Presuming this to be truth, we now have evidence that a man has been shot dead by police without, in hindsight, justification. It has happened before, and will do again.

Only yesterday I highlighted the link between the rise in gun crime in Britain and the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s. Yet, suggest forms of capital punishment should be reinstated, and some commentators such as Peter North (son of Dr Richard North) claim that they are ‘not comfortable giving government the power to kill people for any reason’.

‘Uncomfortable’ they might be; but by removing the death penalty, we have not somehow done away with state sanctioned killings, but simply exchanged one type of death for another. Clearly Mr Duggan was not entirely innocent. Though the exact details of events that led to his death are yet to become clear, he was found holding an illegal firearm. Yet, did he deserve to be killed for this crime?

Some may attempt to argue that police were in a difficult situation, and that accidents like this can happen in tense situations. They are right – but surely if that is true, and they are so concerned that the death penalty may result in the death of an innocent person, surely they would be equally concerned – if not more so – that an innocent person may be accidentally killed by the police?

The shooting of the innocent, or killing without intention become an inevitable part of policing once firearms have been issued. It sadly happened with Jean Charles de Menezes, and now it has happened with Mark Duggan. This is not to say that the cases of law-abiding de Menezes and apparently criminal Duggan are equivalent, or to condone the latter’s actions, but that neither deserved their fate.

Accidents are in our nature. We are imperfect beings, regardless of whether we are highly trained members of the police or seemingly ordinary blue collar workers. But we try to restrict our mistakes by ensuring proper procedures and practices are followed, so that they occur as infrequently as we can possibly manage.

This is why the death penalty is the preferable option to the arming of the police, which is, as I have already said, the real consequence of abolishing capital punishment. Mark Duggan was, to all intents and purposes, executed by the police last week – but crucially he was killed without trial, a judge, a jury, a right to defence or repeal.

Duggan’s trial (as we could call it) occurred in the minds of one or perhaps more officers, who weighed up the situation and evidence before them, acting presumably under pressure and forced to make a split second decision over life and death. By comparison, this is a world away from the far more precise, measured and reasonable process of the courts and judicial system.

In a court, Mr Duggan (or a person accused of murder) would have had the benefit of being innocent until proven guilty. He would have been tried by a Judge and heard by a Jury under strict rules of law and procedures. There would have been prosecution and defence, the right of repeal and the fairness of an open hearing. And if after proper judicial examination a man were found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt by a jury of his peers, and sentenced to death for his crime, this would be a much fairer and more just system of punishment than being shot by an armed police officer.

Unfortunately though, the rapid demise of Europe’s anti democratic Union has been predicted on many an occasion and, so far at least, failed to materialise. Therefore one now tends to make such predictions with some level of care.

Consequently, I shall, for the time being, pass over the continuing Euro zone crisis and instead briefly comment on the current violence in London – a city that long ago ceased to be English or British.

The death of Mark Duggan in Tottenham on Thursday, who was shot by police during what the BBC describes as ‘an apparent exchange of fire’, is another unpleasant reminder of the failure of our criminal justice system and our increasingly destructive political class.

As our police force have evolved into another department of social services, and its officers have receded from their once prominent position on the streets of our town and cities, the criminal elements in society have become increasingly emboldened.

On the orders of wise politicians, the police have become a reactive service rather than remain a preventative force – and they ceased long ago to be citizens in uniform, instead seeing each other as an elite group, draped in paramilitary equipment and riding around in expensive metal boxes, all utterly removed from the events outside and the people they are tasked with defending.

Far from deterring crime, they appear – if at all – only once the offence has taken place, sometimes to record the transgression, but usually to provide counselling and lecture the public against ‘taking the law into their own hands’. Yet attempt to engage in a political demonstration and suddenly the riot shields come out in force.

But most worrying of all is how the police have slowly been armed over the course of four decades, with the inevitable outcome being violence and bloodshed. It was the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s to 60s which created the present situation. The fear and deterrent of the noose quickly gave way, and as the figures starkly prove, gun crime has rapidly risen in the years since.

Areas of London and other major British cities have become no-go zones, ruled by armed gangs who kill without mercy or so much as a thought for the consequences. While the police have retreated to the safety of their police stations and squad cars, when the two gun toting groups eventually cross paths and lock horns, the deaths of innocent bystanders are the inevitable outcome.

This really is only the beginning. Unless we restore the deterrent of the death penalty, gun crime will continue to rise without check, as will unintentional death at the trigger finger of the police. Either it is criminals who live in fear of the law and justice, or we who live in fear of criminals. Which is it to be?

