Get this. A gang of thirteen 15-year-olds attack a 13-year-old and

• tie him to a tree
• bind his legs together with a school tie
• put a monkey mask over his face
• gag him
• set fire to him
• and film a 20-minute “happy slapping” attack on their mobile phones.

All thirteen attackers are arrested and three confess. What happens?

A CPS spokeswoman said: “We decided not to prosecute because the victim was unable to identify any of the suspects when he was shown photographs.

“Seven of the suspects made no admission and accordingly there was no evidence against any of those individuals.

“Three of the boys did admit the attack on Kyle, but because of their previous good character we thought it was unfair to single them out and pursue the prosecution.

“The other three made certain admissions but, as with the others, we decided prosecution was not justified.”

To be fair, the victim escaped and chased one kid down and had a fight with him, so if the kid couldn’t identify that guy then something here is kinda fishy. Still, the public statement made by CPS is sheer lunacy.

The mother is understandably outraged.

If you like singing dogs, hate the idea of National ID Cards and don’t mind someone borrowing from Gilbert and Sullivan, then you will love this flash animation from eclectech: The Very Model of a Modern Labour Minister.

Hat tip and thanks to TriggerFinger. I almost cried laughing. But then again, my wife thinks I’m nuts for loving the musical remake of Reefer Madness . . .

As the Brits struggle with the fact that the four homicide bombers that cruelly attacked innocents in London were from the quaint town of Leeds, one MP has this to say:

We seem to have pulled off the rare feat of breeding suicide bombers determined to attack the very society that incubated them; and the question is why. Why does America import its suicide bombers, while we produce our own? Last summer we had a magnificent holiday driving around America, and for a cynical Brit it was astonishing to see the way the Americans fly that flag of theirs.

On every porch, on every flagpole, on every bumper: there were the stars and stripes, unabashed, exuberant, proud. Contrast our treatment of the Union Flag, which is endlessly being cited in racial harassment cases, on the ground that it is provocative merely – for instance – to stick it on your locker. …

The Americans would be mystified by our approach to a national symbol. For them the flag is a vital agent of integration, a way of asserting that, in that vast immigrant country, each person is not only American but equally American, and has an equal stake in society.

Read it all as it attacks the multiculturalism that liberals swoon over.

The multiculturalism that divides Britain was questioned years earlier by an educator, and it cost him his job:

In a series of articles published in the Right-wing Salisbury Review in the early 1980s, he criticised Bradford city council’s policy of educating ethnic minority children according to their own culture, predicting that the move would create divisions between white and Asian communities.

At school, where languages such as Urdu, Gujurati and Hindi predominated over English, Mr Honeyford tried to introduce a uniform but he was opposed by the local council, which judged that such a move could be racist. Concerned that “we were getting nine-year-olds who had never sat in the same class as a white child”, Mr Honeyford wanted to impose racial integration – if need be, by busing in white pupils from across the city.

His views provoked an outcry among the anti-racism lobby.

They should bring Honeyford out of retirement and put him in charge of the country’s education. Failing that, we should bring him over here.

“E Pluribus Unum” — not “Una Plures”.

A few of those who lept to help during the aftermath:

Medics, cops, firefighters, surgeons, Tube staff and ordinary members of the public all showed amazing courage and compassion after the attacks.

Trauma surgeon Professor Jim Ryan and his team treated 50 victims at University College London.

Falklands veteran Prof Ryan, a war wounds expert, said: “There was absolute calm and no voices raised, people were just waiting to roll.”

Michelle Malkin has pictures and has given the bombings a name: The 7/7 Attacks.

Wikipedia is being constantly updated to reflect the latest (and hopefully, more accurate) information.

Pithiest comment of the day, from Europhobia who is liveblogging the coverage:

14:05 – I tell you what, if this is an “Islamic” terrorist attack, they’re doing a piss-poor job. The pubs are all packed out, people sipping their pints happily, all a tad pissed off, but basically fine with it. Nice one, Al Quaeda – you profess to be from a teetotal religion, and you’ve given the pub trade a massive mid-week boost. Result.

Runner up for pithy comment is Tim Worstall:

Yes, we’ll take an excuse for a day off, throw a sickie. But you threaten us, try to kill us? Kill and injure some of us?

Fuck you, sunshine.

We’ll not be having that.

Best anti-reactionary graphic of the day. HT to Bloggerheads who has this to say on the subject:

This tragedy will only be compounded by Blair’s government using it to further strangle the public. If Charles Clarke dares to speak the words ‘ID Cards’ today, I will be enraged.

