Well that clinches it for me, Blair has finally gone completely off his head. Forget impeaching him, just get a registered community psychiatric nurse and section the fucker now.

Ok, we had a fair few dumbass bouts of ‘thinking aloud’ before - remember the whole business of frogmarching drunks down the cashpoint - but this one takes the fucking biscuit.

“He [Blair] wants to lower from £5,000 to £1,000 the minimum amount of money or assets police can seize from criminals - even if they have not been convicted.”

You fucking what? Even if they have not been convicted?

There is a slight constitutional problem with this suggestion posed by the English Bill of Rights of 1689 which reads:

And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representative of this nation, taking into their most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties declare…

…That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void;

But more that that we have a very simple word round here for what Blair is suggesting - theft.

It may morally be right that we seize assets that can be proven to be the proceeds of crime, but before we do that we also, morally, have to prove both that a crime has been committed and that the alleged perpetrator is guilty of that crime and therefore deserving of having their assets seized.

This is not fucking difficult. I understand perfectly well what ‘innocent until proven guilty’ means and so, I expect, does everyone else who reads this blog.

Blair is barrister - what fucking excuse does he have to not understand this.

This is about a simple as it fucking well gets.

If the state does not secure a conviction against an individual then it has not proved that that individual has committed a crime and if it then goes on to seize that individual’s assets without having secured a conviction and proved that they have committed a crime, that is theft - it may be state-sanctioned theft but theft it is nonetheless.

If Blair is going to pursue this course then the sooner he find himself wearing one of nice cardigans with the leather straps that go over the shoulders the better it will be for all of us.

I tell you, he’s fucking mad.

You want proof - try this for size…

Mr Blair was asked if he was sticking to his principles on presuming innocence before suspects were proven guilty.

He told BBC News: “You cannot deal with this type of crime by ordinary methods or by ordinary court processes. I genuinely believe that. I have tried it, it doesn’t work.”

Right, so that’s it from Blair’s own mouth - the presumption of innocence is fucking history as well. What a complete and utter wanker!

Actually, while I’m on, can I just point out the contribution of the opposition parties to this ‘debate’.

Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis asked how the government could be sure that only drug dealers would have their money confiscated.

“There appears to be an absence of research and evaluation to justify how this will actually work,” he said.

And Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, questioned how ministers would target “street corner dealers” when the Assets Recovery Agency “hasn’t been hitting its targets to date”.

I’m checking the date here, and it doesn’t say April 1st, so I think we can assume that these twats aren’t fucking kidding.

‘Research and evaluation’?

‘Hitting its targets’?

What the fuck happened to plain old-fashioned ‘This is wrong!’ - which bit of that do none of these bastards understand.

Time for another local interest post and another addition to the SCEN Files.

Today I’m going to do something that, to my knowledge, has never been done before.

Not only am I going to publish - more or less - in full the recent ‘fit for purpose’ review carried out by SCEN’s Community Panel on the delivery of the project by SCVO but, in doing so, this will mean that for the first time the local people, groups and organisations that SCEN is supposed to represent will get to see exactly how money has been coming in to the project and, more importantly, where and how its being spent - or in some cases, not being spent.

You’ll note that in places, there is the odd blacked-out section - for the most part only names have been redacted for reasons of data protection. The only exception to this is Annex 2 which has been redacted in its entirety as this relate to a CEN other than Sandwell’s.

Not much more to say other than to note that the report is somewhat overgenerous in its comments regarding SCEN’s project manager - far more generous that the panel member who, in a meeting only last week, offered their considered opinion of SCVO’s management, describing its Chief Executive, Deputy Chief Executive and the SCEN project manager as ‘incompetent’.

I’ll offer no further comment on this last matter for the time being, simply invite you to download and read the full report (it’s in PDF format so you’ll need the Acrobat Reader - version 5 or better) and make your own mind up about the panel member’s assessment.

SCEN - Fit For Purpose Review (Full Report) - 172kb