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RealityLicks -> RE: what are they thinking (4/22/2008 5:19:19 PM)
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I took the following quote from your link:
quote:
ORIGINAL: Genewatch
1994: The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) enabled the NDNAD to be established. The Act changed the rules around collecting tissue samples by reclassifying saliva samples and mouth swabs as non-intimate and changing the circumstances in which a non-intimate sample could be taken without consent. This meant the police could now take samples without assistance from a doctor and could collect mouth scrapes and hair roots by force if necessary. It also changed the rules around the type of offence, from any 'serious, arrestable' offence to any 'recordable' offence (these include all but the most trivial offences) which greatly widened the pool of suspects. The law also stated that if a person was subsequently found guilty, their information could be stored on the database and their sample kept indefinitely; if they were not charged or were acquitted, the data and the sample had to be destroyed.
I believe this establishes that the Act was passed three years before Labour were elected in 1997 - even before Bambi became leader, I think the late John Smith was still around.
I totally agree that the database is a very bad thing and one of the many areas in which new Labour have tried to out-Tory the Tories. The irony is that if you polled the public before its introduction, you'd find a majority in favour. People were being taught to fear crime and told that it wouldmake them safe - they didn't realise that their 10 year-old UMs would be put on the database simply for being stopped by the police.
The kind of people who opposed it - like Amnesty and the Black Police Association - were told that they were being overly politically correct and soft on criminals. Sound familiar?
As for the rubbish thing, I don't really know... its worth asking Meatcleaver but I think they do that in NL. The reason that Germans and Dutch are further down that road is part coercion, part awareness. Perhaps it would be better to start with commercial premises?
I don't see it as a money spinner. Like the Congestion Charge, people aim to avoid having to pay, so change their behaviour. That means that no realistic projection can be made of what revenue it would generate, for starters. As people's awareness grows, revenue shrinks and soon it costs more to administrate than it actually brings in.
The sad thing about the local elections being mid-term is that people hammer the gov't for all sorts of things that aren't really down to them. I look at it like the career criminal who gets fitted up for something he's innocent of - he does the bird for all the crimes he got away with.
Oh yeah - and Gordon would have to go some before he takes Maggie's crown. After they had tea at No.10 did anyone check his neck for puncture wounds?
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