Saturday, November 04, 2006

Obfuscation and the Politcs of fear

It is interesting to note that both David Blunket and Dr John "Comrade" Reid when Home Secretaries have used the politics of fear to keep their parties rating up, as indeed has Tony Blair. This seems to be there to cover up and obscure the fact that what they are actually very ineffective at what they are doing.

They use the passing of new laws to show how tough they are on things when passing laws makes very little difference to anything unless they are enforced.

This government now seems to be drifting from one fiasco to another. They sold off a prison ship only to now be tendering for a new one. They let foreign prisoners go with out considering them for deportation and then in the back lash tried to deport any one they could find.

I could go on.

When politicians use fear as an electoral weapon I always think of FDR's famous line "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself". How very true.

I was also amazed to hear on Radio 4 that the British Crime survey, favourite of this government does not interview women over 59 so they is little record of sexual assault on them. With the BCS also not covering crime against under 16's there are clearly massive gaps in its crime gathering statistics.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suppose Conservatives do too when you consider their strong line of immigration during last year's election campaign.

Benedict White said...

Umm.. I don't think I agree. For the most part the issue with immigration is the failure to enforce laws, but also the removal of border controls (I think that was us in 1996)

If we are going to get control of immigration we are going to need a couple of new measures and a border police would be one of them. I would start being concerned if there was a new law every week.

This government uses the passing of laws to cover up inaction and uses fear to drive them through which is where my complaint is.