statistics

Fibber and friend

Like milestones on a journey the route taken by Nulabour's descent is fixed by certain events and remarks along the way. For example we have Gordon Brown's comment of 'saving the world'. A simple gaffe some say, 'anyone might have said that', really? But the problem here is that our Prime Minister said it and in public; had 'the man in the pub' made such a remark the whole bar would have collapsed laughing with the man himself joining in. But our PM and Nulabour are made of different stuff, there is something sinister, unpleasant and flawed about them. In the Guardian today the Editorial has the title, Who's counting? In this the charge is made that Nulabour cooked the books on knife crime.

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Mr Cameron says knife crime is now a problem of "epidemic proportions" in the UK and that "Anyone caught carrying a knife without a good excuse should expect to be sent to prison." Yet, according to Home Office figures, almost three times as many people prosecuted for carrying a knife went to prison in 2006, compared with 1996 and the average sentence length has increased by almost a third over the same period. In addition murders involving knives and other sharp implements remain relatively stable. This is not to mention that there is no room in our jails.

Rogues gallery, Aynsley-Green
In today's Daily Mail Melanie Phillips is writing about the rise in the number of young people dying from stab wounds. She is understandably horrified by this sort of crime seemingly spiralling ever upwards with no sign of a fix in sight. But she gets really angry and again understandably so with the person she calls the 'children's tsar', Sir Al Aynsley-Green.

This is typical of her mood on Aynsley-Green -

"As if this epidemic of violence wasn't bad enough, we have to put up with the utterances of the Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green.

According to this ridiculous figure, the stop-and-search powers being belatedly used by the police to curb such attacks might further antagonise young people.