Dear God, look at the human cost of this wrong-headed approach to terrorism – where we exploit it instead of fight it.

From Davids Medienkritik:

We must first dry our eyes and then draw our swords. The time for ambivalence is over. On a day like today we need the steadfastness and fighting spirit of a Winston Churchill. We must remember his words, “We shall not flag nor fail.”

Maggie’s Farm carries the message from the group claiming responsibility. Strangely enough, it begins:

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate …

Watching the live coverage today one cannot help but be impressed with the grit of the British people. Shock, yes. Horror, no doubt. But no panic. The people did not go screaming through the streets. The House of Commons did not take a day off. The hard lessons of IRA and the Blitz were not unlearned as emergency services kicked in to evacuate, give aid, assess, and protect.

May they never have to go through this again.

Other coverage can be found at

• BBC News Reporters’ Log
• Being American in T.O.
• The Command Post

This is the second in a four-part series.
Read Crime in Britain Part 1: Dunblane, Gun Laws and Violence.

The avenues England’s cities are no longer safe to walk, as “yobs” run rampant through city streets from London to Liverpool, from Leyland to Leeds. “Yob” (thought to be derived from “boy” spelled backwards) dates to the 19^th century and “denotes a kind of loutish, anti-social behavior associated with working-class youth in Britain’s urban centers.”

[Leave it to the ever-civilized Brits to describe arson and assault as "loutish" behavior.]

England is battling rising yob problems in which large gangs of youths abuse drugs and alcohol in city centers, engage in vandalism and routinely assault citizens. To get an idea of the yob culture, listen to Quadrophenia or watch A Clockwork Orange. The former describes a precursor to the modern yob movement that currently terrorizes the law-abiding citizens of Britain, the latter predicts where it will go.

One of Blair’s first efforts to take a bite out of yobs was taken in 1998 with the introduction of ASBOs, or anti-social behavior orders, which are issued via civil hearings to people for disruptive behavior that is not necessarily criminal. Anti-social behavior is broadly defined:

… it is behaviour which causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more people who are not in the same household as the perpetrator.

Securing an ASBO is incredibly easy with rules that allow hearsay evidence to be admissible — only one in seventy ASBO applications are turned down. Violation of an ASBO can carry a prison sentence of up to five years.

An ASBO can address anything from cursing to begging to vandalism to “harassment of residents”. As one can imagine, this kind of latitude has led to many abuses by civil authorities. Examples of ASBOs include:

• Banning a 16-year-old from “acting anti-socially anywhere in England or Wales.”
• A 17-year-old boy was banned from throwing mud or eggs at windows (this isn’t already a crime?).
• A family consisting of parents and three boys (aged 16 to 20) were banned from leaving the house in anything other than pairs, from meeting more than one friend at a time and has a 11 pm to 7 am curfew imposed.
• Forbidding a man to own a stereo or TV
• Forbidding a man from wearing a hat or hood
• Banning a man from using doorbells or telephoning without permission
• Forbidding a youth from using the word “grass” as a term of abuse towards people
• Banning a man from entering any building with more than four storeys for five years
• Forbidding a youth from walking on the street in which he lives (he must use the alley to walk home)
• Forbidding a man to report people to the police whom he believes to be engaged in suspicious or illegal behavior.

In one case a pet sheep was threatened with an ASBO to prohibit it from eating flowers in a cemetery. (The real culprits were later identified when someone saw a family of deer in the cemetery eating flowers.)

ASBOs have been issued to children as young as ten and to adults in their 80s. Over a thousand were issued during the first half of 2004 alone. The PM has even appointed an “ASBO Tsar“. The effect has been less than noticeable.

In Lancashire a man has been convicted of breaching an ASBO issued to him last year — for the 17^th time. In South Wales frustrated citizens packed the Community Hall to discuss how to address the problem. In North Somercotes, the problem of yob vandalism and intimidation has grown so bad that citizens are threatening vigilante action.

But the latest craze to sweep through the yob culture is a sign that the lawlessness is escalating: “happy slapping“:

Groups of teenagers approach an unsuspecting person and begin punching and kicking him or her while capturing it all on their camera cellphones. The images are later uploaded and shared on the Internet.

The victims can be young or old, male or female. Bus stops, subway stations and parks are considered prime venues.

Sometimes the attacks get out of hand. A woman describes an attack:

“They came from nowhere and jumped on Steve, knocking him to the ground and punching and kicking him. There were about 10 of them and they were only kids. It was horrific.

“I was screaming at them to get off. Then this lad headbutted me and a girl started smashing me in the face.”

