Sadiq Khan - does he actually believe the crap he spouts?

From The Telegraph:

Sadiq Khan blamed the cost of living crisis for the crimewave sweeping London as police faced a backlash over a recent spate of murders...

“Before the summer holidays began, the police, myself and others were warning about what we’ve seen in previous summers – we have seen an increase in violent crime and the cost of living crisis exacerbates this,” he said, “Why? Because one of the complex causes of crime is deprivation, poverty, lack of opportunities and so forth."

The 'crime wave' started shortly he took over as London Mayor six years ago. Why not blame Brexit, global warming and the war in Ukraine? At least he can't blame 'the obesity epidemic', which he claims to have single-handedly solved - based on the most made-up statistics ever.

And it's "I", not "myself" in that context, so he's either pretentious or badly educated or both.

Daily Mail on top form

From The Daily Mail:

Yousef Makki, 17, was stabbed to death on Saturday night in Greater Manchester... Yousef is thought to have received a scholarship to attend the school, where fees are in excess of £12,000 a year.

Two 17-year-old boys have been arrested on suspicion of murder. They are both also pupils at prestigious schools in the North West and are believed to live in multi-million pound homes in the area.

That really is a journalistic low, even by the Mail's (lack of) standards.

"Not just the Daily Mail…"

… says Mark C, who spotted this corker in The Evening Standard:

A murder investigation has been launched after a young man was killed during a mass fight on a suburban street in north London.

Police rushed to Heathfield Gardens, where houses cost around £1 million, at around 7.15pm on Friday following reports of a number of males fighting.

"The Dispossessed Fund: £1m to help charities fight gangs"

From The Evening Standard:

The Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund has secured £1 million for charities tackling gangs and young Londoners at risk of anti-social or criminal behaviour…

The charities will now be able to invest in knives, pickaxe handles and stab proof vests, with fire arms for those who dare venture into the most violent gang territories.

No, you cannot shoot somebody fatally more than once.

Outrage in Canada as moment police officer fatally shot knifeman nine times in 13 seconds is caught on video

Oh yes, and a guy got murdered.

Spotted by Bob E in The Daily Mail:

... in a street lined with multi-million-pound homes... in Pimlico, an affluent district in central London where Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has a home. On the north side of the street... are houses worth millions of pounds.

Ten reasons to hate the Tories (10)

Point 10 from Cameron's Blueprint for Britain was this:

10. We'll double magistrates' sentencing powers from six month to a year and make sure knife offenders can expect to go to jail. And we will get more police officers on the street by slashing paperwork, including the stop and account form.

JuliaM posts endless tales about ridiculously lenient sentencing in this country, so mucking about with maximum sentences is pointless; it's minimum sentences we ought to be thinking about*. The only politician I'd trust with this is Michael Howard, who was prepared to take on the whole "criminal law industry" wholesale and made them actually do their job rather than seeing it as a gravy train. And he got results. It was far from perfect, but he got results.

* UPDATE. Jackart in the comments says that "bureaucratically defined minimum sentences" are a tad illiberal. Maybe so, but can we make a start by ensuring that offenders actually serve the sentences that are currently being imposed, rather than a small fraction thereof or none at all? For examples see JuliaM.

As to the second sentence, as WOAR explained a couple of days ago:

The simplest way to get more officers on the street is to abolish the PCSOs. Each one costs approximately 2/3 the cost of a proper officer but in utility terms is less than half as useful plus many of them are a complete liability when they open their mouths in public. Three plastic plod costs £60k and offers 1.5 worth of utility value. Two real police officers cost £54k (starting) and offer 2.0 worth of utility value.

We lose value on every single PCSO. Madness. Don't worry about paperwork at this stage. Cut the PCSOs immediately.

I hope that you've found this weekend's series thought-provoking. No, I don't claim to absolutely right on absolutely everything, but I can say for sure that the Tories are absolutely wrong on nearly everything - the only bit of their blueprint that wasn't complete rubbish was the first half of point 8. Anyway, time for a birthday drink.

