So our Prime Minister has now pledged a zero tolerance for street crime.
Why only now?
Is this a recent conversion after being briefed about t on the causes of the riots?
Doesn't such a statement imply a previous tolerance for street crime? That while certain strata of society predate on one another up and down our communities and high streets, with petty theft, mugging as theft with violence, all the way up to knife crime, the government have been happy to turn a blind eye to this at a strategic level. The underclass preying on one another.
Only now that criminal activity suddenly agglomerated together into the riots and looting on those same high streets last week, where property and trade themselves were attacked, has the Prime Minister determined to deal with it.
How many youths have been stabbed to death on our streets over the last decade? There has been plenty of official hand wringing, but the only action has really been taken by those in the stricken communities themselves and the police struggling to get a grip on it.
I took a look at the Conservative Party's 2010 election manifesto and other than a pledge to ensure a custodial sentence for knife crime, there is no mention about cleaning up street crime or dealing with gangs.
Therefore a tolerance for both.
The Labour Party were little better in power, so it's not strictly party political.
But I do find Cameron's pronouncements particularly odious and craven. Will we now see him with the zeal of a recent convert? Or just the payer of lip service with his fingers crossed that such criminality will not rear its head in so organised a fashion as last week.
This is the opening of that same Conservative manifesto:
"A country is at its best when the bonds between people are strong and when the sense of national purpose is clear".
Well our country must be at its worst. We're all in this together are we Mr Cameron? Some more than others clearly. We all had our suspicions about the unity of financial sacrifice being a sham. But now I suspect the actual sacrifice of human life and wellbeing before criminality too, had been consciously accepted that this would only apply to certain strata of society.
1 comment:
Riots are part of the British system, as fundamental as the monarchy to our democracy.Britain is not an egalitarian society but is riven with conflict. Even the opposing parties in Parliament sit a little over two sword lengths apart. There is always something to riot about, poverty, injustice, race, politics and always somebody ready to riot.This government, like all others, is just responding to those shouting loudest. I am told (by immigrants that I know) that Britain is a hard country where you must work hard for the rewards. But it does give help, support and chances. If you want equality then Enva Hoxha's Albania is the model, where nobody was allowed to earn more that twice as much as anybody else. Poverty is relative and it might be said that there are no poor in the UK, just those who have made poor choices.
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