But that’s not the worst of it. A girl of 11 was raped by a gang of schoolboys in London while they filmed the ordeal. A 40-year-old barrister was put into a coma in an attack by a gang of yobs. Youths threw stones at passengers debarking from a train, including a woman with a baby carriage, and then 20 of them attacked a man, pushing him to the ground and kicking him. Three girls attacked a 15-year-old girl with a knife in broad daylight. A 20-year-old was left unconscious as the result of a happy slap attack. A father of four was beaten to death by teenage yobs because he could not offer a light for a cigarette. A 17-year-old thug in Bolton headed a gang of 60 yobs (some as young as 4), that was responsible for a string of assaults, including an off-duty police officer. After the thug’s arrest crime in the area dropped 85%.

And those are just the current news stories.

Crime is everywhere:

Sapphire, 15, from Leeds, thinks that by the time she has children most primary school pupils will be carrying knives. One boy says a gun was brought into the playground at his school. Crime seems a daily reality in these children’s communities.

According to a recent survey of over 11,000 London schoolchildren:

… not only did one in ten teenage schoolboys say that he had carried a gun or a replica gun in the past year, but 6 per cent of the 11 to 15-year-olds said that they had fired a real gun. One in seven said that they knew someone who had “brought a gun or a real-looking gun” to school.

Another problem are “hoodies”, yobs who wear hooded jackets or billed caps that obscure their face from the increasingly ubiquitous closed circuit television cameras (CCTVs). The problem has grown so bad that many are calling for a ban on the jackets. One mall, Bluewater in Kent, actually did just that in May — those wearing hoods or baseball caps in a manner that obscured their face (from the over 400 CCTVs on the premises) are asked to leave. The result has been an astounding 22% increase in the number of visitors.

Even Simon Cowell of The X Factor, Pop Idol and American Idol fame is urging the British government to ban hooded tops. But this Brit, no doubt tainted by his prolonged exposure to Americans, has expressed one of the only ideas I’ve seen that addresses the problem: he wants to implement an American-style “three strikes and you’re out” program:

“If you commit the same crime three times there is absolutely no excuse the third time you do it,” he says. “You go to prison.

“Our laws allow 14-year-old kids to commit 30 or 40 burglaries. We need zero tolerance. We should be protecting the innocent.”

Middlesbrough Mayor Ray Mallon also has an idea — he wants to hold the yob’s parent’s responsible:

“If a child under 18 appears in court for an ASBO hearing I want to see that child’s parents alongside them in the dock.

“It should be a joint undertaking, the child and his or her guarantor. If the child breaches the ASBO then the parent should also be punished,” said the Mayor.

Indeed.

Coming next week: Crime in Britain Part 3: Even More Failed Policies

A survey of the clergy of the Church of England shows some surprising results:

Funny, I thought communion was a central part of worship in the Church of England.

In 1996, Britain experienced the Dunblane massacre, in which a single gunman killed 16 kindergartners, a teacher, and then himself. The public was justifiably horrified and government reaction was swift and severe. Rather than blaming the man, guns became the source of evil and the isle of Britain enacted some of the toughest gun laws in the world.

Firearms registration has been a part of life in England since the 1920s, but beginning in 1997 new laws were enacted which become more and more restrictive. 95% of all handguns were banned and the remainder (.22 caliber) had to be stored at gun clubs. Several months later a total ban on handguns was passed along with a buy back, which netted more than 100,000 handguns from the homes of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

But the government’s war on guns didn’t stop there. Over time abuse of power became commonplace and police presence in the home became more and more intrusive:

Under regulations implementing Britain’s 1997 Firearms (Amendment) Act, gun club members must now register every time they use a range, and must record which particular gun they use. If the gun-owner does not use some of his legally-registered guns at the range often enough, his permission to own those guns will be revoked.

Having control over rifle and handgun owners through a licensing system, the police began inventing their own conditions to put on licenses. The police practice was not entirely legal, but it was generally accepted by a compliant public….

After the 1996 Dunblane shootings, some police forces began performing spot checks on persons who already held Firearms Certificates. Apparently the home searches were done to make sure that the firearms really were locked up.

Parliament never granted the police home inspection authority, nor did Parliament enact legislation saying that a hardened safe is the only acceptable storage method. However, that is what the police in many jurisdictions require anyway. In fact, many gun owners who bought safes that the police said were acceptable are now being forced to buy new safes because the local police have arbitrarily changed the standards. In many districts, an “acceptable safe” is now one that can withstand a half-hour attack by a burglar who arrives with a full set of safe-opening tools.

