Imperial Party forum

thomas davison

Agony aunts for criminals - and scorn for the rest of us
By Peter Hitchens
PUBLISHED: 00:30, 13 May 2012 | UPDATED: 00:42, 13 May 2012

The British State treats us, the good, kind and law-abiding, with officious scorn. We have learned, when we are the victims of crime or disorder, that the police don�t need us, and they expect the same in return.
If we dare to travel abroad, we are terrorist suspects on the way out, to be poked and humiliated, and serfs on the way back in, herded, hectored and corralled.
If we try to pay our taxes honestly and on time, we are held on the phone for half an hour. Happy families are torn apart in secret courts, where guilt is presumed and a fair hearing impossible.
Pitifully soft: The official recruiting poster for prison officers. The Ministry of Justice confirmed that the poster is genuine
The state school system pretends to offer us �choice� while imposing a wretched low standard on all, from which only the wealthy can escape. If we dare to grow old and ill, our savings are plundered and stripped, or we die in our own filth in callous hospital wards.
But fight and rob your way into one of our prisons, which generally involves at least a dozen quite serious criminal convictions, and the attitude is entirely different. Suddenly they want to be nice to you.
Pasted up in an Oxfordshire byway, I found extraordinary proof of what most of us have long suspected and what politicians always try to deny. We are now so soft on wrong-doing that the wicked must be laughing at us.
It is a recruiting poster for prison officers. Beneath a picture of two smiling, kindly types in uniform sharing a jolly moment are the words: �Father figures. Agony Aunts. When you�re the closest to family anyone�s experienced in a long while, it becomes less of a job and more of a calling. Prison officers. People officers by nature.�
Tough justice? We are now so soft on wrong-doing that the wicked must be laughing at us
It continues: �Gaining the respect of offenders isn�t a skill you can learn. It�s something you need to have in you already: that ability to build rapport with a broad range of characters and ultimately make a breakthrough.�
The Ministry of Injustice, whose name and superscription are on the poster, have confirmed to me that it is really theirs. There you have it. For the worst people in the country, we hire �agony aunts� and �father figures� whose job is to �gain the respect� of people who have repeatedly trampled on the rights and freedoms of their neighbours.
For the rest of us, death and taxes, indifference, inefficiency, scorn and an array of decrepit, slovenly �services�, which grow worse the more we pay for them.
Why, exactly, do you vote for the people who are responsible for this? I�d love to know.