple. Lucy Connolly tweeted on the day of the murders. No mobs had yet gathered and the attacks on hotels were still several days away.
Hindsight is wonderful. It is not plain that there was a “clear and present danger” that this would come to pass, at the time she wrote – and she deleted her tweet after a few hours. She actually put out tweets against the violence once it started some days later.
Furthermore, to compare Mill’s 19th-century circumstance with a 21st-century social media post requires care. Mill was imagining someone in the position of a leader – able to access the platform as an orator to the mob, or alternatively to get an article or letter published in a newspaper. In the melee of social media, Lucy Connolly is perhaps more akin to a member of Mill’s mob than the person urging it on to action.
Connolly probably did not envision at the time of her tweet that mobs actually attacking hotels was likely to arise some days later. She deleted her tweet after three and a half hours, once she calmed down, and did not repeat it when actual mobs existed. Once they did, she put out other tweets including “I know people are angry, but violence is not the answer” and “Protest yes, violence no”. She also apologised for having spread disinformation.
Connolly’s initial tweet was an incitement to violence, and goes beyond contribution to public debate on the role of immigration in events like the Stockport media. It is culpable and I think on balance does rightly fall foul of the law on those grounds. But I think it is rather marginal on the clear and present danger test. The evidence is non-existent that any member of the mobs who went out a few days later were in fact critically motivated by Connolly’s tweet. This lack of clear causality should be given more weight (which is not a necessary step in the legislation).
My conclusion: the conviction is correct as it was incitement to violence, but the sentence is disproportionate to the seriousness of the offence.
Let us then compare this to the statements by the group Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, which are under investigation by the Police and which the entire British Establishment has rushed to condemn.
This is entirely clear: “Death, death to the IDF” chanted to a live crowd at Glastonbury clearly does not pose an imminent threat. There is no clear and present danger. Nobody in the Glastonbury audience was in a position immediately to attack the IDF, and I can see no serious argument that anybody in the TV or online audience would immediately attack the IDF, who was not already in a position and of a mind to do so.
The argument that attacking the IDF is a legitimate aim I cover below.
There is simply no case to prosecute the members of Bob Vylan on the basis of imminent threat or “clear and present danger” from their speech.
HATE SPEECH
The classic liberal defence of all speech which does not pose imminent danger has been replaced in much of the Western world in recent years by a tendency to ban “hate speech”, generally defined as speech expressing hate towards a protected group defined by gender, race, sexuality or other qualifications.
That intellectual shift against free speech has been broadly driven by the “Left”, particularly by anti-racist and feminist groups. However the incorporation of this principle into the Public Order Act of 1986 was enacted by the Thatcher government. Thatcher had a thorough understanding of the dynamics of hard political power.
I am generally not in favour of the banning of “hate speech”. I agree with Mill that the answer to an incorrect opinion is to engage with it and refute it, not to ban it. Banning it is often counter-productive as it both glamourises the opinion and prevents its proper deconstruction.
This is where I shall part ways with much of the Left, which will believe that Lucy Connolly should be locked up for hate speech. But here we encounter the problem of who defines what is hate speech?
The Right is screaming that “Death to the IDF” is hate speech that indicates a generalised hatred of Jews. There are several answers to that, including that the IDF is a military force committing Genocide and is by no means supported by all Jews.
But in a real sense, once you have got into the argument of why Lucy Connolly’s hate speech is wrong and Bob Vylan’s speech – characterised by the political Establishment as hate speech – is right, you have already lost. You are making distinctions of geopolitical analysis. Essentially you are arguing as to whether the political value judgments of the left or the right are correct.
With the state as, literally, the judge, that argument will only be resolved one way in the real world.
It was in fact the push from the left for hate speech laws which destroyed the western consensus in favour of freedom of speech which does not initiate immediate physical harm. Which was extremely stupid of the left, because it should be blindingly obvious that once you hand the state the power to imprison for speech, it is the left who will be the primary target.
