By far the strongest illustration of this, as far as knife and other violent crime is concerned, is Jackie Smith. Her perverse moral leadership (claiming huge sums of taxpayers money for a second home as well as the porn video fiasco) left the Home Office rudderless at a time when the anti-violence campaigners were building some momentum. I'm not saying that momentum has gone for good - but the behaviour of MPs like Jackie Smith has hampered the work of so many families, crime victims etc at a time when they needed people with power to help them push for required change. This is much more than letting people down.
At the same time and for the same reasons, co-ordinated attempts, communications work and PR efforts to highlight and tackle violent crime seem to have fallen by the wayside to some degree at the moment because politicians have demonstrated time and again that they are more interested in themselves, their salaries, commercial interests, etc, rather than those people suffering in the midst of a violent culture.
With the Government and opposition parties in disarray due to the corrupt parliamentarian compensation system they have been happy to be part of for years, these ego-centred MPs (I can't call them public servants - they haven't served, they have stolen) continue to demonstrate more interest in themselves than victims of crime and the issue of violent crime, sadly.
I was interviewed about the issue about rising knife crime deaths on BBC Sussex radio today. At present, there is confusion and poor communication of the latest round of knife crime figures. I would like to suggest appointing a knife and gun crime tsar because this problem is so huge.
In addition, I wish politicians would stop electioneering on the issue, shut up bickering and sit down together to solve the issue. Everyone wants to see knife crime tackled. Public and political arguments do not communicate that clear resolve that we all have. Further details about my comments are in my latest knife crime blog post.
mark.
Tuesday 14 July 20095:34pm on 15 Jul 2009According to the JMW Solicitors website - who represent Max Clifford in the 'News of the World' phone hacking allegations matter - Mr Clifford says, I want to know which journalists were involved, in case Im still dealing with them. I have a lot of clients phoning me all the time with confidential information. A lot of them have been in touch, worried, looking for me to get to the bottom of it all.
(Don't want to waste your time but can you allow these links as they are highly relevant to my post - else guess you will remove...? Because I'm not 100% sure why you deleted my first post, thought I would try to reference the links as per your House Rules.)