When is a crime not a crime?

FOR some time we have been told by Ministers that the reason for a huge drop in the number of cases brought before the magistrates is because crime continues to fall. All well and good it seems.

But what is this? A Chief Constable recently said that 60 per cent of reported offences are not pursued by the police. On top of this we have already been told that the number of offenders ho are dealt with by way of caution or out of court disposals, effected by the police instead of being brought to court, has risen. No wonder that there is such a pseudo-happy tale for Ministers to tell. Is it any surprise that people do not believe what they are told about crime levels?

The offences which the Greater Manchester police chief says they cannot pursue are presumably the crimes which annoy and irritate the public and it is from these acorns of crime that big oak trees of serious offenders grow. So, just when is a crime not a crime? Further, if 60 per cent of offences are not pursued by the police and another large chunk do not get taken to court, it is no wonder that a courthouse with 18–20 courtrooms might only have six or so in session on any day, and then only for a few hours.

If it is now a too difficult, costly and lengthy process to get offenders into court, look no further than politicians in the last Government who implemented Her Majesty’s Courts Service, together with the bureaucrats who developed complex systems creating delays. Was it significant that it was implemented on April 1, 2005? The results seem to be a far cry from when local justices’ clerks got things done with a handful of staff.

It is therefore refreshing to see reports that the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire is to question police disposals of crimes not taken to court as they should be.

Perhaps a few more of these local commissioners can take up a similar questioning stance in their areas – and please can the media stop calling them ‘tsars’!

Class mobility and exams

From: Jack Brown, Lamb Lane, Monk Bretton, Barnsley.

LABOUR MP Graham Allen reveals either his class condescension or his educational ignorance when he repeats and supports teacher union policies on GCSE changes (Chris McGovern, Yorkshire Post, September 11).

Thousands of sons and daughters of miners on council estates like my own Lundwood, rescued from poverty only by World War Two, did well in their yearly “one-off blockbuster” exam, the 11+ blockbuster and – in grammar and central schools – did well in the O-level and A-level one-off blockbusters. Many of my working class friends did well in Oxbridge one-off blockbusters.

The horrors of the child-centred education that the teachers’ unions would perpetuate killed the comprehensive dream.

I fought within our Labour Party Education Sub-Committee for the sixth form college attended by your columnist Jayne Dowle (Yorkshire Post, September 12).

In a neutered comprehensive school, I wrote and registered a GCSE drama course that my illiterate pupils could pass with course work assistance. The following year, I monitored the social studies course work of a miner neighbour’s son. I told him it was good work.

He said there was always an opportunity to do fishing. I asked him how long he had been doing fishing. “Since junior school” was his answer.

Presumably Graham Allen also supports the teachers’ opposition to primary and junior methods and curricula that are the 
crucial start of the educative process?

Analysis and synthesis of concepts – upon which memory and imagination are predicted – is part of an age-unrelated 
brain development process that begins with early reading and writing. It proceeds through accumulation of an ever widening and deepening vocabulary, and course work was State imposition of arrested development.

If the working class is to have its pride and achievements restored, Michael Gove’s counter-revolution must succeed. How ironic that he will justify comprehensives.

Ticket to ride but no knickers

From: Mrs J Marshall, Oulton, Leeds.

FOLLOWING the letter (Yorkshire Post, September 9) about lady conductors wearing trousers on the trams in the war years, it reminded me of an incident involving my mother.

During the war years she was running for the tram in Sheffield city centre. As she rushed, the button on her French knickers came off and with no support they slid down.

A trained ballet dancer, she stepped out of them, hardly breaking stride, pocketed them, and caught the tram as it set off heading, as a smoker, upstairs.

There she found every head turned her way, steelworkers at the end of their shift had watched her change and knew what she wasn’t wearing!