Most foreseeable of all was the use by the Zionist lobby of its power in the state to seize upon the criminalisation of “hate speech” to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and attack pro-Palestinian sentiment. The Left made this rod for their own back when they led the charge against freedom of speech
In my view, political opinions, even ones I find hateful like racialist attacks on asylum seekers, ought not be criminalised but ought to be tackled in Mill’s field of debate. An opinion with which we disagree should be countered by argument and refutation, not by banning its expression.
At present, the toxic mix of culture war and criminalisation of speech is giving far too much power to a state which I in no way trust.
PRACTICAL EFFECTS
We are currently facing a unified neoliberal political Establishment which is introducing more and more restrictions on protest and speech and which delights in locking up its opponents.
This same Establishment has used, throughout the world, the tools of state control of economies to massively increase the wealth gap between the billionaires who are actually in control, and the 99.5% of society who are reduced to helots.
As a result of the social tensions thus unleashed, there has been a fracturing of support for the traditional political parties, which have all been captured by this neoliberal agenda. However the Establishment has managed to defend itself by the use of media and social media to channel popular discontent at popular poverty and loss of status into hatred for immigrants. Scapegoating has been simple but deadly effective.
The factors of social alienation which drive support for right-wing movements like Reform are the same factors which, more properly understood, motivate the Left to campaign for greater social equality. Excessively punitive actions against the misled foot soldiers of the right simply feed in to the right-wing narrative of dispossession and unfair treatment.
In short, the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly has been the best recruiting tool that alt-right leaders like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson have been given.
We should not fall into this trap.
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British government have opened licences to supply parts to Israeli nuclear subs.
“Whatever that might mean, what is clearer is that British ministers have authorised 77 export licences to supply Israel with components for its submarines since 2010. This makes that category of equipment the fourth most numerous for all UK military exports to Israel.
The total value of these licences is £8.96m, Declassified has established. Two of the licences are, however, “open” rather than “single”, meaning that unlimited quantities and values of such equipment can be exported from Britain.
These licences for Israel’s submarines were excluded from the UK’s restrictions on exports of military equipment for Israel announced last September during its bombardment of Gaza. ”
https://www.declassifieduk.org/britain-is-aiding-israels-nuclear-force/
MPs in all UK Parliaments have access to a wealth of information on prison statistics. There is a relatively recent up to date summary (July 2024) in the House of Commons Library https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04334/SN04334.pdf. One would think that just a few snippets of data would give them pause of thought. Here are just a few.
– The prison population has increased 400% since this bad old days in 1900 and has at least doubled in relation to increases in the population over this period,
– The trend towards harsher and longer prison sentences started in the Thatcher years and has continued irrespective of government in power (with a slight dip during Covid); even more places will be needed at the current rates
– Four fifths of the prison population are white British but ethnic minorities are over – represented. Transgender prisoners are a tiny minority. There are more older people being put away relative to younger.
– Top three offences are Violence against the Person, Sexual offences and Drug offences (followed only then by theft and robbery) which tells a lot about the kind of society we live in.
– 60% of prisons are over crowded – some seriously
– The average cost per prison place was £33,628 in England and Wales, £44,620 in Scotland in 2020-21, and £47,927 in Northern Ireland in 2022-23.
The only “progressive” fact seems to be the reduction in the percentage of women put in prison (17% in 1900 4% in 2023 – however an increase from the 2% 1968 – 1969).
This data and much more is all at the finger tips of our lawmakers but I see no signs of their making any critical use of it to find better and more cost effective ways of dealing with the Lucy Connollys and others who basically are falling foul of laws based on moral panic; a trend started as a conservative reaction to the heady freedom loving 60s and 70s.
Now there is no attempt to examine the root causes of why we are putting more people in prison at a huge cost while at the same time paying for that by reducing innocent people’s disability benefits, ratcheting up defence spending, wasting money on a lost cause in Ukraine and defending the indefensible regarding Israel.
The only answer the government seems to have is to build more and bigger prisons on USA lines some to be run by private companies.
Yes, to knock some sense of reality into the heads of our politicians we all need to be “Palestine Action” in more ways than one.
