Thursday 26 April 2007

Terry Kelly and Hugh Henry Campaign against themselves ?


Terry (TKMax) Kelly and Hugh (Shuggie the Hammer) Henry are on the front page of the Paisley Daily Express today campaigning against the building of a new prison in Paisley.

This is a bit surprising since
  1. Labour are in power at every level in this country so it is their proposal
  2. Hugh (Shuggie etc) Henry is the justice minister and in charge of policing
  3. Renfrewshire Labour councillors sit on the Strathclyde police board so they are responsible for the proposal
  4. The Labour majority council can deny the planning application if they wish, so clearly they don't
  5. It is Labour policy on crime that has filled the jails with usually the wrong people
  6. They don't say where the jail should be built if it is needed
  7. If they had been tough on the causes of crime as they promised at election after election then the jail wouldn't be needed

The result of this policy failure is Labour out sucking up to voters by pretending that they are not responsible for their own decisions and policies.

In terms of sheer two faced hypocrisy and opportunism this one has got to take the biscuit.

I have to ask the question (again). How stupid do these numpties think the voters are. Labour should stop acting like low life con men and accept responsibility for their cock-ups.

Wendy (for it is she) the second trumpet in the Alexanders' rag time band is very quick to get her face in the papers when they think (not very often) that they have done something right, even if it is years too late. Still, it brightens up the paper when you see someone smiling but you just know that the smile is so insincere that they will never have laughter lines. That's why Wendy (for it is she) looks so young.

9 comments:

Fidothedog said...

Terry really is an arse, been meaning to really stick the proverbial knife into him for the last few days- work getting in way of bloggin!

Roll on May 3rd when hopefully he gets thrown onto the dole

Anonymous said...

The causes of Crime RM is criminals lock them up and they commit no more crime.

Once again spot on.

red mist said...

fido--It isn't so much that they are useless or stupid, although they are, it is that, even when caught out in gross deception of the people they are supposed to protect and represent, they still have not the sense of shame that would make a person of any integrity put their hands up and apologise.

zz -- not quite what I had in mind, but criminals are no different from the rest of us except that they have been caught. Even locked up, however, they still commit crimes (possesion of illegal drugs, assault, theft,). Perhaps we should be looking at the causes of criminals. I am reminded by your comment of a line I heard once about every complex problem having a solution which is cheap, effective and wrong. Your solution is too easy, and we've been doing it that way for generations, why do you think it will start to work now. Even when they had public hanging for pickpockets there were pickpockets working the crowds. Poverty is a great driver.

Anonymous said...

RM the poor suffer most from criminality and anti-social behaviour that is why they hate this poverty equals crime link. Lots of people turn to crime for financial reasons but most poor people don not. It is a slander on the poor RM to suggest that being poor excuses criminality.

It is also patronising don't we all have to take responsibility for our conduct. Do the crime do the time.

red mist said...

zz--you're only looking at the small picture. Crimes of the poor against each other tend to be fairly low level--it is difficult to steal a lot of money from a poor person, and in any case the police don't care because it is only when the poor steal from the rich that the legitimacy of property is challenged.
The rich find it easy to protect themselves from crime and anti social behaviour. They can buy in all sorts of alarms, fences, security guards and products, it is therefore inevitable that if crime is displaced from the rich, if it exists at all then it must be perpetrated against the poor.
It is simply naive to ignore the virtually certain statistical link between poverty and crime which exists in low level criminal conduct, even although the popular interpretation is to blame inequality rather than poverty as such.
The real crime is of course the system itself. It leads children to believe that everyone has an equal opportunity of success. It's not true, and those children from poor backgrounds who do make it only serve to validate and legitimise what is an obvious lie. The rich in this (or any other country)would never tolerate a system where there were no manual workers to empty their bins or police their streets, so no matter how hard they try, every child cannot be a success in terms of our existing definition of success. Those from a working class background who are successful, as I have said, only perpetuate the myth that anyone can make it if they try hard enough, but it's not true, it is a lie conceived by a fraudulent system so that anyone who does not become a success will blame themselves even if they tried as hard as they possibly could and were denied equal opportunity. We don't need to wonder if this is true, I am exactly the same age as Prince Charles, could I have become the Prince of Wales if I had tried harder?

The system allows so many crimes to be committed against the poor that it is a disgrace to humanity.
Employers openly state in job ads 'minimum wage satisfied' which is only another way of saying 'we will pay you as little as we possibly can short of us actually being put in jail for it'. Pension funds are stolen; savings disappear and so do the directors (farepack); investors including workers pension funds are robbed by insider trading; government changes the rules on state pensions after we have been paying in for years; workers compensation claims are contested through the courts for years, even when liability is obvious, in the hope that it will prove too costly for small people to tackle large corporations (thank goodness for pro bono solicitors with a conscience); monopoly and price fixing agreements rip off comsumers and corporate fines are allowed against tax; and worst of all is that the sleaze riddled governments, of whichever party seem to be for sale to the rich.
So perhaps it is as well not to dwell on the petty crime that the poor commit against each other, so much of it is a reaction to crime committed against the working class, and they have no means to strike back against the people who they know are robbing them blind.

Surreptitious Evil said...

How stupid do these numpties think the voters are. (sic - should have been '?')

It's obvious really - stupid enough to keep voting them into power at every level in this country.

On the wider subject - there is a significant difference in the complexity of 'crimes against property' available to rich as opposed to poor. (Let's not pretend that rich people don't go to prison for other categories of crime - violence, sexual assault & drugs, for examples). Poorer people tend to commit simpler (including to prove) crimes such as theft, the not-quite-a-crime of non-payment of fines, etc.

Richer people have wider opportunities. Your examples: pension funds, farepack etc are ideal. It is really difficult to distinguish between incompetence and malice in many of these cases and, in some, sheer bad luck (no, not to get caught) also plays a part. It is finding the evidence to prove the necessary mens rea not the actus reus that is the start of the hard bit. Then getting that across to a jury, especially if it involves complex financial transactions that even most bankers only pretend to understand, with sufficient clarity to allow them to take the decision on guilt. Remember that it is the state's responsibility to make the case and that the default position, regardless of the wealth or social status of the accused, must be "Not Guilty".

BTW - I think that blaming rich people, as opposed to Nu-Lab, for "government changes the rules on state pensions after we have been paying in for years" is more than slightly unfair, no?

S-E

red mist said...

s-e 'stupid enough to keep voting them into power': you might have a point, but as a democrat I like to believe that the collective will of the people expressed at the ballot box tends to indicate the collective preference. Unfortunately there are some very good liars out there, supported by the tame media, and people don't seem to be very good at spotting the lies, or they believe that if so called powerful and intelligent people believe it then it must be right. That is why we have the unseemly scramble by the Nats and Labour to sign up the support of every has been and never was you can think of. Its sick'

The problem is not in differentiating between incompetence and malice, or even sheer bad luck. The problem lies in the stroke of a pen which declares the incompetence to be illegal, and if the rich and powerful are able to make the law say whatever they wish, then they need never do anything illegal even when their actions are regarded as 'criminal' by any right thinking person.
There is also a question of which laws are enforced and which aren't.
If a poor person such as myself is burgled then the police might send round two officers next day to tell me I should have had better locks. This only displaces the crime and blames the victim, but it is a crime of the poor against the poor and therefore has no priority. They will say it is because of a manpower shortage. If however I steal a packet of biscuits from Sainsbury's because my kids might be hungry and I have no means, two policemen will be there in minutes, because a crime by the poor against the rich cannot be permitted as it challenges the legitimacy of property. Legality is therefore defined by the powerful and their minions who serve their interests. (explains Nu-Lab action in respect of pensions)
The wealth and social status of the accused person is therefore crucial to the delivery of justice, that is why the prisons are full of poor people, largely illiterate and many with drug or mental health issues.

P.S. gonnae no dae the Latin and stop correcting my grammar:)

Anonymous said...

Not really a surpise that you dont know how these things are done, to be honest I think you do know how these things are done and I think that you are just at it.

The real story (by the way I live there and know this story very well) is that the Council were NOT consulted about where this was going to go and neither were the residents.

When the photo was taken at least the Labour candidates came and asked our opinion and listened to our views the others couldn't have cared less.

Not a tel fan but he changed my mind when I spoke to him.

red mist said...

anon-- please feel free to enlighten us as to how the Justice Minister doesn't know about a new prison, and how the council don't need to give it planning permission. Labour cannot campaign against government decisions if labour are the government. It doesn't make sense and these people are only after your vote. They couldn't have cared less when we were campaigning for the playing fields because that was before the elections were imminent.