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Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

govwaste.co.uk

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Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#101

Post by ra »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #70
ra wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the UK population is 64 million [1] and the annual national policing budget is 3.5 billion, that's a per person budget of £54 per year. So £10,000,000 on one accused person is the equivalent of the annual policing budget of 185,000 people. Spent on one person yet to be trialled. You'd have to say this is a disproportional response. Why? [1] https://www.google.com.au/search?q=uk+population

That's not a reasonable argument, though. You can't generalise police spending over the population because criminals make up a relatively small proportion. Is it a disproportionate response then to spend £10m on one guy? The fact that he's not been tried yet is irrelevant – there's a warrant for his arrest, and for a pretty serious crime. I struggle to see what the alternative would be.

Relatively small, yes. But I'd guess somewhere between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 people are criminal?

1 in 185,000? That's not criminal it's targeted.

Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#102

Post by nols »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #28

It's a huge amount of money, sure. However, to claim that Assange is being 'detained without charge' is disingenuous to say the least. He is there completely of his own free will. I wish Sweden would just guarantee that he won't be extradited and we can get this all over with, but the changes of that happening now are remote - looks like a pretty permanent stalemate to me.

Sweden simply can't guarantee he won't be extradited. Under international law all extradition requests must be dealt with on their merits. To guarantee to ignore that potential future extradition request (the US currently hasn't asked either country to extradite) would be a meaningless lie, and Assange certainly knows it.

Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#104

Post by Jedd »

PlzSnow wrote: post #99
Jedd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law is littered with unwanted precedents. They are not, generally, compelling reasons to act in a sane and thoughtful way, and rarely (especially with such obvious edge cases as this) inform future decisions. Is there actually an arrest warrant in Sweden for Assange? It's a highly convoluted arrangement between the UK (ostensibly keen to arrest, to satisfy their Swedish colleagues) and Sweden (who wish to question).…

Assange is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual assault. Assange is a powerful and connected person, with strong support from a considerable percentage of the population. I am glad that that does not affect the legal process, and I would never want to live in a society where it did. EDIT: The article says "He has been in a cell, under house arrest, or effectively detained at the Ecuadorian Embassy since De…

> Assange is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual assault.

These questions can evidently not be asked within the embassy. (Ignoring the various, and I concede very loaded, discussions around the validity of the allegations.)

> Assange is a powerful and connected person, with strong support from a considerable percentage of the population.

Substitute 'American intelligence agencies' for 'Assange' in that sentence, and perhaps stick a 'tacit' in front of the word support, while you're at it.

To be clear, my point here is that Assange is nowhere near as powerful as any or all of the Swedish, UK, or US governments (or any of their agencies). However, world+dog understands that it's a bit more complicated than 'come and talk to us in our country about these dubious claims, oh and we can't guarantee that we haven't already arranged for you to be flown into Central America to not face charges for the rest of your life'.

> I am glad that that does not affect the legal process, and I would never want to live in a society where it did.

I am genuinely concerned about your understanding of the society/ies that you believe you're living in now.

Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#105

Post by ObviousScience »

dublinclontarf wrote: post #18
ObviousScience wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put your numbers in perspective: the cost of Julian Assange being kept in the embassy is not policing all of the UK for a day or so. That is, the cost of keeping Assange under watch is the same as what would be spent on 1 average day of policing for the entire country. If I were a UK citizen concerned about local crime rates, I'd be mildly ticked off they were spending 1 nationwide police day on some guy rather th…

What are they supposed to do? Just not enforce the law?

Enforce which law?

The police already don't have the resources to enforce every infraction, every time, so we're already discussing which cases we should be enforcing and how much effort we should be putting in to each.

In this particular case, I think that the public would be better served by simply letting the foreign government move him to their nation and allowing the two foreign governments to sort the issue out between themselves (since he was granted amnesty AND the government who seeks his arrest to interview him refuses to interview him in the UK, as has been done with other cases, which suggests an ulterior motive to wanting him in custody).

