Moron oxide - the sweet smell of success

Quite straight-facedly (monkey’s bollock though that face resembles), and being no stranger to hilarious irony, the BBC provides a showplace for our corrupt and useless political class (Labour Division) to offer excuses for its abject, knowing, and deadly failures of morality, duty, and courage.

No excuses' over family's deaths

There were "no excuses" for failings which contributed to the deaths of a mother and daughter who were hounded by youths, the home secretary has said.

Fiona Pilkington, 38, killed herself and Francecca Hardwick in a burning car after years of abuse on their estate.

An inquest jury said Leicestershire Police and two councils had not handled complaints from the family properly.

In much the same way that, for example, the UK Labour Party and Conservative Party did not handle the rise of fascism and Nazism properly between 1933 and 1940.

Alan Johnson said the agencies were wrong to regard such anti-social behaviour as "low-level crime".

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is to investigate the handling of the case.

Speaking to BBC News, Mr Johnson said: "This should never have happened and there are no excuses for this and there can be no excuses for this.

"This is an example of a complacency that we are determined to eradicate wherever it is."

Dosed with a new blend of sodium pentothal and Rohypnol, he added: “We’ve only been in office for 12 years and so now, having put our unique talents to work in the education, health, and benefits systems, we now move forward onto the broad, sunlit uplands of the pre-election months to notice that some people break not only the tolerant taboos of diverse and liberal free speechers, but also laws, windows, hearts and minds- some of them belonging to really quite unimportant people, but still, every little helps.”

Speaking about the anti-social behaviour the family experienced, he added: "In Fiona Pilkington's case there was insufficient attention to this, it was classified as low level when it is high level if you are experiencing it, that is for sure."

While accepting that the police had made improvements in the past two years, Mr Johnson said the fact remained the existing powers had not been used properly.

"It is the police's job, along with the local authority and social services and housing and all the rest of it, to ensure that people are not driven to the kind of despair Fiona Pilkington was driven to.

“Our dozen years running down the prisons system and the whole ideas of incarceration and punishment have no more to do with this kind of savagery as, say, unprotected promiscuous sex has to do with venereal diseases and pregnancy rates.”

"She did that terrible thing because she felt at her wits' end and she had to get a message to someone and if we go through a load of excuses about this we will not tackle the root problem."

Forensic examination tent at Earl Shilton

The bodies were found in the burning car in October 2007

Mr Johnson added: "I take my responsibilities seriously here.

Okay, okay. Calm down at the back there. Hysterical laughter is undignified. Wipe your tears, put your teeth back in, and read on.

"I'm concerned that we've coasted a bit on anti-social behaviour…

Well spotted. You’ve also spent a bit, borrowed a bit, and got into a scrap or two. But let’s not exaggerate any of this, shall we?

We need to ensure now that right across the country there are consistent standards."

Oh, I think that outside Islington and certain areas of Gloucestershire, you’ll find the scuffers unwilling to provide any time for observing, recording, and preventing mob violence and class hatred.

I think it’s officially called ‘persecution in the community,’ or some such.

Conservative leader David Cameron said it was "an absolutely horrific case" which raised questions for both the police and the council.

"But also we have had a decade of a Labour Government telling us about anti-social behaviour legislation and instructions and orders to the police and it just isn't working," he said.

"We've got to get rid of the police paperwork, we've got to get them back on the streets, we've got to make them feel empowered to intervene and clear these people off the streets and make them accountable locally so there are consequences if they don't deliver."

“And therefore I pledge my administration to closing down the Probation Service and most open prisons and the Children’s Minister and spending the money on new prisons and borstals. I will oblige magistrates and judges to operate ‘a one chance and then you’re inside’ policy for all acts of violence, domestic damage, threats and housebreaking, and parole will begin only after ¾ of any sentence for violence, abuse, and illegal entry to homes.”

Say, didn’t Pink Floyd do an album cover reminiscent of the likelihood of this?

Yeah.

The inquest at Loughborough Town Hall heard Ms Pilkington, her daughter and her son, Anthony, who has severe dyslexia, suffered more than 10 years of harassment and threats from a gang of teenagers living on their street in Barwell.

10 years during which a harmless woman and her poor distressed daughter and son were vilely persecuted, insulted, intimidated, threatened and abused, and during which time they received exactly no help from strutting ‘police officers’ in their comic opera uniforms poncing around like banana republic generalissimos, council officers drew their wages and ignored the many complaints.

The only upside of this tragedy is that it brings this issue into the open

Mark Golding, Mencap

Mencap will, of course, be calling for the public birching of those found guilty of insulting the mentally handicapped.

The council has admitted the Simmons family, who live nearby and are thought to be among those involved, still cause trouble in the area. When asked by the BBC if his children bore any responsibility for the deaths, the father said: "That's for the authorities to decide."