The vast majority of MPs, of both main parties, care about just one thing: getting re-elected. That translates to popularity, and hence to what the mass media are feeding to the electorate. Nothing else really matters to them. Becoming well-informed is seen as a complete waste of time.
Quite apart from the attraction of being in a place of (some) power, there is now added the fact that so many of our MPs have no career prospects outside Westminster and its web of patronage.
Funnily enough, giving a lot of actual criminals in jail 30 to 50 grand per year. Would probably keep many of them out of most forms trouble to start with.
As for the rest the Yoo Kay is a corrupt and misgoverned shit-show with delusions of grandeur on the world stage. Despite all the underlying realities.
That’s why there’s more hysterical braying on the world stage about every apparent foe being Hitler, along with endless WW2 flag-shagging. Than there was when most people who experienced the war were actually alive.
A header here on the Mark Gordon and Constance Marten case would be great. They’ve been in jail in England for nearly 2.5 years without being sentenced, after they were declared unfit to breed and it was clear that any child they had would be captured by the authorities shortly after birth. So they went on the run, their baby sadly died when her dog-tired mother fell on top of her, and the Nazi social workers who still operate in the Magdalene Laundry epoch and the police and prosecutors dare to blame the victims!
These two have had disgracefully little support from 99% of the so-called left. Perhaps the lefties are all watching special screenings of Cathy Come Home and saying what a spiffing period piece it is from their greatgrandparents’ time, or how terrible eugenics was in the USA in the 1920s.
Oh and the bereaved parents didn’t call for torching any asylum hostels.
It’s only those who support this victimised couple who have the right to call for “Justice for Victoria”.
End forced adoptions now.
Support not separation.
No jail for pregnant women.
Dear Craig, I’m far to the right of you on politics but had always thought you honest and often right, especially on liberty issues. Here though you write “she published a tweet calling for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers, specifically with the inhabitants still inside”.
She did not, as other commentards have pointed out. She said “for all I care”.
I would have thought that it was unlike you to be ill informed, and till now, unlikely to be deliberatly disingenuous, but it must be one or the other – unless you’ve just posted some AI generated garbage without reading it. I also note that this piece appeared not anytime soon after Connolly was jailed, but now, soon after some others of a diferent political persuasion have actually called for people to be killed.
So, I agree with you, neither should be jailed. But not impressed by “wot you rote” and less likely to give creadance to your further writings.
Has Musk “liked” this article about Lucy Connolly on his Twitter/X service yet?
Neither he nor MAGA nor their bots will stand in the way of its distribution. This is given that it links women’s rights through 19th century bourgeois liberalism to their beloved theme of the freedom to advocate torching migrants. (I realise it doesn’t advocate the freedom to advocate torching migrants, just in case anyone had reading comprehension difficulties with that sentence.)
They’re unlikely to help with distributing any pieces that talk about women’s rights while defending Gordon and Marten, who are a) victims of eugenics policy and b) in an interracial marriage – two things that fascists like Musk and Trump view rather differently from what still passes for the left.
Saying “Burn down the asylum seeker hotels, I don’t care” is not the same thing as saying “Burn down the asylum seeker hotels!”
I agree with the notion that even if you have laws against such speech, the inability of the prosecution to produce one person motivated by the tweet to break any law should have seen the case thrown out of court.
“Saying “Burn down the asylum seeker hotels, I don’t care” is not the same thing as saying “Burn down the asylum seeker hotels!””
She didn’t say that either. I find it disgusting but typical that we have had a lengthy post and a page and a half of comments and no-one has said what Lucy Connolly actually tweeted. The closest we have got is Lapsed Agnostic quoting part of it. Everyone else seems quite happy to make up their minds based only on other people’s recasting of her tweet, based on inferences and implications made by those other people.
Expect an escalation in the murder of Palestinians in the West Bank soon.
“A group of Israeli ministers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party have called for the West Bank to be annexed by the end of the month. Fifteen cabinet ministers, as well as the parliamentary speaker, Amir Ohana, signed a letter arguing that the creation of a Palestinian state in the area would pose an “existential threat” to Israel and its settlement policy.
