Politics Chat.

could it be the toryscum controlling the narrative through their supine press allies that will happily fill column inches that shift the blame from tory cuts to local policing / surestart / youth programmes etc to "because labour and muslim".

Khan should be blamed for the real stuff instead like failure to tackle air quality by giving go ahead for silvertown

That's got to be a big slice.

But are we really living in a country where probably millions of people think he's at least part responsible for the knife crime epidemic without a single shred of evidence? Surely there must be a small nugget of truth there somewhere. If not, this is even more depressing than I thought.

I think that's the thing though. All the evidence a lot of people need is the aforementioned negative press coverage from sources that they already identify with or believe. Most people (myself included) don't fact check enough of what we read, particularly if it comes from a reputable source or leads us to confirmation bias.

Crime has never been my area, I'm afraid. I don't know much about that and I couldn't answer your question.

Cheers anyway mate.

Crime and Policing is one of the areas devolved to the London Mayor and overseen by the GLA. I think this means he can set budgets and priorities for the Metropolitan Police.

Therefore if knife crime in London was purely a police matter, and was rising because of the Met's policies specifically, it could be fair to apportion some blame to him.

I think - if there is a non-racist reason why he has taken the flak for it, which I'm not convinced by - it could be that as Mayor, Khan basically becomes a spokesperson for any issues of crime in London, and therefore is made or assumed to "own" the issues.

I think - if there is a non-racist reason why he has taken the flak for it, which I'm not convinced by - it could be that as Mayor, Khan basically becomes a spokesperson for any issues of crime in London, and therefore is made or assumed to "own" the issues.

And since London's population is bigger than everywhere else, our social problems tend to occur more than most other places.

But ultimately i'm with you. The general blaming of Khan for knife crime has more to do with his name, skin colour and religion than with any evidence.

Crime and Policing is one of the areas devolved to the London Mayor and overseen by the GLA. I think this means he can set budgets and priorities for the Metropolitan Police.

I think this is only partially true. 80% of his policing budget comes from the government from what I have read, and that part has been cut by about £800m in recent years.

The other 20% has to come from council tax revenues etc which as I understand it he has increased by the maximum legally permissible amount every year in recent times to divert to the police budget.

Not certain of this info, but that is my understanding.

Of course - he can only budget with what he is given, I think he just decides on the allocation of very limited resources.

I didn't mean to use the "deceptive Tory" line of reasoning of blaming local authorities who have cut spending when their funding has been cut drastically.

He's had a couple of high profile failures though hasn't he? He hasn't delivered on housing. Westminster totally stiffed him in the end Re Oxford street. So he's got a bit of an upward battle to 'look' effective. I get that this has little to do with knife crime, but people are tuned in to the direction of travel. I'd hope it's this.

I suspect the successes he's had aren't widely reported, too.

I think that's both the great shame and strength of the Mayoralship - there's a limited amount you can do to achieve change. That's great when it's someone like Johnson who could really fuck things up with a little power, but it's a shame when it's someone like Khan who by all accounts is a serious, intelligent, and honest politician.

When I argue that I don't know what else Khan can do about knife crime, people often tell me that if he can't take responsibility he should quit and let a "real politican" fix the problems he cannot.

I think in terms of the knife crime there isn't much he can do. There's some rejigging of police priorities but it's a bigger issue than what he can address.

I think part of the trouble is there's very little you can point to as successful ideas that he's implemented. Whether or not he's struggling with a biased press, his PR team aren't doing a good job or he just hasn't done anything I'm not sure but I'm struggling to think of a handful of things that he's achieved since he came in.

As such, the knife crime tends to get bundled in with the general perception of him as ineffective.

As such, the knife crime tends to get bundled in with the general perception of him as ineffective

I think this might be spot on. Or at least the strongest take I've seen so far.

Westminster totally stiffed him in the end Re Oxford street.

Well, his policy was not good and had no chance whatsoever to be accepted by the local authority, which, after all, is Westminster. It wasn't totally his fault, he doesn't really understand transport policy and took this from someone he thought would know. But yes, certainly a failure.

Dominic Cummings is hiring - https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/

^He really must be one of very few people who grew up masturbating to The West Wing.
And it's hard not think he knows exactly what he's doing when he writes "I don’t want confident public school bluffers. "

I think he's hit on one or two okay ideas. More scientists and evidence based policy is a good thing

It's a pretty appealing job posting really

people (lol; twitter) are saying he using personal email to avoid FOI requests

The racists have overtaken the sectarians, but the homophobes look like they could be gearing up for a comeback. It's all still to play for in NI

Do we have a Dominic Cummings thread yet?
Meanwhile journalist Stefan Collini has been reading all of DC's blog posts since 2013. A great public service.

Collini's conclusions compressed into about 5000 words appeared in the Guardian's Long read on Thursday.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/06/inside-the-mind-of-dominic-cummings-brexit-boris-johnson-conservatives

Take a look at the mind that is directing PM Johnson and his cabinet of all the talents.

There are traces of that kind of absolute certainty that is more often shown by fellow-travellers of science rather than by first-rate scientists themselves.

There are traces of that kind of absolute certainty that is more often shown by fellow-travellers of science rather than by first-rate scientists themselves.

I read a few of the posts and that was my impression. There's no doubt in his mind that he's right about everything, particularly the civil service.

Some of the stuff he advocates (programming with little bits of card with stickers on and projectors??) looks like bunk, but on the other hand some of it also seems sensible and it does seem that (deliberately or not) there's a good chance you'd end up with some okay evidence based policy being produced, as long as you get proper scientists in rather than people with a political agenda.

Reassuringly he seems to believe in climate change and sees Brexit as a way to push the issue of immigration to the sidelines (i.e. we aren't going to deport immigrants or ban people from "shithole countries" or anything like that).

I had half a mind to apply to the job posting on the basis that if it wasn't a lefty with bad ideas like me doing the job it'd be some Tory with even worse ideas. If nothing else there was a chance I could've told Dom he is a knobhead to his face

There’s a reason you don’t find blogs written by people wracked with self doubt and imposter syndrome. They tend to be a very boring read.

Think of each post as a speech.