UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
How should Britain prosecute its drugs strategy?
Britain’s drug strategy is under the spotlight following the UK Drug Policy Commission’s (UKDPC) recommendation that there is too much energy spent on arresting drug dealers and not enough on reducing harm to communities.
Latest figures show that nearly 90,000 people were arrested in England and Wales for drug offences, with over one billion pounds spent on law enforcement, with £17.6 billion the estimated cost of the UK drug markets.
The report questions whether it is worth arresting a drug dealer if a more violent individual replaces him.
“Drug law enforcement is clearly not limited to the traditional role of arresting as many dealers as possible in anticipation of reducing supply,” said UKDPC chief executive Roger Howard.
Is Ronnie Biggs being treated harshly?
To the surprise of many, not least the newspapers and TV channels that were telling us right up until Wednesday afternoon that his release was imminent, Ronnie Biggs has been refused parole.
Reason — a bad attitude.Â
The 79-year-old Great Train Robber may be physically frail but is clearly unwilling to show the required amount of remorse that would get him out of jail and could now spend the rest of his days behind bars.
On the frontline of the G20 summit
Abolish money. Punish the looters. Eat the bankers.
Ageing 1960s hippies and their youthful anti-globalisation descendants joined in an angry anti-capitalist protest at the Bank of England on Wednesday, waving placards and shouting slogans reflecting a common fury at perceived corporate greed.
With worldwide recession destroying jobs by the week, protesters at the G20 protest in the City of London demanded an end to what they see as a global, predatory system that robs the poor to benefit the privileged.
Is police action against protesters disproportionate?
A committee of MPs has warned police they must not impose restrictions on demonstrations “unless it is necessary and proportionate to do so.”
“The right to protest is a fundamental democratic right and one that the state and police have a duty to protect and facilitate,” said Andrew Dismore, chairman of the human rights committee.
Stripping off for money
A colleague tells me of a quick way to make cash for anyone who wants to. His neighbours discovered a pile of old taps and central heating pipes they had lying around had more value than they thought. A scrap 
metal merchant gave them £75 for them. ”It’s a bubble,” the merchant said.
It may be a bubble, but it’s proving a lasting one and one that’s causing problems in unexpected quarters too. In my salubrious part of Surrey, local churches are struggling to keep their roofs on and it’s not because of the volume of their congregations’ singing either. Thieves are stripping lead roofing and flashing to melt down and sell on.
Will paedophile scheme work?
A new pilot scheme which allows worried parents ask police if someone with significant access to their children is a convicted sex offender has been launched by the government.
The Home Office says it will make it possible for single mothers, for example,  to find out the background of a new boyfriend, or for worried parents to check out babysitters.
How safe is your street?
Ever wanted to know how many crimes were committed in your local area?
Well, by the end of the year you’ll be able to get some idea with every police force required to produce online interactive “crime maps”.
West Midlands and West Yorkshire are two of the forces who have put information about the number of offences in different neighbourhoods on their Web sites and on Wednesday the country’s biggest force, London’s Metropolitan Police, activated its crime mapping site.
Is the DNA database too big?
Whose DNA is it anyway?
A “citizens’ inquiry” instigated by the Human Genetics Commission, a government advisory body, wants the records of people who have not been convicted, or whose convictions are long spent, to be deleted from the forensic National DNA Database and says the whole archive should be overseen by an independent body.
The database was established in 1995 in Britain – the country where scientists first pioneered the technique of DNA fingerprinting.
RIP speed cameras?
Conservative Swindon council is planning to pull the plug on the 400,000-pound annual grant it makes towards running its speed cameras, saying the money could be better spent on other traffic-calming measures.
Its head of highways, Councillor Peter Greenhalgh, is widely quoted in newspapers as saying cameras are “a blatant tax on motorists.”
Reaction to Brown’s 42-day detention vote victory
 Gordon Brown may have won the 42-day detention vote, but the victory was ”hollow”, ”shameful” or “tactical”, depending on which newspaper you read.Â
Under the headline “Westminster for Sale”, The Times said Brown had humiliated parliament with a victory secured through bribery and bartering.
-
The Wall