Werl, he don’t know what responserbilitty means, do he, poor lamb?

Ms Pilkington is believed to have poured the contents of a 10-litre can of petrol over clothes in the back seat of the car, and set them alight.

The jury found Ms Pilkington killed herself and her daughter "due to the stress and anxiety regarding her daughter's future, and ongoing anti-social behaviour".

The jury foreman said the police's response had had an impact on Ms Pilkington's decision to unlawfully kill her daughter and commit suicide.

Relatives described how Ms Pilkington had complained for years about youths "taunting and abusing" her at her home, but six months before her death had told them "I give up".

Temporary Chief Constable Chris Eyre of Leicestershire Police said he was "extremely sorry" that police failed to help Ms Pilkington and her daughter.

Mark Golding, chief executive of Mencap, said "hate crime" against people with learning disabilities was common and should be taken as seriously as racial abuse.

He added: "I think this case will be the wake-up call that gives it that kind of profile.

"Until now it's been seen as low-level, it's being treated as misbehaviour and people's lives are being ruined as a result."

Here it comes. The stocks for spaz-bashers, for sure, right?

Mr Golding said more education about disabilities was needed in schools, and authorities needed to work together to support people with learning difficulties and stop a similar tragedy happening again.

He added: "The only upside of this tragedy is that it brings this issue into the open."

The filth who did this aren’t in any schools, Mark Golding, you witless oaf.

They’ve been truanting almost all their lives from schools that are now free of all authority, sanction, respect, or power to compel attendance, thanks to thinking like yours. You and your tribe did this – caused it – it’s your soft-headed, soft-power, soft-option system, Mister Golding. You’re not too far from the political ‘authorities yourself’, are you?* What expertise or knowledge of life in, or on the edge, of underclass ‘neighbourhoods’ can you possibly have?

However, it does lead us quite nicely to the BBC’s political class mantra. They’re actually going to allow comments on this story and so must think that they’re onto a winner.

Have you suffered from disability discrimination? Do you live in Barwell? Have you been affected by the issues raised in this story? Tell us your experiences using the form below.

A selection of your comments may be published, displaying your name and location unless you state otherwise in the box below.

They can only think - if that’s not too strong an expression – and confront this problem (which certainly is too strong an expression) in terms of a clash of competing victimhoods.

You see, Francecca Hardwick wasn’t burned by her distraught and desperate mother as the result of 10 years of barbarians persecuting them in their home and the utter abdication of the authorities from their paid and, in the police’s case, sworn duties – far from it.

She died because some individuals still don’t understand people with ‘learning difficulties.’

*How much of this is truly voluntary rather than from local and national government and quangos?

I don’t know.

But let’s look at Watford Mencap, shall we? You need page 13.

To be fair, the pulp fiction formerly known that the conservative Daily Telegraph lets him spout his victimhood poker line here.

Illustration from here.

Britain freezes over

In Hell, according to Dante, the lowest depth of the innermost circle of the Inferno is reserved for traitors.

Even the shades of those who have betrayed some duty or trust are discriminated between and graded in a diverse and degraded hierarchy of evil.

From bad to worst it goes:

Betrayers of kinsfolk;

Betrayers of polity, nation or state;

Betrayers of guests;

Betrayers of lords and benefactors.

Why be hung up – ha ha! – on the words of some homophobic foreign Papist whilst sitting here with mild backache in the sunlit uplands of the enlightened Twenty-First Century after the birth of some dead white Zionist?

Why, indeed, when I myself surely wouldn’t make it out of Hell’s reception room, if lucky, and would probably be roasting and toasting and enshrined in a tomb a bit further Downstairs myself?

Because some truths are universal, and they’re often expressed in literature, and they’re not all about nice stuff like getting married eventually.

The ancients and medieval folk weren’t just down on sin because they’d been brainwashed by the patriarchal military-workshop complex and lacked community organisers: they did it because thousands of generations of rural and city life had taught them that certain attitudes of mind generate behaviour that harms individuals and the polity a t large.

And it’s still true.

Via the Ranting Penguin and Julia amongst others, here’s real-life sin from fewer web pages than you have digits on one hand.

Betrayers of kinsfolk;

Gang torment woman 'sat in dark'

A woman who died inside her burning car with her disabled daughter would sit in the dark listening to the gang that tormented them, an inquest heard.

And

Despite police requests, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council had no record of the problems, the hearing was told.

Council officer Tim Butterworth, who was responsible for dealing with anti-social behaviour, said he had "no concerns" with the situation.

