Saturday, February 21, 2015
PAAlison Saunders should reconsider her approach
Its every action and decision should be driven by justice, not statistics or political embarrassment.
It should be above the fray, independent, impartial and silent.
That was once the case but no longer.
As readers of this column will know, I do not greet every error or mess with a demand for heads to roll but I regret to say it is time Alison Saunders was asked either to reconsider her approach or to expect her P45.
For once the CPS has travelled sufficiently far along the path she appears to have set, then halting and reversing the runaway bus will be all but impossible.
And we are nearly at that point.
First there was the long string of acquittals in celebrity rape cases.
Every time this pattern of failure was interspersed with a conviction the CPS publicly congratulated itself or claimed that the result justified the naming of the accused.
But whether or not the law on naming the accused is maintained or changed is a matter for Parliament not the CPS.
Political commentary is not its role.
Then we had the recent guidance on when a defendant should be believed if he says he obtained consent to sex.
The answer appears to be not unless the woman has signed in triplicate and that is only just an exaggeration.
Pretty well every circumstance will count against him.
Then there has been the deep unwillingness of both police and CPS to take false accusers to court.
Why are the scales of justice so unbalanced?
The answer appears to be that guidance is driven by the need to increase the conviction rate.
That is not a consideration which should even be heard let alone be allowed to drive policy.
If there were to be 99 false allegations out of every 100, then we should be prepared to face a conviction rate of one per cent because that would be justice.
Now in the past week we have seen a jury take exactly 20 minutes to acquit a doctor accused of female genital mutilation.
Why on earth was he prosecuted at all?
It is tempting to conclude that the existence of a law plus a complete absence of any prosecutions under it gave rise to pressure to bring a case.
Thank heaven for British juries.
It is essential for any democracy that the system of justice commands respect.
The CPS is putting that in jeopardy.
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It makes sense to scrap the £100 fine for late tax returns.
I once fell foul of the rule myself when January 31 landed on a Saturday.
It was quite clear from the date my cheque was cleared that HMRC had received it by the Monday.
Presumably, however, nobody was working at the weekend so they could not tell what had come by Saturday and what by Monday.
It is daft to fine people the same regardless of whether they are 24 hours or 24 days or even many months late but crucially £100 means nothing to large numbers of taxpayers but everything to little businesses struggling to survive.
One size fits all is always a poor rule so maybe this one really has had its day.
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There is an argument over whether Chris Huhne, the former MP convicted of perverting the course of justice, should have an ex-member’s pass for the House of Commons.
There was a time when he would not have qualified anyway, having been an MP for a mere eight years.
The issue of a pass which admits you to some areas of the House used to be an honour reserved for members of very long standing.
If I recollect correctly that meant about 15 years but Tony Blair changed that to a single term so now – no matter how fleeting the service – any ex-MP can wander about the Mother of Parliaments as of right and that includes some pretty dodgy expenses claimants.
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So fat is good for us after all.
If we wait long enough some scientist will tell us that the ideal healthy meal consists of chip butties smothered in tomato sauce and posh chefs will be avoiding vegetables as nasty, dirty things which live in the ground among the worms.
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So not only do cameras spy on our every move but now our televisions can listen to our private conversations.
All George Orwell got wrong was the year.
In 1984 the new technology was in its infancy, few possessed mobiles and CCTV was sparse.
Thirty years later the state can monitor almost anything.
Not even Orwell managed to think up microchips in wheelie bins to check our rubbish disposal habits.
Walls have ears and so apparently do Samsung smart TVs.
It makes me wonder what the average British home will be like in another 30 years.
Whatever else it will no longer be our castle.
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The debate about Myleene Klass and the birthday party rumbles on with the school’s head now entering the fray to ask parents to be careful how they use emails.
Personally I can see no reason why a child should not prefer her classmates to club together for a present rather than get a heap of individual ones but it really is not polite to suggest the sum.
“I want you to spend X on my child’s birthday present” is not what most of us would say, so I reckon the score is 2-1 to Myleene.
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BRIAN ARISTwiggy was papped not looking her best
Oh, thank goodness for Twiggy.
There she was, snapped looking haggard and grey and off to a shop in her pyjamas.
Yet we all know what that same lady looks like when she is coiffed and made-up.
If Twiggy can transform herself then why not the rest of us?
Perhaps we could all be the face of L’Oréal?
At any rate I shall never again despair when I look in a mirror!
I shall just think, “Aha! I’m Twiggy on a bad day!”
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Well, I do so hope Tony Blair is right for once.
He says that this May’s election will be “between a traditional Right-wing party and a traditional Left-wing party with the traditional result”.
He then confirmed that he meant there would be a Tory win.
Blair and Mandelson mounted a huge offensive before the 1997 general election to charm business leaders while Ed Miliband has done his best to alienate them, so let’s hope Tone is right in his prediction.
The latest folly is the promise of four weeks’ paid paternity leave.
Big businesses will mop that up but it could bankrupt small ones so Ed has now upset and alarmed another, very big section of the economy.
Keep going, Ed.
You are doing Cameron’s job for him.
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Pity our police.
Playground squabbles are now inflating crime figures because teachers no longer deal with them but instead call in the constabulary.
Meanwhile Twitter users moan about harassment and bullying when other users are merely being rude.
We have become a nation of wimps who can no longer fight our own battles.
The police are there to fight crime, not petty quarrels.
They are guardians of the law, not nannies.
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Kara Scott
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