The move should be made before the end of the parliament’s summer session on June 27, the letter released on Wednesday stated, adding that West Jerusalem should seize the moment following the weakening of Iran and its allies in the region in recent conflicts with Israel.”
The Times of Israel says that Israel dropped the idea of formally annexing the West Bank in exchange for normalization with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Therefore, if Netanyahu responds to the letter as the right wing would like, that would alienate the UAE and Bahrain. So I’m not sure he will do it.
Unless the west applies pressure, which is highly unlikely, then the west bank will go the same way as gaza. That is the plan – to remove all Palestinians from occupied Palestine. This genocide is supported and enabled by the west, Israel could not do this without outside support.
“Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese demands that more than 1,000 corporate entities sever ties with Israel or be held accountable for complicity in war crimes”
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/07/02/chris-hedges-the-genocide-profiteers/
Good to see Chris Hedges shine a light on the UN report by Ms. Albanese I mentioned a couple days ago. Hopefully, he may have been in Geneva in time to hear the full story.
We hate the West, we hate the MSM. And it still isn’t a crime for now…
Melrose
July 4, 2025 at 13:45
Melrose, I certainly don’t hate the Zapad/West.
The MSM are pretty shit alright.
JK redux.
One for you.
“The first “Azovite” in Zelensky’s government has arrived.
Oleksandr Alfyorov is now the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory—the country’s main state memory authority. To get the post, he left the ranks of the Azov 3rd Assault Brigade.
He curated his brigade’s museum exhibit in Kyiv, “In Steel Storms,” which glorified the Waffen-SS Division Galicia. During his time in the unit, one of its subdivisions began using a modified SS Dirlewanger patch as its official emblem.
So why stop there? Maybe the Institute’s new logo will be the Dirlewanger insignia”
“We hate the West, we hate the MSM. And it still isn’t a crime for now…”
Concerning the first two, speak for yourself. As for the third, Palestine Action is banned from midnight tonight (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93901n9z0qo), so you’ve got only 90 minutes left to say anything you want in their favour, or possibly to see the documentary about them _To Kill a War Machine_. Young people, I wouldn’t join them or participate in any of their sabotage operations now, if I were you. Find other ways to oppose Israel’s apartheid and genocide, especially promoting Boycotts, Disvestment and Sanctions (BDS).
A Wiful Silence
As the Children are
slaughtered
The West are Laughing
Nice work Brian [irrespective of typo].
Best wishes.
Thank You
Johonny Heart Breaking X
Yes.
They are struggling for their lives and so should we.
Kind regards and best wishes.
There’s loads a money to made out of genocide.
“War is a business. So is genocide. The latest report submitted by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institue of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as Blackrock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/corporate-complicity-gaza-un-report/290088/
On my above comment, and Canada is in on the act as well.
“Data from Global Affairs Canada (GAC) reveals that, in February, Mark Carney’s pro-genocide regime authorized two new military export permits to Israel worth a combined total of $37.2 million.
The newly authorized goods fall under an export category that includes “bombs, torpedoes, rockets, missiles, other explosive devices and charges and related equipment and accessories,” and another category that concerns military “technology.””
““War is a business”
War has always been a business. The idea that countries go to war over ideology is a myth into which children are indoctrinated. The dressing up of WWII as the “War Against Fascism” is something that I have observed in my lifetime. It’s bollocks. Prewar Britain didn’t go to war with Germany because Germany was fascist, the British government had no problem with fascism, quite the reverse. WWII might have been a war against fascists, but that doesn’t make it a war against fascism.
Look at who the Allies allied with at the end of the of the war in Italy and Greece and look at their policy toward Spain prior to the war. I think your point more than holds.
Look at who the Allies allied with at the end of the war in Italy and Greece and who they supported prior to the war in Spain. I think your point holds.
The current situation is another crisis created by the Conservative Government that was in power for far too long. Probation Officers were horrified when their jobs were lost, their remit was changed beyond recognition, and the dangers were clear.
