"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

also kids trafficking drugs (which is tied up with austerity too)

In combination with the fact that the Mayor of London stopped being a Tory.

The murder rate in London, aiui, hasn't shifted that much. With a couple of outliers, it has been in the 110-130 range for most of the last ten years, which is way, way down on where it was in the early 00s. What's changed, more than anything else, is that you have a local press determined to pin all the deaths they'd have previously ignored on Khan.

xp notably an English phenomenon too (Birmingham is seeing a lot of violence lately), Scotland has pioneered an epidemiological approach to combating knife crime, with positive results: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/14/scotland-knife-crime-public-health-issue-violence-uk

no it’s drill

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/847818629840228354/VXyQHfn0_bigger.jpg

The Glasgow approach is excellent and should be a model for everyone else.

I'm given to understand there's very little resourcing available for any kind of proactive community policing left, which might help prevent some crimes or at least give police an idea of the warning signs.

If the murder rate is down on the early 00s, has the proportion/number of teenage victims gone up?

It's a good question and i haven't seen any stats but you definitely had a lot of reporting between 2000 and 2007 on a perceived wave of teen murders.

There's a theory that, as the penalties for possession of guns and knives had statutory minimums imposed, gangs increasingly made juvenile members carry weapons so adults, who would get the full whack if caught, didn't have to.

It was very common for teenagers in the late 90s to carry blades for 'self-defense' ime.

If the graphs on BBC are right (Home Office source) actual homicide by knife (in England and Wales) hasn't changed much compared to the early-mid 00s where it jumped up by 50-60 from a few years at around 200. That it reached a 20 year low just four years ago is as interesting as the recent spike.

As ever the Mail can fuck off with their "blood-soaked streets" virtual glee.

I wouldn't give May too much of a "complex causes" get out clause but I'm not really reviewing any evidence other than "fuck every last one of them". Although I'll grudgingly admit the homicide spike probably is a complex thing, but this lot can fuck off when they start using "complex" on the homelessness epidemic or any of the other ills of austerity. And I still think it wouldn't be as bad without all the youth/drug addiction services/facilities that have had to be closed by cash-strapped LA's in the last decade. And all the extra pressures austerity exerts on poor families is something that can't be underestimated.

Tory suspension time:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/05/tories-suspend-14-members-over-alleged-islamophobia

Good, but this is so specious, in the same vein as the rest of these performances from all UK political parties.

I hope they've not been bulking up the figures by suspending a few dead members.

Many, many members who could do with suspending

Peston on what he imagines the next fortnight has in store:

https://www.facebook.com/pestonitv/posts/2291225804535485?__tn__=K-R

There's a fella walking around London who had AIDS a few years ago and doesn't now? (As regards cheering news)

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 5 March 2019 13:16 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he never had AIDS he was HIV positive.

That was my assumption when I read that

Yes, you're right, sorry.

the state of this prick:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/05/journalist-makes-police-complaint-about-tommy-robinson

not a nice thing to say about an ex-ilx0r

The Glasgow approach is excellent and should be a model for everyone else.

I believe that involved a marked increase in stop and search.

Peston on what he imagines the next fortnight has in store:

https://www.facebook.com/pestonitv/posts/2291225804535485?__tn__=K-R

― Acting Crazy (Instrumental) (jed_), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 7:45 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Do you have a non-FB link/paste to this?

I'll do it right after this

The Scottish approach was quite conventional at first. “The police played a central role in the beginning,” explains Christine Goodall, who along with two other surgeons founded Medics Against Violence in 2008, a campaign group which works with health professionals, law enforcement, social services and other bodies to thwart violent behaviour. “They campaigned really hard to get the legislation around knife crime changed so people would be more likely to get a mandatory sentence. There was also, at the outset, a lot of stop and search.”

Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you
Read more
The average sentence for carrying a knife in Scotland has tripled, from four months in 2005-06 to an average of 13 months in 2014-15.

The issues, says Goodall, were concentrated in certain areas, particularly around Glasgow. Using intelligence from police operations, the VRU identified those people most likely to offend and asked them to voluntarily attend the sheriff’s court. “They didn’t have to come but they were encouraged to by community police, teachers and social workers and a lot of them did come,” says Goodall.

