|
Mayor should try a square table, the round one isn’t working |
|
|
|
Written by Al Hollingsworth
|
|
Thursday, 02 July 2009 |
I have always believed there should have been an eleventh commandment; “Thou shalt not committee.” Far too much time, especially within governments and their bureaucracies, is spent in meetings and committees, with little or nothing being accomplished. The mayor’s recent Round table on Crime Committee is a case in point.
It looked good on paper. So does my budgie. And he makes better use of it.
Halifax is going to hell in a hand basket - and we do studies? Meanwhile the lawbreakers get more brazen – and more dangerous - by the day. It is just a matter of time before some innocent bystander is gunned down by these mindless, gun-toting, drug-addled idiots.
What’s the old saying? They hang wallpaper and let these nitwits live.
It is a miracle that no one was hit in this week’s shooting in a Tim Horton’s parking lot on Lady Hammond Road. Five shots were fired in an area where there is constant traffic. What’s next - a incident at the Metro Centre?
Halifax police are trying but they cannot be everywhere at once. Besides, today’s criminal doesn’t give a fig about society nor any punishment that is doled out, if you can even call the sentences courts hand down “punishment.”
I never thought I would think it, let alone say it, but maybe what this country needs is four years of a majority Conservative government. A government with a strong law and order agenda and no patience or sympathy for criminals.
We need tougher laws and judges who will apply them. Shoot a gun, for example, and it’s 20 years with no time off for good behaviour. Do the crime and you do the full time.
In other words, make them think (if they are capable of it). Maybe, just maybe, they would get the message about the severity of the penalty, and have second thoughts. If not put them away, and for a long time.
Something has to be done to quell this lawlessness and give us back our communities.
Do you feel safe, leaving Neptune Theatre, the Metro Centre, movie theatres, etc., walking through the downtown of old Halifax back to your car? I avoid it like the plague. So too do many of my friends. And the danger is not confined to the downtown.
Last week two young men were walking down Quinpool Road when a car pulled up, people jumped out, beat them up and robbed them. When I was in my late teens we lived on Quinpool Road and didn’t even lock our doors.
Indeed, the most frightening aspect of this violence is that it has become endemic and not confined to a specific area within Halifax/Dartmouth. Therefore we can’t even avoid a particular part of town to ensure our safety. That is also making it much more difficult for the police to put a stop to it.
If these addle-headed idiots continue to shoot up the city, people will begin to make choices. They will leave the area to find a place where they can raise their families in safety.
There was a time when I was so proud to say I was from Halifax. Sadly, it is hard to feel that way these days, as it becomes less and less possible to run an errand to the corner store, or walk along one of Halifax’s tree-lined streets without constantly looking over your shoulder.
(Al Hollingsworth is a retired journalist and broadcaster) |