Rugged individualism can be fine on some levels, but I think that at some deep level even the most doctrinaire Objectivists and natural-rights libertarians (who tend to be hyper-ethical in their private lives and public dealings, despite my newfound conservative prejudices) believe in something like common humanity – we may not owe a living to our healthy fellow-men, but in some ways they are our kin: and as such do not deserve to be left alone to be tormented. If this isn’t kin betraying kin, then it’s close enough for the authorities to be damnable, if not actually damned.

Betrayers of polity, nation or state;

Anti-social behaviour 'not police job'

A senior police officer told the inquest into the deaths of a family terrorised by a gang of youths that it was not the responsibility of police to tackle anti-social behaviour.

And

Earlier Ms Davison, assistant deputy coroner for Leicestershire and Rutland, asked whether Mr Butterworth remembered a meeting with a police officer.

She said: "The police officer wanted an anti-social behaviour order and as the best course of action to issue an anti-social behaviour warning. "He appears to want action from the council and he appears to want you to take action. Do you remember this?"

Mr Butterworth replied: "I don't think we have that statement anywhere."

Is Britain better or worse off for these ‘authorities?’

Betrayers of guests;

Hundreds of children are going missing from Britain's care homes and foster families each year, many falling victim to violent and sexual abuse, prostitution and drug addiction.

And

She tempered her unhappiness at a new foster home by drinking a lot of White Lightning cider, ran away and spent time in a children's home. The situation was exacerbated by sexual abuse from a carer, her rape by an older man who liked to prey on vulnerable children's home girls, and dropping out of school without GCSEs.

If fostered children and children in care aren’t guests, then what in heaven’s name are they?

Betrayers of lords and benefactors.

At the inquest into the pair's deaths yesterday, Superintendent Steve Harrod, head of criminal justice at Leicestershire Police, acknowledged that the criminal justice system was set up to avoid sending juveniles to prison.

He said police officers were only allowed to issue warnings to young troublemakers unless their behaviour was judged to be serious.

"I'm not sure if people know but low-level anti-social behaviour is mainly the responsibility of the council"

Supt Harrod suggested that officers got "frustrated with not being able to do some things".

"From my personal experience, if a juvenile goes into detention, they are likely to mix with like-minded people during their time there and they are more likely to reoffend."

And

For really improved outcomes, residential care and foster care need to be transformed. "Residential care needs to be top notch and that's expensive," said Wes Cuell, director of children's services at the NSPCC.

Look at your next wage slip or, if self-employed, your next tax return. Compare the top lines and bottom line and note the difference. Remember how residential carers, foster carers, police, social workers and local authority antisocial behaviour officers are paid, and by whom.

Who then are these armies’ lords and benefactors, if not us?

Now, we are supposed to endure endless taxes and regulations and criminal records checks and dutifully put our ticks in ethnicity boxes of various forms and scrawl X’s into other boxes twice a decade to change not even the guard at Buckingham Palace. We have to dawdle and daydream in pubs until our huddled friends come in from the rain after a cigarette, and we have to watch our soldiers’ coffined homecomings from their just and much-needed but under-strength and ill-supplied service overseas.

And we have to mind our Ps and Q’s and be lectured when we vote for the wrong people by the shamans of the very tribe that abolished punishment in the first place.

I can see why treachery is the worst sin of all in Dante’s imagination.

To take the name of kinsman: of protector; to become both public servant and recipient of public funds; to assume the rank and titles and respect and uniforms of guardians and to inexpertly wield the power of legitimate force and to fail on every level of your duty is sin, pure and simple.

It causes harm to the human family of your neighbours, to the guests in the institutions of child protection, to the country’s peace and prosperity, and to the very people who pay for your comfortable living.But for now; it’s someone else who’s being punished.

Drag Act. Hair net. 5-0.

Sweet holy Mother of Kermit!

Have the Muppets been officially declared the new aristocracy to rule over us wisely and firmly but kindly? Or is the following in fact not at all a really, really stupid idea?

Top cops visit burglars in Ferret City.

Daaa..da-da dah!

The story you are about to read is true.

Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent, if any.

My name’s Monday. I carry a club. I’m a cop.

Dah..da daaa-da!

EAST Lancashire’s top cops have paid personal visits to the area’s most prolific burglars as part of a month-long crack-down on crime.

July 5, 9.21 am. Lancashire Police HQ.

I took a patrol car and drove the brass from downtown into the dark heart of Ferret City’s Lower East Side. Riding along was an exchange-placement officer on a PR junket for City Hall – a shapeless, smiling foreigner and a distant relative of the Frenchman who wrote Magic Roundabout.

Already I knew it was gonna be a bad day.

Finally convincing the brass that, yes, the seatbelt and smoking regulations applied above the rank of Detective Sergeant, I took the fast and dirty route up the Barnoldswick Road, past Charlie Wong’s Racetrack; second home to Ferret City’s biggest dreamers and the final resting-place of its slowest greyhounds – also the graveyard of many a Friday wage packet and many more marriages to women called Vera.