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/society/prison-and-probation-staffing-dangerously-low-after-botched-privatisation/
“Home News Home Affairs
Prison and probation staffing dangerously low after botched privatisation
A slow-motion crisis has been building for roughly ten years – few government reforms have been as disastrous as the privatisation of the probation service
Alex MairbyAlex Mair 28-08-2023 16:38 – Updated On 29-08-2023 07:16in Home Affairs, Society Reading Time: 5 mins
There are few jobs in the world as thankless as either prison officer or probation officer. The hours are long, the workload is often considerable, and when something goes wrong – for example when a former offender either in prison or on probation re-offends – typically it’s officers, whose job it is to supervise those in the criminal justice system, who are the first to be blamed.
In recent weeks, a slip-up resulted in comments from the Ministry of Justice being accidentally published on a government website. The comments revealed that staffing levels in the prison and probation service were described as “dangerously low”. The result is that unless there is a rapid influx of new officers into the service, current officers will be saddled with unmanageable workloads, placing the public at serious and unnecessary risk.
If that rapid influx failed to materialise, the result would be that dangerous former offenders would not be managed in the community to an appropriately high standard. The fact that these comments come after three years of ‘levelling up’ is a damning indictment of the government’s failure to deliver on its post-Brexit promises of plentiful and well-paid jobs. As well as its failure to deliver stronger, more resilient communities as part of its post-Covid renewal.
A service at breaking point
A slow-motion crisis has been building in the prison and probation service for roughly ten years. I have a personal involvement in this story because, for a period of four years, I worked at one of the Ministry of Justice’s ‘approved premises’. For those who don’t grasp the strange lingo of the MoJ, the term ‘approved premises’ is how the MoJ likes to refer to those strange buildings in your community everyone knows as the ‘halfway house’ or ‘bail hostel’.
During my time at two approved premises, most staff I met were hard-working, diligent, and conscientious. But during those four years, it became apparent to me that many probation service workers across multiple disciplines were burnt out, exhausted, overworked, and tired from multiple changes to the service, including a disastrous privatisation headed by Chris Grayling, and a large refurbishment of many government buildings.
In my experience, staff also struggled to deal with increasingly high expectations from the government. The probation service has always been seen as a ‘soft cop’ service, being a combination of legal enforcement and a health and social care model. In Scotland, probation officers are known as ‘criminal justice social workers’, a job title that some would say more accurately reflects their role.
But in the context of 13 years of austerity, Brexit shrinking the economy, and a government that distrusts the probation service, towards the end of my time in the probation service it became increasingly apparent to me that the government had unrealistic expectations. Expecting the service to reduce risk to the public, and tolerate a greater degree of scrutiny and oversight, while simultaneously expecting officers to take on increasingly unmanageable workloads, will only lead to new victims.
Seven out of the 12 regions in the UK showed that officers were operating at 110% capacity or above. Some probation officers are working at 160% capacity, with some reporting they are working at 200%. A small, exhausted workforce overloaded with unmanageable caseloads, combined with a client group that is notoriously deceitful and duplicitous, is a recipe for disaster. There is a growing view that something must be done.
A slow-motion disaster
Few government reforms have been as disastrous as the privatisation of the probation service. In 2014, over two-thirds of the probation service was privatised without pilot schemes to ensure the viability of the reforms. The privatisation was a disaster, recent data showed that one person was killed by an offender under supervision every three days under the new privatised system. Over a third of staff said they regularly cut corners to meet targets. Privatisation was also ruinously expensive, costing at least £171mn for a reform that was abolished in 2019 when the service was put back in public hands again.
There is an argument that the privatisation of the probation service – in terms of cost, life and resources – was the worst since 2010 when the coalition came to power. Few reforms have been as costly to the public purse and delivered so little return.
One of the effects of privatisation was to accelerate the retirement of many long-serving officers and staff. Faced with the rigmarole of privatisation, many experienced officers chose to retire. Likewise, the pandemic was also the spur for many experienced officers to opt for retirement. In the context of the latest round of public sector cuts coming from Jeremy Hunt’s Treasury, the outlook looks bleak for the possibility of a return to 2013 when the prison and probation service was rated good or excellent.
