Straw protests.

The son of Justice Secretary Jack Straw yesterday joined more than 1,000 protesters who gathered outside Nick Clegg’s party meeting to demand electoral reform.

Will Straw, 29, who edits the Left Foot Forward blog which promotes a progressive political agenda, joined in with chants urging the Lib Dems to stand firm on their call for proportional representation to be introduced.

He said: ‘I am here because I have long believed in electoral reform. We have seen again in this Election the third party has been under-represented and it was a big issue.

‘We want to send a strong message to Nick Clegg.’

from the Mail

The demonstration was organised by organisations seeking what they described as a ‘purple revolution’ in the UK and included campaigner and musician Billy Bragg.

The surprise protest forced Nick Clegg to come outside and address the crowd which was chanting 'fair votes now' and was calling for him to stand firm over the issue in any pact with the Tories.

'Nuff said!

Of course it was a 'surprise'! Of course it was designed to tell Mr Clegg 'what the people want'! Must have been music to his ears to learn he had such a lot of support.

But, Straw?

Like father, like son.

[Will Straw] graduated from Oxford University where he was president of the Student Union and spent four years as a senior policy advisor for the Treasury.

Jack Straw, centre, 1971. President of the National Union of Students.

Picture Mail

Oh, and Mr Clegg?

It seems he was very impressed, because Mr Clegg said,

'The fact that you are here because you care so much about political reform is absolutely wonderful,'

'Take it from me, reforming politics is one of the reasons I went into politics.

'I've campaigned for a better, more open, more transparent, new politics, every single day of this General Election campaign. I genuinely believe it is in the national interest.'

'I take your petition in the spirit in which I am sure you meant to deliver it - in a spirit of change, of real change, in the politics of this country.

'And in return, I would ask you to do what you are doing so well here today in Smith Square in every street and every community of our country, to continue your campaign for a different, better, new politics.'

Carte blanche! Opening the door for more 'spontaneous' protests!

He really should think before he opens his mouth and encourages protests he knows nothing about. Welcome to the sleazy world of Labour politics Mr Clegg.

He should also pause a moment to wonder who gave consent for this 'surprise protest' because they must be approved by the Police, and it can take quite some time to process the forms and get consent. It is unlikely to be arranged in a day or two, unless there are strings to be pulled by a puppeteer.

Lib Dem headquarters are in Cowley Street. Cowley Street is within the designated area with regard to Sections 132 - 137 of the Serious Organised Crimes and Police Act. To arrange a demonstration within that area this is what you have to do:-

Marches and demonstrations

If you wish to organise a protest march then please send the completed form 3175 form to your local police station.

and

Static Protests

If you wish to organise a static protest near the Houses of Parliament it may fall within the designated area, if so, it will be regulated by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which places certain restrictions and obligations on organisers; you should contact either the MPS Public Order Branch or Charing Cross Police station (see below).

Persons seeking authority to hold a static protest within the SOCPA designated area should complete Form 3175a, and send the completed form to Charing Cross Police station, or the Public Order Branch, in accordance with Section 133 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. This form connot be completed online.

And here's the map. Cowley Street runs between Great Peter Street and Great College Street, to the south of the Houses of Parliament, it is well within the designated area.

And 'Smith Square', named in the article? That is also within the designated area.

And Mr Brown had nothing to do with it, according to Iain Dale he's gone to Scotland!

And it must have been a very peaceful protest, because the Police seem to have been conspicuous by their absence, or at least they kept themselves away from the press photographers. Unusual that, don't you think?

....

Jack Straw and the Police

Jack Straw thinks the Police are lazy and actually prefer to spend their time indoors, where they can keep themselves nice and warm whilst filling in a few forms that, he says, take no more than an hour or so.

Mr Straw thinks the Police are undisciplined, and Mr Johnson agrees with him. Mr Straw is, at present, the Justice Secretary and Mr Johnson the Home Secretary.

Apart from the fact that Mrs R remembers what Jack Straw was like as a student, she also thinks that, before making such a careless public criticism, he would do well to find out what's happening in the real world and what real people think of policies that are imposed from on high. His criticism could do more to alienate and undermine the authority of decent and hard working Police than almost anything else he and his colleagues have done in the last few years.

Do either Mr Straw or Mr Johnson think imposed "targets" make themselves up, all on their own without human intervention? Doesn't it cross their minds, even for a fleeting moment, that their own departments are responsible for keeping the Police indoors. It's the multitude of government bean counters, quota hunters and target seekers who keep the Police chained to their chairs, not electric fires and coffee cups.

Here's one place he could have looked, which gives a list of Police targets for 2010, they're shared with the world by Inspector Gadget - dated 28th December, four days before Mr Straw launched his broadside.

I quote :-

Here are the targets for my team in 2010.

1. The number of Detected Crimes per officer, measured against the other teams (supposedly dropped; still around with a vengeance)

2. The amount of overtime spend, measured against the other teams (ignore everything towards the end of a shift)

3. The number of annual Appraisals submitted on time (dash through a ‘cut & paste’ session to meet the deadline)

4. The amount of violent crime in the area, measured against other Divisions, regardless of location (arrest for D&D as instructed)

5. The number of officers who complete the Diversity Training packages in time (apparently I can take a pay cut if this is not done).

