You would have to be very naïve to believe that the high street’s decline is something of a recent   thing, the likes of supermarkets and out of town shopping centres both played their part in changing how we shop. 

However in more recent years we have started to see the likes of what we would call big shop’s coming to an end.  Previously we had been seeing the likes of independent shops closing down.  Such as when I was a teenager there was a great little record shop in town where I would go to buy my CD’s, which eventually got in to a position where it just couldn’t compete with the likes of HMV or Virgin Records.  Like many independent shops went to the great high street in the sky. This was a great shame; as I picked up some great albums that I would never have got in the main stream shops

We resigned ourselves to the fact that high streets and latter shopping centres like Meadowhall and the Trafford Centre would be dominated by the big shops.  Who would meet our consumer needs provide jobs and generally keep us happy till we maxed out our credit cards. 

Though slowly over the past 10-15 years a new menace has been creeping up on the retail industry one that is slowly but surely picking off its victims one by one, like Woolworths, Virgin Records, Blacks and Game.  A menace that can strike from miles away, cruising through the air like an exocet sinking retail outlets one by one. 

I am of course talking about the Internet and shopping online.  The handy convenient super high street that has everything there at a few clicks of a mouse.  Where you can sit in your pyjamas in the warmth of your own home and can order everything from abacuses to stuffed Zebras.  Where you don’t have to deal with the possibility of an inept shop assistant and the huddled masses clambering over the last copy of The Kings Speech special edition in 3D. 

Now some people will argue that the internet is a great thing, and shopping on it is fantastic and you can find anything you can think of and more.  You can go to an online shop and find 1000 different pairs of shoes in hundreds of different colours.  Because the diversity and range is just not on the high street any more. 

Yes, the diversity and the range has been lost from the high street but there is only one person to blame for that, and that is ourselves.  When we had the little independent shops there was more options on the high street, but people wanted cheaper and cheaper items which forced these shops out of business.  If we carry on with the growth of the internet then the shops that remain on the High Street and in the shopping centres will follow suit. We have already seen the likes of HMV, the last proper “record shop” having problems, because of the likes of I-tunes and Amazon.  If our last record shop goes it will be a very sad day for the high street.  We will end up with a generation not knowing what it’s like to go in to a record shop and thumb through all the cd’s to find new and exciting bands.   

While yes the internet can be a force for good, a place to debate with socialists, to find out the weather forecast for Corvo Island but I implore you if not for me but for future generations use the High Street.  Spend your hard earned money in a proper shop, an independent one if you can, because if we continue to spend online we will lose those shops and it may not matter to those of us who can shop online, but it will matter a lot to those people who don’t have that option.  So let’s support that High Street, let’s see a growth in independent shops let’s get back to being able to go out and shop in person and find what we want. 

The more we do it, the more choice we will get which is better for everyone.  As not only will we be able to find those red shoes we were after but jobs will be created the economy will blossom and we will make Britain Great again.   

If you look in any newspaper you will see on any one day a news story where a criminal had got a very strange sentence; such as the paedophile who escaped prison when found with a million pictures of child abuse, then there was the student in south wales who got 56 days for his actions on twitter what he said and did were wrong but really prison when a community sentence would have been more proportionate.  Then we see in today’s paper the case of a prolific burglar who 12 months ago was given a suspended sentence for his actions, only for him to go on and commit 22 more offences in 9 months and asked for more to be taken into consideration when sentencing and he got 6 years.

Now these are just a handful of cases where criminals have been handed down unusual sentences for their crimes.    Now I could also add in my own experience where my attacker got a 2 year community sentence for two serious sexual offences, after he had evaded police bail for 14 months.  So is he likely to have turned up for his punishment?

Now some people will tell you that prison doesn’t work and we should use more community punishments, now yes re-offending rates of people on community sentence is 13% lower on average than those sent to prison.  But it’s still 54% or people re-offending after, their sentence. 

So I can see why a judge may think it makes more sense to issue one, as there is only a 54% chance that they will re-offend as opposed to a 67% chance.  But this in my opinion is where the judges are going wrong and why they are out of touch with society. 

Now I can understand with a first time offender they would think what’s the best way to send this person back on the straight and narrow so they won’t get in to trouble again? In that case if it’s nothing serious then a community sentence is probably the right thing for them.  However when the judge is faced with a habitual offender who has a criminal record as long as your arm, is the best thing to let them walk around the streets?

What we need is reform of the whole criminal justice system, as I have spoken about prisons earlier I won’t talk about that now.  But I think that the judiciary is letting people down.  Prison is there to make the people feel safe, to keep people we perceive as a danger to society and our belongings away for us for a period of time. 

