tygerland.net

The rightwing press are doing an incredible job. It looks like they’ll get another Home Office scalp as John Reid takes several punches on the chin. A Judge, following Reid’s instructions to only send to jail “the most serious offenders,” has declined to furnish a photo-downloading pervert with a custodial sentence.

Now nothing animates the rabid, bloodthirsty rightwing press like some middle-aged man called Derek, hidden away in his fusty bedroom, with a fast broadband connection to kiddie porn heaven. But really, would the country really be served by yet another change at The Home Office? I don’t like John Reid. He just the sort of politician that brings me out in hives, but even I can see that whatever he does, he’s en route to a serious kicking.

The government has missed the boat on addressing the prison problem. Blair’s consensus style of government has played to the tune of the conservative tabloids. We now have record numbers of convicts, sky-high re-offending rates, and the prisons are bursting at the seems. Who would bet against prison riots this summer when the heat picks up? I wouldn’t. I actually thought I’d seen the last watching D-Wing take to the roofs to throw slates at panda cars.

The problem was, regardless of the countless warnings, the government didn’t build any more prisons. There simply wasn’t the money. Having blown billions on the NHS and seeing little return, any loose-change in the government purse was divvied out to education and nourishing the struggling management consultancy industry. So now we have no more room in our prisons and prisoners stuffed in every spare draw and cupboard.

Of course the solution to the problem would be rehabilitation for the countless prisoners inside for drug related offences. On this we could learn lessons from the other northern European nations, who have a much more progressive and effective system for dealing with criminals. Progressive policies do work. It’s just that supposedly liberal British governments are terrified of getting on the wrong side of the asinine rightwing rags. What we get is a mess.

So back to John Reid.

Reid more than anyone has swallowed the tabloid agenda, and because of this, his potential fall at the hands of the editors he pandered to is somehow fitting, but as I said, would this really serve the British people? And more to the point, the fallout from the ongoing tabloid offensive has been evermore authoritarian, rightwing Home Secretaries (surely the whole point?), but do the editors of the NOTW, The Sun, and The Daily Mail, really think they’ll get a more willing marionette than Reid?