Earlier this week, the police officer who shot and killed Chris Kaba was cleared of murder charges. For those unfamiliar with the incident: On September 5th 2022, Kaba was driving a vehicle that was linked to a shooting incident the day before, and was being followed by police. His car was stopped at a police road block and he was ordered to exit the vehicle. Kaba refused to do so, ramming two police cars in an attempt to escape. He was then shot dead by police officer Martyn Blake.
When the judge in the Kaba case finally lifted reporting restrictions yesterday, it was revealed that Kaba was a member of a notorious drug gang, and that he had shot another man in a nightclub the day before his death. However, neither these revelations nor the acquittal of officer Blake (by a unanimous verdict) has stopped Left-wing activists from blaming Kaba’s death on “racism”.
In relation to the incident, the Runnymede Trust posted a tweet claiming, “The legal system doesn’t deliver real justice for families bereaved by racist state violence” and “this lack of police accountability perpetuates cycles of violence and impunity.”
Likewise, the website Counterfire published an article claiming that “the reality of institutional racism is laid bare” and “this case is a reminder of the structural and institutional racism in this country”.
Even the supposedly respectable Guardian published an editorial noting that “since 2005, the Met has shot and killed four unarmed men in non-terrorist operations. All were Black”. The editorial went on to quote a report by Inquest, which referred to “deeply rooted patterns of racial disproportionality resulting in deaths after the lethal use of force”.
The problem with claims of “racist state violence”, “institutional racism” and “racial disproportionality” is that they don’t stand up to scrutiny.
To begin with, “killings of unarmed men in non-terrorist operations” is a rather arbitrary category. Why exclude terrorist operations? In any case, four data points isn’t much evidence to build a case on. And doesn’t the fact that only four unarmed men have been killed in almost 20 years suggest a remarkable degree of restraint on the part of the Met?
According to the Washington Post, 516 unarmed men have been killed by U.S. police since 2015. Adjusting for population (of the U.S. versus Greater London) and number of years (nine versus 19), this means the rate at which unarmed men are killed by police is more than seven times higher in the U.S. than it is in Greater London.
As a matter of fact, the overrepresentation of black people among the victims of police killings can be entirely explained by their higher rates of involvement in violent crime.
The Inquest report quoted by the Guardian found that, from 2012-13 to 2020-21, there were 119 deaths “in or following policy custody” or “following police contact”, and that 23 of the victims, or 19%, were black. Since black people are only 4% of the population (less if you average over the relevant time period), they are substantially overrepresented. If you use homicides as a benchmark, however, they aren’t overrepresented. From 2014 to 2020, black people comprised 18% of homicide suspects.
Homicides is clearly a more appropriate benchmark than population. Around 90% of the victims of police killings are men. Yet we don’t attribute their overrepresentation to “sexism” because we know that men commit the vast majority of violent crime and hence are much more likely to get into situations where a police officer ends up killing them.
The verdict in the trial of officer Blake suggests that Kaba was killed in lawful self-defence. And there’s no evidence that police are disproportionately killing black people due to racism.
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Isn’t “stakeholder democracy” something of an oxymoron? Seems like code for “experts who know best will decide”.
Stakeholders, unlike share holders, have invested nothing so have nothing to lose when things go tits-up.
The idea is that stakeholders, unlike share holders, are the one’s who’ll be directly affected by decisions and that’s why they should all get together to make such decisions in a way that’s sensible for all of them (or the best possible compromise which can be achieved). Share holders have no direct reason to care for the outcome of any particular decision, just for the indirect effect of share price changes.
Government… Budget Responsibility. Side-splitting laughter is heard around the parish.
Central economic planning and control aka fiscal policies = root of Socialism and Fascism. In the former the State owns the means of production, in the latter the State directs the means of production giving the appearance of private ownership in a free economy.
The technocratic aspects plants it in the Fascist economic model.
The Industrial Revolution occurred because there were no fiscal policies, had there been we would all still be working on the land, as soon we shall be as Net Zero progresses.
(The primary means of production is the Human Being.)