Now watching Free Speech last night on the BBC they had a person who went to prison and said “he didn’t enjoy it and didn’t think it was right for him.” But does he not understand prison is not supposed to be fun it’s a punishment for doing something wrong. 

Anyhow the judges need to realise that we the public want to feel safe, and as a result habitual offenders and violent people should be locked up for what they do.  If we change prison we can address their re-offending rate. 

In America we see judges standing for office, and being elected by the people to do their job.  Now yes this may politicise the judiciary a bit, and may account for their astronomical prison population.  But I think that if people know that burglars would get sent to prison when convicted people would feel safer, and this would also impact on the opinion the public have on the police to a degree. 

As I know personally, that if the police put in a lot of effort to catch someone and put them on trial for the judge to say ok you can go and have a community sentence feels like a kick in the teeth for the victim and I am sure the police feel the same. 

The justice system is there to protect the law abiding, but in lots of cases we see it as if they are protecting the criminals, with a slap on the wrist don’t do it again and go and pick up litter for 200 hours. 

Judges need to get tougher on offenders, the sentencing guidelines need completely overhauling and increasing; and prisons need changing.  Then when people are seeing justice being done and criminals punished in an appropriate manner will people start to feel that justice is being done and we can feel safer in the streets and our own homes.   

Now if we go back 60 years to the early 1950’s male homosexuality was illegal, and you could find yourself in prison just for following through with your sexual attractions to another man.  However at this time attitudes were starting to change with regards to if this should be a criminal offence.  Then we saw in 1957 the Wolfenden Report  which suggested the decriminalisation of certain sexual acts. 

Which eventually did materialise a decade latter with the Sexual Offences Act 1967; and over the coming decades we have seen major changes in public attitudes to homosexuality.  Now culminating in the current consultation that is looking at how we can grant marriage equality for same sex couples and we have a raft of anti-discrimination law for homosexuals. 

However today I was saw a re-tweet of a link to a news story comparing homosexuality with paedophilia (http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/b4u-act-pedophilia-takes-step-toward-being-considered-212800919.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us).  By a group who want to normalise the attraction of people to children.  Wishing to de-sensitize society to the effects of paedophilia so that some people may consider it normal like we do with homosexuality now.

So naturally I had a look at their website to see how credible this group actually is, and to see if it’s not just a group of paedophiles’ trying to find a way of justifying what they do so that they can eventually campaign for the de-criminalisation of their actions.    However their website doesn’t list names of either the lay people or the medical professionals that are part of this organisation.  So it does raise credibility questions. 

However as a gay woman I find their stance and comparison to the LGBT movement unnerving and very offensive.  As with homosexuality it concerns two consenting adults, who know and understand what they are doing and can rationalise their feelings for each other. 

Whereas does a young child know what is happening and would they want to have sexual relations with a middle aged man?  Now I know some 8 year olds are very bright you occasionally hear of an 8 year old getting a GCSE or an A-level.  But that type of intelligence is not the same as being able to cognitively understand what sex is.  This is why we have an age of consent for sex; as this is the age where people can understand what sex is. 

I don’t think any rational human being would agree that we should let paedophiles have sex with children because they consider it to be a natural thing just like homosexuality.  The problem is not if it is a natural thing or not, but it’s what it is doing.   There are numerous scientific studies that say children that go through sexual abuse can have a multitude of problems in later life.   This on its own should be enough to convince people that to even consider talking about the possibility of doing something with the law on this issue should just not happen. 

This I see as being one of the few things that society will never be able to accept, because of the shear destructive effect that it can have on the lives of the children involved.  It is an abhorrent and egregious act and we shouldn’t be looking at listening to their nonsense we should be looking at ways to strengthen the protective measures in place to stop these people doing it in the first place.  Personally I consider this a crime up there with murder and should upon conviction automatically generate a life sentence, on public protection grounds.        

There has been a bit of fuss about the web monitoring that the government announced yesterday. When you think about it, it's a lot of fuss over nothing really.  Yes some people will be upset because they will see it as an invasion of their privacy and the state shouldn’t be snooping on them and seeing what they are looking at in the privacy of their own home. 

They will argue that Article 8 gives them a right to a private life and this should be respected and not interfered with like this.  However Article 8 is not an absolute right and can be limited hence why it has a qualifying statement. 

But this argument takes away from what the problem really is.  When the Internet first started to become accessed by the average person in the street it was relatively harmless and full of useless facts and personal websites of people who liked Star Trek.  But as it took off and more and more people started to use it, the nature of it changed.  As well as having the law abiding people who wanted to find out what the day’s weather was going to be or to read the news, the internet attracted nefarious people too. 

