The Madness of King Tony

Well that clinches it for me, Blair has finally gone completely off his head. Forget impeaching him, just get a registered community psychiatric nurse and section the fucker now.

Ok, we had a fair few dumbass bouts of ‘thinking aloud’ before – remember the whole business of frogmarching drunks down the cashpoint – but this one takes the fucking biscuit.

“He [Blair] wants to lower from £5,000 to £1,000 the minimum amount of money or assets police can seize from criminals – even if they have not been convicted.”

You fucking what? Even if they have not been convicted?

There is a slight constitutional problem with this suggestion posed by the English Bill of Rights of 1689 which reads:

And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representative of this nation, taking into their most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties declare…

…That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void;

But more that that we have a very simple word round here for what Blair is suggesting – theft.

It may morally be right that we seize assets that can be proven to be the proceeds of crime, but before we do that we also, morally, have to prove both that a crime has been committed and that the alleged perpetrator is guilty of that crime and therefore deserving of having their assets seized.

This is not fucking difficult. I understand perfectly well what ‘innocent until proven guilty’ means and so, I expect, does everyone else who reads this blog.

Blair is barrister – what fucking excuse does he have to not understand this.

This is about a simple as it fucking well gets.

If the state does not secure a conviction against an individual then it has not proved that that individual has committed a crime and if it then goes on to seize that individual’s assets without having secured a conviction and proved that they have committed a crime, that is theft – it may be state-sanctioned theft but theft it is nonetheless.

If Blair is going to pursue this course then the sooner he find himself wearing one of nice cardigans with the leather straps that go over the shoulders the better it will be for all of us.

I tell you, he’s fucking mad.

You want proof – try this for size…

Mr Blair was asked if he was sticking to his principles on presuming innocence before suspects were proven guilty.

He told BBC News: “You cannot deal with this type of crime by ordinary methods or by ordinary court processes. I genuinely believe that. I have tried it, it doesn’t work.”

Right, so that’s it from Blair’s own mouth – the presumption of innocence is fucking history as well. What a complete and utter wanker!

Actually, while I’m on, can I just point out the contribution of the opposition parties to this ‘debate’.

Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis asked how the government could be sure that only drug dealers would have their money confiscated.

“There appears to be an absence of research and evaluation to justify how this will actually work,” he said.

And Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, questioned how ministers would target “street corner dealers” when the Assets Recovery Agency “hasn’t been hitting its targets to date”.

I’m checking the date here, and it doesn’t say April 1st, so I think we can assume that these twats aren’t fucking kidding.

‘Research and evaluation’?

‘Hitting its targets’?

What the fuck happened to plain old-fashioned ‘This is wrong!’ – which bit of that do none of these bastards understand.

10 thoughts on “The Madness of King Tony

  1. Blair on taking more innocent peoples money
    Remember that “innocent until proven guilty thing”? Blair, it seems, doesn’t believe in it anymore. Talk Politics has more … instead of making the system, as duly constituted in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, work, he wants to rip it up …

  2. This looks like typical Blairite kite-flying to me. Remember spot fines for drunks? Votes at 16? Guantanamo boiler suits for those doing community service? All ideas (and many, many more) floated in the press and shot down in a hail of raucous laughter. He’s trying it on to see what reception it gets.

    True, the fact that he’s willing to say “hey, this presumption of innocence thing, let’s get rid” proves he’s gone round the frikkin’ pipe, but this has got as much chance of reaching the statute books as compulsory beards for the under-fives.

  3. “You cannot deal with this type of crime by ordinary methods or by ordinary court processes.”
    Terrorism, white collar fraud, drug dealing, antisocial behaviour. The list of types of crime that can’t be dealt with in the ordinary way just keeps growing.

  4. And, if I remember rightly, he’s also intending to extend similar powers to other areas.

    In a speech about a month or two ago he was speaking about tackling yob culture and suchlike, and said he’d be bring in powers so that if the police see people committing certain crimes, they can smack on a fine that you have to go to court and prove your innocence on, rather than the other way around.

    I can’t remember the exact details on that one though.

  5. Managerialism versus the rule of law
    Two stories:1. Blair wants to lower from £5,000 to £1,000 the minimum amount of money or assets police can seize from criminals – even if they have not been convicted. (via Talk Politics).2. Police have investigated an innocent woman for

  6. I guess the police won’t have much trouble meeting their monthly arrest quotas now or whatever, they just have to hang around the 24hr-licensed bars! Absolutely ridiculous.

  7. Blair has just said during PMQs that the police will be able to keep a proportion of the proceeds of this exercise to encourage them to greater efforts. Can anyone tell me what the mechanism for this process is? Are the courts involved or does the friendly neighbourhood bobby sidle up to you and say, “nice Rolex, have you got the receipt on you?”

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