Month: March 2004

Stick a Fork in England. They’re Done

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We locked you up in jail for 25 years and you were innocent all along? That’ll be £80,000 please

Blunkett charges miscarriage of justice victims ‘food and lodgings’
By Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor 3/14/04

WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in British prisons.

On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 (Almost $5,400) for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

Blunkett’s fight has been described as “outrageous”, “morally repugnant” and the “sickest of sick jokes”, but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.

And this isn’t a new idea. They’ve done something similar before!

Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £50,000 (That’s just shy of $90k) for living expenses by the Home Office.

It wasn’t until two years ago that Hill was finally awarded £960,000 in compensation. However, during the years since his release, while waiting for the pay-out, the government had given him advances of around £300,000. When his compensation came through, the £300,000 was taken back along with interest on the interim payments charged at 23% – that cost him a further £70,000.

One hand giveth, another taketh away.

“The whole system is absurd,” Hill said. “I’m so angry about what has happened to me. I try and tell people about being charged for bed and board in jail and they can’t believe it.

“When I left prison I was given no training for freedom – no counselling or psychological preparation. Yet the guilty get that when they are released. To charge me for the food I ate and the cell I slept in is almost as big an injustice as fitting me up in the first place.

Hell, when they released serial criminal Brandon Fearon, they gave him money so he could sue Tony Martin, the farmer who shot him when Fearon tried to burglarize Martin’s home.

“While I was in prison, my family lost their home, yet they get no compensation. But the state wants its money back. It’s like being kicked in the head when someone has beat you already.

“I have to put up with this, yet there has not been one police officer convicted of fitting people up. The Home Office had no shortage of money to keep me in jail or to run a charade of a trial.

“But they had enough money to frame me. Nevertheless, when it comes to paying out compensation for ruining my life they happily rip me to shreds.”

Hill is not leading the legal action against the government – instead he has handed the baton to another high-profile victim of miscarriage of justice: Mike O’Brien.

O’Brien spent 10 years in jail wrongly convicted of killing a Cardiff newsagent. His baby daughter died while he was in prison and he was charged £37,500 by the Home Office for his time behind bars.

Hill said he cannot lead the legal fight as the Birmingham Six have fought every legal action together, but now three of them are over 70 and Hill believes it is too much to ask them to join him in taking on the government yet again.

He said he was also worried about the compensation payments for the other members of the Birmingham Six being affected if they joined him in court against the government.

“The establishment hate me and people like me as we proved them wrong,” he said. “They either want to ignore us or hurt us.”

O’Brien took the Home Office to court last March and won, but Blunkett appealed the decision. On Tuesday, the rights and wrongs of the government policy will be decided at the Royal Courts.

I’m not taking bets on that decision.

O’Brien said: “Morally, the position of the government is just outrageous. It shows total contempt for the victims of miscarriages of justice. It makes me livid.

“I really believe if we win the appeal this week, the government is evil enough to take me to the House of Lords. They are trying to break us. I really think this is personal as far as the government is concerned.

“A government really can’t get much worse than this. But I am confident that we will win as the law and morality are on our side.”

Vincent Hickey, one of the Bridgewater Four who was wrongly convicted for killing a paperboy, was charged £60,000 for the 17 years he spent in jail. He said: “If I had known this I would have stayed on hunger-strike longer, that way I would have had a smaller bill.”

John McManus, of the Scottish Miscarriage of Justice Organisation, said: “This is reprehensible. How can we call ourselves a democratic, civilised society when our government is acting like this?

How can you call yourselves a democratic, civilized society when you deny people the right to defend themselves?

“The government seems intent on punishing innocent people. The state wants to be paid for making a mistake. It’s hard to believe someone actually thought this policy up. If you tell a child about this they will think it insane.

“Only a sick mind could have invented this policy, yet the government is fighting to retain the right to act like this. It is cruelty with intent. They seem to want to punish people for having the audacity to be innocent.”

The SNP’s shadow justice minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said: “This is outrageous. It is another assault by Blunkett on the rule of law and on civil liberties. These people didn’t chose to go to prison. They were wrongly convicted, and to charge them for it beggars belief.”

The Home Office said an “independent assessor appointed by the Home Secretary takes into acccount the range of costs the prisoner might have incurred had they not been imprisoned”. The spokes man said the assessor was “right” to do this, adding: “Morally, this is reasonable and appropriate.”

I suggest that, if the Home Office really believes this then their “moral compass” is spinning wildly.

‘I was a hostage, now they are billing me’

ROBERT Brown was just a 19-year-old from Glasgow when he was jailed for life for murdering a woman called Annie Walsh in Manchester in 1977. He served 25 years before he was finally freed in 2002, when the courts ruled him innocent of the crime.

He is now facing a bill of around £80,000 for the living expenses he cost the state. For Brown, it is the final straw. An interim payment he was given pending his full compensation offer is exhausted; his mother recently died; his relationship with his girlfriend has fallen apart and he is facing eviction from his home following a mix-up over benefits.