So along with the good things came a dark side to the internet.  In the late 1980’s there wasn’t even any laws governing the use of the internet in the UK, and judges were faced with having to bend existing laws to fit.  We then got the Computer Misuse Act 1990.  However since then we haven’t really seen any progress in regulation or legislation of the internet.

However although we have these offences, if not outdated ones, the internet is still basically a lawless place where criminals can operate with relative impunity.  If the streets were in such a state there would be a public outcry. 

Which leaves us with two possible options, we can police the internet or we can police those people using the internet.  The first of those tasks would be near on impossible, it would require huge scale international co-operation from every government in the world and all the ISP’s to be able to effectively police the internet.  Then you would be faced with the dilemma of what if X is illegal here but not illegal over there.  So the mammoth task of policing the internet is something that we can’t do.

So we are left with policing the citizens’ of the UK and what they access, which is a more than doable task; even if it will upset a few people along the way.  But any task that the state carries out will upset some people, as you can’t please all the people all of the time.

Now there are lots of reasons why this is actually a good thing and not a bad thing like lots would have you believe.  Firstly this should be seen as giving the police extra resources to do their job in an effective way, as there are lots of people out there who are committing crimes on the internet and going totally undetected.  How many paedophiles are out their sharing images of child abuse that the police don’t know about and currently can’t find out about without a warrant?  There are shops out there that have gone in to administration due to people file sharing copyrighted material, which is money and jobs being lost from the economy.  Then not to mention people posting material that is technically a hate crime.  If I stood in the high street giving out copied music or spouting hate crime I would get arrested, yet as it stands I can sit in my living room on my computer and do the same thing with impunity.  Why is that the case? They are both the same things yet one we ignore at the moment and when there is the likelihood we will do something about it people don’t want it to happen.

In a modern society we should have a police force that are able to deal with the changing types of crime, to say that because it may infringe on my civil liberties is a very selfish way to look at it.  Those pictures of child abuse infringed on the civil liberties of the child who was abused, are your civil liberties really more important than bringing someone to justice for passing around abhorrent materials?

Then you have people saying well if we let the police do this then corrupt police officers could pass on the information to other people that could lead to blackmail.  Well there is nothing to stop a corrupt police officer doing that now; these changes don’t introduce a new computer system, they just take away the need for a warrant to look at them.  So if there was a corrupt police officer now they could gain access to this information, and do the same. 

This is not an increase in the “nanny state” it’s an increase in police powers, to bring them in to the modern age.  So what if they can see what I have been looking at online, I have nothing to hide about my browsing history.  Hell the last 10 websites I looked at were;

• Twitter
• Facebook
• My blog
• Google Analytics
• Okcupid
• Gaydargirls
• LGBTory
• Hotmail
• Legislation.gov
• Lexis Library

Hardly the most interesting of browsing history’s and I bet the vast majority of you don’t have anything out of the ordinary in yours; so there is nothing we should worry about.  If there is a small encroachment on your civil liberties then surely the benefits of the people arrested for committing crimes and making society a safer place outweigh that. 

If you believe the left then this bad 10 day period for the government has spelt the end of them and that they will be wiped of the electoral map at the next general election.  However a lot of these people are the same type of people who would love to see Karl Marx as prime minister.

But let’s address the real crux of the issue, a bad 2 week period in April 2012 all of 3 years and a month before the next general election will not be remembered by 99% of the electorate come May 2015 when they head to the polling stations to decide who to vote for.  If anything it is the 6-8 weeks prior to a general election that will help people decide how they will vote, as we saw in 2010 with the sudden surge in support for the Lib Dems after the leaders debates.

But you see Dave and Co. have a huge advantage over previous governments in that they actually already know the date of the next general election.  So unlike previous governments they know when they have to start the political bribery of the electorate.  Just like at the moment in the USA Obama doesn’t want anything to do with the Iran situation because he knows it could harm his re-election. 

So come the end of 2013, we will see in the UK this Government starting to focus on things that the people care about, and making changes that will directly impact their lives. However what the left have not factored in to their neigh saying is come 2015 when people go to the polls one big thing that people care a lot about is benefits; and we will see in 2015 the effects of the benefit reforms with those on benefits earning less than they are now.  Which will leave Labour with very little room to manoeuvre on the subject; as to say they would increase them would be political suicide. 

