A crime is a crime no matter how you categorise it!

Dumbing down crime to try and make some supposedly minor offences sound inconsequential is ruining our country and driving the law abiding mad with anger.

The death of David Askew, a 64 year old man with learning difficulties who was being persecuted in his own home by young thugs, is being talked of as being a result of "anti-social" behaviour.

NO, it is as a result of criminal activity - pure and simple.

No doubt those arrested will be afforded a range of human rights they did not afford to their victim. These people take no responsibility for their actions and yet expect society to bow to them when they demand special treatment. For me, to earn rights in our society you need to take a reasonable amount of responsibility for your actions and this is clearly a principle our authorities have lost complete touch with.

Local Police and Council officials were well aware of the issues faced by Mr Askew but clearly treated them as being a series of minor offences which did not merit intervention. By not treating low level crime as being a precursor to more serious events our authorities let Mr Askew, and all of us, down.

No matter what language you choose to use to describe the events that led to Mr Askew's death our criminal justice system must show no mercy for those neighbours say "tormented" Mr Askew "to death - like bear bating".

The important thing now is to learn the lessons these events teach us and to treat anti-social behaviour as the crime it really is. Mr Askew's memory deserves nothing less.

Time to get tough on CRIME!

Our justice system is out of control! Let me tell you why.

1) A man has just been sentenced to two weeks imprisonment for entering a drug dealers home, threatening the drug dealer (who has hooked one of his family members on heroin) and for taking the drug dealers heroin and flushing it down the toilet.

What an outrage! The gentleman in question admits to being no angel but if the police and procurator fiscal are unable to get drug dealers off our streets no one should be surprised if members of the community take matters into their own hands.

2) Sex beast John Cronin absconded from a probation hostel earlier this week and is now in the custody of West Midlands Police on suspicion of fraud. This man was sentenced to (and wait to you hear this) Life Imprisonment in 1992 for attacking a woman in her Edinburgh home, only to be released from prison in 1996. LIFE - someone is having a laugh at the expense on the safety of our public.

Since his release Mr. Cronin has been in custody in Sweden, Ireland and England for a string of offences and he remains a danger to the public wherever he goes. It was the Scottish justice system who let us down first when they released Cronin after just 4 years and it is surely time he was incarcerated for LIFE to protect people all over the world.

The PC Brigade will cry foul and point to the human rights of both the drug dealer and John Cronin. I say that as both have chosen to take NO responsibility for their actions they have no right to expect compassion from society given the threat they pose to us all. It's time to get tough on crime and that means stiffer sentences for those that are the causes of crime!

Is Beauty Only Skin Deep In Beijing?

The Opening Ceremony at this years Olympic Games was truly something to behold - even if some of the fire works were CGI and not real! The one truly disturbing factor for the Games Committee is that organisers felt it necessary to put a child model onto stage to replace the wonderfully talented singer of the words going out over the public address system because she was not attractive enough.

The angelic voice of Yang Peiyi, (pictured on the right), enhanced the wonderful visual display put on by Chinese authorities to herald the opening of their Olympics. The young girl in the red dress put forward as the singer of "Hymn to the Motherland", Lin Miaoke (pictured on the left), added nothing to this visual display even though I am sure many people sitting at home across the globe probably commented on how cute she looked.

It's time China grew up and started acting responsibly. We want a games where we see the talent of its nation and how effective they can be as organisers of an event that promotes harmony amongst the people of the world.

Yang Peiyi is a true Chinese star and someone their whole country can be proud of for her hard work at the Olympics. Let's hope her country recognises and honours her accordingly!

Dogs - Mans Best Friend or Offensive Animal?

I am widely quoted today, in national newspapers, following the decision of Tayside Police to apologise for using a puppy dog in an advert designed to publicise their non-emergency telephone number. This apology followed a complaint by a Dundee Councillor that this image is offensive to Muslims because dogs are considered to be ritually unclean in his religion.

I am in no doubt that the advertising agency who designed this advert did so on the basis that the UK is the most dog loving nation on earth. In our culture dogs are viewed as mans best friend and I am sure the ad agency simply wanted people to think of their local Police as mans best friend by using the imagery of one of their dog, 'Rebel', to advertise the Tayside Police force.

The British way of life means is happy to respect cultures from all around the world and to allow them to prosper in Britain alongside our own way of life. I am quite sure Andrex will not drop their puppy dog from advertising, packaging and branding and I am equally sure their toilet tissue will continue to be used by people of all religions.

Britain is a nation that know all about respect and we have the right to have our culture respected. 'Rebel' is simply a puppy dog training to serve his local community in our Police Force. He's a cute little thing and I am sure he will do a lot of good for the Tayside community, regardless of their religion!

There's No Place For Political Correctness In Our NHS

The world's gone mad! Or at least it appears it has in our NHS.

"Gay" patients must now to be referred to by NHS staff as, "men who have sex with men", (MSM), and similar descriptive terms are to be used instead of "prostitute" and "intravenous drug user". Why? Apparently for fear of causing offence!

National Services Scotland, who are advising health boards on the issue, have clearly lost the plot. So much so that gay rights groups have labelled their new terminology as "demeaning" to homosexuals and even Lothian and Borders police have pointed to this oversimplification as being inappropriate.

