[Osem]

Originally Posted by BBKing

Murders in London:

2005/6 - 168
2006/7 - 162
2007/8 - 156

By comparison

Murders in New York (slightly larger population than London)
2006 - 921

What was that about getting a grip? What part of 'inventing lots of new offences, hiring thousands of police, spending fortune on policing, taking sentencing policy out of the hands of judges and into a politically appointed quango and locking thousands more people up for longer' doesn't meet all the usual kneejerk requirements for 'getting a grip'? When will people stop making political capital by distorting and misleading people? Why do we constantly hear people point to New York as an example*? Why don't we hear from the newspapers that spent the year trumpeting about a 'wave' of killings in London when the figures prove that there wasn't a wave at all? Why am I going to get slated for being 'insensitive' for trying to bring rationality into stupid faux-emotional arguments? Answers on a postcard, please, to:

'I don't give a toss about the truth but I'm scared and want someone who looks different from me to suffer',
c/o The Sun,
Wapping,
Lies.

* Yes, murders are down a hell of a lot in the Big Apple, no that doesn't make it a role model. Same is true of Baghdad, after all. Mind you, some people are probably far enough unhinged into tabloid world to support sealing off of areas of London with concrete walls and sending in the Army.

Well perhaps my definition of getting a grip is a bit different from that of the Sun's (you evidently spend far more of your time reading that rag than I've ever done) and being scared of a situation or appalled by it are totally different things. None of the above constitutes getting a grip when the figures are still as high as they are and people are being killed almost at the drop of a hat for doing not very much at all. Comparisons with New York or anywhere else for that matter don't alter the fact that our glorious leaders have so far proved themselves unable or unwilling to tackle this problem.