Liberal Burblings

Archive for August, 2007

Conservative Home reports that David Cameron gets a grilling by a panel of four journalists on Newsnight tonight.

The BBC are trailing it as Immigration ‘too high’ – Cameron.

My ex-holiday feet have just touched the ground long enough to read this excellently argued piece from James Graham on Quaequam Blog entitled: “How society has failed Frances Lawrence”.

I think Iain Dale has introduced a red herring which even the Tory spokespeople/David Cameron haven’t mentioned – the length of the original sentence. (He asks ‘What about the human rights of Frances Lawrence and her family?’ in what appears to be a rehearsal of his fantasy selection hustings speech).

The actual item under discussion is/has been the deportation decision. As Laurence Boyce commented on Quaequam Blog: “If Chindamo is still a risk, he should be kept in jail, not sent to Italy.”

The whole point is that David Cameron has gone to town on the Human Rights Act here, but that was only a secondary point in the decision. The decision was primarily taken under the provisions of Article 27 and 28 of the EU Citizens Directive 2004.

But, I suppose, Daily Mail readers can understand “Scrap the Human Rights Act” or “Scrap bleeding heart liberals”. However, they find it difficult to swallow “Scrap Articles 27 and 28 of the EU Citizens Directive 2004″. That is far, far too nuanced for them. They’ll be flipping over to the Quick Crossword before they’ve got halfway through the sentence.

Alice Miles in the Times made some excellent points in her article “Chindamo stays – and I’m proud of it”.

The key one is this. Chindamo’s mother and brother are in this country and want to give him a home when he is released from jail. Chindamo has no connections, no family and no friends in Italy. He does not speak Italian, for goodness sake.

Whether you are a bleeding heart liberal or not, common sense tells you that if someone is going to have a fighting chance of getting back on the straight and narrow when they are released from prison, a family and ability to speak the local language are likely to stand them in fairly good stead.

Being plonked in a strange country with no family and no ability to speak the local language is a fast-track back to crime.

One final point. Hwyel Morgan took the words out of my mouth. For years we have watched Leslie Grantham as Dirty Den on Eastenders (above). He was a national institution.

Did you ever hear anyone say: “What about the human rights of the family of Felix Reese?”*

No, after he served his sentence, we, quite rightly, gave the fellow (Grantham) a chance to rehabilitate himself into society, and he did.

*The German taxi driver who Grantham shot dead

Well done to Ming Campbell for raising the issue of the Iraq withdrawal timetable, as previously blogged about. Polly Toynbee has described the Liberal Democrats as “right, right and right again about the Iraq war”

As usual with Ming, his letter to Brown was measured and authoritative:

We have a moral obligation to the young men and women of our armed forces who we ask to do dangerous and difficult tasks, and it seems to me that the prime minister is ignoring the reality on the ground, but second, the increasingly vocal anxieties and reservations being expressed by senior army officers….And there really are two questions: First is, what political objectives are being achieved by our continued presence in the south of Iraq and what military objectives are being achieved? And so far, and certainly not in this letter, the prime minister does not seem to me to have provided coherent answers to either of these questions.

Sadly, the Iraq mission appears to be the classic military bête noire of a campaign with no proper political objective. A quicksand mission.

While that looks a pretty clinical observation in print, we have to remember that British soldiers are dying for this open ended Bush bail-out errand.

Well done to Chris Huhne for highlighting a sensible plan to phase-out petrol as a fuel by 2040.

I was tempted to call this plan “ambitious” and “radical” but it would be wrong to describe it in either of those ways.

It is simply right and realistic.

David Cameron has called for broad, “generational” change to tackle the “lawlessness” in some UK areas.

So far, so good.

Then you look at the suggestions which appear to have come forth from the Camster so far (with my comments in italicised parenthe..er..brackets):

-Curb violent video games (they already go through censorship and some have been banned)

-Urge parents to be more responsible (vague or what? Would a big stick be used?)

-Consult with the music industry (big deal and already happening)

-”Encourage marriage” through tax changes (cloud cuckoo land – as previously discussed)

-Give head teachers the final say in expelling pupils (not that simple as previously discussed)

-Put prisoners two to a cell (already happens – 2006 HMP Edinburgh report)

-Use prison ships (being put on stream anyway)

-Use disused army camps as prisons (A Sun favourite)

There is a Conservative document explaining all this here.

A lot of the suggestions are either vague, have already been announce by the Tories, or are being done to some extent by the current government.

However, the document is worth reading and considering.

That is the question asked in this vue de l’horizon by Nick Assinder on the BBC news website.