Off-T
Paula Jardine at TCW with her thoughts on the next Scamdemic.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/big-pharma-is-the-lottery-winner-in-the-great-bird-flu-myth/
“So which strain of bird flu do you have on your bingo card for the pandemic flu mark 2 public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) this coming winter? The UK government has just signed a pandemic preparedness deal with CSL-Seqirus, the vaccine company now running the old Chiron factory in Speke, to supply 100 million doses of an unidentified flu vaccine in the event of a pandemic. But I can see another switcheroo coming. My money is on an outbreak of H9N7, the other influenza strain in Moderna’s new mRNA-1018 vaccine.”
‘The mRNA technology allows us to be much more agile in developing vaccines; we can start creating a mRNA vaccine within hours of sequencing a new viral strain with pandemic potential,’ said Dr Hensley. ‘During previous influenza pandemics, like the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, vaccines were difficult to manufacture and did not become available until after the initial pandemic waves subsided.’
Read: Nobody needs this shit and pandemic waves have so-far always subsided without it. But thanks to mRNA technology, we’ll be to market quickly enough in future to avoid this!
Deborah Birx is also again making noises about “avoiding the mistakes made with COVID”, start mass testing of healthy people now and stop requiring symptoms for diagnosis in favour of using PCR test results instead. Deborah Birx would seem to be one of the mistakes made with COVID. After all, she admitted to tricking the Trump administations into principally endless lockdowns by lying about her true intentions.
Aren’t they just establishing a costing oversight which will simply state that every Labour plan will bankrupt the nation? Net Zero is going to bankrupt every Western Nation that wants to die by just aiming for it.
it would be simpler to go back to rotten boroughs and University MPs.
And back then MPs got no pay or expenses. Voluntary contributions from constituents defrayed some of their costs, and the size of contribution was linked to how well constituents thought their MP was serving their interests.
We should go back to that.
Can we have Budget Accountability instead.? That thing that if you don’t spend wisely, we have the means to fire you..?
Fire you and fine you, say, 50% of the cost to the public purse.
I am in favour of a fiscal lock.
A fiscal lock that doesn’t allow a government to spend more than it collects or better still one that puts a hard limit, like maximum 10% income tax.
But this isn’t a fiscal lock. It’s a shift of power from parliament to bureaucrats.
A fiscal locks takes the power away from everyone.
How about abolition of all taxation except limited taxes on land value and consumer sales.
Such tax to cover essential working of government and defence, public services returned to the private sector, no welfare, and borrowing limit of 5% of GDP only in times of stress.
Oh. I’m up for all that. I was just trying to be “realistic” to illustrate my point. But, yes, that would be even better.
You could argue that a fiscal lock is undemocratic, but then you could argue that a limited democracy, where certain rights cannot be removed by simple majority, is better than what we have.
This stakeholder¹ democracy resembles Mussolini’s corporatist state a lot, ie, it looks very much like a fascist core concept.
¹ Can we have steakholder democracy instead? Sounds like more fun, especially if there’s also some pintholding.
The Swamp is truly Septic !!
“Stakeholder democracy is different in that it views the electorate as only one voice in the lawmaking and governing process – and not necessarily the most important.”
Actually I think this understates it. It views the electorate as fully irrelevant. Voters only get a legitimate say if they are directly affected by a measure as a” stakeholder”.
“Stakeholder democracy” is nothing less than the complete repudiation of democracy. We are seeing our ancient democratic system being literally dismantled.
It is dismantling the Crown in Parliament, so allowing Parliament to evade responsibility.
Henry Ford – “you can have any colour car you want as long as its black.”
British Establishment – you can have any Government you want, as long as the policies don’t change.
At least you would have a car!
If there’s no possibility that policies can change, you wouldn’t be having a government, one that represented us.
“If the Fiscal Responsibility Bill passes, all future governments will have to request that the OBR prepares an analysis of any proposed fiscal measure”
This isn’t true, any future government can, if it chooses, repeal the Bill. No government is bound by the decisions of a previous one.
Successive governments have abdicated responsibility to unelected, unaccountable bodies. This is shameful and a disgrace, elected politicians should be responsible not quangos.
It is an interesting question , why economics is not a science.
Frederick Soddy, a Nobel Laureate chemist, pointed out that in science, wealth is positive and money is negative. Who knew ?