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Libdemologists: Doomed MP Floors Spin Doctor
When I saw the tag and the headline I thought it might be Paul Rowen MP giving Dave Drunkagain the bum's rush. Heaven knows Dave cannot keep his feet when he's drunk and disorderly! We've seen him flat on his arse more than once. But on this occasion the argy bargy involved Messrs Littlewood, a knifed former Cowley Street spin doctor, and one Adrian Sanders MP (who?) a man with even less chance of survival than the Manky trio of Rowen, Leech and Hunter. Telegraph report.
STOP PRESS: The clown Huhne is on BBC News 24 doing the old Lib Dem double, treble, quadruple spend shuffle. He's buying 10,000 more bobbies with the saving on implementing iD cards which has already been used to finance the £20 Billion cut in tax. Brilliant stuff.
UPDATE 16:17: The doomed MP's MySpace is worth a listen - Anarchy in the UK was I think a moment of sanity in a diet of Prog Rock.
22 comments:
Nick Clegg's speech was superb and backed by Chris Huhne's call for more police to catch criminals.
Word in the conference bar was young Dave Heineken, bottle of Hennigan in hand was looking a little rosy cheeked.
Was he overcome with emotion or just a little flustered at the thought of thoose extra policemen's helmets thrusting their investigative skills into the allegations of criminal activity with senior Rochdale Lib Dems?
Historic sexual abuse? Undeclared party donations? Money laundering? Criminal conspiracy? Incitement to pervert the cause of justice? Incitement to religious and racial hatred? Cash for questions and planning applications?
Time for the Federal Party to get tough on crime by being tough on the causes of crime.
The Lib Dems in Bournmouth seem to like dog whistle soundbites about crime. Try this one out for size with regard to Grand Wizzard Cyril and Team Hennighan that promotes Rochdale's MP Paul Rowen by using public money:
"Prison works".
That's right Mr Huhne, let's get catching those criminals.
Shame about that copyright notice. Would probably stop a less brazen blogger using the thing ...
Didn't have time to find a version without the banner across it. A Lib Dem source suggests the assault was more serious than the Telegraph and others have reported. Which is worse? Attacking a fellow Libdemologist or whacking an unfeasibly protected photo from a venue website?
There's only one minor technical detail of a problem about your pronouncement of Chris Huhne's promise to put 10,000 more police on the beat. He didn't say it!
I have just watched the late night rerun on BBC2 and heard him say the following:
"If the prison population was the same as when Labour took control there would be enough money to put an extra 25,000 police on the streets
If the ID scheme were scrapped that would pay for another 10,000 beat officers.
That would be an extra 35,000 police officers fighting crime"
He was using examples of what Labour's total mismanagement of law and order would mean if it had been spent wisely. It was neither a promise nor a spending pledge.
Only an idiot would think it was or a liar claim it to be.
There are more prisoners per head in this country than any other in Europe with the exception of Turkey. A teenager serving a prison sentence here is more than 90% likely to be reconvicted. A young black male in Britain is more likely to go to prison than to university.
I wish Huhne had made that promise, but he didn't.
Labour announce every increease in spending in triplicate and use dodgy (and technically illegal) accounting methods to inflate the actual growth by up to five times the amount, so don't bloody complain if the tables ever are turned.
Hennigan watchers have spotted a rather forlorn Dave wandering around quite alone and without a beer.
Red eyes, pale skin, very quiet.
Anon 23:58: To be blunt this is ridiculous having-it-both-ways NONSENSE from Huhne.
Moaning that only 1% of "criminals" get convicted?
Moaning about prisoner numbers?
Moaning about police numbers?
Feeding out disingenuous soundbites? As this 10,000 more police "promise" WAS run on news as the main policy commitment.
I agree though. Nothing LDs ever say is a costed commitment. It's all just "chatting fart" sad to say.
Nice prediction from anon 19:16 on Clogg's barnstorming speech. Brilliantshow of twaddle and soundbite combined in glorious libdemmery or libdemagoguery?
So perhaps you can inform everybody as to what percentage of crimes do result in a conviction.
Perhaps you can let us all know what percentage of the UK population is currently in prison and compare it to the rest of Europe.
And then perhaps you can reflect on those two figures (whatever they may be) and wonder if there just might be a connection.
Maybe you could tell us how much less or more the government would be spending if our prison population was the same as our neighbours.
Maybe you could then work out how many more or fewer police this could fund on our streets. And all this without changing the taxation system at all.
I'd contend that we could actually employ more police officers by reducing the numbers that we chuck into prison.
More police on the streets, less fear of crime, less need to carry knives. Just what part of that don't you agree with.
Perhaps Anon 15:05 has a point.
Look at the conviction rates.
Criminals in Rochdale get away Scot free.
Bullying politicians can abuse young lads and get away with it. The local newspaper keeps quiet. The DPP drop the charges. Special Branch take away the files. Cyril Smith, unconvicted sex offender.
Asbestos companies can kill with impunity and even pay out share dividends. Cyril Smith, Parliamentary unconvicted asbestos champion, lobbyist and consultant.
Gangsters, sorry, er, businessmen can allegedly throw cash about, get planning permissions and do deals in Rochdale Town Centre with Rochdale Council and the Lib Dems.
Cyril Smith, unconvicted Lib Dem party fundraier.
Criminal cover up, blackmail, corruption and collusion.
Private Eye must only be scratching the surface of this cess pit.
Chris Hunhe and the Federal Party needs to have the courage of their convictions. Criminal ones.
Too far anon 21:00. Less of this hitting on Hennigan's arse. Deleted.
Anon 15:05:
Huhne has quoted this 1%. He's not my man. He's yours apparently. It is not my business to make Huhne's bullshit stand up. That is for you lot.
Explain where he gets his 1% figure from. Show me the workings.
