Conviction rates should be soaring in Britain, the CCTV capital of the world – not plummeting

Crime waive

ISN’T it bizarre that in Britain 2021, the CCTV capital of the world, it should be so hard to get enough evidence to charge burglars and thugs?

In a society where no occurrence is too trivial to be recorded on smartphone, conviction rates should be soaring.

GettyThe charge sheet is mounting up for the Conservatives on law and order, their traditional home turf.[/caption]

Instead, the charge rate for violent crimes in England and Wales plummeted from 22 per cent in 2014/15 to just 6.8 per cent in 2020/21.

One clue to this decline may be the explosion in cases dropped because of “evidential difficulties”, from 17 per cent in 2015 to 40 per cent today.

Perhaps bobbies should spend more time on basic coppering and less on virtue-signalling or dancing with mobs.

The charge sheet is mounting up for the Conservatives on law and order, their traditional home turf.

Voters won’t be as slow to deliver a damning verdict as our legal system is.

Travelling circus

WITH an entire nation bellowing in unison for more clarity on foreign travel, adding extra confusion seems wilfully tone-deaf.

The proposed “amber watchlist” — between amber-plus and red — is just an excuse for ministers to wreck your holiday plans at the drop of a sunhat, while saying they warned you.

Ministers should try fixing the problem, rather than just giving themselves extra wriggle room to dodge blame.

Worth a shot

IN THE debate over whether faltering vaccination rates among the young are best tackled using the carrot or the stick, who would have predicted the answer would be a third option: the kebab?

Some argue the “kebabs for jabs” scheme to encourage students to get their Covid vaccine is patronising.

In contrast, we salute the likes of Uber, Deliveroo, Bolt and Pizza Pilgrims for offering the £10 incentives, ranging from taxi rides to takeaways.

We don’t yet know if the scheme will deliver a much-needed surge but it’s surely worth a try.

All we are saying is: give pizza a chance.

Instagram/@pizzapilgrimsPizza Pilgrims is one of two dozen firms in talks with the government to give discounts to jabbed students[/caption]

Mask heroes

OUR Mask Force campaign has recycled ONE MILLION single-use face masks in its first six weeks — a phenomenal start by our fantastic readers.

But why stop there? Over that time, an estimated 600million masks were thrown away, many ending up in our seas and harming our wildlife.

So let’s keep pushing, and not stop until the proportion of unrecycled masks is less than a drop in the ocean.