£20k Bounty for the Escapee

Otoh £20k is a lot for an average roadman. What aren't they telling us? The whole Iranian spy come terrorist thing makes no sense.

He seems like a lone operator to me. If he was part of a gang he would be long gone.

plain clothes copper pulled him from a bicycle on a canal towpath

not sure how he was sure it was him but probably worth a gamble with £20k up for grabs

The arrests of spies connected to China is much more serious than the Daniel Khalife case. The latter has done us a favour by showing how to get out of a prison.

chinese spies get bail,kid messing about in his bedroom gets remanded

sageform -- "prison prevents serial killers and thieves from committing more crimes while they are inside. As far as I am concerned that is their purpose."

Ah but do they reduce crime overall? For some crimes, like drugs for instance, it looks like the people locked up are immediately replaced by new smugglers, couriers and dealers on the outside. It's complicated. Maybe with a crime like burglary where relatively few tea leaves break into a lot of houses, locking them away will be more successful.

The Americans bang up even more people than we do with no obvious benefit to their crime rate. I'd rather we took a leaf out of Germany's book where an apparently softer regime leads to less recidivism.