London - more children slaughtered

Bridget Prentice, who used to be my MP, left the Commons when scandals about her expenses mis-spending began to emerge. I was about to present evidence of her using Parliamentary expenses to subsidise the running of a constituency Labour Party office when she threw in the towel. She ligged a job as an electoral commissioner which came to an end in September 2018 - putting her well within the frame of the 'Corrupt Commission' that acted so partially against Brexit bodies that it was condemned as 'not fit for purpose' by leading politicians. Anyway, back in 2008 I wrote to her over the mismanagement of the Met Police - a mismanagement that has got far worse since.

Here in the borough of Lewisham we pay the salaries of around a thousand Metropolitan police officers - our share of the 32,000 strong force. Yet where are they? Our homes can be burgled, fouled and violated, the possessions of a lifetime stolen and trashed, and we are told it's no longer a concern of the police - we're invited to leave our details on an answerphone. This year nearly thirty teenage boys have been knifed to death in London, yet on the buses and in Lewisham market at the end of the school day are scores of knife-carrying teens terrifying each other and causing public fear.

She replied

I do not believe that life in Lewisham is as grim, unappealing and crime ridden as you portray in your letter. If you feel that 'knife-carrying teens' are terrorising 'the buses' and 'Lewisham market' I suggest then that you raise the matter with the police.

The arrogance and contempt of her response was quite typical - Bridget was never a clever woman, and I doubt she had ridden on a bus or visited Lewisham Market since being elected. It is exactly her brand of purblind ignorance that has seen the numbers of dead children in London multiply in just ten years - the young corpses no longer confined to black-on-black violence but claiming victims who really did stand chances of becoming architects or doctors. Yet there is something surprising about this - take a look at the Met's stats

Boris served as Mayor from 2008 to 2016. His first term was dominated by the Olympics - but in his second term, he concentrated his efforts on knife crime, with some success. Then two things happened. From 2015, Theresa May, as Home Secretary, prevented police from carrying out stop and search - and in 2016 Sadiq Khan took post as Mayor of London.

London is now stuck with exactly the same brand of asinine, purblind social democrat stupidity that we had before 2008; there is little to choose between Bridget Prentice and Theresa May in terms of (in)ability, and Khan is as robust and effective as a feather in the wind. May is even now defending her appalling tenure as Home Secretary, and the vain, preening little Khan has only an eye for photo opportunities rather than dead teens.

For whatever reason, the number of fatal stabbings is increasing - counter intuitively, for if the volume of knife crime is what it was in 2008 with thirty dead, one would expect a learning curve in trauma medicine and response to have lowered lethality.

Perhaps now that normal middle-class grammar school kids are bleeding to death in the gutter, London's Labour mafia and their tame Prime Minister might take notice.

Knives, Thugs and Conditional Fee Agreements

By all accounts, the Met Police did well at last weekend's Notting Hill carnival. Knife arches, proactive and aggressive policing and lots of arrests meant not a single additional murder to add to London's score of 100-odd already this year. It came at a cost however; police officers have been complaining loudly at the roughness, shoving, elbows, rudeness, scuffles and minor sprains, strains and abrasions that they suffered. There was a fair bit of physical contact, and the officers didn't like it. Given the choice, and unless prodded from behind by their sergeants and commanders, many would go out of the way to avoid a tussle. Even with a certainty of a minor offender going free. 

I'm afraid getting 'stuck in' has always been part of public order policing. Men and women officers need to be decent rugby players not shrinking petals - and thankfully, many are. But with ineffective, confused commanders such as Cressida Dick, the Met is carrying too much dead beat dead weight, officers avoiding conflict and carving out cushy jobs for themselves. Dick's judgement has been questioned on everything from overseeing the shooting of a Brazilian electrician, proudly claiming 900 officers are patrolling the internet for 'hurty words' to scanning the opinion columns of the Daily Telegraph for unprofessional use of words and publicly pronouncing on those pieces that have passed her scrutiny. Her intellect is neither universally admired nor trusted. 

Below are two similar photos of officers being kicked whilst carrying out their duties; one at a student riot in Red Lion Square back in the 60s, the other from yesterday as officers attempted to arrest a man in a branch of McDonalds. 

The first was published on the front page of virtually every daily newspaper and attracted a tsunami of public disgust and questions in Parliament. The second features deep inside the Daily Mail behind the Kardashians and has gone virtually unnoticed. What's happened to our righteous anger at assaults against the police - our police - who are supposed to be us in uniform? Or have their bosses been responsible for alienating them from public support? The struggle between a centralising Home Office and Localities for control and ownership of the police has been going since the 60s, and the Home Office is winning. They want a national police service wholly answerable to the Home Secretary, which would be a disaster for both democracy and public trust in the police. 

We can't solve the local-central issue, but there is something that the government can do, quickly and I believe with cross-party support. One of the fears that police officers have is that if they react against public provocation, they will be at the mercy of some smart-arse lawyer such as the loathsome and now disbarred Phil Shiner scabbling damages from the taxpayer's purse and fat fees for themselves. And not only the police; soldiers, NHS staff, council bin men and just about anyone in the public sector is an entry-point for these reptiles into raiding our taxes to stuff their corrupt legal mouths with our gold. They advertise everywhere for 'victims' of the public sector. It's a scam and it's costing us billions - and only the skunk lawyers are getting rich.

Surely there's a simple solution. We must legislate rapidly to proscribe civil actions against public sector bodies from Conditional Fee Agreements ('no win no fee'). It was of course Blair who introduced this pernicious error in the Access to Justice Act 1999. Like much of what he did, it was wrong, and has created a disastrous legacy for our country. If you slip on a grape in Tesco and hurt your back, fine - CFA is a good way to go. If a copper sprained your finger whilst wrestling a Zombie knife from your hand, fund a civil action yourself. No legal aid. No CFA.