VIDEO: Will the Government bring in tough U.S.-style penalities for oil fraud?

Today I asked the Government to look into the United States Governments proposals to introduce penalties for price fixing by Oil companies - something that the PetrolPromise.com campaign has been pressing for.

Please see my question below:

Robert Halfon (Harlow): Whilst welcoming the Government's cut in Fuel Duty, the market price of oil is still too high. Partly because of oil speculation. The United States is bringing in tough penalties for price fixing and market manipulation. Will you urge your Government colleges to look at this and also put pressure on the big oil firms, to cut prices at the pumps?

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (David Jones): As I said the Government does recognise the impact of the rising cost of fuel on both people and businesses in Wales. However it should be remembered that the Duty increase expected to take place in January of this year has been deferred to August, and we have also cancelled the inflation increase that was planned for August. This means that there will be just one inflation only increase this year.

by Robert Halfon - Working Hard for Harlow.

A Third of Americans have been arrested by the age of 23

An astonishing report in the New York Times a couple of days ago. According to an academic study, thirty-three percent of American citizens have been arrested by the time they reach age twenty three:

"By age 23, almost a third of Americans have been arrested for a crime, according to a new study that researchers say is a measure of growing exposure to the criminal justice system in everyday life.
The study, the first since the 1960s to look at the arrest histories of a national sample of adolescents and young adults over time, found that 30.2 percent of the 23-year-olds who participated reported having been arrested for an offence other than a minor traffic violation.
That figure is significantly higher than the 22 percent found in a 1965 study that examined the same issue using different methods. The increase may be a reflection of the justice system becoming more punitive and more aggressive in its reach during the last half-century, the researchers said. Arrests for drug-related offences, for example, have become far more common, as have zero-tolerance policies in schools.
The study did not look at racial or regional differences, but other research has found higher arrest rates for black men and for youths living in poor urban areas.
Criminal justice experts said the 30.2 percent figure was especially notable at a time when employers, aided by the Internet, routinely conduct criminal background checks on job candidates.
"This estimate provides a real sense that the proportion of people who have criminal history records is sizable and perhaps much larger than most people would expect," said Shawn Bushway, a criminologist at the State University at Albany and a co-author of the study, which appears in Monday's issue of the journal Paediatrics.
The study analysed data collected as part of the federal government's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The 7,335 participants were nationally representative and ranged in age from 12 to 16 when they were enrolled in the survey in 1996. The first interviews were conducted in 1997. Follow-up interviews have been carried out annually since then.
The researchers found that the probability of a first arrest accelerated in late adolescence and early adulthood - at 18, 15.9 percent of the participants reported having been arrested - and then began to flatten out as the youths entered their 20s.
Robert Brame, a professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and the lead author of the study, said he hoped the research would alert physicians to signs that their young patients were at risk."


This is an incredible figure - and, if correct - represents a disturbing reflection of American Society. It suggests that there are deep rooted problems with young people on the conveyer belt to crime.
What would be interesting to see is similar comparisons for the UK and other advanced nations in Western Europe. I suspect it will be high in other countries too.