Pausing only to spend fifteen minutes going around Ferret City’s award-winning counter-clockwise one-way traffic system with its ACPO-approved traffic-calming measures, we were soon in the rotten heart of East Lancashire’s Red Zone; the Merdbeck Estate.

Daaa..da-da dah!

Superintendent Buddy Kowalski and Chief Inspector Myron Napolitano delivered warning letters to five of the area’s most persistent burglars who operate across Blackburn, Darwen, Hyndburn and the Ribble Valley yesterday.

July 5, 9.59 am. 42 Anglezarke Moor Lane. Merdbeck Estate. Ferret City

‘Intel says this one’s a real hard nut,’ growled Kowalski, ‘A real low-life shyster, pimp, pusher, fence, trellis, ornamental hedge, water feature and grafter named Leonardo ’Lenny the Ring-Tailed Lemur Romano. ’

I wondered if the Intel guys had been into the evidence locker again with the Sarah Lee Cookie Dough and were even now ordering two eighteen–inch everything-included meat-feast pizzas apiece from Mohammed ‘Mo the Cheese’ Khan’s takeaway and fast food bar on Corporation Street.

‘Listen Monday,’ Kowalski went on, ‘This time I don’t want you staring and the ceiling throughout the whole interview and pretending to be an actor shadowing us for the day. You hear?’

Intel were on form. There’s nobody in all of Lancashire called Leonardo Romano but Kevin McFall was at the address alright: in an unornamented council flat with its National Collection of flat-screen TVs, but his name wasn’t on the letter so it was impossible to serve him with the paper.

Not that he needed more – he had an ASBO for every one of those giant TVs but not a single receipt.

The Frenchman smiled as we left to the musical accompaniment of McFall’s untouchable laughter.

Daaa..da-da dah!

Twenty-five others who form the ‘top 30’ burglars in Lancashire have been swooped on by senior officers from other police divisions.

Geographic inspectors across the county will also be paying a visit to their area’s most troublesome offenders.

July 5, 10.47 am. Flat 3, 67 Darwen Road. Merdbeck Estate. Ferret City.

It’s not easy to like people in a place whose very name conjures up images of squirming translucent things evolving in the primordial soup but you’re grateful for the lack of hospitality in Darwen Road where the kitchens are never used for cooking - unless you count unwrapping kebabs or heating up the wrong end of spoons.

‘You coming out of there, O’ Brannigan?’ yelled the kneeling Napolitano through the broken letterbox of the apartment. Napolitano was smarter than the average skateboarder though his meteoric rise through the police ranks had been slow in the first couple of years when he had actually attended monumental stone carving classes. There’s a good side and a bad side to the brass learning about the existence of the Internet, but one quick glimpse at Wikipedia’s disambiguation facility and he was on his way to higher places.

‘We no understan’, copper,’ came a muffled cry from within. ’You got warrant?’ inquired a pseudo-Polish voice of the ball-of-fur that I’ve written down on numerous reports since his grade school truancy days and spelled as Gary Butler, but who I call neither ‘Gary’ nor ‘Bulter’.

Not in the recesses of what remains of my soul.

‘Well, no, actually, I don’t have a warrant as this isn’t really an investigation as such. It’s just that we’re onto you O’Brannigan, we know all about your light-fingered ways, and if you try to pull any heists in my town, I’ll jolly well come down hard on you, like.-

‘-like a ton of social workers? Public defenders? Police brutality complaints?

If you’ve got anything on me, then kick in the door and come get me, but otherwise, go ‘way now. I’m busy with my bitches.’

‘That went well,’ beamed Napolitano on the way down 67 Darwen Road’s needle-tinkling stairs as I made a mental note to cross Criminology Degree off my Amazon wish-list.

The French guy just smiled again, and scribbled in his little grey book.

Daaa..da-da dah!

Chief Inspector Napolitano, who is leading the operation in Eastern Division, said: “Burglary in Lancashire is at its lowest in 35 years, but we want to keep it that way and this is just one of many tactics aimed at disrupting the activities of our most prolific burglars.

This type of crime is iconic and has an adverse impact on public confidence, not only to victims, but to the wider community.”

July 5, 12.16 am. Case, Bag and Cash Trading Inc. Ecclestone Munitions Industrial Estate. Ferret City.

‘Icons…Icons. L’yet me see. ‘Lyet me see…’ said Kiselev as we stood gormlessly in his pawn shop right after Chief Napolitano had explained Lancashire’s brilliant new anti-crime strategy to him.

The fence wandered off, chuckling, into the back of his shop that I knew contained half the stolen goods in Lancashire. There was a keyboard tapping sound as username and passwords were deleted and contacts broken but it meant nothing to the brass; I’d recently had to explain to Kowalski that login wasn’t a Russian surname.

