qwghlm.co.uk : because all the other domain names were taken

Not satisfied with his quest to destroy every civil liberty in Britain, David Blunkett has come up with a new wheeze – charging victims of miscarriages of justice for the food & lodging costs they incurred while in prison (found via Sore Eyes). Quoth:

Spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.

[...]

The Home Office said an “independent assessor appointed by the Home Secretary takes into acccount the range of costs the prisoner might have incurred had they not been imprisoned”. The spokesman said the assessor was “right” to do this, adding: “Morally, this is reasonable and appropriate.”

No it’s fucking not. It’s utterly morally reprehensible to demand innocent people pay for the mistakes the judicial system did. It was their lives that were being destructively robbed, not the Prison Service.

Just what is going on in Blunkett’s mind? Is he thinking something like “That’ll punish ‘em. All these years of pretending to be guilty so they could get a free bed and three square meals, greedily robbing the state blind, it’s what they deserve.” What next? Charging dead people’s families for the waste of NHS money spent on them? Demanding payment from the Afghans and Iraqis for the bombs we dropped on their heads?

The case is up in the Royal Courts of Justice this week, I really hope there is some law (The “Fuck Off, You Evil Bastard” Act?) that stops this abomination of a policy from going ahead. The Scottish Executive have already said they would not follow the directive, which gives me (and everyone else) another good reason to move north of the border. I’m praying for the right decision to be made, either that or some sort “reasonable and appropriate” (i.e. fatal) accident to befall the Home Secretary.