The Anonymous Widower

Strauss-Kahn Walks But Ken Doesn’t

So Dominique Strauss-Kahn has now quit as head of the IMF.  He should have gone immediately, as evidence in serious papers I have read has him down as a man, who can’t keep his hands and dick to himself.

But Kenneth Clarke hasn’t resigned over his choice of words on BBC Radio 5 yesterday morning. I listened to the interview in full and have a rather different take on what happened.

I should say now, that I’ve very much against all violent, sexual and personal crime, as having been married to a barrister, who dealt with many cases involving some of the worst sexual offenders in this country, I have more knowledge than most people.

The program was billed as discussing the problems of the large numbers of people in prison and how we deal with it. I e-mailed in early in the program, before the discussion started and my e-mail is below.

A few years ago, I read the book Prisongate by Lord Ramsbottom.  In the book, he says that there are a large number of prisoners who are suffering from dementia and other long term illnesses.  Surely, these people should not be in prison.

I also went over a prison, where there were quite a few East European truck drivers, whose only crime was inadvertently bringing in illegal immigrants. Generally they are model prisoners, so why are they in jail, rather than being deported.

We need to make certain that we lock up the serious criminals, but what proportion of those are not any menace to society and should not be in jail.

They called me back and said they might put me on air and would call me back, if they wanted to put me on.

There had been comments in the tabloids in the morning saying that Ken was going to be soft on rapists, but giving them a fifty per cent discount on sentences if they pleaded guilty.

Virtually, all of the calls aired in the discussion were about letting criminals off lightly and fairly soon it was seemingly all about rape. Very little callers talked about anything else.

Now we all know Ken can be rather robust at times and I think he lost his patience and didn’t choose his words as carefully as he should have.  He made a mistake that many would have done in the same circumstances

But the program lost complete track of being a wider discussion about how we get a better and a more affordable criminal justice system.

In the end Ken apologised, but it hasn’t stopped those who want a scalp in this government from calling for his resignation.

How many of those, who are calling for the resignation listened to the whole program?

May 19, 2011 - Posted by AnonW | News | BBC, Justice, Law, Radio