Kiselev returned. ‘So sorry, gentlemens,’ he smiled, wiping tears from empty, satisfied eyes, ‘But I haff no icons. I got many stuffed animals y’and also plasma screen televisions like new, y’and also very large collection of Hannah Montana merchandise from this poor teacher you arrest by accident last week and release without charges. Also I got much nice new house furnishings and ornaments from MP now spending time wit’ h’yis researcher family before election but no icons, unfortunate.

You say there is much house-breakings in Ferret City, officers; despite the lowest crime since thirty years, God be thanked? I know nothing of such.’

‘Well just you keep an eye out for suspicious characters coming in here, Mister Kiselev,’ said Napolitano, as Kowalski eyed a silk evening gown and silver fox stole longingly.

‘Sure will, y’inspector. Glad to help polices always. Y’and if you is having difficults with forensic evidencs for this one crime or that one, SOCKO budget low and no overtimes, you be giving me a call da? Haff friend in National DNA Database from old days.’

‘Why that’s very public spirited of you, Mister Kiselev,’ put in Kowalski as he put down something silk and spangled with diamante with obvious regret.

The Frenchman met my eyes on the way back to the squad car as he muttered into a pocket mike.

There are a million stories in the City of Pigeons.

Daaa..da-da dah!

.“There are a small minority of people responsible for committing the majority of burglaries.” The message to them is simple: we know who you are, we know where you live, and if you continue to commit crime, you will be targeted.”

The warning letters are the first phase of Operation Julius, a campaign aiming to reduce burglaries across Lancashire.

Other aspects to be employed will involve filming suspects as they go about their day-to-day lives.

Superintendent Kowalski said: “We want burglars to know we are watching them.

“Most intitatives are to counteact a problem, but we have the lowest crime rates for 35 years and we want to keep it that way.”

He added: “It’s not often you get a Chief Inspector and a Superintendent knocking on people’s doors.“

But we know the impact these people have on the community and we want to show them we’re not messing about.“

They won’t like getting these warnings, or being watched.

“But it’s their choice. If they stop offending, they won’t have to worry.”

July 5, 15.32 am. 9 Tockholes Walk, Merdbeck Estate. Ferret City.

Sharon Plank was a bust.

Even her bust was a bust: despite years of work the twin towers of the former Miss East Lancashire and The Blackburn Intelligencer’s Playbloke Supplement centrefold Ferretgirl of the Month for October 1996 has seen better days. One of those better days had apparently been 9/11.

‘Listen copper,’ she sneered as Kowalski handed her a threatening letter from the Lancashire Constabulary (into which I was fairly sure was folded a hastily-scrawled note requesting the name of her plastic surgeon and the address of her costume suppliers), ‘I don’t know nothing about no burglaries.’ She scratched under her hair-net alluringly.

‘What’s this? You hassling my wife?’ rumbled my old pal Terry Dean Reynolds as he emerged from a back room that was filled with well-thumbed law books and purely decorative Housing Benefit claim forms full of imaginative names and identities for his amateur dramatic society nights down at the Overspill Refugee Centre.

‘You’re always round here bothering us, and we never done nothing’ - except that one time. Which was self-defence.

You never get pictures or forensics or hire lawyers from anywhere but Ferret City U who couldn’t spot a walk-away technicality if it bit them on the arse. There’s never going to be enough filth on the street when you’re always in the station house doin’ paperwork or away on diversity courses or poncin’ around with the communities. So I’m laughing at your Operation Julius which you’ll never have the manpower to follow through or the overtime to back up.

You ought to get out more year in: year out an’ spend some money on beat coppers like the old sod who always put my Dad in nick.

So you get out an’ don’t let the door hit you on the arse as you go. An’ take that Frog bastard with you.’

Kowalski beamed with delight at this last remark.

‘That’s racial harassment, Mister Reynolds, and we know how to deal with that kind of thing in my town.’

Kowalski turned to the Frenchman who was now stroking his Zebedee moustaches and jumping up and down like he was on a spring.

‘Book ‘em Danot,’ he said.

Sicko and the Gloomycons

Just for fun. From the Guardian. Where else?

An invitation to reoffend

Libby Brooks

The short-term prison sentence is a disaster for offenders and society. But there are alternatives.

It was with a heavy heart that I read of Alan Johnson's pledge this week to revive the state crusade against antisocial behaviour. Our new home secretary was concerned that the government had been "coasting" on the issue. The prospect of more rhetoric about yob culture leaves me weary.

‘Weary’ yes, but not, I suspect, bleeding to death on a pavement somewhere, or sobbing your aged rather than heavy heart out and hoping your angina won’t kick off as you stare at a lifetime’s personal possessions smashed or missing: especially the silver framed photo frame that once held a favourite and irreplaceable picture of your late husband of fifty years, perhaps?

