Crime

It was Shetland that tipped me over the edge. Not the place, but the TV series. Although that’s set in the place. So both, really. It’s a crime drama, see, and people keep getting murdered. Roughly speaking, so far, there’s been a corpse every episode. Which by the end of the series will mean eight corpses. Which, given that there are only 20,000 people in Shetland, means that Scotland’s most northerly islands have a murder rate roughly comparable with that of Belize. Or higher, even, because my calculations assume that a series happens in a year, and that we are seeing all the murders there are, rather than just the

On the evening of the Mark Duggan verdict, Diane Abbott MP tweeted the following: If the #duggan jury believe that he did not have a gun in his hand when he was shot, how can they find it was a lawful killing? #baffled — Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) January 8, 2014   Well, Diane, your bafflement is because you weren’t inside the court room for three months listening to the evidence, were you, you idiot?  Does she think her tweet was helpful? Why does she not devote herself to tackling gun crime within the young black male community – or does she think that it is not a problem, a

It’s surprisingly boring, legalising weed. In Colorado, where recreational doobie has been utterly without censure for, ooh, about a week and a half now, the Department of Revenue (Marijuana Enforcement Division) has published Permanent Rules Related to the Colorado Retail Marijuana Code, which is 136 pages long and no fun at all. Were I actually in Colorado, I suppose I could always spark something up to help me get to the end. ‘The statutory authority for this rule is found at subsections 12-43.4-202(2)(b), 12-43.4-202(3)(b)(II), 12-43.4-202(3)(b)(III), and 12-43.3-301(1), C.R.S,’ it drones, at the top of the final page. If you like, imagine that read out by a posh girl in a

This was supposed to be the year of strife, strikes, misery and more. Instead, to the surprise of Britain’s politicians, things have instead gone badly right. I look at them in my Telegraph column today, and here are the top points:- 1. Crime plunges With the austerity and the unemployment, internal government reports predicted that Brits would respond by unleashing a crimewave. Instead, recorded crime has fallen to the lowest level in 25 years: [datawrapper chart=”http://www.seapprojects.co.uk/charts/3571387552215.html”] 2. We’re doing more with less People think public services are getting better, in spite of substantial cuts in local authority spending. The doomsayers were wrong – thanks to resourceful British public servants, more

Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants to this country are ‘just like’ British people who have second homes in France, according to the government’s Crime Prevention minister, Jeremy Browne. He is absolutely right, except for a small number of really quite insignificant differences. One being that the Romanians and Bulgarians don’t own homes here. The second being that Brits with second homes in France are rarely in receipt of that country’s welfare benefits. The third being that Brits in France are rarely a matter of concern for that country’s Crime Prevention minister.  And the fourth being that Brits with second homes in France do not usually set up a shanty town of

When Argentina appears in British public discourse, it is normally in relation to one of the two ‘f’s – football or the Falklands. The behaviour of President Cristina Kirchner’s regime towards the islanders is nothing short of disgraceful, and it is very encouraging to see the British government supporting the islanders in the strongest terms. The Falklands, for obvious reasons, are top of our agenda when it comes to discussion of Argentina, but this issue should not blind us from other major problems affecting this country as a result of Cristina Kirchner’s belligerence. Kirchner makes no secret of her refusal to play by the same rules as everyone else. Argentina

The most dramatic part of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s unmatched submarine novel, Das Boot, takes place beneath the Straits of Gibraltar, when Buchheim’s U-boat is ordered from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. ‘How can we get through?’ Asks one of the luckless crew, certain that Gibraltar’s massive defences will be the death of them. At least 9 U-boats were destroyed making that perilous run during the Second World War. The story of Gibraltar is not merely a tale of garrisons and gunships. The Spectator’s unique archive provides some insight into the life of the colony over the last 200 years, especially at times when the Rock became embroiled in Spanish intrigue or when it was threatened by

I wonder how many illegal immigrants who’ve seen the government’s imprecations for them to leave the country have done exactly that? Seen the van driving around with its placard and thought: ‘That’s really tugged at my conscience, that has. I shall take myself, and family, to Gatwick Airport immediately. I am sorry to have been such a burden.’ More to the point, I wonder how many are able to understand a single word of it? I suppose a pictogram of a Romanian with an accordion being roughed up by the old bill, followed by a picture of an aeroplane heading for Bucharest, would have offended the sensibilities of the Conservatives’

There are many Scotlands and they’re all dreadful. That at any rate seems to be the message from the Scottish government’s anti-sectarianism ‘taskforce’. We’re all in denial about sectarianism and the shadow it casts over Scottish society. Of course it’s hardly surprising that those people who spend their lives ferreting for evidence of sectarian behaviour conclude that sectarianism is both more broadly found and more deeply ingrained in Scottish society than your own experience may suggest. What do you know anyway? Conveniently, of course, such conclusions also demand that more public money be spent educating the poor, bigoted, people of Scotland to change the way they think and act. Then