Urgent need
A massive recruitment drive alone isn’t enough. Placing unrealistic expectations on officers is dangerous too. For the government to expect high-quality offender management from officers reporting workloads of 200% is simply not acceptable, and puts the public at dangerous risk of harm, because ensuring that offenders are properly managed in the community becomes impossible with a caseload double the maximum.”
Prime Minister Orban of Hungary is in the firing line (and let’s hope not literally) as he states that Hungary will veto Ukrainian accession to the EU. The Danish PM Mette Frederikson affirmed that Ukraine should become part of the EU but also at a later date NATO. All this while the current war/conflict is unconcluded and Ukrainian actors are nominally the lead suspects in blowing up Germany’s Nord Stream pipeline (which is what MSM will have you believing).
I suspect that the USA, I mean hedge fund Blackrock, want a return on their investment in Ukraine and the EU is therefore obligated to pick up the tab for reconstruction.
China’s Foreigh Minister Wang Li is reported in the Western Media to have told unelected EU Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas that China will not accept Russia’s defeat. I aver however that it is more likely that China will not accept that Ukraine-Russia war/conflict to freeze and then be rethawed in 2030 for the next round of fighting against Russia. This would impact on the integration of the Belt and Road initiative.
At this stage Europe has a choice either to continue to wither on the vine as an outpost of the US empire or accept its geography and potential prosperity as part of the Eurasian landmass linking itself to the major BRICS powers.
The current timidity of the European elites in asserting their independence from the US, excepting Orban who may also cynically be holding out for a bigger bribe, might be subject to change depending on the outcome of the war/conflict. Russia and its supporters will not accept a frozen conflict or temporary ceasefire a la Gaza and I suspect Russia will not accept a revanchist rump Ukraine either as part of NATO or as part of a larger EU Defense Force. The historic Duchy of Lithuania dissolved ( historian Timothy Snyder irrespective of one’s opinions about his political views has done a good survey on the Duchy) and the rump Ukraine could be separated along linguistic and cultural lines and absorbed into other EU states with whom it has contiguous borders. This would also leave the Blackrock investment null and void. Given the ideological capture of our elites however it is more likely to be Cold War 2 with the EU, UK, US in the role of the Soviets and their satellites.
Got that off my chest! As I am wrong more than I am right, I won’t be surprised to be disproved by events !
” China will not accept Russia’s defeat ”
Interesting. It’s obvious from that comment that China thinks that Russia may lose the war and that they’re worried about being the focus of US attention.
Perhaps some serious diplomacy between themselves and the US might help although I agree that will be difficult with Donald in charge otherwise what are they going to do if Russia does lose? Risk WW3 by sending troops? Damage their own economy by imposing sanctions? Some analysts think that secretly China would delight in seeing Russia collapse, they’d like mineral rich Outer Manchuria back if nothing else.
“Books were forbidden to criminal prisoners in my jail lest their pages be soaked in drugs.”
Yet prisons are full of drugs, which in actual fact the authorities condone for reasons of order.
But books – no. They ban books in order to fight against what they’re not fighting against at all.
This is typical of the lies that people live under in Britain, equally strong in say the “health” and “education” systems, spouted by “professionals” and petty officials who would say and believe the opposite tomorrow if they were told to. Belief doesn’t come into it much, though. Just obey, keep watching your “smart” “phone”, and don’t think. Don’t listen to anyone who does, because they want to spill your blood, they smell like poo, and they don’t want mortgages.
The term “sh*tclown” is apt.
Parents can’t take photos at school events because of the risk from paedophiles. You can’t meet your family except somewhere you’re buying something, in case you spread the lergy. You’ve got to go on a waiting-list. The library can’t do you a photocopy because there was a cyberattack. There’s no racism, there’s only the flag and too much that’s foreign and erosive of pride in tradition. Just don’t read. That’s antisocial.
