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Anti-Social Security

by | 30th, June 2005

‘HAS Saddam Hussein been issued with an anti-social behaviour order yet?

Travis models the new wooden Asbo

If not, we hereby call upon the Government of this country to explain why not.

If Saddam could have been given an Asbo, banning him from Iraq and ordering him to stop misbehaving, there might have been no need for war.

Nothing less than a full judicial review is needed to discover why when, as the Mail says, record numbers of Asbos are being handed out, one has not been given to Hussein or, for that matter, to Robert Mugabe.

Not that there is any guarantee an Asbo works. Home Office figures show that four in ten Asbos are breached and only 46 per cent of under-18s and 64 per cent of adults who ignore the order are jailed.

What’s more, Gareth Crossman, policy director at Liberty, says he’s aware of anecdotal evidence that Asbos are viewed as a “badge of honour” among the anti-social classes.

So, though more Abos are being issued – 786 orders were dished out between October and December last year, against 364 over the same period in 2003 – they are not the complete answer.

Perhaps the Government can think of another way to deal with these hardcore miscreants. And the Sun might well have stumbled upon the answer.

Hussein might have escaped the wrath of a local magistrate, but he could not avoid being shamed in another way – being pictured in his underpants.

And once again the Sun uses its front page to display jailed Saddam Hussein in his Y-fronts.

Short of putting his head in the stocks and pelting him with weapons of mass destruction and rotten tomatoes, the deposed despot could not have been more humbled.

But Saddam is not happy. And, as the paper says in “YOU AND WHOSE ARMY? (…OOPS, YOU HAVEN’T GOT ONE)”, he’s thinking about suing the, er, pants off the Sun.

Hussein thinks his human rights were violated when the Sun published a picture of him standing in his prison cell in his pants, a claim the paper’s lawyer calls “preposterous” and vows to fight.

So that’s “knickers” to Saddam. And pink frilly knickers and nothing else for the Asbo dodgers…’



Posted: 30th, June 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink