Listening

Listening To The People

There are matters of liberty and democracy that the British government is ignoring at the peril of both it and the society it exists to serve. Over the weekend I sat with a group of middle class people, the type who form the backbone of England. These are not wide-eyed radicals; by and large they are a calm group, patient, friendly, almost docile in their decency. I can report that they are now becoming very impatient and angry with the British leadership, unable to accept what’s happening and convinced that no one in governmental power is listening to their concerns. I do not pretend that this is a scientifically chosen or representative group, but I am prepared to bet that this is the view of the vast majority of British people. These are the issues they discussed and I list them in the order they raised them, not in my personal priority listing. On all these matters I am expressing the unanimous view except where I state otherwise.

Prison sentencing is too lax. Life has to mean life for murder, or other serious crime. It is not acceptable that life has come to mean 15 years in the UK, with up to one third off for good behavior. The common view is that if we need to build more prisons we should get on with doing it.

If the system will not allow “proper” life meaning life sentences the consensus is that capital punishment must be reintroduced. I was only one of two who expressed a dissenting view on this. I believe that capital punishment is premeditated murder by the state, which cannot justify taking a life in revenge for taking a life. If it’s wrong for an individual to murder someone, it must be equally wrong for the state to do the same. There is also the reasonable chance that mistakes, that are unalterable, could and would be made.

People no longer understand our criminal justice system, and have lost faith in its fairness, efficiency and transparency. No one in this group believed in the top level of management in the police service any more, although there was widespread respect for the men and women on the beat. There was universal belief that they had too much paper work to do, and that most of this was motivated by political correctness rather than to help maintain law and order and protect the citizenry.

There is total belief in and admiration for the efficiency and bravery of our armed forces. But there is a common perception that they are mismanaged, under resourced and equipped. The old saying from World War 1 comes to mind when the German leader described the British armed forces thus, “Lions led by donkeys.”

Everyone believed that the current fuel taxes and duties are grotesquely high and must be urgently reduced. Only one person felt that the proposed additional duties would in any way help the environment although they provided no evidence as to why they thought this was so. Their view was that if we didn’t take such measures now our children and grandchildren would be fighting for food and other resources.

The entire group thought that the British Prime Minister is a second rater, unable to lead and unwilling to listen. It also should be said that Gordon Brown is as unlucky as his predecessor was lucky. Blair had another huge advantage over his successor, charisma by the truckload whereas Brown is a black hole in the charm stakes. I don’t think anyone can dispute this, including the increasingly peevish PM. If Gordon were a political genius I would love to see any evidence, as would the country. If he’s a nice guy then we need some help us to see it.

Above all the group was furious that we, as a nation, are being spied upon, relentlessly and with increasing frequency. There was only one supporter for the huge increase of CCTV cameras, whereas everyone else was vehemently opposed. The supporter trotted out that old canard “If you’ve done nothing wrong what have you got to worry about?” The correct response is that this constant spying intrudes into our privacy and the presumption of our common innocence. The fact that the nearly 5 million cameras in this small country do occasionally catch a criminal does not mean that there are no other means by which those criminals would have been caught had there been no cameras. Add to this the almost unbelievable and daft spying now directed by the tin pot dictators in our town halls. This includes placing hundreds of thousands of concealed mini cameras in our waste bins to detect whether or not we are correctly sorting our rubbish according to their environmentally friendly regulations. At the same time no official appears to do anything when many families living in sinkhole housing estates throw their rubbish over their balcony parapets, so that they don’t have to bother walking down the steps in order to place it in the correct bins. No one could fabricate such lunacy, but it’s happening all over Britain today.

I think my fellow Brits are right to feel and express these views and it’s long overdue that this, the previously silent majority, is listened to. The British are the most placid of nations, until they are made angry, and then they are an implacable and terrible enemy to those who have offended their sense of decency and fair play. History is peppered with the bleached bones of tyrants destroyed by the British when they became angry.