Obligations, part 2.

I am here today to pay tribute to you, to the forces you lead, to the local police authorities you work with, and above all, the 140,000 police officers and police staff who each day take responsibility for the protection of all our citizens.

Over the last year I have seen close at hand, in all areas of the country and in the last few days meeting police in Liverpool, in Birmingham, and the Met in London – your great achievements.

Your day-to-day work combating crime and ensuring safe communities.

Your one-to-one work with young people at risk of wasting their lives in crime, and
your achievements from the local to the global, uncovering and thwarting terrorist conspiracies, bringing major national and international crimes to justice.

We place in your hands our homes and our safety and security. We expect you to risk danger and sometimes your lives on our behalf – with the recent tragic deaths of PC Ricky Gray and PC Jon Henry reminding us again of the bravery and the sacrifice that is required in the line of duty.

There is no more fundamental right than the right of a citizen to be safe and secure.

So there is no greater responsibility than that which you as police officers accept.

And there is no greater obligation for us in Government than to support you in discharging that duty.

Who said this ? Gordon Brown. There is also that word again. Obligation.

He said more.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2007/press_66_07.cfm

Tough on crime.

Between 1986 and 2000 Michael Porter admitted gross indecency and indecent assault offences against young boys as young as 18 months. He was recently convicted and sentenced to a three year rehabilitation order. He escaped a custodial sentence.

He has had mitigation for his circumstances by the fact that he came forward and admitted his involvement. The judge belived it to be an exeptional case because Porter had already received therapy.

He is banned from being alone with anyone under 18 years of age and has been put onto the sex offenders register.

He is a paedophile. He abused the trust of friends and work colleagues.

Apparently he left the court hand in hand with his wife.

The founder of the Victim of Crime Trust believes that this sentence absolutely beggars belief.

This was not a minor theft or damage. This was a series of serious sexual offences against innocents who could neither protect themselves or prevent these terrible things taking place.

I have no idea of how the families of the victims feel about the severity of the sentencing. I can guess. Itis my guess that they are not impressed.

The morale of the story ?

The Ant and The Grasshopper

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool. He laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

BBC, ITV, SKY news, Channel 4 & even CNN, show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The British public are stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, so civilized and prosperous this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

The grasshopper is immediately accorded victim status.

The telly tubbies appears on children’s TV with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” along with other anti-ant songs.

Representatives and supporters from the various minority Political institutions stage a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” The Archbishop of Canterbury leads the group to kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Tony Blair exclaims in an interview with Jeremy Paxman that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both agree that an immediate stealth tax should be levied on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the European Commission, pushed by the UK MEP’s drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The grasshopper seeks and is awarded legal aid to take his case to the European Court of Human rights.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. The Ant is left branded a grasshopperist and as a result of so much negative press is unable to begin to work to rebuild his life.

Cherie Blair gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of High Court judges that Tony Blair appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case. The grasshopper is awarded costs and a sizeable compensation package that leaves the ant financially crippled. The grasshopper employs an agent and is able to secure book & film rights and several lucrative sponsorship deals.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the local authority low cost housing property he has been given, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is later found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: You can decide this one.

Of course this is all totally untrue and non-factual. A complete work of fiction.
How could it be anything else ?

Obligations

Isn’t it nice to hear government mouthpieces making reassuring statement about their obligations.

Trouble is, these seem to be towards the Iraq & Afghanistan population and not to things on the domestic front.

Oh yes. The prison officers have gone out on strike after being ignored for too long
and not being taken seriously by, the government, funnily enough.

What was that about obligations ?

LAS VEGAS CHURCHES

This may come as a surprise to those of you not living in Vegas but there are more Catholic Churches than casinos.

Not surprisingly some worshippers at Sunday services give casino chips rather than cash when the basket is passed around.

Since they get chips from many different casinos the churches have devised a method to collect the offering.

The churches send all their collected chips to the nearby franciscan monastery for sorting & then the chips are taken to the casinos of origin & cashed in.
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This is done by the Chip Monks!!!!

You didn’t even see it coming did you?

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

The seemingly unstoppable tide of youth crime has taken another turn with the sad and unfortunate death of an innocent 11 year old in Liverpool.

Because the victim was so young the slide into a so called new abyss of bad behaviour has been identified and hit mega headline news. This is becoming a now constant stream of bad news on an almost daily basis and definately sad reading or listening.