We will also see the changes to the NHS in full swing by 2015, and unless the NHS has collapsed and exploded like the left are hoping for then the electorate will be happy with that and Labour will have nothing they can really say about it. 

So all this doom saying from the left is really a lot of hot air, 2 bad weeks 3 years before an election is not the end of a government.  If it were then Tony Blair would have been done in at the start of each of his terms as Prime Minister, as he made lots of bad decisions at the beginning of his terms.  People don’t realise that the first 3 years of any government is when they get rid of the unpopular things that they have to do, so that the last 2 years they can pander to the voters for re-election. 

It’s what has always happened and will continue to happen so while Dave is probably spending a relaxing Sunday evening with Samantha and his family he is probably not worrying about 2015 today and is more thinking what should I watch on the telly tonight.  Whereas Ed on the other hand is probably thinking I am glad Bradford is over and done with but oh crap we have more elections in a months’ time!   

However it’s not a time to be complacent about 2015 but it’s equally not a time to worry. As if a week is a long time in politics then three years must be an eternity.

The media and the left have made a lot of fuss out of all sorts of things since the budget, notably pasties, petrol, the granny tax and cash for access.  So this morning I braced myself for an interesting time knocking on doors.  Just like last weekend after the budget the response from those we spoke to was positive.  Not just from those who traditionally vote conservative but also from those who vote Labour.

I did have one lovely old lady bring up the granny tax but once I explained to her just what it was and who it would affect, she was relived and actually in favour of it.  It's as if the media is actually out of touch with those people they are reporting to.  Mr Smith at number 27 doesn't appear to be interested in the nonsense that the media spew out. We all know that those on the left will make a mountain out of a mole hill if they can, and it looks like the media must source their stories from the left. 

Now I know the whole cash for access thing was a big issue. But the granny tax and pasty gate were two non-stories that are illustrated by the lack of comments I've had on the doorstep.  As for the petrol issue, well that I think happened due to the over reporting of the story by the media.  The problem we are faced with is that with 24 hour rolling news we get the same stories every 20 minutes or so.  As a result it makes an unimportant news item seem important.

Anyone who's knocked on doors after a bad press week for a party will tell you that most of the time the electorate won't mention these items to you.  So it makes you wonder if the people who vote don’t mention the stories to people who are there as a representative of those parties then why oh why do the media decide to repeat the story over and over again. 

I can only think that the media are hoping that they can stir up a lot of fuss over pasties or a tax that only affects a very small number.  If the media wanted to be responsible and fill up their full schedule why not pick up on local good news stories then to repeat non news items over and over again.

Anyhow an a plus note the door knocking went well both this morning and this afternoon and we got a lot of C’s one or two P’s and only a few S’ which is always good to see.  Though there were a few U’s which considering we are only a month away from the election to be undecided is a little odd in my opinion.  Though I am waiting with baited breath for the knock on my door from the Labour party just so I can see how long I can keep them talking on the door step before telling them I am a Conservative. 

Strikes were traditionally the way that the down trodden worker would redress the power balance between employer and employee.  Workers would go on strike when they wanted better conditions and a safer working environment.  So you would have had miners go on strike to reduce their working day to something reasonable and to ensure that they got regular breaks. 

Now industrial action is the preserve of the trade unions and the public sector.  We see or hear about unions balloting their members on industrial action ever few months, if it’s not the teachers it’s the postmen or the fuel tanker drivers or the tube drivers.  Now its normally over them wanting a pay rise or something to do with their pensions or working hours. 

However gone are the days when unscrupulous employers sent teenage boys down the mines for 14 hours at a time to extract coal.  We have a whole raft of legislation both domestic and European that protects the rights of the work, and limits the hours they can work and regulates when they have to have rest breaks and how long they have to have off between shifts. 

So pray tell well what are they after? Well in most cases they are normally after more money or they want to work less time for the same amount of money.  Which if you think about it, it really isn’t that fair on those in the private sector.  Whose employees can’t down tools for the day because they want a few more hundred pounds in their pay packet at the end of the month or because they want to work 35 hours a week not 39. 

Now I would have a little bit of sympathy for these people going on strike if the statistics actually backed up their arguments.  Yet however the office for national statistics regularly does a comparison between public and private sector wages and every time it always shows that the wages are normally a lot better in favour of the public sector.  This time it was 7% advantage money wise working in the public sector over the private sector. 

Yet these workers keep going on strike because they think they are underpaid and want more money.  I’m sorry but who are you comparing your earnings to? You are better paid than the private sector so that really doesn’t leave anyone else to be compared to.    