“The police had mapped all the gangs and when people got there they saw their own pictures up in the court. The session started off with a warning: ‘We know who you are and if you carry on with this lifestyle we’re going to come down on you really hard. We’re going to arrest you and we’ll arrest the rest of the gang. You will be going to prison if this carries on.’”

But at that point the intervention at the court took a more creative and holistic approach.

“We spoke about the injuries we see as a result of the violence and had a mum talk about losing her son. That really hit home,” explains Goodall. Finally, they were offered a way out. “There was help with housing, relocation, employment and training. They were given a number to call if they wanted to take the offer up. Huge numbers of them did so, were put into the programme, and are no longer in the gang lifestyle.”

The decision to treat knife crime as a public health issue – rather than simply a police matter – appears to have underpinned both the direction and support.

https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2017/dec/03/how-scotland-reduced-knife-deaths-among-young-people

Peston:

without a Withdrawal Agreement at the end of March, that is whether they want a no-deal Brexit.

Here is that nutshell of government and parliament as the figment of some mischievous deity's imagination - because the prime minister will have to make a decision that will expose all the contradictions in her approach to Brexit and all the mutual antipathies on her benches.

The point is that she has promised more than 100 times that the UK would be leaving the EU with or without a deal on 29 March . But she is also increasingly and acutely aware that leaving without a deal on that date would undermine our prosperity, security and even our health for an unspecifiable time.

So two questions follow.

First, will she stick to government policy and - via a three-line whip - force MPs and ministers to vote to keep the option of leaving without a deal on 29 March on the table?

Were she to do this, she would probably precipitate the resignations of more than 20 ministers from cabinet and lower ranks. Which is the sort of accident most PM's would rather avoid.

But were she to allow a free vote, she would be conceding that on one of the most important questions of this age or any, she and the government used to have a position and a view, but now she doesn't.

Which is not a great look.

Second, if there is a free vote, how would she vote?

If for a no-deal Brexit, then she would probably be on the losing side, which would look very odd (to say the least), though she is racking up these historic losses like a school child collecting Pokemon game cards.

And if she votes against, then she would be betraying what she has claimed for months is in the interest of the nation.

So what will she do? How will she whip her party and vote herself in that historic no-deal vote next week?

I asked her ministers. None have a clue. She won't tell them.

How would they recommend she votes?

I asked one I would normally expect to be less religious on this issue than most.

This is what he said: "she should give a free vote and then vote herself to rule out leaving the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement(without a deal)".

So the recommended position for this prime minister, according to one of her closest allies and supporters, would be to abandon the pretence that the government is in charge of leaving the EU - and also to admit that what she has been telling us about the virtues of no deal have been so much piffle.

thx Jed!

She’s going to bottle it and give them a free vote. No way is she going to lose a massive vote AND have half the front bench resign on her.

good luck for the government that - on the one policy they have

is this vote scheduled yet?

Next week supposedly but I’m not seeing it on the parliamentary calendar.

The first half of Peston:

We have a Tory government and governing party irredeemably split on the biggest question of our age, namely how and whether to leave the European Union.

And we have a Labour opposition in a disorderly civil war between backbench MPs and lords on the one hand and a leadership team under Jeremy Corbyn over a perceived failure to cut the cancer of antisemitism from the party - and, perhaps worse than that, the undermining of due process by officials close to Corbyn.

In other words, there is chaos on both sides of the Commons, compounded by the collapse to zero in the working majority of Theresa May's administration following those defections to The Independents Group.

It is not just the PM of whom it could be said she's in office, but not in power. Parliament as a whole looks like a Disneyland representation of democracy - all sound and fury, signifying little but self indulgence.

In 25 years of taking a close and perhaps unhealthy interest in politics, I've never known anything like it.

Ministers daily threaten resignation over a Brexit strategy that the PM won't actually share with them. Backbench MPs in the tea rooms and restaurants of Westminster talk about their respective leaders with a contempt which astounds even my cynical ears.

