Betrayal…

I’ve been at the Times again.

Two articles that caught my eye:

This:-

This country’s education system is a betrayal of this country’s children. It blunts their intelligence, narrows their perspectives and blasts their future prospects. How often does that need to be said? Of course it is not universally true; many children defy the system, one way or another. But the point is that the system is bad. If the word “institutionally” means anything, this country’s education system is institutionally unfit for purpose. Minette Marrin

And this:-

… … It is an absolute failure of public policy that we have no means of reassuring the public that this is at present the case for finance crime.

And that’s where legislators come back in. How seriously do they really take financial wrongdoing?

Do they understand the wreckage it brings? How much money will they put into uncovering it? How long do they think the sentences should be?

Do they really believe that an illiterate mother-of-five drug mule from a village in The Gambia should be serving five times the sentence of a millionaire City fraudster?

Let’s have fewer terrorism acts, fewer laws attacking our right to speak frankly and freely. Let’s stop filling our prisons with junkies, inadequates and the mentally damaged. How apposite in 2009 to have, instead, a few more laws to confront the clever people who have done their best to steal our economy. Sir Ken Macdonald