The renewed call for yet more police officers on the beat is answered by the statements that police numbers have increased year on year under whatever government is in power.

All this seems to forget that following a report by the audit commision some years ago police officers on the street were not deemed an effective use of such a resource, presumably because they performed a service in such a way so as not to have anything to measure. Funny that, as we provide exactly that, a service. To compare and judge along the lines of business is stupid and irrelevant and is only done to follow a trend in trying to appear more efficient and productive. We don’t sell stuff, although we probably will soon, we give a service. It seems that the community either tolerate us because they have to or hate us because we are the only thing between civil obedience and anarchy of a lawless society that they want. Funny how some of them still complain when stuff happens to them.

Take away service to the community and replace with all sorts of targets to copy industry standards at the same time as saving as much money as you can. Add to this the ball park figures that the mouth-pieces state that this or that government has spent (in real terms, I nearly forgot that bit) and you reach the position where ever increasing numbers of officers have been taken away from walking their beats and reallocated to other trendy targets by a hoard of teams, squads and other groups.

The normal everyday response goes on relentlessly.

The normal everyday association with a regular officer in an area is almost lost.
A sudden return to this would still miss out on several years of local knowledge that the current organisation of resources has lost in all but small pockets. Very few officers spend all or most of their career on the same beat or area. The close relationship with the community is lost.

All this is because of saving money and an ideology of someone with a business brain and little or no regards for the style and quality of policing that was in place at one stage. This was deemed to be old fashioned and outdated. In my view just excuses for saving money and changing what service was provided for something more manageable, more statistically accountable and less of a service than it used to be.

Modernisation, better use of equipment and resources, able to better react to our changing society etc etc etc.

Society has changed, there is no doubt. More cars, more availability of cars, more people who have no social conscience, more people who care nothing about anyone but themselves and more people who condone and support lawless and antisocial behaviour.
Less and less people who stand up or challenge the unacceptible.

Yet the one consistent thing is that itis always somehow someone elses fault. Mostly, it seems, the police but if not then always someone elses fault.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. With action comes responsibility.

Breach that responsibility and nothing will happen to you, again and again and again.

This is the message we seem to be giving as a society.

I guarantee that the bad and disturbing news will continue because within the trends of generational growth the standards always get worse. The boundaries always get pushed lower and lower. What shocks gets ever worse. The ones who suffer most are the victims, the real victims, not those who claim or are given a variety of victim status but at the same time shelve all personal responsibility for their actions.
Again the actions of the minority have such a profound and negative effect on the lives of the majority.

I listened to a liverpool MP talking on the radio and what he said made a lot of sense. Even then the reported disagreed just for the sake of taking an opposite view.
There is a breakdown in families that is some part responsible for our declining standards of behaviour, along with the violence and filth and mindless trash that is available to watch by way of TV or computer games. Of course there will be ‘no real & conclusive evidence’ to support this but then again there never will be.

We’ve got too much opposition in this country and something needs to change.

But, then again, we got everyone’s human rights to consider and people in jobs to justify their existance. Perhaps lets just stick to targets, everyone is happier about that.

motorway madness

For the last several weeks I have been hearing on the radio at work, on a daily basis, about yet another RTC, formerly RTA that has occurred on the motorways or major roads, sometimes even both, of the road networks that run through my area.

The mayhem, inconvenience and untold delays these events cause to other road users are one symptom of events that occur that involve serious injury or all too often fatalities. Whilst suffering the inconvenience of delays itis all too easy to forget the feelings of those who have suffered loss & injury. We refer to this nowadays as life threatening or life changing as opposed to major, serious of very serious likely to be fatal.

This occurs every year during the main holiday season, regularly and without fail on an annual basis.

Two things strike me, also on a regular basis.

I am amazed at how some of our community are so heartless and selfish to the plight of others. Some treat death and serious injury as no more than a whim. I doesn’t affect them so they don’t give a toss. I am amazed at the total lack of consideration that others of our community show on the roads, often bordering total contempt.

I am also amazed at the levels of blatantly poor or dangerous driving, some of which is behind a lot of these accidents-collisions that disrupt what should be a time of people enjoying holidays.

Combine the two things and there is a recipe for disaster.