Staff in NHS maternity units are already told not to refer to the father of a child as the mothers husband, even if they know they are, for fear of causing offence and the simple question must now be "where does this all end?".

It's time for the Political Correctness brigade to leave us all alone and let the civil, law abiding majority decide what is right and what is wrong and what is appropriate and inappropriate.

You can join the Campaign Against Political Correctness via its website at: www.capc.co.uk

What About The Human Rights Of The Law Abiding Majority!?!

So, Abu Qatada, the radical Islamic cleric and Osama bin Laden’s “right-hand man in Europe”, has been released from jail because we apparently have no grounds to keep him in prison.

It comes as no surprise to me that the principle reason given by the judge, Mr Justice Mitting, for his release was possible infringement of his human rights if we continued to detain him, despite the danger he presents to British people. This followed an earlier Court of Appeal decision to refuse his deportation to Jordan, again on the grounds that it might breach his human rights.


To put this into perspective, the same court had earlier described Qatada as "a truly dangerous individual" who was "heavily involved, indeed at the centre of terrorist activities associated with al-Qa'eda". Despite this description it appears our governments devotion to the European Convention on Human Rights prevents us from throwing him out of our country or locking him.


Over the next few days, weeks and months this dangerous man will be confined to his London home for a minimum of 22 hours of every day and we will require him to wear an electronic tag. We will continue to pay his family £12,000 a year in state benefits, (£1,000 a month), and can now add to this the cost of a 24 hour a day 7 day a week police presence outside his house - all this being spent on a man the police once found with £170,000 in cash in his possession.

Devastation to a bombed hotel lobby in Amman, Jordan, November 1998

This man helped mastermind the 11th September bombings and Jordan has already convicted him, in his absence, of bombings in Amman in 1998 and of providing finance and advice to terrorists planning a series of explosions on Millennium night. To enable us to consider his deportation Jordan promised Qatada a retrial, but our Court of Appeal now says we cannot deport him to stand trial in Jordan because some of the evidence they might use could have been obtained using torture.


If this is what ECHR means to the safety and security of the UK I say we kick it into touch and fend for ourselves.


The British public is very capable of making sensible decisions on human rights and people who want to see an end to our way of life should not be allowed to hide behind European law to retain residential status and claim state benefits - no matter what they claim will happen to them if they are deported!

Crime And REAL Punishment

Not many of us are familiar with the elected Sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, Joe Arpaio! But does he have any lessons to teach us about punishing criminals in a way that makes them less likely to reoffend?

Sheriff Arpaio keeps getting elected, over and over again, because he punishes criminal activity in a way that marries with his local public's desire to deter crime and not to have to pay excessively for punishment of criminal activity.

Following his election, Sheriff Arpaio decided not to build another expensive jail complex so created the "tent city jail", (essentially a tented village surrounded by barbed wire). He banned smoking and pornographic magazines in jail and he also took away inmates weightlifting equipment, explaining his reasons by saying: "They're in jail to pay a debt to society not to build muscles so they can assault innocent people when they leave."

To keep convicted criminals occupied, he started chain gangs to use inmates to do free work on county and city projects - saving taxpayer's money. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn't get sued for discrimination.

He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only allows the Disney channel and the weather channel. When asked why the weather channel, he replied: "So these morons will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs." Coffee is no longer served to prisoners because it has zero nutritional value and is therefore a waste of taxpayer money. When the inmates complained, he told them: "This isn't the Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it, don't come back."


When temperatures rose to record levels in Phoenix in June 2007, the Associated Press reported: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed wire surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts. On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing pink boxer shorts were overheard chatting in the tents, where temperatures reached 128 degrees. "This is hell. It feels like we live in a furnace," said Ernesto Gonzales, an inmate for 2 years with 10 more to go. "It's inhumane." Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who makes his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic. "Criminals should be punished for their crimes - not live in luxury until it's time for parole, only to go out and commit more crimes so they can come back in to live on taxpayers money and enjoy things many taxpayers can't afford to have for themselves."

The same day he is reported to have told inmates who were complaining of the heat in the tents: "It's between 120 to 130 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers live in tents, they have to walk all day in the sun wearing full battle gear and they get shot at, and they have not committed any crimes, so shut your damned mouths!"

If all prisons were like Sheriff Joe Arpaio's I wonder whether we might just experience a lot less crime and I am sure we would not be in the current position of running out of prison spaces.

Sheriff Joe is accountable to the residents of Maricopa County and has recently been re-elected for an unprecedented fourth 4 year term. His ethos seems to be that local people want to see criminals punished in a way that deters criminal activity, he does allow political correctness to interfere with his work and he challenges the sort of crazy rules we suffer from as a result of the European Convention on Human Rights. Basically he wants a deal for his law abiding public which is fair on them given they are paying for the criminal activity of others.

I wonder whether the British public would decide to elect people like Joe Arpaio if we allowed to elect our local Chief of Police? It certainly seems to me that we have a lot to learn from people like Sheriff Arpaio and should look to some of his ideas to help redress the balance between taxpayer and criminal.

Thanks Joe, you have given us a lot to consider and shown us we may have a lot to learn!

You can read more about Sheriff Joe Arpaio at: http://www.mcso.org/index.php?a=GetModule&mn=Sheriff_Bio