Sometimes the police require the purchase of two safes: the first one for the gun and the second one for separate storage of ammunition. A Briton (p.424)buying a low-powered, £5 rimfire rifle may have to spend £100 on a safe. Likewise, a person with five handguns (before the 1997 ban) might have been ordered to add a £1000 electronic security system.[109] Added to the cost of the illegal requirement for hardened safes is the escalating cost of Firearms or Shotgun Certificates. Home inspections are expensive for the police, and thus the cost of Firearms Certificates or Shotgun Certificates has been raised again and again, far above the rate of inflation, in order to cover the costs of the intrusive inspections, as well as the cost of many gross inefficiencies in police processing of applications.[110] The net effect of the heavy security costs is to reduce legal gun ownership by the less wealthy classes, as in the days of Henry VIII, Charles I, who was later beheaded during the English Civil War, and James II, who was driven out of the country by the Glorious Revolution.

That was the situation in 1999. Since then not much has changed. Laws on the books include:

• Limits on how much ammunition the citizen is permitted to have for each weapon.

• Requiring the citizen to obtain a “firearm certificate (FAC)” for the ammunition he purchases.
• Each prospective gun owner (if they can get the police to actually give him permission to have a gun) must “be a member of a firearms club approved by the Home Office, and have completed a 3-month probation.”
• Police inspections can take place at any time and two separate safes for the guns and ammunition “securely fastened to the residence” are generally required.

Can you imagine this happening in the land of “from my cold dead fingers”? Never mind the restrictions on guns. You want me to fill out forms just to buy ammo? And then you want me to allow storm troopers to come into my house and see if I have my boxes cases of ammo locked up in a special safe?

But they did just that in England and Scotland and Wales. Over time the owners of antique pistols and shotguns that had been in the family for generations have been forced to give up their cherished possessions. Sports shooters gave up their handguns and have had to be happy with rifle shooting.

And for what? The result has been a sharp increase in gun crimes, particularly in the early years as the criminal element came to realize the advantage it had against a defenseless citizenry, with an explosive 35% increase in the 2001/02 year:

The dramatic rise in gun crime had to stop eventually as the crime market became increasingly saturated, and indeed we now see that the growth has slowed considerably, with less than a 1% increase from 2002/03 to 2003/04.

Yet the latest Home Office report
contains some disturbing statistics (page 79):

• The number of serious crimes of violence against the person involving firearms increased by six per cent between 2002/03 and 2003/04, while other offences of violence against the person involving firearms increased by 16 per cent over the same period.
• There were 440 firearm offences that resulted in a serious injury in 2003/04 and 1,860 in slight injury. These represent a five per cent increase in firearm offences with serious injury compared with the previous year and an 11 per cent increase in firearm offences with slight injury.

In point of fact, with 10,340 gun incidents reported in the 2003/04 period, gun crime has more than doubled since the time of the massacre in spite of (if not because of) increasingly tough restrictions on gun ownership and growing government encroachment into the private lives of law abiding citizens.

Even worse, figures from the third quarter of 2004 indicate a return to the high growth rate of gun crime with a 5% higher rate than the previous year’s third quarter. Furthermore, there has been a huge surge in shootings across London this year with a dramatic increase in the number of young teens carrying and using handguns, some as young as 14:

The teenage gunmen are suspected of being behind a rise of as much as 146 per cent in gun crime in some London boroughs in the months since April, during which Met Police figures show a 10 per cent rise capital-wide.

One senior detective on Operation Trident, combating armed black drug gangs, said: “The gunmen are getting younger and younger. These kids are less disciplined than older gunmen and more volatile. The terrifying thing is they are getting hold of these guns and they are more willing to use them than older criminals.”

The worst boroughs report stunning increases in gun crime:

And in spite of the total prohibition on handguns, the pistol remains the criminals weapon of choice with 58% of firearm crimes in 2001/02 being committed with a handgun (figure 2.3). As one ex-cocaine dealer put it, high-calibre firearms are as easily available as toothbrushes.

The experiment in the UK is a failure in every respect. It clearly demonstrates that prohibition fails to keep guns out of the hands of anyone except the law abiding citizen. Indeed, the most restricted weapon — the handgun — is the weapon most used by the criminal element. Gun control has not only failed to fix the problem, it has failed to keep guns out of the hands of an entire new, younger generation of thugs.

In addition, police have abused their authority and treated the gun owner as the criminal while utterly failing to stem the tide of gun crime.

Next week, Crime in Britain Part 2: Yobs and ASBOs.