Guest blog: A bit less rape, please

Harriet Harman appears to be on a mission to piss off every last man, woman and child on the planet.

On reading this piece, in the Times, regarding Hattie's latest brainwave, a good friend of CF's feels the need, the need to vent. He has no blog to call his own. But no matter. CF is very happy to provide a venue, an outlet, a valve to reduce the pressure. All posters are welcome here.

Anonymity is preserved, scrupulously. A pseudonym will be created, for this very angry, quite Welsh individual.

So, take it away, JonesTheSteam:


One excellent way of increasing the number of convictions for rape would be to convict people who are not guilty - however for some reason the bovine electorate have always been resistant to this method of improving the success of the criminal justice system. While Harman believes people should be found "guilty in the court of public opinion" our outdated criminal laws require people to be considered "guilty beyond reasonable doubt" as opposed to "looking a bit shifty, so despite the absence of evidence, let’s bang him up for a decade". The requirement to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt is a high hurdle to conviction - but it should be, conviction has terrible consequences for the offender. Some factually guilty people go free. Some factually innocent people get convicted. Tough, no system is perfect. But if you lower the standard of proof required for conviction - particularly for an offence like rape where typically only perpetrator and victim are present - you risk the increased fear and disrespect for the justice system, and more people convicted wrongly - which is as bad, perhaps worse, than a guilty person going free. It is typical of the government that it wants to tinker recklessly with systems and statistics to want to set targets for the number of rape trials leading to conviction - great, let’s fill up the jails until they actually burst open. We should not be targeting more convictions – we should be targeting fewer rapes and sexual assaults.

But it is too hard to discuss and address real problem because that risks making hard decisions and enemies of party-funding interest groups.

That would require looking at sex education in schools - oh, tricky that risks looking a bit pervy. Or uncontrolled discount alcohol sales in supermarkets - oh but the grocers might not like it. Or the media culture of celebrating and normalising frequent casual sex - not to mention drug and alcohol abuse, by celebrities in particular - but that might upset the media who might not like us. Or the treatment of women in the media; where the state broadcaster has no shame in sacking wrinkly but experienced women, where what was porn is now a pop video, where children’s TV discusses shagging and generally promotes the objectification of women and the coolness of casual sex. Not that I’m not keen myself but any man who gets to 17 in 2009 without forming the opinion from the media around him that he has the right to shag anyone he fancies deserves a medal. But lets not risk looking uncool by suggesting responsible media should feel obliged to discuss how real women behave, how they might look sexy but not want sex, how they might not want to be treated as objects – but no, easier to make programmes/newspaper features about the ever increasing/decreasing size of Jordan’s norks – a woman who has made a career out of being the woman that makes men want to splash out on magazines that feature her.

Or the destruction of playing fields, physical ed in schools, swimming pools that used to play a part in giving "yoof" alternative activities to wandering round town centres looking for a shag - but who was in charge for the last 12 years? And who allowed town centres to be denuded of community in the name of free enterprise, for supermarkets to move to edge of town and uncontrolled expansion of on-licences so that after 7pm our city centres become one long vomit-soaked shag-fest. Or the celebration of making money over public service so that the youth club leaders scout masters, guide leaders, football/rugby/netball team coaches now are all made to feel a) like saddos who could be driving Porsches if only they weren’t wasting their time serving their communities and b) they are latent child molesters. In any case who want to fund boring local community activities that need £500 for some goalposts when you can piss away an ocean of capital on sheds in east London to be used for three weeks in 2012.

Honestly its enough to make one quite Furious.


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