Governments and Trust (or lack of)

The nation loses trust in its leaders

A new poll shows that a decline in deference to authority has accelerated in the Blair years

Tony Blair has presided over a dramatic collapse in voters' faith in government amid signs that Iraq has accelerated a post-Second World War decline in British deference to authority.

As he prepares to leave office, just 29 per cent of voters trust the Prime Minister, down from 46 per cent who had confidence in Blair in 2000, according to an Ipsos Mori poll.

All Prime Ministers expect to see their trust ratings decline. But the fall has been particularly acute in recent years. Only 17 per cent of people now believe the government can be trusted to put the interests of the country ahead of their party, the classic trust test. More than double this number - 38 per cent - had faith in the government in 1986.

This does not surprise me, would you trust the government with these new anti terror laws these days? The answer would be no. Blair and NuLab have this great belief that in dealing with a problem like terrorism, a new law needs to be created, however as the police will tell you they already have enough laws, also how many terrorist attacks have happened these past couple of years? One! Your more likely to die from an accident on the M25 than from a terrorist attack, so the endless fearmongering by the government only serves to help them in their need for control.

Laws are created with consent from the people, without it the law becomes very unpopular, doesn't even work if you run a police state. This is what makes the Smoking Ban in Public Places different, in that the majority support it, there is little need for the local councils to go snooping around making sure it is implemented, it has been successful in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Mental Health

MP rebellion looms over new mental health curbs

Mental health professionals and opposition parties have joined forces to resist wider powers to detain people with a mental disorder deemed to pose a danger to others.

The Mental Health Alliance, which represents 80 professional bodies and support groups, and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, will press for safeguards to the legislation.

They will work together to retain amendments added to the Mental Health Bill in a string of defeats inflicted on the Government in the Lords. It means that Labour faces a struggle to avert a Commons rebellion on the issue in Tony Blair’s final weeks in office.

Rather frightening, this law could be used by an unscrupulous government to lock up 'undesirables' or those who dissent.

The reason why there is this problem is due to the shutting down of the mental health hospitals and the 'care in the community' policy that was put in its place, this was then underfunded, which leads to our current impasse, the mentally ill end up in prison because there is no where to look after them, thats a reason why the prisons are overcrowded here.

Yes I know the old mental hospitals were not very nice and led to institutionalism. What I am saying is you could build state of the art facilities to care for those with mental health issues and still have care in the community but have someplace where they can be protected from hurting themseleves and others.

Instead they are abandoned in the community due to a lack of funding, then end up committing a crime and then go to jail.

The system is fucked up at the moment.

NuLab has a history of tearing down things in the rush for 'modernization' and then underfunding its replacement, doing things on the cheap, which then causes more problems.