Authority is so absent from our streets that bad people are worryingly unafraid, so the rest of us have to be afraid instead
If you really wanted to make women safer on the streets of this country’s cities, after dark or during the day, there is a very simple, logical thing that you would do.
We used to do it. When we did, the streets were indeed far less dangerous than they are now.
You would restore the regular foot patrols by uniformed constables, which were abolished from the 1960s onwards for no very good reason.
It is since that abolition, agreed on at a meeting of the Police Advisory Board, chaired by the then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, on November 18, 1966, that policing in this country has gone down the plughole. It was this change that led directly to the closure of hundreds of police stations.
It also led to the transformation of the police themselves, from trusted, popular citizens in uniform, polite and friendly to the law-abiding, into the unloved, shouty, overbearing militia which for the past year has taken such obvious pleasure in bullying and handcuffing peaceful members of the public.
None of the excuses for this change work. Manpower is much higher now than it was then. No research of any kind showed that waiting for crime to happen was a better policy than preventing it.
A police presence on the street is not aimed at catching criminals, but at deterring them from committing crimes in the first place. It does not produce arrest figures, or other totals that look good in official statistics.
It produces a real result, peaceful, orderly streets where a woman can walk after dark without fear.
How often are we told that a prison sentence on a criminal will not bring back a murdered person, will not restore the peace of mind lost when a home is burgled, will not undo the injury and grief caused by crime? Detection is important, but it is nothing like as much use as prevention, the job the police were set up to do.
The case of Sarah Everard has been seized on by many causes, but I think we had better wait for the trial of her alleged killer to decide how justified they are in doing so. But the issue of safety on the streets was a real one before her death and it is still one now.
I should say women are not the only ones who sometimes slip their keys between their knuckles as they walk past or near menacing people or lonely, ill-lit places. Men do it too.
Authority is so absent from our streets that bad people are worryingly unafraid, so the rest of us have to be afraid instead.
Well, there is an easy answer to that. I think the recent behaviour of the police has dispelled much of the lingering goodwill, earned in a different time, which they used to enjoy. I think any political party which truly espoused a policy of prevention by regular, sustained foot patrol would gather so much support that it would be amazed.
And if the existing police don’t like it, and prefer whatever it is they do now (how can we tell what it is, as we so seldom see them?), then we should dissolve them, and rehire only the ones who are interested in serving the public.
You would restore the regular foot patrols by uniformed constables, which were abolished from the 1960s onwards for no very good reason. It is since that abolition, agreed on at a meeting of the Police Advisory Board, chaired by the then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, on November 18, 1966, that policing in this country has gone down the plughole
The model Caprice Bourret, right, is currently being praised for saying, on the Jeremy Vine Show a year ago, that we should all wear masks, that there should be travel restrictions and the country should be shut down
Where’s the proof Caprice was right?
The model Caprice Bourret, right, is currently being praised for saying, on the Jeremy Vine Show a year ago, that we should all wear masks, that there should be travel restrictions and the country should be shut down.
A doctor, Sarah Jarvis, who opposed her, is being called on by a Twitter mob to apologise.
Can I point out here that just because Ms Bourret’s ideas were adopted by Her Majesty’s Government, it does not mean that they were right. Evidence for the effectiveness of lockdowns is still scant, to put it mildly. The same is true for face coverings.
I do not know what Dr Jarvis thinks now. But the interesting point is that when this disagreement took place there were still quite a few experts and media figures who opposed the wild, disproportionate measures with which we later wrecked our economy and strangled our former freedom.
It was not facts which caused so many of them to shift, as they remained the same. It was a stampede of conformism.
Hand us back our flag, Boris
The Johnson Government’s attempt to muscle in on the Monarchy, and to hijack the flag, is nearly as bad as the Blair creature’s. Not only do Ministers appear on TV with enormous Union Jacks in their spare rooms (which, of course, all normal people have), the ludicrous new Downing Street press room is also crammed with clusters of national flags.
This is plainly wrong. Government press briefings in a two-party parliamentary democracy are bound to be partisan. The Prime Minister may fantasise about having a White House, a West Wing and a personal jet, but he is not Head of State, and the flag represents the whole nation, not just the bit that voted for him. This is more presidential than the real president.
I am pretty certain that when I attended White House press briefings in the Clinton era, even they didn’t display the Stars and Stripes in the small, scruffy room they used. This stuff matters. If it becomes unpatriotic to criticise the Government, you are not in a free country.
The Government is not the nation.
Hurrah for the BBC iPlayer, which means I can now watch the increasingly woke and boring quiz University Challenge in ten minutes flat, rather than enduring the full half-hour.
I just press the fast-forward button when asked to identify bits of garage music, or when the topic (yet again) is the moons of Jupiter, African flags, obscure women mathematicians, or the dense scientific puzzles Jeremy Paxman obviously doesn’t understand and where the question itself can take a minute to ask.
General knowledge is stuff you could or should know, or are ashamed not to know, not this sort of thing. University Challenge is now so dull that someone in TV badly needs to develop a quiz format that is actually informative and entertaining.
Oxbridge fails the entry test
It looks very much from recent entry figures as if Oxford and Cambridge universities are turning their backs on the fee-charging ‘public’ schools.
But is this really the radical widening of opportunity that some claim? No. They give preference instead to products of socially selective ‘comprehensives’ in wealthy areas. They also favour schools and colleges with academically selective sixth forms.
Selection at this age, for some reason, is all right, whereas it is illegal to set up a new school which selects at 11 or 13.
That would give much more chance to bright children from poor homes, whose hopes are often destroyed by chaotic, low-grade education in dud comprehensives.
Back when this country had more than 1,300 state grammar schools, the Oxford intake from ‘public’ schools fell from 62 per cent in 1939 to 45 per cent in 1965. In the same period, state grammars increased their share from 19 per cent to 34 per cent.
This revolution was based on merit not wealth, and the exams were much tougher.
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