Total number of crimes in UK 2007-2008 11.3 million (British Crime Survey)
Number of people convicted each tear 76,000 (Department of Justice)
Avergae number of crimes each convicted person is found guilty of, just under 1.5% (HM Prison Service)
= 1% (1.009% if you want to be arsey about it)
What twaddle.
BCS figure given. I'll accept that as I tend to accept BCS figures. Some of these though are of course extraordinarily slight things that may or may not be crimes that COULD possibly lead to convictions or cautions. For example lesser ASB.
You know that, I know that, Huhne knows that.
Number of convictions - or you say "people convicted" 76,000. That might be right. But if it is it makes the rest of your script wrong.
The number of convictions for the year to March 2008 was 726,342.
Which - if your 76,000 is correct - is between 9 and 10 crimes per perp. About 9.5.
There are also 376,166 crimes leading to formal cautions for the period. And 106,707 TICs.
These take crimes per perp to about 15 if your 76,000 is correct.
And they add up to around 1.29 million convictions, cautions and TICs. Which is about 11%.
Your figures may each have some substance though what the 1.5% is supposed to mean I don't know. But what they don't do is support Huhne's twaddle.
This is an extraordinary exaggeration. Saying 1% when it is 8% or 11% including formal cautions which are on the record for five years as convictions.
Explain yourself, or slink away.
Slink away it is then ...
If you define goiing to work as 'slinking away'. then, yes, I did slink away.
If you think that people who receieved an official caution really are among those sentenced to prison last year, then you figures make sense. If not ....
Would you like me to list here the issues that you have slunk away from - including defending homophobia; a refusal to explain the fact that your election campaigns were funded by property speculators; refusing to defend or apologise for calling somebody an 'alleged racist' when they have been no such thing.
I could go on, but I think I'll go and get some tea instead - if that's alright with you.
One of Dave's press releases at the time of the Lib Dem leadership race.
Mention of "leadership favourite" Chris Who?n coming up to Rochdale to kiss Cyril's ring:
"I had the pleasure of paying homage to Sir Cyril last week in Rochdale and enjoyed his company immensely. Sir Cyril has always had a reputation for plain speaking and the great honesty he has consistently displayed is a lesson to any aspiring politician"
Ouch.
Unless he was talking tongue in cheek (sans wet sponge), then such glowing words are going to embarrass Chris Huhne like a vegetarian's fart in a lift.
It's so good to see that the spirit of 'Carry On' is not dead in this country.
If you want to deal with important sibjects, that's fine. But please without all this schoolby sniggering. To call it double entendre would be to give it a billing it does not deserve.
Don't try these moral high ground shenanighans here. Especially not when attempting to defend Cyril Smith.
Personally I prefer gallows humour, like Cyril did when demanding that sex offenders be hung. Even, if it later transipred, when they were innocent.
But then again, Cyril seems to have done very well for himself by turning a blind eye to innocents receiving a death sentence.
"They knew the dangers, they could have left".
Words of a perverted shitbag that has got away with murder for years.
Anonymous 22:12
It is not like you to use work as an excuse for not blogging in a timely way.
My response to your inaccurate research states clearly that Huhne exaggerates eight-fold if it's only fresh convictions, and eleven-fold if we count formal cautions and TICs.
If we also take other forms of cautions to adults, and of course cases of detection, apprehension and no conviction we can see that Huhne's fibbing takes on even greater dimensions.
He was trying to say that only 1% of crimes get a satisfactory result i.e. conviction.
This is plain wrong on its own terms. But when you consider that Huhne wants cautions and so on it is super clear that he is either utterly muddled or utterly disingenuous with his 1%.
And although the BCS don't ask under 16s the question they do include many crimes committed by under 16s on older respondents. In that regard too his 1% is utterly worthless as a statistic.
It really is no good - even in rhetorical terms - to say:
"Nah nah, Huhne is only out by a factor of eight."
It just won't do. In fact with all the other categories of detected and dealt with crime - including cautions, TICs and youth crime Huhne is out by far more than a factor of eight.
Perhaps you will have the good grace to concede this fact?
I see you now want to include acquittals as part of the conviction rate. God help us.
Apples and oranges, Chris. Or in your case, applaes, oranges and bananas. You seem to want to add formal convictions, cautions, TICs, school detention and wrong answers in pub quizzes.
Last year there were just under 5 million recorded crimes in this country. I assume that we can take it for granted that nobody is getting convicted of an unrecorded crime (however much authoritarian headcases like Straw, Blunkett, Reid and your good self may wish it so). So your fugures suggect that over 26% of all these crimes result in a safe conviction.
Official conviction rates recorded crime for
- serious woundings 9.7%
- robbery 8.9%
- rape 5.5%
and these are the crimes that have the most time and attention paid to them by the police.
60% of crime is not recorded. Unless you have found a way to secure a conviction that isn't even on the books then your figures are a total fiction.
Any chance of anseers to the other questions?
My point is simple.
Huhne's implication of only 1% of crime being addressed - which is what he implied - is utterly wrong.
Using BCS figures and DoJ figures we get 11M crimes and 3/4 million convictions. This is around 8%.
You should I think either acknowledge that - i.e. that your calculation of 1% and Huhne's rhetoric was basically useless - or forget it. There's no point in discussing something with someone who talks across the point.
Many of the other crimes are also addressed by cautions, TICs, youth courts etc. As it should be. And are you suggesting that acquittals should be stopped now?
Huhne is a clown and/or a liar.
On your strident calling me out for suggesting Huhne was suggesting 10,000 more police with iD card savings I'd direct you to the billionairess Lynne Featherstone - who once adviced people on the dole to become LD councillors "so you can afford a cleaner" - and her comments confirming Huhne's commitment on last night's BBC Question Time.
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