20mph for Westfield

The Lid Dem BANES council put a large provision for 20 mph speed limits in their last budget.

I intend to try and get an early chunk of this money put in to Westfield for the residential roads.

Westfield is primarily a residential parish with a large number of young families, and is one of the few places I have seen in recent years where children can still play in the street. I want to help protect these children and enable them to continue to use the open areas we have - so I am going to propose having the residential roads in the area converted to 20 mph.

Also a number of the green areas are becoming mud with people illegally parking on them, at the same time I am going to request that parking officers actually police these areas, while looking at the possibility of converting 1 or 2 to tarmac to create the extra parking needed to ease the problem.

I will post more as it happens

London Riots spread country wide.

The side effects of the policy allowing young people to run riot has brought riots to the entire country.

For years we have pandered to our kids, allowed them to ignore the police and teachers and attacked authority figures that have stood up to them. Punishments have been reduced to meaningless in schools so our youth feel there are no consequences to their actions. The result is Riots, Mass looting and the death toll to several communities.

They are about to learn there are consequences, when no jobs or businesses return to their communities for fear it happens again. The scars will remain as no one comes to repair the damage, and the number of jobless and impoverished families will grow.

We need to stem the tide now, the government needs announce that they will name and shame those guilty, so they face the wrath of their friends and family. Any over the age of 14 need to be treated as adults in the face of the law with the consequences that come with it. We need to announce the punishments now to prevent further spread.

More importantly we need to take a long look at our society. We need to show our children that there are consequences when the consequences are minor, long before they get to this stage. Discipline needs to come back in to schools and respect for the police needs to be rebuilt. 

We need a society where common sense wins, rather than instant reaction. Where when a parent hears that their child is in trouble - they find out why rather than immediately believing either side. Then stand up for the side that is in the right. In 'The good old days' parents immediately believed the Teacher or Police - now they immediately believe the child. 

Neither is right, but it is the lack of consequences caused by the latter that have enabled the current problems to arise. Our society has had a habit of jumping from one extreme to the other, where the middle ground is needed, and hopefully after the dust has cleared and the rebuilding commences we will not see more knee jerk reactions but a constructive dialogue to rebuild a safer, fairer and stronger society.

Newspaper Crisis

The News of the World is soon to depart our news stands - a casualty of a greedy empire out of control.

Hundreds of jobs, and a long (168 years) and illustrious history are being sacrificed to save one woman, who should have already been fired. Rebekah Brooks was Editor at the time, and was either in collusion or completely incompetent if that level of criminal activity was happening in her news room.

This is also a bid to save the deal that will extend the empire, the purchase of BskyB in full - a deal already fraught with competition questions, and now with the extra slap of a big question over the integrity of News Corp.

Even the integrity of our two main partys is called in to question over this, with Andy Coulson (the former head of communications for David Cameron's Conservative Party, and Deputy Editor at the time of the hacking) possibly being arrested today. 

Labour don't get away clean though, despite Ed Miliband demanding change and that the government needs to be seen to take a firm stand to bring the press back in to line - but his own head of strategy, Tom Baldwin is another former News International Journalist who urged the Shadow Cabinet in January not to say anything "which appears to be attacking a particular newspaper group out of spite" and not to associate hacking to News Corporation's attempt to takeover BSkyB.

How did we let this happen? Over recent years the press have gained more and more control over our country, with politicians too scared of bad headlines and exposes to stand against them. 

Now we end up with Trial by Media (luckily two newspapers (The Sun and The Mirror, with The Sun being another News International paper) are being tried for contempt of court over reporting of the Jo Yeates case), and the news papers running riot over anything they think will sell a paper.

Do not get me wrong, I believe in freedom of the press, and that they have to have the power to investigate and keep government and business honest. That requires a degree of honesty, integrity and control that they no longer seem to possess though. There is a big difference over what is in the public interest and what the public is interested in.

Unfortunately our papers can no longer be trusted to do this - they have become the big business that needs investigation, rather than warriors for truth and justice keeping our society honest.

Breaches of the law and privacy aren't calculated against the good they will do, but will the extra advertising and sales be worth the fines they will incur.

What we need is a restructuring of press controls, and independent organisation with real power. A Committee made up from the Judiciary, various aspects of the media, the government and the common people. One with real power to investigate and then act on the investigations, weather that is to forward on to the Police, the Government or to place realistic fines themselves.

The fines would have to be large, most large media organisations will not notice a million pound fine, a large expose will generate far more income than that - the fines need to be large enough to hurt, to remove all profits make by that article and then some. That might make the media stop and think before acting.

If we fail to do this, then we risk the media gaining more and more control over our country, till the government become little more than puppets for the all powerful news barons . . .

Having to steal to eat

I have just read a concerning article over a court case in the town I live in. An unemployed man, who had had his passport and other vital papers stolen from him was taken to court for stealing £12.54 in food and drink from Asda. At the time of the theft he hadn't eaten in 4 days . . . .

He was found guilty and fined £50 and told to pay Adsa a £15 surcharge for the goods.

The court case isn't what bothers me most - people cant been seen to be allowed to get away with theft, what ever the reason. The part that concerns me is that in our society we have a situation where someone needs to steal to eat. How can our government claim to be tackling poverty, when situations like this still occur.

There should be some way we can feed the homeless and poverty stricken victims of modern society with out them having to resort to theft. Even if it's just a can of discount beef stew in a disposable bowl (that would cost at most 15p per person). In 2008 there were just under 100,000 homeless according to government figures (which hide large numbers of people). That is under 5.5 million pounds per year to give a hot meal to each one every day - that is only 1.5 million over what the Prime Minister spent on travel last year.

The government has spent a fortune on it's digital britain report - concerned about getting high speed broadband in to every house in the country - shouldn't it be more important to get food in to every mouth in the country first?

Should Men be able to Sue over false accusations of rape?

There was an article in the Independent today, that leaves me in a quandary. It involves a man suing the woman who accused him of rape - as he has just been acquitted.

Independent Article

Understandably the women's rights groups are up in arms about the possibility of this happening, and the effect it may have on women coming forward after being raped - something that could become a serious issue.

From the other side, what happens to a man when he is accused of rape is almost as psychologically scaring as being raped - with the added side effect of anyone knowing that you were charged with it asking did he or didn't he.

Finding a line between the two may not be possible, to protect women and make them feel safe to bring charges against their attacker and at the same time protect men against false charges.

In the long run I think the only option may be to block any legal proceedings against the alleged victim but to keep the man's identity secret until he is convicted. Though far from perfect, it may be the only way to keep rapists off the streets - and though the occasional false allegation may harm some men - that is better than leaving predictors on the streets and at least the innocent would have a trial by jury to fall back on.