In one sentence, Jacqui Smith became the Gerald Ratner of the Home Office

Austin Barry

Blimey, did Rod Liddle really mention the problem of black crime? Back to re-education classes, I think. He could at least just refer to certain "communities".

william

I notice that people who make 'incompetances' with their tax or welfare papers get put in prison though. Why is it a greater crime to defraud the state out of a couple of thousand quid than to mug, rob and rape? Why can one get a criminal record for not having a tube ticket but can steal from a shop and receive no punishment? Why do the laws protect the state and its servants but don't protect ordinary people?

EyeSee

She did worse than not admit any culpability. Ms Smith went on to say how much crime was reduced and how safe people were under Labour. When Orwell wrote 1984 it ws a warning to be on our guard, he would have thought the real New Labour we have today, to extreme to believe.

Colonial Mike

I doubt that there has ever been a time when the thinking of politicians has been so different to that of the commercial and middle classes. They it would seem have given up on government and occupy themselves largely with accumulating wealth. How on earth do we land up with a nanny state that's indulgent of everything that seeks to destroy it from drugs to simple values? What has caused this? Western society entering a decay period? The slow gutting of traditional values by the left? After fifty years of control of the media, total ownership by the left of the moral high ground? Government selected, effectively, by the bottom 51% of society? Could The Spectator please facilitate contributions on the subject by those who study it?

Jonathan Matthews

Ah yes, Rod. Wasn't it wonderful before the arrival of all the black people? Like the 19th century when one could walk the streets of Whitechapel and er..oh..wait a minute. Rod, the streets of London have been unsafe for decades, especially for women. It's not Labours fault. Crime, the causes of crime and the methods of dealing with offenders is a worlwide problem and isn't helped by such simplistic arguments.

iskidmore

a very satisying bout of truth telling in a world where Hain is a "man of integrity" according to his mates.Congratulations

Stephen

I think Rod is being a bit hard on Ms Smith. She managed to get 25,000 Police on the streets on London the other day. No moaning from them about excessive paperwork and political correctedness. Also a Police helicopter hovering above all the time. That is what I call policing!

Jon Livesey

The streets of London have been "unsafe for decades"? Pull the other one. I grew up in London in the fifties, first in Islington and then in Fulham, neither exactly hang-outs for the gentry, and the notion that the street were not safe was unknown. From school entry age to eighteen I went about my business on foot or by tube, and I neither experienced violent crime nor met anyone else who had. To cry "It's always been like this" is lazy. And it's dangerous because it implies that nothing can be done. Something can be done. Robert Peel proved that, and his solution worked very well until it was suffocated by political correctness.

Kevin

Is the Health Secretary allowed to make comparisons with the nineteenth century when questioned on current standards of medical care? Also, Jack the Ripper must have got around a bit if the murder rate in Victorian London is alleged to have been as bad as it is today. (Update: another murder committed this morning, in West Ealing.)

sebastian

I expect Rod Liddle soon to be arrested for indecent exposure. This time, he's flashed the unseemly truth about crime and London's streets. He's also been disgracefully, impolitely revealing about muslims in the past: waving rude honesties around in an altogether shocking exhibition of frank admission. Now, bumptiously proper MP Diana Abbot has been ogled at: the voluptuous facts of her son's education eyed behind the rustling, self-righteous crinolin passion-killers. Can this impropriety continue? I sincerely hope so. We, the prurient majority, are enjoying it too much to see it stopped. Indeed, there's such a lot of it around that eventually we might even all get a bit ourselves - come the next General Election.

Iain

So things are no worse than they were in the 19th century? Well that's a relief. I must start reading Dickens again.

Kevin

Update: Another hideous murder in south London on Sunday night. Quote from the police: "There was an argument between two parents over a game of football, which has tragically resulted in the death of a man." I have written about this habitual misuse of language before - calling an evil act a "tragic circumstance", as if it were a damnum fatale. Some newspaper must pick up on this. In my view it is clearly an admission that, with the abolition of capital punishment, we have lost control of the lawless in our midst. If the victim had been killed by a dangerous dog doing what comes naturally, it would have been put down. Let it be proved beyond reasonable doubt, however, that a person viciously beat a man to death and, if anything, we give them police protection. No-one has the right to expose the public to the continued presence of such a threat among us.

Jonathan Matthews

Jon, I lived in Chiswick, Woodford and Muswell Hill, worked in Leytonstone, Bow and Hoxton for several years in the 1990's. Not having a car, I both walked extensivley and used public transport around these areas and was never attacked and I never knew anyone that had been attacked either. Is that an indictaion that the streets were safe? Of course not. And even assuming that the streets were safer in the 1950's (which they probably were) doesn't preclude one from saying that the "streets have been unsafe for decades" surely? I am just disputing Rod's contention that it's all Labours fault.