Saturday 30 May 2009

Compare And Contrast

In the UK, we send a lot of people to prison. And as a result in the UK we get stories like this

Titan prisons plans 'abandoned'...Instead, Justice Secretary Jack Straw is expected to reveal proposals for five 1,500-place jails, with two set to go ahead immediately...
Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said..."Jack Straw needs to urgently explain how he will address the current crisis in the prison population that has resulted in thousands of prisoners being released early".


I particularly like the use of scare quotes around the word abandoned there. Mostly because Titan prisons aren't really being 'abandoned', just scaled down slightly.

Meanwhile, over in The Netherlands;

Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals. The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.
...The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry's research department expects to continue for some time.


It's being widely reported that Labour are anticipating a proper fucking up at the polls next week and again (oh please oh please) at the general election next year. That means a lot of Labour MPs are going to be at a loose end. And you know, it really would be a shame to see the Labour party's skill at making every fucking thing illegal go to waste. And I think it's pretty clear that Holland needs a hand filling up it's prisons (I mean, where on earth are the Dutch putting their mentally ill for bum's sake?). It could be a match made in heaven.

Friday 22 May 2009

Yeah, Nadine It's Totally The Same

Ah Nadine Dorries. She just can't stop with the stupid can she?

The atmosphere at Westminster has become so "unbearable" due to expenses revelations that a suicide is feared, one MP named in the row has warned.

...In an interview with the BBC, Ms Dorries, who was a nurse before she came into politics, said MPs were walking around "with terror in their eyes" and likened the atmosphere to that surrounding Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" of Communists during the 1950s


Nadine Dorries there, making reference to Joseph McCarthy's lesser known 'British MP's and their fraudulent expenses witch-hunt' where the following infamous question was asked;

Are you now or have you ever been a member of parliament claiming taxpayer money to pay off a non-existent mortgage or to purchase a house for a duck?


Got to love Labour MP Stephen Pounds' response though (it's a strange sensation typing the words love and Labour that close together, I can tell you),

Mr Pound dismissed the analogy as "facile" because "Senator McCarthy's victims were innocent".

Zing.