A self-styled former liberal writes an article in the Daily Mail. It is entitled ‘The night my daughter was stabbed - and my liberal instincts died’.
In summary, his daughter had gone out one night to the shops in their affluent North-West London neighbourhood. On her way back, she was stabbed in the ribs by a hoodie who grabbed her bag and ran away. Mercifully, she survived, but her father has swiftly recanted his liberal ways. Hear him:
Nothing shatters one’s dearly-held liberal beliefs quite like a brutal clash with the reality of crime.
On our streets today it is the middle-class young people - the products of our liberal homes - who are being targeted.
That’s right, sir. Welcome to the real world.
Faced with what happened to his daughter, he states further:
So is there anybody out there who is accountable? The terrible fact is that, in these well-tended million-pound-plus houses with their state-of-the art security systems, people have long known what’s going on in the street outside.
But they have closed the blinds and simply turned away. And so have I.
…
We have put our heads in the sand for too long about this problem and have done nothing about the indifference of the authorities to much that is wrong in our society. We certainly backed the wrong policies on education - no one who could possibly avoid it would send a child to a comprehensive school around here.
Worse, we have done this at the expense of our own children, who now have to forge their lives in the bleak urban environment we have allowed to develop.
Well said, sir.
As you can imagine, the readers’ comments to this article in the Daily Mail, while sympathetic, have chided him for his past folly. Many have made the sound observation that it is liberals like him who have denounced ordinary citizens and even politicians for daring to speak out against the prevailing tolerant attitudes to crime and criminals.
I am glad he has acknowledged the damage done to society by the ideology he previously espoused. His redemption is (almost) complete. All he needs to do now is share the news of his conversion with his fellow liberals. I fail to see the point of him writing this article in the Daily Mail. Preaching to the converted, as it were. Better that he takes his message to the Guardian, and let us hope it falls there on good ground and yields lasting fruit.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Well yes, now he ponders on the damage caused to society by his woolly headed thinking. Only after his precious daughter has been attacked does he see the reality of crime. I bet any ‘understanding’ he previously had for the lowlife criminals who commit these acts, has quickly evaporated,
And while all this is happening, we have our dear old Cameron calling for hoodies to be shown love and affection. Perhaps our ex-liberal can pay him a visit.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Bel, Bel , Bel!!
Why do you hate us poor bleeding hearts so?
I would agree we have a crime problem. Unlike the authoritarian right, I don’t believe current law and order policy works because there is no attempt made at rehabilitation or tackling the causes of crime. I think the idea of ‘punishment’ for crime is medieval and we should focus more on treatment and crime prevention.
Anyway Bel, as a TRUE liberal (as opposed to the crypto-statist Liberal Democrats) I have always voted the same way you have. My liberal instincts have always kept my firmly in the blue camp.
Pray for my redemption Bel!
(I’m a Telegraph reader, I should add).
March 7th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Not sure the Guardian would print the article though Bel…
People voted for Labour thinking they were doing something and that was enough; more taxes and let someone else sort it out.
What folly.
March 9th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
And you hang about a blog written by an unrepentant individual who beat an old lady to death with an axe?
please explain why you do that?
March 9th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
The hitch,
Welcome. Never seen you in these parts before.
“And you hang about a blog written by an unrepentant individual who beat an old lady to death with an axe?
please explain why you do that?”
Do I do that? Explain, please.
I generally do not know anything about the authors of the blogs I visit, save what they reveal about themselves on their profiles. But should the details of a blogger’s past influence whether or not I read their work? Interesting question.
March 9th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
http://prisonersvoice.blogspot.com/search/label/Guardian%20writer%20lives%20to%20write%20another%20day...
March 9th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Imagine you own mother in this situation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1949501,00.html
March 9th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
In the end, the prosecution at Reading Crown Court accepted Hirst’s plea of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and he got 15 years. “I have no doubt you are an arrogant and dangerous person with a severe personality defect,” said Mr Justice Purchis. “Unfortunately, this is not suitable for treatment in a mental hospital.”
March 9th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
At one point I tell him it is very difficult for Mrs Burton’s daughter to move on from such a thing. He lifts a Rizla packet from the table and rips it in two. “That’s her mother,” he says. “You can’t put that back together.”
He has a great deal to say about freedom and rights, and wishes Nina Burton-Harris would move on. “She thinks I’m free,” he says. “My life sentence goes on until the day I die. But she is filled with assumptions about my life being all freedom and jollies. In a sense, your life sentence only begins the day you get out.”
“But do you want to be forgiven by her?”
“Honestly, I don’t give two fucks,” he says.
March 10th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Bel - JailHouse Lawyer is an unrepentant axe murderer who murdered the old lady with whom he was lodging. She had her back turned to him. She was elderly. She was frail. And she had her back turned to him. And he hacked her to death with an axe for leaving the lid of his jar of marmalade.
I do not understand why Iain Dale lets him infest his blog. He is banned for life by Croydonian.