I think the enforcement effort would be better spent stopping crimes against UK citizens, instead of playing middle-man in an international conflict between Sweden, Ecuador, and likely the US. Heck, if you really wanted to spend your police money on international drama, there are plenty of financial crimes committed in the UK against UK citizens that they could be investigating, nevermind that policing street level crime would likely do more for the average citizen than big drama cases like this. (Of course, that's speaking from the perspective of a citizen. Politicians have other reasons they'd like to trade favors like this.)

Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#106

Post by Mvandenbergh »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #20
k-mcgrady wrote: post #13

Why do they need to waste so many resources on him? Wouldn't it suffice to monitor the embassy with CCTV cameras on the street and have him flagged at the border if they see him leave?

I wonder if it would be possible to prevent the staff entering the embassy? We can't enter it legally, but we surly could prevent people entering? I understand it would create a stink, but starving the man out must be something they have thought about.

They could simply declare the diplomatic staff persona non-grata and revoke their diplomatic status. They'd have to leave the country. They could even cancel the diplomatic status of the embassy. That wouldn't have immediate effect and the Ecuadorians would have treaty guaranteed rights to clear out their effects but it would eventually lead to a moment where Assange is inside a building emptied of diplomats which ceases to be an embassy at some defined hour.

Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#107

Post by PlzSnow »

Jedd wrote: post #104
PlzSnow wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assange is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual assault. Assange is a powerful and connected person, with strong support from a considerable percentage of the population. I am glad that that does not affect the legal process, and I would never want to live in a society where it did. EDIT: The article says "He has been in a cell, under house arrest, or effectively detained at the Ecuadorian Embassy since De…

> Assange is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual assault. These questions can evidently not be asked within the embassy. (Ignoring the various, and I concede very loaded, discussions around the validity of the allegations.) > Assange is a powerful and connected person, with strong support from a considerable percentage of the population. Substitute 'American intelligence agencies' for 'Assange' in that se…

I am genuinely baffled by your reply. Assange is wanted for questioning for allegations of sexual assault, and you say he shouldn't have to follow due process and answer them because... because what? Because his political ideals are aligned with your own? Because of an absurd conspiracy that he will be secretly abducted to Central America?

Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#108

Post by corin_ »

ra wrote: post #98
corin_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I think it's a good use of money in this case, but disproportional responses are what is expected and needed from policing. The other option is "well we think this guy just bombed a street and raped 15 people but we've already hit the £54 budget so we'll forget about him, let's go spend £54 on some old grandmother who hasn't committed any crimes in her life". The issue isn't with police actions being disprop…

Yeah but 185,000 grandmothers? No one bombed anyone.

Right. So like I said, I'm not arguing this use of money is a good one. Just that the reason it's bad isn't because it's disproportionate, it's just the wrong kind of disproportionate.

Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#109

Post by rhblake »

alextgordon wrote: post #82
rhblake wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. There is nobody in Sweden with the power to make such an advance promise. It's simply impossible, by law. This is generally a good thing.

The real question in all of this is why does Sweden have an extradition treaty with a country infamous the world over for torture of detainees?

Well, you could ask roughly half of the world's sovereign states the same question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_extradition_...

Re: Spending by the UK government on the siege against Julian Assange

#110

Post by matthewmacleod »

ra wrote: post #101
matthewmacleod wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a reasonable argument, though. You can't generalise police spending over the population because criminals make up a relatively small proportion. Is it a disproportionate response then to spend £10m on one guy? The fact that he's not been tried yet is irrelevant – there's a warrant for his arrest, and for a pretty serious crime. I struggle to see what the alternative would be.

Relatively small, yes. But I'd guess somewhere between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 people are criminal? 1 in 185,000? That's not criminal it's targeted.

1 in 185,000? That's not criminal it's targeted.

Like I said, it doesn't work like that. We don't decide in advance how to apportion resources on the basis of how many people are likely to commit a crime this year, do we?

No, of course it's targeted. There's a warrant out for Assange; he went into hiding. We know where he is, but for diplomatic reasons we can't arrest him. This is a very unusual situation.

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