It looks like the wonderful Bob Vylan chant – (DDttIDF) is being painted on walls all over parts of Europe.
https://nitter.poast.org/MonitorX99800/status/1941385273562235240#m
European governments, one by one, are finding their Biden-led, unconditional, support for Israel is faltering. This of course is all part of the ‘Fuck Europe’ agenda which Biden’s Victoria Nuland initiated and I hoped Trump would ignore. Those of European and Russian descent would like their countries back. They had to leave and settle for dual nationality but when it all gets too hot the war in Ukraine can pave the way for a land without people but with huge valuable assets, most of which have already been snapped up by Black Rock in exchange for armaments. So until more space can be cleared in the rest of Europe the ball would seem to be in Russia’s court. This is wildly far fetched of course. It is a nonsense, even. No one in their right mind would imagine such a thing. But, perhaps, if Europe wants to offer safe refuge for endangered Palestinians such a paranoia as we know exists could get transferred to compassionate people everywhere.
I used to think Trump would pull the US out of NATO because it will have other uses for its armed forces than protecting Europe from external dangers and it has huge deployments of men and armaments stationed for safe keeping in friendly countries.
Friendly countries now need to take stock of their individual control over this collective defence pact. Democratic agreements need to be reevaluated in the context of international standards, and accountability under consensus law. This is a time when assumptions are being called into question, when peace can perhaps not be relied on as a matter of continuity, because the ‘supreme commander’ as the US always termed its role, may be out of step with its collective partners. Carefully does it… Don’t let haters spout polarising social media or graffiti. Clean it up. Jailing people must only be a last resort for polarising actual disruptors. Diplomacy is always best. And truth. Being inclusive and caring is what underpins our social democracy.
Ethical politics will need its own consensus, and policeman, if we are to clean up the corruption and define principles and standards effectively
People made light of Mark Rutte unctuously deferring to ‘Daddy’ Trump.
But it really was an unedifying display for a Dutch Secretary General of an organisation, ‘NATO’, that’s meant to operate by unanimity/consensus. I doubt there is a senior military post holder, intel chief, or senior politician across the whole of Europe, who’d claim that NATO membership comes with no obligation to adhere to US foreign policy objectives. Is that loss of sovereignty worth it? I suppose the answer to that, comes down to threat assessments, and whether you buy into the idea, Russia and China really are out to get us? Or whether you believe that fear is western projection, served with a large dollop of paranoia.
This differing worldview, is the fundamental difference between those labelled ‘tankies’ and those who think Ukraine is engaged in some grand existential fight on behalf of the whole West.
I honestly don’t believe Russia has any ambition to recreate the Eastern Bloc, or conquer and rule over hostile European populations. I reckon Putin probably privately regrets invading Ukraine, after underestimating the initial resistance due to western support. Had Ukraine not launched drone strikes and terror attacks e,g, car bombs in Moscow, and the abortive Kursk Oblast incursion, Putin may well have been in political trouble domestically by now. Ukraine’s Kursk offensive enabled Putin to sell his war as essential to Russian interests and territorial integrity i.e. wrap it in patriotism. It changed perceptions of Ukraine being a victim.
Nor do I believe China has US-empire type ambitions; there is no evidence in terms of overseas military base expansionism to suggest that. China wishes to gain allies and influence using soft power and trade initiatives, not through hard power and economic warfare(sanctions).
That Daddy remark was not a Freudian slip, it was Rutte subconsciously expressing his real feelings toward his master, in fact most EU and NATO leaders behave like children when in the presence of the person who regards himself the “Master of the Universe” when in fact he is an orange blowhard and a bigger gob shite than his predecessor Genocide Joe.
Similar War being a ‘ Racket ‘ – Crime is a racket too.
Karl Marx ( maybe Engels – not sure ) wrote about The Crime Industry.
The State paid Judges – the Local Magistrates – the Chief Police officers etc etc.
Add to that Bum Bailiffs – Bailiffs and Prisons and the running and being paid for of the prisons.
The Bureaucracy of administration and so on.
It does take quite a stupid bunch of Middle Class Politicians to come up with the ludicrous idea of fining Homeless people One Thousand Pounds for living in tents or on the street and breaking the law.
That was actually posited as a solution to clearing the streets.
If Marx thought it was an Industry then, it certainly has been perfected since.