But it's further troubling because another spike in Asbo use will inevitably cause an increase in one of the most individually corrosive, socially useless and economically indefensible elements of our criminal justice system: the short-term prison sentence.

‘Economically indefensible’ used in the Guardian is about as convincing as using feckless to describe an all-mime episode of Father Ted.

Antisocial behaviour orders, the high noon of New Labour's respect agenda, with their absurdist conditions (not to wear a hat, not to utter a particular expletive in public, not to approach a certain bridge when suicidal) seem to me designed to be breached.

Authority’s just so…silly, isn’t it? I mean, using the power of the State to threaten people who speak or behave in such as way as suggests they might violate some bourgeois moral rule. I mean, that’s so mediaeval, right?

So kids let’s just dig out those Union flags, shave our heads, put on those cherry-red doc Martens and hang around some blues bars and mosques, yeah? No problemo.

And, in a dangerous legal blurring, breaches of this civil instrument are dealt with by criminal sanction,

I’ll bet you’re really hot on protesting against how our Civil Service enforces European Union ‘guidelines’ as criminal offences dear, aren’t you?

…often leading to brief periods in custody.

‘Brief’, I know. Tragic.

Currently, 65% of Britain's prison population is serving sentences of 12 months or less.

Take a walk in these shoes, darling. Longer, tougher sentences, handed out to more (you should excuse the expression) criminals in larger, nastier, and more numerous prisons is what we need.

If Asbos offer a fast track for young, grossly disadvantaged…

Bingo! ‘Grossly disadvantaged’ is the money quote.

Because when some toe-rag slips a screwdriver into your door frame and nicks off with the pension money and some other unconsidered trifles, it’s disadvantage that propels him into your home – not any conception of moral agency, free will, or wickedness. The psychoanalysts and anthropological relativists dealt with those old superstitions yonks ago. Clouting the undeserving possessors of cash and valuables is an illness.

…men into the prison system, then short-term custody traps them in a revolving door of offence and reoffence.

Gotta dance! Gotta sing! Gotta find my way onto somebody’s premises ‘cos no-one told me about the fifty-lots of support organisations and funds and benefits I can claim on my way out of jail! Just haddta get out into the sunlight and find me some wrinkly old fart or single mother to relive of the burden of property.

I’m not sick; I just want a drug!

This is not an argument against prison.

Prove it.

It is an argument against the costly, superficial palliative of ­locking away…

Thought not. It’s not a palliative for the truly vulnerable in society, such as the women, pensioners and absent taxpayers who tend to fund criminals’ free-form socialism, but who don’t have to worry about such things while said crims are banged up. It’s not a palliative because it’s the cure.

…the most vulnerable...

How bloody vulnerable is a twenty-year-old man with a hunting knife when he’s surrounded by peaceful commuters or booze-dulled night-clubbers?

… among us...

But they aren’t among us if they’re locked in F-Block, which is an actual argument in favour of prison, as distinct from your more virtual kind…

…for periods of time that render rehabilitation meaningless.

True enough. I expect it’d take much longer than any month or so to break the mental, emotional, and pscycho-chemical habits of years or decades or even a lifetime. I mean, if you truly believe that therapy, neuro-linguistic reprogramming and so on can take substance abusers and wife abusers and remould them into decent citizens when it takes twelve whole years at school to teach many healthy and unabused children to read and write badly, then it’s likely to take quite a long time to get results from your vulnerables.

Might I suggest a minimum sentence of two years for any act of violence or house-breaking?

Asbo refuseniks are only a minor constituency of a group that, it bears repeating, makes up more than half of all prisoners.

I wonder whether the prison shortage and the liberal attitudes of many magistrates might have something to do with the shortness of sentences, rather than the ‘pettiness’ of their crimes?

We're not talking about serious, violent criminals but shoplifters…

I’d like £100–worth of your favourite possessions please from your home or some of your work tools from your place of employment taken at a time of my choosing without your prior agreement.

…the homeless…

Lots of ‘free’, i.e. State-funded accommodation in this country. This sort of homelessness isn’t a curse from Heaven or Hell: it’s the name for one consequence of bad decisions taken by human beings. You have to be pretty damn gross to get chucked out of homeless hostel.

…and those who petty-thieve to fund a habit.

So that’s alright then. Now it may be that drug dependencies or alcoholism do to some extent erode free will to such an extent that some or all rules will be ignored by addicts in pursuit of their substance of choice. They will, you seem to imply, be prepared to do anything, pretty much short of violence, to fund their habit. Why the hell should the rest of us put up with the dirt and the smell and the expense of time of reporting crimes to the police for statistical purposes? Those particular policemen can’t chase up quite so many truly violent criminals if they’re taking Crazy McShaky off to the drying-out cells or dragging a shrieking Tracksuitina O’Giro to the patrol car as she scatters obscenity-larded assertions of her ‘rights’ to everyone in earshot and dropping ruined and now unsellable shoplifted Next underwear into the gutter. What price is there on peoples’ fear about their lost security because you believe that these shambling zombies should be treated the same as philology dons or the Spanish ambassador?