This was proven beyond doubt today in Taunton when the local Royal Marine unit 40 Commando, stationed at Norton Manor Camp, held a parade through the town to mark their homecoming after a tour of Afghanistan.

The streets were in places lined more than eight people deep, especially as the parade route converged at the war memorial outside the Market House in the centre of Taunton. In fact, so busy were the pavements that it was quite often impossible to see anything more than the back of another person’s head.

The parade also marked the sad death of three brave 40 Commando Marines who did not return home after losing their lives in service of their country. Two of those commandos were killed when caught in an explosion in Helmand Province, while another died in a separate explosion while taking part in an outreach patrol to disrupt enemy forces north of Sangin.

40 Commando is also the regiment of reservist Lance Corporal Matt Croucher, who has been in the news lately with the recent announcement that he is to receive the George Cross from the Queen in October, for bravely jumping on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades after tripping a wired trap while out on a reconnaissance patrol in Helmand Province in February.

News crews from BBC Points West (or BBC Points Bristol as they should really be known since the vast majority of their news never covers much else) and ITV West were on hand to cover the morning’s events, while the usually non-existent local Police were out in force to mark the route.

To cheering crowds, the Royal Marines of 40 Commando were given a special welcome home and a day that they, and those that were there, will hopefully remember for years to come.

The new unit will apparently help combat illegal immigration, people and drugs trafficking along with a whole host of other niceties that cross our borders on a day to day basis. However, as is unfortunately the case with so many new Conservative proposals, this mooted Border Force will avoid the true issue and instead tackle an irrelevant one.

The immigration problems that we now face as a country have little to do with the illegal variety which constitutes only a very minor part of our total immigration burden. In fact our real problems (and they are many) lie with what is entirely legal immigration over which we no longer have any say or control.

When we became members of the European Economic Community and later the European Union we accepted the text of the Treaty of Rome which grants the ‘fundamental right’ of free movement to Citizens of the Union across member state borders.

This supposed ‘right’ to free movement was later strengthened by our old friend Directive 2004/38/EC and more recently the Lisbon Treaty (aka. The Constitution) which has now completed its rubberstamping journey through our increasingly irrelevant provincial council (aka. The Houses of Parliament) and will soon come into force once the will of the Irish people has been circumnavigated (aka. basically told to shove it).

Still, one would have thought that while we may not be able to control immigration coming from within the EU we might still be able to control it with countries from outside the Union. Not so. As I explained previously, we really have little control over that either because once someone obtains citizenship within another EU member state (easily done) they have as much ‘right’ to enter Britain as you or I do.

So you see, we really do not have any control over immigration at all, whether illegal or not – and a new Border Police Force will not in any way change that.

Another key activity the proposed Border Force apparently intends to target is drugs smuggling. However, since drug-taking in this country seems to be practically legal you have to wonder why a border force is needed to prevent those supposedly banned substances entering the country.

A Border Police Force tackling drugs smuggling is therefore a token gesture to keep the gullible public happy because it gives the outwards appearance that the Government (or rather would-be Government) are actually doing something to fight drugs smuggling and banned substances when really they are condoning their use by not enforcing the current laws.

So, at face value the Border Police Force sounds vaguely reassuring to the general public, but unfortunately in reality it is not. Much like our national politicians, any such Border Force would be irrelevant and incapable of tackling the real issues.

Yet, despite its obvious failings, other similar party policy groups will keep on churning out useless proposals like this because it is what they think their political masters want to hear. At the same time such policies allow the politicians of all parties to entrench themselves further in the Westminster bubble and again put off the day when they will have to confront the reality that they control nothing and must take the blame for everything.

This is just the latest in a long series of brutal and completely unacceptable assaults which are reaching seemingly epidemic proportions, and unfortunately becoming more common by the day.

Yesterday there was the tragic news that an eleven year old boy, Rhys Jones, had been shot dead on his way home from evening football training. Today, more shootings. Tomorrow it will be someone else.

Yet, what do the Government and the Police have so say about these incidents? Very little is the answer, and when they do eventually remark upon these cases, it is of small comfort to families like those of Garry Newlove, Evren Anil, or Rhys Jones.

I found this selective quote featured at the end of a BBC report particularly telling of the liberal establishment’s attitude: ‘He died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time’. This apparently neutral statement in actual fact suggests that somehow the blame falls, in part, upon the shoulders of poor Rhys Jones, rather than the sickening thugs that murdered him – that being in the wrong place by his decision, he died, whereas being in the ‘right’ place, he would have survived.