Nearly all privatised now but, like all Privatisations the industry has been totally under – invested in.
Society has been roughed up by the effects of neo – liberal economics and its reflection is mirrored in society at large.
The politicians obviously are not intent on smoothing out inequalities so things ( and society ) will become even rougher than it is now.
Unless ( another Marx view ) you are going to invest in a Policeman in everyone’s home to keep any eye on things, then the problems will only accumulate.
Most people are in prison for relatively petty offences.
More are nuisances rather than arch criminals with evil intentions.
The idea of rehabilitation went out of the window years ago as this costs money and didn’t please the Mail -The Express – The Telegraph and Sun readers.
From ‘ Short Sharp Shock ‘ to Blair’s ‘ Tough on the cause of Crime ‘
The former was exercised and the latter never realised ( intentionally ).
The truth is that lack of investment in the economy and shovelling money up to the
rich ( Flood Up – not Trickle Down) has produced some people to absolute penury.
If most of these prisoners could get a decent paid job and a house to live in you would
see very few of them again back in prison.
That is not on offer from our moral guardians and investors.
Making money through shares and usury is the latest craze so, why build factories or businesses when you can make money with little effort.
Society can go hang.
Yet – the same shysters need their assets protecting from the criminals just like they need protection from imaginary Foreign Invaders.
They do not want to pay for that protection and expect the people to pay for that for them.
When this Crime Business gets worse they will be the one’s crying in the newspapers above that thing’s are terrible and something ‘ must ‘ be done.
They could of course invest their pirated stash into making the UK a better place.
No chance of that.
Why?
Because they don’t live here – they live in Bermuda or some other Foreign Shore.
The answer is very simple:
Make them pay more tax for their asset protection in the form of job creation.
People end up in prison for all sorts of reasons – bad luck – terrible decisions when skint – and even stupid outbursts on Social Media ( or should that be Anti -Social Media) and they should never have been sent to prison in the first place.
The alternative for the cowards who allegedly run the show is not to improve lives but to moralise and act all Holier Than Thou just to please the smug people who like the homeless are only a few missed payments away from the streets themselves.
Moral Superiority obviously sells but, the smug ones need to be very aware that if things carry on as they are then some one needs to write a song called; Things Are Going to Get Worser as a Manifesto commitment before the next
election.
If we keep voting for these politicians they will keep delivering nothing for the ordinary person and everything for the rich.
The Bidenism ‘ Nothing Will Fundamentally Change’ is deadly accurate .
It is the Technocrats job to make sure of that.
The only target they want to hit.
Karl Marx:
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch33.htm
“The criminal moreover produces the whole of the police and of criminal justice, constables, judges, hangmen, juries, etc.”
Marx wouldn’t have called that kind of thing an “industry”. It riles me that people who work for television companies or hooking business for moneylenders refer to e.g. “the television industry” or “the mortgage industry”. And the less said about Theodore Adorno the better.
I wonder if he’s related to Lukashenko, says I with tongue pressed firmly into cheek.
“The new Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and thus commander of NATO’s European military operations, is US Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, nickname “Grynch,” who is of Belarusian descent.”
FACT
A small number of people have been arrested in London for holding up signs saying “I Oppose Genocide. I Support Palestine Action”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gd3pkr9x1o
LESSON
Bearing witness doesn’t work.
Staggering how MPs have categorised a disruptive protest group, putting in the same company as the likes of the ruthless killers who carried out the 2015, French Bataclan theatre massacre. Slapping ‘terrorism designation’ proscription orders on a direct action group, not only offends against basic civil liberties, it looks intellectually lazy. They are not comparable at all.
The middle-aged and old women dragged away today by the Met, for holding up those placards, are as far removed from the people who opened fire on those concert goers in 2015, killing over 130 with 350 injured; or the man who drove that lorry in 2016, killing 86 and injuring 450 others on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, as you could possibly get. Lumping them in the same company is absurdly offensive.
We’re scared. Today a cafe was blown up in Australia, the ToI reports. False flag attacks will soon be everywhere and then some not so false flag ones, to ignite the civil war that Musk is so looking forward to