Monday marked the two year anniversary of the signing of the ‘Friendship Treaty’ on immigration between Italy and Libya, writes Natalie Hamill. Visiting Italy for the fourth time this year, Colonel Gaddafi punctuated his visit with several provocative claims, not least that the EU should pay Libya €5 billion a year to stop migration flows to the EU, and that Europeans should convert to Islam. Gaddafi lectured those willing to listen (mainly a parade of young women hired from an Italian model agency) on the virtues of Islam as the ‘ultimate religion’; three of the girls ‘converted’, to complete the stunt.
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Proust’s madeleines may evoke a merry-go-round of warm childish memories, but a trip to Disneyland Paris is the stuff of nightmares, writes Annaliese Briggs.
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The internationally respected former Home Office criminologist, Professor Ken Pease, has shown that it will not be feasible to save money by releasing convicted prisoners from jail. According to Prison, Community Sentencing and Crime, not only does the available evidence suggest that offending will not be reduced, the Government’s hope of cutting expenditure on prisons can only be achieved by ignoring the impact on victims of crime – costs that the Home Office itself has acknowledged and quantified.
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A survey has found that very few people are intending to buy 3D capable TVs in the coming twelve months. While this finding has been labelled as a ‘surprise’, it is hardly shocking given the rapid (and perhaps temporary) ascent of 3D TVs into the market. The result reflects not the ‘conservative’ habits of consumers as one pundit believed, but the simple failure of the TV manufacturing companies to notice that demand for their 3D TVs is currently nowhere near supply. Read the rest of this entry »
France’s decision to expel its Roma minority has reignited debate on who should decide citizens’ right to free movement: ‘Should it be the host state or the EU?’ asks Natalie Hamill.
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It is an article of faith amongst some prison reformers that the use of short prison sentences increases the chance of re-offending, sometimes turning a one-time offender towards a life of crime. They are counter-productive in terms of fighting crime, they argue. According to the most recent systematic evidence, this is probably not the case.
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