Labour will be even worse than the Tories at cracking down on crime – just look at clueless Sadiq Khan
WHEN a young mother, 31, and her daughters, aged eight and three, were taken to hospital after a chemical substance was thrown at them, the appalling attack was described on the BBC’s breaking news as “a terrible event”.
Yes, it is a terrible event. But let’s not kid ourselves that it is a rare event.
In the UK in 2024, exactly this kind of cowardly, sadistic assault happens all the time.
According to the Office for National Statistics, police in England and Wales recorded 472 offences involving a corrosive substance over the 12 months to March 2023 — more than nine acid attacks a week.
How can chemical attacks happen with such sickening regularity in a civilised country?
But they do. The suspect in the Clapham attack is revealed as an Afghan sex offender who was refused asylum but got to stay because — praise the Lord — he converted to Christianity, which always works a treat, as does claiming to be gay.
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It is painfully clear how this unspeakable attack in Clapham happened.
Because we are soft. Because we are mugs. Because the asylum system is easily gamed.
And above all, because the kind of evil bastard who thinks it is acceptable to throw corrosive chemicals at another human being, and her children, is totally unafraid of British justice.
And I suggest the main reason the Tories look like toast at the next General Election is that Labour are doing a good job at passing themselves off as the party of law and order.
Windy rhetoric is dead easy when you are in opposition, of course.
Combating crime will be much harder when Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is the one ultimately responsible for chasing all those shoplifters and burglars down the British high street.
But credit where it is due. Labour’s pledge that, if elected, every neighbourhood will have its own named policeman is an eye-catching campaign promise that will undoubtedly appeal to millions.
Because what we see right now is the total absence of the forces of law and order.
Last year, a poll revealed that 50 per cent of people reported they never see a police officer — more than double the number in 2010, when the Tories came into power. And when the police are visible, it is often for all the wrong reasons.
This week the Met apologised for causing offence after a community support officer told a Christian singer to “stop performing church songs outside church grounds”.
Harmonie London, 20, said she felt “sad, humiliated and bullied” when some pea-brained plod threatened to take away her keyboard following her performance of Amazing Grace.
The officer was apparently attempting to enforce the law on unlicensed busking.
Tough on unlicensed busking and tough on the causes of unlicensed busking!
The triple killings in Nottingham disclosed the rot in our justice system.
It was revealed this week that investigators neglected to take proper toxicology samples from killer Valdo Calocane, which would have made it more likely he faced charges for murder rather than manslaughter.
Softly-softly policing
But these same ham-fisted investigators took toxicology samples from Calocane’s innocent victims — Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19, and Ian Coates, 65 — because evidence of drink and drugs (not found) would have helped the man who killed them.
Labour will be even less effective than the Tories at cracking down on crime.
A clue to the softly-softly policing to come under a Labour Government came when London’s Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan, responded to the chemical attack on the woman and her children in Clapham.
“The problem is many household products — detergents, paint strippers — that contain ammonia, bleach, caustic soda, can cause huge damage,” bleated Khan. “We’ve got to make it as difficult as possible to get hold of things like acid.”
No, the problem is not household products.
The problem is men — they are usually men — who think that they can get away with throwing acid in someone’s face.
Sadiq Khan wants to lock up the drain cleaner.
We should be locking up the bastards who throw the drain cleaner, and we should be locking them up for the duration of their miserable lives.
No win in state of play
DAVID CAMERON – now Lord Cameron, Foreign Secretary – is furiously denounced for advocating a two-state solution in the Middle East.
We are told he risks “infuriating” Israel.
But what exactly is the alternative to a two-state solution?
A one-state solution? Permanent war? One side obliterating the other? That’s no solution at all.
Without a two-state solution, the slaughter will continue for generations.
Cameron is not recommending we bend to knee to those who want no Jews “from the river to the sea”.
Cameron states the obvious. The Palestinians and the Israelis either find a way to live together or continue to die apart.
Anyone who objects to Cameron’s suggestion of a two-state solution need not fret too much.
The terrorists who raped, murdered, tortured and kidnapped innocent Israelis on October 7 will never sign up to a two- state solution.
And neither will Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, whose actions in Gaza have created 19,000 Palestinian orphans, according to United Nation figures.
Netanyahu has created more terrorists than he killed. A two-state solution? Not in our lifetime.
Risk of Reform
REFORM UK’s soaring support has chewed into the Conservative vote.
It is to such an extent that some experts predict the Tories could win as few as 120 seats and be out of power until 2036.
Ironic, then, that Reform UK is flying high because of disappointed Brexiteers and broken-hearted BoJo fans.
What do they imagine they will get if they vote Reform UK?
It will not be Brexit, it will be Brussels.
It will not be Nigel Farage taking a pint. It will be Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner taking the knee.
It will not be taking back control, it will be surrendering control to those who despise you.
Those Reform polling figures are eye-watering. Never have so many turkeys so enthusiastically embraced Christmas.
Taylor made for the NFL
TAYLOR SWIFT stands accused of “ruining the NFL”.
She has been a regular feature at Kansas City Chiefs games since she started dating Travis Kelce – a big, bearded bear of a macho man who could not be more different from all those pretty young Brits Taylor gave her heart to in the past.
The NFL has understandably taken the opportunity to show Taylor in the stands at every chance, adorably bundled up against the butt-numbing Midwest winter.
Taylor at NFL games makes a refreshing change from all those players with shoulder pads straight out of Dynasty huffing and puffing, and all that interminable stopping and starting that is such a feature of American football.
Taylor Swift is not ruining the NFL. She is the most interesting thing about it.
Deliver decent payout
EVEN after Mr Bates vs The Post Office – the ITV drama that electrified a nation – the establishment still doesn’t get it.
After the greatest travesty of justice in British legal history, the former Post Office staff who were hounded, humiliated and imprisoned because of faulty Horizon software deserve proper compensation.
If Alan Bates says the compensation currently being offered is “derisory”, then we believe him.
The Government’s lawyers should pay these innocent victims NOW.
And don’t stick the cheque in the post.
RUSSELL BRAND talks for the first time since he was accused of multiple sexual assaults, which he strongly denies.
Brand spoke to Tucker Carlson, the vehemently right-wing American commentator – an odd choice for a vehemently kale-munching comrade like Brand.
Brand told Tucker that the allegations he is facing were being made by “legacy media organisations”.
Legacy media organisations? I think they are being made by women, Russell.
BURLESQUE legend Dita Von Teese models her lingerie line while revealing that some of her previously worn items such as laddered, snagged and torn stockings are available for £90 a pair.
But are you expected to wear them, worship them or repair them?
A flare share of blame
HISTORY knows him as “bum-flare man”.
He is the England football fan who inserted a flare up his Wembley Way when England played Italy in the final of the Euros in 2021.
The biggest day in English football since 1966 was marred by the violence, drunkenness and idiocy of England fans. When it came to stupidity, bum-flare man took the chocolate digestive.
The story is told in a one-man show called Why I Stuck A Flare Up My A*** For England.
“I had a photo of the bum-flare man on my wall for months,” says the show’s creator, Alex Hill.
“It was such an epic thing but totally ludicrous. In a way it was theatre within itself. I read a lot of interviews with bum-flare man.”
I can’t defend bum-flare man. Football is increasingly plagued by dolts who have had their tiny brains inflamed by cocaine.
Bum-flare man confesses that he had cider and coke in copious quantities before he pulled down his pants and shoved his buttocks into immortality.
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But if bum-flare man’s adventures are going to be part of our culture, I think the guy deserves a name check: Charlie Perry.
You would never guess it, but bum-flare man is not his real name.