The Spectator

Barometer | 25 June 2015

Plus: the figures on knife crime, crowds at religious festivals, and the prevalence of paedophilia

issue 27 June 2015

The spirit of 1945

No one would have been more surprised at the sight of 100,000 people marching in London under the banner ‘End Austerity Now’ and demanding ‘Tories Out’ than Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade and briefly Chancellor of the Exchequer in Attlee’s government.
— Hard though it might be to remember now, but austerity was once a proud Labour policy. The rationale of the policy, devised by Cripps, was that by suppressing private consumption, resources could be spent instead on boosting exports.
— Any anti-austerity march in 1947 would have been led by the Conservatives, whose slogans of the time included ‘Starve with Strachey’ and ‘Shiver with Shinwell’.

Cuttings job

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe blamed a drop in stop and search for a 25 per cent rise in youth knife crime in London. Knife crimes in England and Wales last year:

Homicide 189
Attempted Murder 245
Threats to kill 1,630
Assault with injury 13,000
Robbery 10,500
Rape 311
Sexual assault 125

Faithful crowds

23,000 attended the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge, down from 36,000 in 2014.

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