6. The amount of time we take to submit road accident reports, measured against the other teams (accuracy would be better but….)

7. The amount of time we take to submit domestic violence reports, measured against the other teams (as above)

8. The amount of time I take to submit personnel paperwork (the personnel department do what exactly?)

9. The number of days taken off sick by my team, measured against a ‘analytical product’ from somewhere.

10.The number of Customer Service cold-calls I make and the number of Customer Service forms handed out by my team.

11. I must have a Diversity & Performance Meeting, every week, with every officer, and submit the minutes within 7 days of each meeting. These meetings are to be held individually, not as a team, and must cover 1 to 10 above.

Now Mrs R can do basic calculations and basic time keeping, and she's fairly confident that if she had to do all this stuff as well as ordinary policing (which she doesn't because she has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Police Force) she's fairly sure it would take up quite a bit of time.

Mrs R isn't at all sure she'd appreciate a "cold call" from the Police, she's fairly sure she'd put the phone down thinking it was a hoax!

She's very intrigued to know why every Police Officer has to have a "Diversity and Performance" meeting each week - does this mean that each officer has their own 'diversity' targets to meet, and can be told off if they fail to have ticked all the right boxes? Surely they don't have to either arrest or stop and search a given number of people who fit certain profiles, or make sure the number are balanced to give a 'fair' ethnic mix?

To think there was a time when the Police were reacting to or trying to prevent crime - irrespective of who was the perpetrator - and to keep communities safe.

If they were able to do this today then potential thugs such as this "child" from Croydon might be under control, kept ther by proper 'community policing' - instead of having his tag removed by magistrates who decided it was pointless!

P.S.
It's worth reading the comments beneath Insp Gadget's original post here

Spilling secret beans.

The Times reports conversations between the now Lord Irvine of Lairg and Tony Blair relating to the decision to abolish the position of Lord Chancellor :-

[Lord Irvine] first discovered that the office of Lord Chancellor was to be abolished and the job transferred to a Secretary of State in the Commons in early June 2003, just days before it happened. “I had no intimation of this but when The Times and the Telegraph carried the rumour I determined to see the Prime Minister.”

That was at No 10 on June 5. Mr Blair hesitated and then said that it was being considered but nothing had been decided. Lord Irvine asked “how a decision of this magnitude” could be made without consultation with himself, the permanent secretary within government, the judiciary, House of Lords authorities and the Palace.

“The Prime Minister appeared mystified and said that these machinery of government changes always had to be carried into effect in a way that precluded such discussion because of the risk of leaks.”

What makes Mrs Rigby more than a little bemused is what might have happened had these plans been "leaked" - presumably to the opposition and the media - and if these matters had been discussed, debated and voted on in Parliament, which is where we ordinary folk expect such wide reaching decisions to be made. With a massive majority it would have been surprising if things hadn't gone according to plan.

The end result is that Jack Straw, MP for Blackburn, is "Lord Chancellor" and "Secretary of State for Justice", in charge of the brand new Supreme Court which the "Justice Department" says :

... provides greater clarity in our constitutional arrangements by further separating the judiciary from the legislature.

This is the same Jack Straw that avoided answering a QT questioner, who asked, "Can the recent success of the British National party be explained by the misguided immigration policy of the government?", by coincidence only a day before other secret discussions were revealed (quoting from Minette Marin's article in today's Times) :-

Andrew Neather — a former adviser to Straw, Blair and David Blunkett — revealed that Labour ministers had a hidden agenda in allowing immigrants to flood into the country.

According to Neather, who was present at secret meetings during the summer of 2000, the government had “a driving political purpose” which was: “mass immigration was the way that the government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”.

What’s more, Neather said he came away “from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended — even if this wasn’t its main purpose — to rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”.

and

“There was a reluctance ... in government,” he wrote, “to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour’s core white working-class vote.” The social outcomes that ministers cared about were those affecting the immigrants. This, Neather explains, shone out in a report published in 2001 after these confidential deliberations. One must question whether this is true. Needless to say, Straw has denied all this and Neather has since tried to back-pedal.

Mrs Rigby can't, from any of the reports she has read, work out what the truth is. She simply hasn't a clue. But, she does know that Britain has changed so much that it no longer even vaguely resembles the Britain of pre-1997 when Labour were first elected.

Since 1997 a whole generation of young people have grown up, they seem to accept that it's normal to be watched by CCTV cameras, that it's normal to be asked for identification by any number of either uniformed or non-uniformed individuals. It's normal for the Police to close roads without saying why, and it's normal for DNA to be taken at the slightest opportunity. It's become normal for summary justice to be served through the post, without the chance of time in a Court of Law to plead innocence.

Since 1997 it's become normal for people's personal and private opinions to result in dismissal from work, and words said in private conversations to be reported to the authorities. It's become normal for ordinary people to be criminalised for trivial 'new' offences, whilst thugs are let off with a warning, or taken to Alton Towers.

It's also become normal for our MPs to be subjects of scorn and derision - unworthy of the trust we, the public, place in them.

Mrs Rigby thinks it will be quite a tangle for the next government to unravel, if they have either the time or energy to do so whilst they are also dealing with the financial mess they will inherit.