Parliament? Schmarliament! Right. I'm fed up of these Westminster types fiddling their expenses but denying that they need to have any external oversight. Indeed, they are denying that they CAN have any oversight external to themselves.  The central problem here is that Parliament is "sovereign". It cannot, while it remains so, accept any independent outside scrutiny, only scrutiny from a person or agency that is appointed by itself. We don't trust it enough to trust anyone it appoints, so we both spiral ever lower into the depths of contempt and ignorance. In very simplistic (and probably blasphemous, but what the heck - I'm an atheist) terms, it's like expecting God to submit an expenses claim. God is supreme - to what authority can He defer? In the UK constitution, Parliament is supreme, so there is no authority to which it can defer. Parliament wrested that sovereignty over many years from the monarch, starting with Magna Carta. This was the right thing to do in the historical context, where a corrupt and unaccountable monarchy was doing things that, despite their corruption, were internally consistent with ownership of sovereignty. As with MPs today, the problem was not necessarily that every member of monarchy was a corrupt despot, but more that the constitution did not prevent them from becoming one. In other words, it was the perception of what a monarch might do, more than a suspicion of what every monarch really does (spurred by some real abuses), that was at the root of the shift from monarch to Parliament. Now we are faced with a Parliament that many of the people suspect of corruption. Analogously, we don't generally think that EVERY MP is chiselling, self-serving and only interested in the status quo, but we know that some are. Also, there appear to be no barriers to prevent any MP from behaving in that way, nor any effective punishments for those that do so. It is the suspicion of what all MPs might do, spurred by some real abuses, that is the root of the next constitutional shift I believe the UK needs. Also, everything that Parliament is doing to clean its own reputation is internally consistent with ownership of sovereignty over itself, despite the obvious desire outside Parliament that it should be a servant of the people, and that it is badly failing in that role. The first action has to be a formal recognition among the people that soveriegnty should now rest with us alone - not the monarch, and not our elected representatives (however they are elected) They work for us, not the other way around. The second has to be formal recognition by parliament that it must defer its own soverignty to the higher authority of the people. Then, we can have a proper constitutional convention to determine the future roles of people, parliament and monarch in the running of the country and the decision making processes that determine how that can happen. Government can only happen with the consent of the governed, and it looks increasingly unlikely that such consent can continue to be given without root and branch reform. Parliament has long passed the point where it can reform itself, because the sovereignty that currently defines it is the very thing that prevents it from reforming itself. So, I think the people should organise an electoral vote ourselves along the lines of: "We, the people of the United Kingdom, no longer have confidence in the institution of Parliament to effectively represent our foreign and domestic interests, be they individual, social or commercial. We demand the immediate recognition by Parliament that it must, on a timetable of no less than one and no more than five calendar years from the date of this vote, hand over political sovereignty to us, the people of the United Kingdom. Furthermore, a constitutional convention must be convened over the same period to determine how this handover of sovereignty is to be effected, and how the soveriegn will of the people of the United Kingdom is to be determined and applied. This constitutional convention must involve representatives from among the people, selected fairly and randomly, in the final decision-making capacity. The people's involvement must not be a purely consultative or advisory one. All the institutions of the state - including, but not limited to: the legislature, executive, judiciary, and monarchy; the armed forces and security services; and all departments and tiers of government, both local and national - must be aligned with this peaceful and ordered handover of sovereignty during the course of this process." Providing the turn-out was more than about 50% of eligible voters, a simple ballot of "Yes I agree with this demand" or "No I do not agree with this demand" would have no legal or constitutional force under current laws, but it would have such a degree of moral force that I don't think any British government or Parliament could ignore it without formally becoming a dictatorship. It does, of course, mean we'd have to take some responsibility back for the way we are governed. The argument that "all politicians in all parties are equally useless, so there's no point taking part or even paying any attention to politics" would be moot, because almost by definition we would all become politicians ourselves. Especially if part of the constitutional settlement was to make the people's final decision-making powers permanent, through some kind of jury selection system (as I've argued would be the best way to reform the House of Lords before now). It's our democracy, not theirs. Let's take it back from them and make sure they can't mess about with it any more. Think about the text in blue. Would you vote in favour of it or against it? And if you think it's worthwhile, tell your friends and send them here. Maybe this is where it all starts - it's as good as anywhere else, surely?

