“When in doubt ignore the statistics and go with the gut feeling” has always been seen as wise advice among Planet Reality dwellers.
Though government have told us for years crime figures are falling steeply the gut feeling of those of us too streetwise to ever believe statistics was that crime is on the increase. We are all deluded apparently, the crime rate has been falling ever since (surprise surprise,) the current government came to power. So effective have the government’s policies been that the crime rate is actually negative now, as fatsally reported for us some time ago. In the 1980s you car was very likely to be stolen by joyriders, driven to destruction, trashed and torched. By 2007, when the Labour Party had been in power for ten years, scallys were likely to break into your garage and give the car a full service and valeting.
Both Boggart Blog and Little Nicky Machiavelli have questioned the figures for years. Statistics are all very well but we don’t notice any bloody corpses being unmurdered. Our gut instinct is perhaps informed by the streets we pass that are lined with burned out cars and shops with shattered windows.
It turns out we were not just nasty, suspicious curmudgeons. We were right.
Today’s news reveals many crimes have been falsely recorded as less serious offences than they actually were. Spouse murders are entered on the charge sheet as domestic violence, rape as sexual harassment and Grievous Bodily Harm as the less serious Actual Bodily Harm.
This last is very disturbing; the difference between the two offences (about seven years in most courts) is that while Actual Bodily Harm or ABH is simply a case of somebody getting smacked in the mouth in a fight, GBH, Grievous Bodily Harm is the proper charge when someone has been stabbed, beaten and kicked to within an inch of their life or hit in the face with a shovel.
In the frenetic scramble to meet bureaucratic targets imposed by government, the police and Crown Prosecution Service have prosecuted the latter category of malicious wounding as the less serious ABH and perpetrators have got away with sentences as light as a hundred hours community service. We hear of such things on the news and think, “A bit of weeding in the municipal gardens and the guy walks free but that’s not so bad, it was only ABH, he’s not an animal.
Meanwhile another psycho is stalking the streets.
No Way To Solve The Knife Crime Crisis
More humour evry day from Boggart Blog