"Jail not deterring knife crime"

A Home Office spokesperson explains why:

"No-one should be in any doubt of the consequences of carrying a knife. If you do so, you are now more much likely to get caught. When you're caught, you're more likely to be prosecuted. And if found guilty, you're more likely to go to prison."

So there are three stages to this; being caught; being prosecuted; and being sent to jail. Assigning probabilities to each of those three stages, your typical hoodie knows that the probability of each is, let's say, 50%, i.e. if you carry a knife, the chances of being sent to jail are 12.5%, or one-in-eight. Assuming that "more likely" means "a 55% probability", the chances now rocket to ... er ... 16.6%, or about one-in-six.

The peer pressure on these murderous little shits is so enormous, I doubt whether the fact that their chances of being jailed has increased by 4%, or about one-in-twenty five, is going to make the slightest bit of difference.

Twats.

UPDATE: Knirirr makes a good point. If they lock away 166 offenders in every 1,000 instead of only 125, and seeing as jails are 'full', that means the sentence they can expect is reduced automatically by a quarter anyway, i.e. 125 x 12 months = 1,500 jail-months; 1,500 jail-months ÷ 166 convicts = 9 months each.

Shopkeeper Of The Month

This month's Tony Singh Award goes to Mr George Pillai.

Via Philip Thomas, who makes further good points.

"Gangs linked to male insecurity"

From today's Metro:

Young men are turning to crime and a violent gang culture because they are losing their sense of masculinity, a minister has warned. They are being overtaken by women in the jobs market as tradit­ional male positions disappear and see crime as the way to wealth and status instead, skills [sic] minister David Lammy said.

And in the 'warped world' of 'get rich or die trying' gang culture, they can earn respect and regain their manliness by carrying a weapon, he wrote in the New Statesman*. 'An aggressive street culture rep­laces success in other spheres of life as an expression of masculi­nity,' he added. At the same time, the 'fetishis­ation' of money and the growth of consumerism was adding to pressures, the Tottenham MP said.

Mr Lammy acknowledged problems in the black Caribbean community, where 59 per cent of children are raised by lone parents, but stressed the issue affected youngsters from all races and social backgrounds. 'While there may be young men on estates missing fath­ers, there are also children in Middle Britain whose parents become strangers in a culture of long working hours,' he said.

Shorter David Lammy:"I blame crime on those people, especially women, who try to achieve something in life. The fact that black Caribbeans tend to have no sense of family values has very little to do with it"

* The full article kicks off with "We are failing miserably to provide Britain's teenage boys with meaningful occupations, worthy role models or hope for the future. David Lammy, minister for skills, on the crisis we must resolve,"

Who's "we" for f***'s sake? How is any of this my f***ing fault? Has he never heard of 'personal responsibility' or 'self-reliance'?

Twat.

Readers' letters of the week

Eagle-eyed Jim Morton in yesterday's Metro pointed out that if the police operation at the Birmingham Bulldog Bash bikers' rally cost £1.4 million and 20 weapons were seized, this worked out at £70,000 per weapon, which he reckoned was lousy value.

Fair enough - one could argue that without the police operation, more weapons may have been smuggled in, the real value is £1.4 million ÷ the number of weapons that otherwise would have been smuggled in.

But wait!

Dave Preston, Essex had a follow up letter in today's Metro:

In response to Jim Morton - the 20 weapons the police 'netted' at the bikers' rally were actually deposited in amnesty bins set up by the Hell's Angels. The police were not allowed on site, which seems to have had the desired effect of keeping violence to a minimum.

Number crunching

Number of "problem families" with disruptive youngsters [which] will be targeted as part of a crackdown on knife crime: more than 110,000

Number of couple families fraudulently claiming lone parent benefits: 200,000 (see page 7)