“I feel like ending my life,” he says. “I’ve tried to maintain my dignity, but the state has treated me with nothing but contempt – now they are asking me for money for my bed and board in jail.

“I never contemplated suicide once while I was in prison, but it’s different on the outside. I have received no counselling or support. Society is treating me like something you’d wipe off the bottom of your shoes, but I’m an innocent man and a victim of a terrible injustice.

“It’s horrific. I’ve been out of jail for 14 months and in that time the state has put me through a war of attrition that it never needed to conduct. I feel my life is disintegrating around me.

“Making me pay for my bed and board is abhorrent. I was arrested, fitted up and held hostage for 25 years and now they are going to charge me for being kept as their prisoner against my will.

“Can you think of a more disgusting way to abuse someone? I really feel that my heart is truly and finally broken.”

First disarm them, then enslave them, right?

KevinLeave a comment

Spain Capitulates. Poland Fills the Breach

As Spain surrenders to the terrorists and yanks its troops out of America’s unilateral coalition, Poland announces its intention to take up the duties Spain is abandoning, according to this CNN story:

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) — Poland has vowed not to pull troops out of Iraq because of “terrorist” attacks and said it was willing to remain in command of a stabilisation force there if Spain, which had been due to take over, withdrew.

Spain was due to take command of 9,000 troops in central Iraq on July 1, but that was thrown into doubt on Monday when Socialist Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he could bring home the Spanish 1,300 troops currently there.

—

Poland has 2,400 troops in Iraq and has led a 9,000-strong division of troops from 24 nations in a central-south zone since last September.

“If it is necessary, we will continue leading the multinational division,” Polish Ambassador to NATO Jerzy M. Nowak told Reuters in Brussels. “We are prepared for that even if Spain is not able to fulfil its promise.”

Note Reuter’s use of scare quotes when it says “terrorist.”

Asshats.

I wonder how those 1,300 troops feel about being pulled out of Iraq now that their countrymen have been the victims of these “terrorists”?

Pissed, I hope.

KevinLeave a comment

Another Reason Banning Guns Never Works

Rule #1 of Economics: Wherever there is a demand, there will be a supply.

In this example we have the Pakistani town of Darra – home of gunmakers for over 100 years, according to this page.

Check out those beautiful Enfields!

And how about these detachable-magazine Broomhandle Mausers!

These people don’t have CNC machine tools. Hell, they don’t have much in the way of tools at all, yet they make perfectly functional firearms.

Guns aren’t rocket science. They’re pretty simple devices. Banning ’em cannot make them all go away.

“Happy Birthday to Me…”

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Actually, it was last week, but I got my present today. I purchased a like-new Bulgarian Makarov pistol, a Fobus paddle holster, and 500 rounds of Wolf 9×18 109gr. FMJ ammo. Range trip tomorrow!

I was going to purchase it through AIM Surplus via an FFL I know through the Tucson Rifle Club, but making arrangements to get AIM a copy of his license and all the other hassles involved in the deal, plus the fact that I’m sometimes not as patient as I should be led me to be sitting in the parking lot of my favorite gun shop in Tucson at 8:50 this morning, waiting for them to open. Sure enough, they had a Bulgarian Mak with two magazines – $174.95. (A reasonable markup, IMHO.) Unfortunately the only ammo they had was CCI Blazer and American Eagle at way-too-much-$$/box, so I went to another shop for ammo – with the same results.

So, I girded my loins (why does that sound faintly risque?) and went downtown to the Roadrunner Gun Show at the Tucson Convention Center.

$4.00 to park.

$8.00 to get in.

ONE ammo dealer, and all he had that was even close to what I wanted was Wolf FMJ at $47.95/500. I wanted to find some Silver Bear 95 grain hollowpoints, but, alas, the entire country seems to be out of stock of that. I also found the Fobus holster. I did manage to avoid buying any beef jerky, and (hold on to your hats) didn’t see a single Beanie Baby in the entire arena.

Only regret? I didn’t buy the T-shirt that said

Nine Out of Ten
Voices in my Head
Said that I Should
Stay Home and
Clean My Guns

I really like that one. If I hadn’t had to shell out $12 just to get in, I would have bought it.

KevinLeave a comment

Gun Crime Still Going Up in England

Though just maybe it’s starting to peak.

According to this BBC News piece:

The number of crimes involving firearms increased by just under 3% in the 12 months to March 2003, to 10,250.

It was well below the 35% rise in the previous year, when gun crime leapt from 7,362 firearms offences to 9,974.

Home Office minister Hazel Blears said: “The risk of a fatal shooting in England and Wales is still one of the lowest in the world.”

But minister, it always has been – even long before the bans on semi-automatic rifles and all handguns. The point is, these laws show no evidence of making England and Wales safer, yet they were accomplished at great public expense.

Also in the story, relating to the move to non-dangerous bar glasses and switching to plastic beer bottles:

Violent crime – excluding robberies and sex attacks – increased by 12% between April and June this year, according to the British Crime Survey quarterly results, also released on Thursday.

Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin said the statistics presented a “confusing” and “alarming” picture.

“One thing which no amount of statistical manipulation can disguise is that violent crime has doubled in the last six years and continues to rise alarmingly,” he said.

Cheery, that – no?

This piece, also from the BBC, reports:

Gun crime has increased in recent years, including a near doubling of handgun offences since 1996, the year of the Dunblane massacre.

Um, make that “since all handguns were banned and all the licensed, registered, legally possessed ones were handed in.”

Now, to put this into some perspective:

In 2001-02, there were some 22,300 firearms offences, a rise of almost a third on the previous year. The number of people killed by firearms was 23.

That’s a busy weekend in Chicago. Yet we’re told constantly by gun control groups that licensing and registration will reduce gun crime and would never be used to confiscate our guns. However, England & Wales had licensing and registration, “safe storage” and all the rest, and when that wasn’t enough they confiscated all the semi-auto rifles and then all the handguns.

All the registered ones.

And firearm crime went UP.

Yet if you listen to the Violence Policy Center, the only answer to our gun violence problem is a complete handgun ban.

That worked so well in England, didn’t it?

And here’s why:

But while it may appear to be rife, it is generally confined to a large number of incidents perpetrated by a small number people in very small areas.

While this is of no comfort to those who may have witnessed gun crime on their own streets, those most likely to be victims are young men.

All the evidence suggests that gun crime is not the problem but a symptom of a huge and well established drugs economy.

And the same is true here. Gun violence is concentrated here too, “to a large number of incidents perpetrated by a small number people in very small areas.”

But the VPC et. al want us to take England’s gun control path – to the same predictable failure. If you want some idea of the significance of England’s gun control failure, when the ban went into effect the number one source of gun violence was Jamaican immigrant gangs called “Yardies.” Yet this report states:

So-called Yardie gangs were certainly involved in the growth of crack in the UK.

But Lee Jasper, chair of the Trident advisory group, says the majority of those involved are now British-born.

As their drug trade has become more established, gangs have become more inclined to carry guns to command the respect of rivals, he said.

Now, according to the police, guns are in the hands of regular Brits.

To give you some idea of the futility of banning handguns – even in a nation with strict licensing and registration laws, the report also discusses a recent “amnesty” that allowed people to turn in weapons and ammunition – no question asked:

The Home Office ran a month-long nationwide gun amnesty in April, partly as a response to the outcry following the killings of Birmingham teenagers Letisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis in January.

More than 43,000 weapons were handed in to the police over that month – but critics say they were not the weapons on the streets. In London’s case, there was an extremely poor response from each of the key Trident areas.

Get that? This story has more detail on that “amnesty.” Forty-three thousand unregistered weapons and almost a million rounds of ammunition – but almost none from the “very small areas” that have the “large numbers of incidents.” According to the story, when the handgun ban went into effect in 1996 they only collected 23,000 firearms and 700,000 rounds of ammo – from the legal, registered owners. Oh, and Letisha and Charlene were gunned down with a submachinegun – illegal to possess in England since 1934, but available in England, new-in-box, via Eastern Europe.

But we’re supposed to believe that licensing and registration will work here to reduce crime.

Just like we’re supposed to believe that “shall-issue” concealed-carry legislation will result in “blood in the street” and “road rage” killings over fender-benders.

Why is it that gun control advocates never bother to look at reality?

This is NOT What I Wanted to Read

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The New Orleans Times-Picayune had a recent piece (minor piddling registration required) on a recent speech given by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the rightest of the conservative right-wing justices on the Court.

What did Scalia say that I didn’t want to hear?

“It is literally true that the U.S. Supreme Court has entirely liberated itself from the text of the Constitution,” Scalia said at a conference Uptown on the merit selection of judges.

Well, I’ve believed that for some time, but hearing it from a sitting Justice doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies. He says also:

Ideally, Scalia said he would choose merit selection of judges. But when you have courts trying to rewrite laws, he said, “there’s a lot to be said for electing judges.”

Scalia blasted the existing system, which he said allows courts to change the laws, and not the people.

“What ‘we the people’ want most of all is someone who will agree with us as to what the evolving constitution says,” he said.

“We are free at last, free at last,” he said. “There is no respect in which we are chained or bound by the text of the Constitution. All it takes is five hands.”

Scalia, who was nominated by President Reagan in 1986 and confirmed by a Senate vote of 98-0, said these days a so-called conservative judge is politically frozen out of the process.

“What in the world is a moderate interpretation of the text?” he asked, drawing soft laughter from the audience. “Halfway between what it really says and what you want it to say?”

This is supposed to be a nation based on the rule of law. We know what happens to societies in which the rule of law fails, yet what Justice Scalia has said leaves no doubt that the rule of law has been essentially abandoned all the way up to the Supreme Court. Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in his dissent to U.S. v. Olmstead –

Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subject to the rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.

And we’re seeing that, more and more, every day. Aren’t we.