Anyhow, these strikes are also never the majority of those types of workers.  Let’s take the proposed fuel driver strike.  Now out of the 2000 of them balloted, only actually 827 of them voted to strike.  So because most of the drivers didn’t really care so they didn’t bother to vote they will all lose pay for the day’s they are on strike and 800 people are effectively holding the country to ransom till they get what they want.  As we have already seen people panic buying petrol in case they do actually go on strike.  As a lot of people remember what happened last time there was a strike involving petrol. 

Those on the left seem to think that a strike is generally a good thing as it’s the working man fighting the system and their perceived injustice.  But the last big strike was over pensions and the fact the public sector didn’t want to be brought in to line with the private sector.  Which got a lot of press coverage but the general mood of the private sector was one not in support of those on strike.  A strike on petrol delivery will see little or no sympathy for those on strike as it has the possibility to produce wide scale disruption to just about anyone who uses any form of transport be that car, motor bike or bus. 

Now let’s for a second imagine what the reaction of those public sector employees would be if the private sector workers decided to down tools on a semi-regular basis.  Imagine the outcry there would be if all shop workers went on strike for a week, there would be lots of very upset teachers and nurses who couldn’t go and buy their couscous. 

Now the reason why the private sector doesn’t strike is because of a small thing called competition, if M&S workers walked out you could buy your new dress from a multitude of other places.  If Tesco’s staff had a strike you could go to ASDA.  Yet with the public sector you don’t have that the NHS has a monopoly on health care, there isn’t an alternative school you can send your children to for the day and you can’t look in the yellow pages to find an alternative job centre. 

So I think that the laws surrounding industrial action don’t have to be changed, they need to be changed to stop a minority of people holding the country to ransom.  Now this could be done in a few ways, we could introduce a minimum number of union members that have to vote in any ballot for it to be a valid one as to call a strike as a result, say 70%.  Which would stop a few militant trade unionists from pushing for strike action every other week. 

Or the one I am favouring the more I think about it would be a temporary ban on industrial action whilst the Office of National Statistics keep producing reports that say pay is better in the public sector over the private sector.  Strikes could only be balloted on if the private/public sector pay gap was more than 7.5% in favour of the private sector.  Then it may be justifiable to ask for more pay and strike if it’s not given.   

Or there could be punitive measures attached to strike action, so if the teachers went on strike and 10,000 parents had to take the day of work as a result of it then the unions had to cover at least 50% of the lost wages of the parents.  Or when the tube drivers go on strike and it costs London hundreds of millions, some businesses could claim back some if not all of the money that they lost as a result of it; to give some protection to small and medium business.  

As, for the issues that most of these strikes are called for they should be resolved through negotiation, as if the threat of strike action was removed from the table or made something the unions couldn’t guarantee they would get.  The negotiations over pay, conditions and pensions would be a lot more productive.   

So to sum up, we need to change the laws concerning strikes to level the playing field, that is currently stacked against everyone but the trade unions. 

As some of you may well know Linda Hobson made what you would call an inappropriate tweet for an elected representative regarding Baroness Thatcher.  This obviously stirred up some feeling on the Conservative side and upset a fair few people.

This lead to a whole scurry of twitter activity regarding this, lots of people demanding that Linda Hobson resign immediately or that her council leaders actually sack her from the Labour party.  But before I joined in in this twitter rage, I looked in to the Local Government Association Code of Conduct; and I found that what she said was actually a breach of them. 

Under paragraph 3(1) - Treating others with respect.  As through her use of inappropriate words and abusive language, either in writing or verbally she had breached this code. 

So I sent a nice email to the relevant people at Newcastle City Council who told me they would look in to the actions themselves and would also pass on my complaint to the Labour Group on the Council for them to look in to. This response was on Monday afternoon, so I braced myself for what was probably going to be a long wait while they investigate.

Then yesterday evening I got a reply from Linda Hobson personally who said the following;


Dear Miss J. McQueen LLB (hons),

Could I firstly and most importantly apologise for the upset I have caused you.

As you quite rightly point out it was a totally inappropriate thing for some one in my position to have done. I have issued a formal apology, however, I wanted to apologise directly to you.

I did not intend to cause such distress and I sincerely regret my actions. I hope you will be able to accept my apology.

 
Yours Sincerely,
Linda Hobson

 

So we now have an apology, and she says that she has issued a formal apology, we know the tweet has been deleted, so we just have to wait for the formal council investigation to find out what they say and this matter can then be put to bed.

Though I do hope the Labour party are consistent in their actions, as after the last one who made such comments was suspended, I think it only fit Linda Hobson although apologetic is suspended for a period of time too.