By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter. Our columnist Jesse Norman asked yesterday whether the market principle should have limits (he believes that it should), and if so where these should apply. Is it right to use shaven heads as cranial billboards, he asked, drawing on the work of Michael Sandel? Should better-off non-violent prisoners be […]
By Mark WallaceFollow Mark on Twitter. The full details of yesterday's horrific murder in Woolwich, and the terrorists who carried it out, are yet to be revealed. With both suspects alive and in custody, albeit undergoing treatment for gunshot wounds, there is a reasonable prospect that we will learn a lot more in the coming weeks about […]
By Mark WallaceFollow Mark on Twitter. In Britain we have a proud policing tradition which has seen our forces of law and order stay more free of corruption than most others in the world. That makes it all the more shocking when an instance of corruption does come to light – and all the more important that […]
City Journal has a fantastic profile by John Buntin of Bill Bratton, whose inspired leadership of the New York Police Department famously restored law and order to America’s largest city. Bratton’s police career began in Boston, where he first developed the ideas that would characterise his approach to law enforcement: “At first, Bratton focused on […]
Russell Brand is not someone you’d expect to find writing for the Spectator, but here he is on the subject of drug abuse: “I cannot accurately convey the efficiency of heroin in neutralising pain. It transforms a tight white fist into a gentle brown wave, and from my first inhalation 15 years ago it fumigated […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter. Chris Grayling says in tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph that if David Cameron is returned with a majority in 2015, his Conservative Government will scrap Labour's Human Rights Act. He has told the paper: “I cannot conceive of a situation where we could put forward a serious reform without scrapping Labour’s […]
Last year, the Deep End featured a Julie Bindel article on prostitution. In a more recent article for the Spectator, she covers the same issue – in particular the failure of legalisation in the Netherlands – but makes some useful additional points. Advocates of liberalisation – whether of the law on prostitution, drug dealing or […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter The Daily Mail has written up a new opinion poll on drugs policy, conducted by Ipsos MORI. “Just one in seven want drugs laws liberalised and majority say possession should remain criminal offence,” reads their headline – and it’s true. Looking at the full results, only 14 per cent of […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter. The vast majority of 15-17 year olds in Young Offender Institutions have at some point been excluded from school at some point. Half of those in this age group are assessed as having the literacy levels to that expected of a 7 -11 year old. Furthermore: A youth custodial […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter. Today is Chris Grayling's day to star in Downing Street grid – as the afterwash of yesterday evening's welfare vote sloshes through this morning's papers. (No doubt it will also feature in Prime Minister's Questions today. The Daily Mail reports that – "Private firms and charities are to be […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter This morning’s edition of the Telegraph contains an interview with Chris Grayling, from which a number of points stand out… 1. Another attack on the ECHR. We know Chris Grayling’s views on the European Court of Human Rights, not least because he set them out in Paul Goodman’s interview with […]
Do you remember desktop publishing? It was all the rage in the 1980s and 1990s when people realised that with a home computer and a printer they could produce their own leaflets and newsletters. DTP hasn’t gone away, of course. It’s just gone to the internet, in fact to a very large extent it is […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter. The media pendulum that swung all the way, one way, is now swinging all the way, the other – and knocking the police off their perch: Nick Herbert in the Observer: "Last week on Any Questions, broadcast from a Buckinghamshire village, Jonathan Dimbleby gasped as the majority of his […]