According to the latest briefing from the Prison Reform Trust, published tomorrow , about half have mental health needs, while a quarter are drug- or alcohol-dependent.

Wow, The Prison Reform Trust, huh? I don’t suppose you’d expect much of a throw away the key kind of argument from that particular body, to quote Wikipedia: They work closely with the campaign group SmartJustice who promote alternatives to custody. Alternatives to custody actually means 'a life of crime.'

Next week, Meat is yummy, nutritious, and fun to find: a report on game hunting and gralloching by The Vegetarian Society.

These are problematic individuals who undoubtedly un-civilise our streets.

The common sort travel around in baseball caps and hoodies and trash or remove other peoples’ property: sometimes over their dead or battered bodies; sometime leaving them intimidated, permanently fearful and ashamed of having handed their pensions or wages or benefits over at knife-point. The other less obvious sort are no less obnoxious or guilty of this state of affairs and they are the ones who put the hoodies on the street in the first place, and who campaign relentlessly to keep them there, or briefly in our homes or workplaces for redistributionist purposes.

But the sanction and support…

They don’t need weasel-word ‘support.’ They need to have it proven to them that crime doesn’t pay: that trials work and prison awaits convicted criminals and that it’ll be no picnic inside. Perhaps after having spent long months contemplating the unlovely bulge of a cellmate’s snoring form in the bunk above, and fearful of further sentences and full of despair that this particular stretch is not going to be halved and halved again for ‘good behaviour’, perhaps then they might be ready to open their tiny minds to the possibility of living and acting in a non-criminal way when they do, eventually get out of jail. Under these circumstances and, I suspect under these circumstances alone, might problematic individuals be prepared to allow thoughts of not thieving into their heads.

…they need can never be provided by the present response of aimless deterrence.

Deterrence is indeed aimless, strictly speaking, because it’s intended to have a scatter-gun kind of effect. You know: all those who rob or mug or intimidate people on the street or at home have a good chance of spending quite a long time in the big house making nice to Tattooed Harry and His Big Bad Friend; irrespective of class, faith, sex, sexual orientation, victim group of choice or length of tadger. The nick is for everyone who decides that other peoples’ bodies or possessions are footballs and their homes and public spaces are sport stadiums.

Short sentences barely give the authorities time to assess an inmate's needs.

And that’s the crux. This is all about the criminals and their needs. It’s the felon-centred approach that is having such a strikingly similar successes rate as child-centred education.

But even a limited spell in custody does enduring damage – the fracture of family bonds,

Actually, I think you’ll find that the ‘families’ in involved here either need to be broken up and dispersed for the sake of the children, or are thieving and benefits-trawling institutions which need to be broken up and dispersed for the sake of the children and everyone else in society.

… loss of accommodation,

Trust me, dear, there are plenty of piggy-eyed private landlords out there eager to put these people up in their hovels in the sure and certain knowledge that the Housing Benefit will be generous under the new Local Housing Allowance scheme. Under 25s do have particular problem here because they’re only entitled to a much smaller Single Room Rate, and can only get typically half to two thirds the Housing Benefit that would fund a flat for single adults or even childless young couples. But:

A) Boo hoo, and

B) Oh.

Boo hoo again.

Actually, landlords have a tendency to keep lets open for people who’ve gone to jail for short periods as they know that Housing Benefit is actually quite a secure income source compared with, say; private sector wages in Mister Brown’s exciting and constantly-changing wealth-generating economy. Housing Benefit can be paid to remand prisoners for quite some time. See paragraph 5 of this lovely web page.

… the stigmatising record on future job applications.

I know, I know. It’s such a bore having to tell the HR lady at Sainsbury’s that you once kicked a supermarket guard in the pills during a vodka-finding missing in your late teens, or that some old iffy-hearted gimmer popped their clogs at 1 AM when you paid a moonlight visit is search of exchange goods for a local pharmacy. They always look at you funny, and you rarely get the job. If only someone had told me that crime doesn’t pay earlier, a chap might have stuck to his school books a bit more, or at least not tried to stick to other peoples’ stuff.

Somebody serving less than 12 months is not even allocated a parole officer, and is cast back into the community with a derisory grant of £46 to tide them over until their benefits kick in two weeks later. If this is not an invitation to reoffend, I don't know what is.

I’d guess that being told it’s not really their fault and being aware that there is a huge and active State machinery of welfare and unjudgmental ‘support’ to fall back on once they hit the streets and the people on them might be kind of an invitation, too.

