Tim Worstall on That Blair Speech.

Tim Worstall on That Blair Speech. like for everybody else Blairs authoritarianism shines through the spin, as does the complete lack of any insight by New Labour. Blair says that

We are trying to fight 21st century crime - anti-social behaviour, binge drinking, organised crime - with 19th century methods

When it is pretty obvious that all of the things that he cites where in fact frequent occourances in the 19th century, and as Mr Worstall points out, good solutions where found for them in the 19th century

Bobbies on the streets, a clean up of the Magistrates Courts (making them more local, not central for a start)...effectively exactly the system that the Great and the Good have spent the last 40 years dismantling

. As much of the political approach for the last haft century has been aimed at dismatling the 19th century solutions the 19th century problems they solved have of course come back.

Blair claims in that speach that he wants people living in safety, but this means that people must not be afraid of the Police locking them up, or executing them on the street, when they are in fact innocent. To live in safety you have to be able to live, and that means somehtign more than not being dead but in a prison cell, which is where Blair seems to think everybody should be sent.