Missing the point on a grand scale, Nick Clegg has used the Liberal Democrat conference as an opportunity to show the country that they are no longer 'Liberal' or 'Democratic'. The most fitting description for the minority party in the coalition would now be New, New Labour in disguise.
Socialist policies, hand wringing and blaming everyone other than the guilty are what brought this country to the brink of destruction in the first place. Now, with a firm acknowledgement that our social problems need to be sorted out sharpish, Nick Clegg and the leftie loonies at the Lib-Dem conference propose only more of the same.
The social tensions behind this summer’s rioting must not be ignored, Nick Clegg will warn today.
The Deputy Prime Minister will use his flagship conference speech to insist many of the looters had ‘lost touch with their own future’ because they had been let down by society.
They have only been let down by society if you subscribe to the notion that society owes them a life and a living.
The reality is, those people who were out rioting in the streets this summer were the ones who have been told all their lives that society and the state is responsible for their success or failure in life and not themselves. When the state failed to deliver the utopian dream it had promised for the last fourteen years, people took to the streets. Prompted I might add, by the police shooting of an armed gangster, and culminating in not political protest, but theft and destruction.
People who didn't subscribe to the socialist fantasy, those who worked hard for what they gained and did not spend their lives walking around with their hands out claiming entitlement, those people stayed at home and watched events unfold on the telly.
To say now that the answer lies in giving more free stuff to feckless and criminal element in society is the answer, could not be more wrong.
Children are not going to jump at the opportunity of an extra two weeks schooling in the summer holidays, they don't even want to attend school in term time. It's beyond me that Nick Clegg thinks he can separate the idiot spawn of the council estates from their x-boxes and Stella, and get them to attend school for an extra two weeks, and think that this will turn them into respectable, hard working people. What is this man thinking? And He's the deputy Prime Minister.
The answer is not to be giving more free stuff to these people, it's time to start taking it away.
Take away the entitlements, take away the handouts and benefits, take away the belief that they are owed a life and living, and above all, if they break the law, take away their freedom.
In a sign of growing coalition tensions on law and order, Lib Dem justice minister Lord McNally revealed last night that he is attempting to resist proposals from Downing Street to toughen up sentencing powers in the wake of the riots.
He told a fringe meeting that ‘the little elves that work in Number Ten helping the Prime Minister’ were attempting to insert new offences and tougher sentences into a Bill going through Parliament.
This will be seen as a warning of a rebellion against measures such as tougher punishments for knife crime, docking benefits of convicted rioters and evicting their families from council housing.
There has been an awful lot of talk from all sides in the wake of the riots. The only good thing to come out of all the gas is that most of the rioters have been denied bail and a number of them have received sentences that are much tougher than what they might have expected.
Britain is becoming a country of no consequences for crime. The police are so politically influenced and target driven that they are no longer fit for purpose.
When a pub singer can be arrested under hate crime laws for singing 'Kung Fu Fighting', but riot police will stand back when a bunch of feral youths set fire to a town centre, it shows you how very broken the police 'force' of this country is.
One of the reasons people freely took to the streets this summer is their knowledge that nothing much will happen to them. A lot of these people had already been through the system, some of them a number of times. When you are free to commit crime with impunity and the only punishments you ever get are asbos and suspended sentences / community punishment, it is unlikely you will be scared of the law, or even wary.
In the case of crimes involving violence or damage to person or property, the courts should be handing down stiff custodial terms. There needs to be serious consequences for crime if we are ever going to come close to beating it.
The minister claimed some proposed offences might prove too costly and result in too many offenders being jailed.
In these times of 'austerity', it is important that we endeavour to save money in any areas we can. Criminal justice is not one of those areas. Financial cost is no excuse for putting a violent offender back on the streets with no real punishment and no deterrent from committing crimes in the future.
There are many ways we can save money. Not just a few thousand here and there, but we have many opportunities to save billions of pounds. I won't go into the subject of the EU or overseas aid, however, not wasting £50m on summer schools for tearaway teens would be a small start.
So what if more violent offenders end up in prison and so what if it costs a lot of money to put them there. Our priority should be teaching offenders the consequences of crime, the hard way if necessary.
You want to save money? Then let's start taking stuff away, as I've already said.
In today’s speech, Mr Clegg will insist he cares most about ‘ensuring a fair start for every child’. In what will be seen as a swipe at his Tory coalition colleagues, he will suggest measures to improve social mobility are being blocked by ‘those who do so well out of the status quo’.
I'm sorry Mr Clegg but it isn't your place to be ensuring a 'fair start for every child'. That can only come from a responsible approach from every parent. The government needs to stop assuming responsibility for the nations children and put the onus back on the parent to care for and raise the child.
Also in the conference:
I know that opinions can be quite vocal where Margaret Thatcher was concerned, but to claim the privatisation of utility companies, among other industries, that were wasteful, unproductive and draining millions in taxpayers money makes no financial sense. The government does not make a good company chairman as they are working with an endless pit of other peoples money. Waste is criminally rife in nationalised industry.
What is utterly stupid is to put the utility companies in the hands of private business, people who through competition have incentive to provide quality and service at a low price, then force them to invest in home insulation, spend money on 'vulnerable' people and wast millions in unproductive, unprofitable green energy technologies. There are so many regulations and requirements on modern utility companies that you may as well call them nationalised.
Surely the best course would be to remove the rafts of red tape, dispel the climate change myth and stop forced investment in wind technology.
The privately owned housing stock is not there to be utilised at will by the government or local councils. Homes that are owned are private property. What a home owner chooses to do with that property is no business of the government.
Mr Stunell talks of it being criminal that some people cannot get a decent home because there are 1.8 million families on the social housing list. This is not because some people own more than one house or because some houses are empty.
How many council houses do we give to those granted asylum? From 1997 - 2006, there were 40,000 more grants of asylum given than there were extra council houses built.
How many council houses do we give to single parents? A report from the Town and County Planning association says the number of lone parent households will have increased by 889,000 between 2006 and 2026. That's not increased to, but increased by.
Maybe there would be a more ready supply of council housing if we stopped giving them away to those that don't deserve them. I know that assylum seekers may have escaped from an awful reality (or just one that's a bit crap), but they are supposed to stop at the nearest friendly country. I know our assylum seekers are not coming from France and Ireland, they are crossing entire continents to get to England because they know that on arrival they will be given free housing and free cash.
I know that there are single parents out there who made responsible choices in life but still fell on hard times. They are way in the minority because we are happy to give free housing and free money to anyone who has a baby and then puts their hand out.
It time to start taking things away. Don't punish people who have done well for themselves and now own more than one property, instead, stop rewarding the feckless, the entitled and those with their hands out.
Just like imposing a 50p tax rate on the rich, penalising people for their success is not the way to solve the countries problems. You want more tax? Then stop wasting what you already get.
Everything said at this LibDem conference is going down the wrong track. It's neither Liberal nor Democratic and shouting for more of the same will not solve any of our problems.
The coalition is not working as is. The Conservatives would do well to disband it altogether and call an election. There's probably no one left worth voting for though. Certainly none of the big three have what it takes to sort out the countries problems but if we continue with people like Nick Clegg calling the shots, Britains journey to the bottom of the toilet will be over fairly soon.
I've got beans.
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