I mean, if local authorities had more, nicer, and better-furnished accommodation available at the drop of a sentence for ‘offenders’ to move into straight away, that’d take some of the sting out of prison and punishment, and that’s bound to, er, make the consequences of committing a crime more scary. Innit.

There is an alternative. Community sentencing is still underused, but its efficacy is increasing. By the last tally, reconviction rates for those sentenced to under 12 months were almost twice those of offenders given alternative sentences for similar offences.

Did you also know that the topic of penal reform generates 63% of spurious or misleading statistics; coming in a close third to climate change and government employment figures?

Last year, 55,771 people successfully completed community payback sentences, which translates into over eight million hours of labour benefiting local areas.

I wonder if this is true? It is a truly good idea forcing convicted felons who aren’t insanely or irregularly violent clearing wasteland or cleaning up fouled social housing and the like, but I wonder how many mere thieves who only steal to fund a habit are entirely trustworthy. How closely is their behaviour monitored? And if they are back in their former accommodation and their old neighbourhoods, how do their silent, unsupported victims feel about that? Stigmatised at all, do you think, or worse?

Still, hand-wringing over socially excluded minor offenders gains little traction with a government that is all too aware of the boost its perceived light touch on nuisance crime gives to the BNP.

To hell with the victims, past, present, and future of minor crimes – the fascists are coming!

See how the different campaigns in the culture wars all end up joining up with each other? What’s truly evil about ‘nuisance crime’ is that it helped close to a million adult human beings vote for the jackbooted hordes of, ah, people in suits, at the Euros. Forget Granny’s neighbour’s tearful phone call at 11 PM one Saturday night, it’s the fuehrer with the eagle’s head and the lion’s body that should be sneaking into your nightmares.

Which is why the campaign Make Justice Work has been smart in commissioning the first independent cost-benefit analysis of short-term sentencing versus ­community alternatives.

The results are astonishing. It estimates that the country would have saved almost £1bn had drug-using offenders in custody for 12 months or less been given residential treatment under community sentencing. The annual savings for the first six years after conviction would have been £60m-£100m. Compare the £2.3bn price tag of the latest prison building programme.

The full analysis will be released on Monday, at a launch set to be attended by Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice minister. His junior, Edward Garnier, has spoken positively about community sentencing, though the Conservatives' latest prison policy paper fixates alarmingly on the need for recognisable ­uniforms for offenders working locally.

So the Right wing of the political class agrees with a section of its enormous Left wing, and we sociocons are supposed to jump up and down cheering?

To be fair to the present Tory party (and being fair to the present Tory party translates as ‘not horsewhipping the regional officers around the county town or shooting the Shadow Cabinet on sight’), there may actually be a useful cleavage between jail for the violent ones and the work-party and curfew for the others – it seems on the face of it to be so sensible that its might even resemble something actually conservative. Except…

Who, exactly, will be making the decisions about whom to jail and who to put to work?

The Probation Service? Judges? Victim Support, maybe? Nah.

Given the apparent inevitability of a Tory administration next year, it's important to interrogate their policies in advance. Jonathan Aitken, who headed a report on prison reform for the Centre for Social Justice in March, believes that the party is more willing than ever to consider alternatives to custody, though he notes that progressive thinking does not always transfer into government.

‘…progressive thinking does not always transfer into government’ – does this perhaps mean ‘Once you’ve got to read the court reports and look at crime scene photos and skim the post-mortems on a daily basis, a Home Secretary might reluctantly decide to do something a little different from the very strict and not at all malleable pre-election guideline/aspirations/bullet-point hints that some naïve individuals took to be election pledges in that old manifesto thingy?

I hope so.

The Scottish parliament is putting through legislation to embed a presumption against custodial sentencing below six months – a genuinely radical step that neither Conservatives nor Labour are yet willing to subscribe to.

This would be one of those scorched-earth, pre-Tory government anti-personnel devices the soon to be slaughtered Left are hoping to insert into the body politic.

As Roma Hooper, of Make Justice Work, says: "Short-term sentencing is a waste of money and also disingenuous to victims." Because it's nobody's ­justice if your bag-snatcher is back on your estate after three months inside, having received zero ­addiction treatment, just sharper criminal tutoring.

Hear, hear. Let’s start with that three months inside bit and work on from there, shall we?

Thanks to the variously gloomy and despairing social conservatives Dumb Jon and Ranting Stan who inspired my tentatively optimistic reply.

‘Optimistic,’ because we’ve got to keep fighting and tearing the social Left down, one miserable prejudice at a time. 'Tentative' because there are a lot of people like Libby Brooks in the ironically-named criminal justice system to deal with.

PS, Bertie Humbug's Rantoamtic. New blog on the block.