People who normally only drive short distances and the general intolerance and lack of consideration for others and you have our roads network in the summer. They get mixed in with the normal everyday people who drive as part of their living and seem to swell the road burden to an amazing level.

Police wrongly get the blame for much of this mayhem caused by road closures, diversions or blockages.

These are no longer scenes of traffic accidents-collisions. They are scenes of crimes and needed to be treated with such importance. We get one chance to get the scene examination done properly. Its no good when and if things go to court 10, 12 or 18 months later saying that this or that wasn’t done at the time. We owe it to those injured or killed and their families to do the job properly. It will continue to piss off most of the poor sods caught up in untold delays and those jams that don’t seem to move for hours. I know because I’ve been there as well.

Until the menace of impatience, intolerance and lack of consideration are removed this cycle of mayhem will continue.

Police dogs muzzled

No problems with this poll.

Clearly in favour of keeping our dogs free of muzzles and therefore not restricting their effectiveness. 91% of the votes say so.

Thanks again to those who voted.

Bank Holiday Weekend

Its the bank holiday weekend approaching. There will be football at the weekend, the last of the, laughingly called, summer holiday weekends that will collectively produce some of the greatest demand on the response resources available.

Rest assured that this perceived extra demand will have been carefully planned for with numbers down to minimum levels to deal with the extra workload.

A weekend when many of our ‘partnership’ partners will be unavailable yet the world as we know it has not taken a few days off.

I trust that the intoxicated and drunken behaviour of the generally stupidly inebriated will defy the odds and be so good that we will all rejoice in the bank holiday festivities and have an equally great time.

My best and safest wishes to you all.

Chimps without hoods.

I watched an interesting documentary the other day about chimpazees and drew some amazingly close comparisons with some of the modern, misunderstood youth of todays society.

They live in family groups, the chimps that is, some of them quite large. They have a strict heirarchy and appropriate acceptible behaviour levels. Any deviation from this is enforced rigorously and is quite brutal if needed to make the correct point and quell the insurrection. Itis over when itis over and normality returns to the fold. It appears that this is how they sort out the pecking order to sustain a successful group. The adolescents practice this behaviour amongst themselves as a preparation for the big wide world when they are mature enough to see and fit into the bigger picture.

The adolescent chimps appear to prefer to hang around in gangs, terrorising the small, weak or aged when the opportunities allow and appear to get great fun out it. The pester the bloody hell out of them (we call it bullying) and generally make their lives a misery. Getting their kicks I presume. They are unable to settle for any long period of time and appear to get, what I would called bored, for want of a better word. Then they are off looking for their kicks to amuse and stimulate themselves.

The ones they don’t mess with are the higher ranking males or females, because that means serious trouble. A bit like being grounded but with longer, sharper teeth. When these more dominant or mature chimps get really pissed off they are not slow in showing their annoyance and put the rowdy adolescents firmly in their place. A bit like the Police and SAS all wrapped into one but without the long drawn out legal proceedures. Needless to say, the adolescents know exactly who not to piss off. There is also no appeals process. The status quo is restored for a while before they start to gang up on the weak, young and old again. The really troublesome adolescents can be driven out of the group if they are a pain and lose the benefit of numbers for companionship, food and protection.

So maybe this disruptive, disrespectful and annoying behaviour of the hooded hordes is an ancient genetic trend or perhaps some of them are closer to chimpazees than we think. And where are the adults (higher ranking males & females) to sort out the troublesome adolescents ?

I think this would called vigiliantyism or something with our misguided human slant on things. I’ve called Bronson but he states he is too old to deal with this matter effectively.

One thing is for sure, our intelligence has allowed us the luxury of using most of our time to find ways to amuse or entertain our selves. The need for all our resources to be used just to survive, to find shelter,food and defend ourselves is now not the case. The days when everybody worked from a young age, because they simply had to, is well passed us because we are now civilized and educated, some may say anyway. Are we better off for all this advancment ?

We are more aware of what is happenning all over the world but often don’t know what is going on in the next street, we can buy all sorts of convenience junk because the ads say we are better off for it. At the same time we lose the life skills we have needed in the past. Another thing society has lost is the burden of resposibility for our actions because we are deemed unable to decide. Everything is denied and everything has to go to court, be it civil or criminal.

Something must change but I suspect it won’t, although we will be tolod it has.