Like those signs in car parks which tell you to hide your valuables, lest you tempt the poor criminal to steal them; this statement makes out that the victim is as much to blame for the crime as the perpetrator.

How many more people will be condemned to die; how many more families must suffer until something is done?

Over the weekend in Bristol, a batch of pure heroin reportedly caused the deaths of two drug addicts while leaving another two seriously ill in hospital after near fatal overdoses.

Subsequently, the police issued a city-wide warning to help raise awareness by calling for all Bristol drugs users to remain vigilant and take extra precautions when injecting themselves.

Since, in fact, the use of heroin is illegal, why are the police calling for criminals to be ‘careful’ when breaking the law? Perhaps the police should also be warning people to pay special attention when they speed on the motorway, or advising would-be murders to take extra care with knives or firearms in case they accidentally injure themselves in the course of a criminal act?

Will either bed-ridden Bristol addict be prosecuted for drug abuse? Highly unlikely, since the law no longer seems to condemn individual users, and quite often indulges them in their ‘illness’ as if it were similar to a common cold which can be caught without any individual responsibility.

Comparably, if you wish to break the law by using or selling drugs, then the likelihood of any retribution is so slim as to be almost negligible. On the other hand however, should you wish to stage a peaceful protest outside the home of Government in the nation’s capital, then you’ll be met with unbridled force and the full fury of the criminal legislative system.

So long as the authorities and the Government continue to believe that drug abusers, like criminals, are themselves victims of social problems caused by relative poverty and the state’s inadequacy to nanny them into submission, then Britain’s drugs problems will only grow, and public trust in the police will only decline yet further.

Yesterday, fifty of its filthy occupants decided to march towards the airport, banging their drums like primitives and protesting loudly about the supposed current and future environmental impact of air travel.

Okay, so I generally do not agree with the neo-hippies’ claims of impending doom and disaster. However, what really vexed me about this particular protest was not the sight of a group of left-wing nutters masquerading as a friendly bunch of tree-huggers, but the fact that three hundred police officers were posted to supervise their protest and squalid anti-capitalist camp.

This seems to me to be overly excessive, especially at a time when most people in Britain will probably never see that many police in their entire life. I bet the grieving families of poor Garry Newlove and Evren Anil, who I mentioned yesterday, are wishing that at least one of those officers had been patrolling nearby when they were most needed.

Yesterday, a man died in a London hospital a week after being stabbed and punched by two youths he confronted over throwing litter through his car window. At the weekend, Garry Newlove, died of injuries sustained when he approached a gang of teenagers who were damaging property in the road outside his house.

Sadly, it would seem that these attacks are becoming far more frequent and in certain areas almost common place. This is especially true of the big cities such as London, Nottingham, Manchester and Birmingham.

It is arguable that the increase in violence could be perceptive; that because the media now reports on these cases more widely and regularly than in the past, then people fear a threat which is, in reality, not actually increasing. However, I do not accept that to be true. Independent crime surveys continue to show a substantial increase in violent crime, with even the Government’s own manipulated figures showing a worryingly rapid rise.

It is very clear that we now live in a society where the majority of people are law-abiding while a minority are anything but and have nothing to fear from the law. Confidence in our police force (or as it now is; ‘service’) is at an all time low. Far from being the last of the great unreformed British institutions, the Police have been steadily and quietly bureaucratised and politicised by successive governments for decades. What’s more, as a nation we cannot seem to decide on a solution to this growing problem. The Labour Government has been content to fashion headline grabbing initiatives such as Anti-Social Behavioural Orders and new policing initiatives for the past ten years to little effect.

The ITV evening news yesterday featured one male citizen journalist in the News Uploaded section calling for night time curfews for groups of teenagers, and an increase in police dispersal powers. This just would not have any affect. The children and youths who currently commit crimes at night would just break the curfews anyway, so it would be another unnecessary law with no purpose but to give the appearance of activity while yet further weighing down the statute books – which is why we’ll probably see Labour implement it in a few years.

Most of the solutions put forward today attempt to tackle the symptoms rather than the root cause of low-level and violent crime in Britain. These real problems such as the breakdown of the family unit, lack of discipline in schools and in some areas an increasingly secular and divided society; have been brewing for many years now. In fact I would probably guess more likely decades. They are problems that have permeated our society and consequently there are unlikely to be any quick fix solutions. It will probably take a similar period of time to correct the damage as it did to create.

Unfortunately though, in a country where the government and the ruling classes consider crime a social disease caused by relative poverty, and are totally unaffected by it themselves, then there are bleak prospects for any future improvement.