Maybe the latter years of Wilson and Callaghan governments felt as anarchic. But I doubt it.

The collapse of parliament into self parody is likely to be nutshelled next week in one decision the prime minister will have to take that will follow the expected defeat for her in the "meaningful" vote on her reworked Brexit deal.

First things first: there is not a single MP or minister who expects the attorney general Geoffrey Cox to succeed in the mission he was set by parliament and the PM, which is to persuade the EU's Brexit negotiators to amend the Northern Ireland backstop so that it has a formal end date.

That mission has to all intents and purposes been abandoned - as the foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt implied today, when he said that what matters is that Cox can make a formal statement in his role as the government's legal adviser that the backstop would not be indefinite.

It is not clear Cox will even be able to say that, without humiliating himself in the court of QC opinion. But even if he does, few Tory Brexiters will declare themselves sudden converts to the PM's Brexit plan - because a "temporary" backstop could still endure for decades.

So the PM's Brexit deal will be rejected by MPs again. And the following day Theresa May will put a motion to the House asking MPs whether they want to leave the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement at the end of March, that is whether they want a no-deal Brexit.

Ah, thanks Andrew. I didn't spot that.

What happens if you shout “ahoy there” in the Commons... pic.twitter.com/cP2B0T7oLg

— Richard Wheeler (@richard_kaputt) March 5, 2019

john bercow is an odd duck

John Bercow here, sounding like he’s been slain in a Megadrive game pic.twitter.com/NbXlwee6hG

— Richard Wheeler (@richard_kaputt) February 26, 2019

There's a theory that, as the penalties for possession of guns and knives had statutory minimums imposed, gangs increasingly made juvenile members carry weapons so adults, who would get the full whack if caught, didn't have to.

In Scotland 'in the day', people used to have women carry the razors.

av hird a kippin it in yer boot but crivvens

how bad was that tho

well if there's one thing that sums up the lived exoerience of working class people it's never mind

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/06/brutal-cuts-fight-back-preston-dragons-den?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I don't know why this isn't a national scandal instead of buried 2/3 down the page under an obscure headline. Too many national scandals to go round?
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/05/think-ill-leave-him-on-steps-of-downing-st-mp-tweets-pm-over-cuts-at-sons-school

people have become so inured to national scandals we're probably almost ready to relegate mainstream cannibalism and the eating of babies to page 2.

leader of the opposition got punched in the head and it barely even registered (compare that to the week of outcry when angela eagle’s window got panned)

i had horrible unnecessary thoughts about a media compare and contrast if some nazi cunt had actually shot him

It got a lot less coverage than JRM being heckled with his kids too. A lot of the same people who write the news are the same people who hang out with each other on twitter and fantasise about Seumas Milne being some sort of malign presence & constantly subtweet Owen Jones.

When Owen Jones got heckled & then chased down a street by one of the yellow vest crowd calling him a faggot, you barely heard anything about that either. Same reason.

"Defence secretary Gavin Williamson says military 'ready to respond' to knife crime crisis"

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/knife-crime-uk-stabbings-gavin-williamson-military-police-cressida-dick-a8809581.html

Williamson needs to put it back in his pants, part #23

"Theresa May and her circle of advisers did not understand how the European Union works, and consequently followed a negotiating strategy in 2016 that was doomed to fail, the former UK ambassador to the EU Sir Ivan Rogers has said."

"Rogers said the issue of whether the UK should contribute into the EU budget would come up in April. He also said there was no chance that the UK would be able to disentangle itself from the EU even if Brexit goes ahead.
He said: “These fantasies of release and liberation – they are fantasies. We are going to be negotiating on everything from aviation to farming for evermore with our biggest neighbour. We cannot live in glorious isolation. Talk to the Swiss and to the Norwegians – they live in a permanent state of negotiation with the EU.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/04/theresa-may-did-not-understand-eu-when-she-triggered-brexit

huh no shit

the eternal brexit

ivan rogers' speech to idk liverpool guild hall or something a few montsh back is essentially a longer version of that and well worth reading

where most ministers have a stash of jazzmags in their office I think Williamson has his collection of Victor comics, mind probably the same thing for him.