It’s not a good look is it Prime Minister?
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has announced plans to give police and councils new ‘tools’ to combat so-called anti-social behaviour.
This includes increasing their powers to move on ‘nuisance beggars’, making it easier for the public to report anti-social behaviour, increasing fines for fly-tipping and littering, and ordering miscreants to perform community service, with victims getting a say in any punishment.
Rishi Sunak’s Yorkshire Home
So why does Rishi Sunak feel the need to introduce a new raft of powers of his own? One reason is that, in announcing new powers, politicians can give the impression that they are ‘doing something’ without actually investing money or providing anything concrete, or even going to the bother of changing the law to introduce a new criminal offence. After all, ensuring that there are sufficient hostel places for homeless people – not to mention systems to move them into jobs and permanent housing – would be a more expensive and difficult task. Instead, politicians prefer to create ‘new powers’ that don’t even need to be given too much thought. In this way, persistent social problems like homelessness and poverty are turned simply into a matter of ‘nuisance begging’ – behaviour that can be tackled by new dispersal orders.
In his crackdown on crime, the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, gives new powers to the police to move on rough sleepers who kip in doorways. Given they’re homeless, and often former soldiers or drug addicts, it’s not a good look from a PM who owns four mansions worth £14.7million!