10.3.08 17:34 Permalink / comment

Parliamentary Reform for Dummies Voters are disillusioned with party politics, but care as deeply about political issues as they ever did, leading to widespread contempt and further disillusionment for elected poltiicians. This is not controversial. And the sort of peple who rise to the top in modern politics are pretty much the sort of people so convinced of their own abilities and views that they view opposition (from political opponents and public alike) is evidence of, at best, ignorance or, at worst, outright malice. Nothing outlandish here, either. Witness Tony Blair's revealing comment in his recent John Humphrys interview that he has enormous respect for the British public and it has "been an honour to lead them". LEAD them? Does he not realise that the British public does not want the Prime Minister to LEAD us, but to SERVE us? Clearly not. I would greatly like to think other politicians think differently, but I fear they don't. So from this perspective, it's not hard to see how ideas such as the half-arsed Lords Reform proposals or satellite-tracked, Big Brother-evoking (the Orwellian kind, not the crap TV kind) road pricing. Or the Iraq War, or before that, rail privatisation, the Poll Tax, or pretty much anything else you'd care to mention - it's a function of modern government politics, not of NuLab, especially. Hence the disillusionment I referred to. So, if representative democracy is out of favour with the public, but the public do not want their views to be ignored, the only sensible reform to the Lords is to abolish it and replace it with a chamber that is not representatively democratic (i.e. elected through voting) but directly democratic (i.e. populated from the general public through random selection, just as juries are). Deliberative polls have developed to the point where they can cope with complex and sensitive matters with at least as much dexterity as parliamentary or government committees. The expertise and experience of "the great and the good" which the peerage system supposedly preserves could continue, since it would be in the interests of the parties (both political, and interested) to send their best experts to present evidence and attempt to persuade each "legislative jury" (for want of a better phrase) to their point of view. One such jury per parliamentary Bill would be about right; ending up with probably about the same number of people sitting at any one time as there are entitled to sit in the Lords or Commons. A root-and-branch revision of all forms of jury service (the current judicial, as well as this new legislative type) would be needed. For example, make it sensibly rewarded (for those in employment, daily fees to match their current salary, some sort of locum professional support for the self-employed to keep their businesses running in their absence, a crackdown on employers who discourage their staff from serving, etc.), and stiffen the penalties for evading one's public duty Security concerns are no concern - sensitive matters get looked at in closed committee by parliamentarians already, and they aren't a special type of person with an enhanced ability to keep secrets. They just sign the Official Secrets Act and know they'll be thrown in jail if they talk or write about things outside the closed session. Add to this the forced removal of the whipping system from the existing Commons, and the redrafting of the Parliament Act (so the Commons has to defer to the "House of Juries", rather than having primacy as they do now) and you've got about the best possible solution for improving our system of government without completely tearing down the whole apparatus of state and starting again from anarchy. How hard is that? It clears the Augean stables of the donations/honours system, it by-passes the party system the public say they don't trust, and it forces the general population to take some responsibility for their own government

11.2.07 15:03 Permalink / comment

Muslims - arenchasickofem? In the UK, perhaps 2% of the population declare themselves as 'Muslim' in the Census. The population is now estimated to be just over 60 million, which equates to 1.2 million Muslims. A vanishingly small percentage of this 1.2 million are suspected or known to actively plot againt the interest of the majority. The security services know about perhaps a few thousand individuals they suspect of being involved in these plots, moslty in orgnasiational or support roles - perhaps a few hundred of them might be actively planning to immolate themselves in attas on the wider public. That's a lot of people to wathc, and (potentially) a lot of suicide bomb attacks; if they are all as 'successful' as the 7 July 2005 London attacks, the casualty rates might creep into the hundreds of thousands. That would be a massive problem, but nobody (not even the terrorists) imagines that every attack would succeed. It's FAR more likely that the death toll in Britain from Islamic terrorism in the next five years will be about the same as it has been in the last five - less than 100 dead. About the equivalent of a bad year's murder statistics. Or barely a day's road death casualties. Yet, across our whole media (including myriad blogs, including this one, for fuck's sake!) barely a day goes by without one or more of the top stories being somehow linked to the 'problem' of Islam. If it isn't the uncovering of a plot, it's a bungled police operation. If it isn't a bungled police operation, it's an employment tribunal for someone who's supposedly been sacked for being a Muslim or sacked by a Muslim for not being one. If it's not an employment tribunal, it's a family court case where a mixed-race daughter has been abductd by her Muslim father. If it's not a child abduction, it's that the child has decided she wants to be a Muslim and disapproves of her moother's sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll lifestyle. If it's not this, it's a 'fake shiekh' sting where a reporter pretends to be a Muslim and tricks someone's real opinions out of them by feigning approval. If it's not a 'fake shiekh' sting, it's a former cabinet minister who is deaf in one ear saying that he sometimes asks his Moslem women constituents who wear a full-face niqab veil to remove it when they visit him in his constituency surgery because (surprise, surprise) he finds it hard to communicate with them when he can't see their lips moving, and moreover that he personally he doesn't like people wearing veils in public because (though he didn't say it in so many words) he thinks it's a bit rude. If it's not that, it's a right-wing and generally hostile right-wing press spinning those comments into a variations on the old 'fit in or fuck off' anti-immigration paranoia (though, to give them some credit, Jack Straw, the former cabinet minister I mentioned, is smart enough to have known perfectly well what the likely reaction to his niqab story would be) . And so on and so on et cetera ad nauseam.  My questions are -  is this the way to persuade the 'backward Muslims whose civilisation hasn't moved on since the 14th century' that Western 21st-century secular democracy is a better way to live? And is it the best way to tell the secular majority (and, even among the British Pakistani and Bengali populations that form the majority of the 1.2 million British Muslims, over 50% are non-devout or entirely secular) what is actually going on in the country and the wider world? So yes, I am sick of Muslims, but in a very particular way. I am sick of the way the rest of us are letting our whole national conversation be determined and driven by a few hundred criminal lunatics, whether we are atheist, agnostic, Christian,  Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, or flipping Jedi. I am sick of the way our civil liberties are being eroded willy-nilly in the name of protecting us from these fanatically religious bogey-men who are supposedly trying to destroy our way of life, when that didn't happen in reply to Irish Republican terrorism. 'Ah, but this is an entirely different and much more dangerous form of terrorism', they say. How do you work that out, eh? Surely the only significant difference is that Islamic terrorists kill themselves at the same time as they kill us? Which, apart from anything else, means that they never ever get any better at it, because their first attempt is the only one they ever have. The IRA bombers got progressively better at it, because they got to practice. Veteran bombers could share their expertise. That, by definition, doesn't happen with Islamic terror suicide bombers, because they don't have the organised command infrastructure that allows them to share knowledge beyond posting to a website (which, by definition, have to be accessible to the public domain). And, obviously enough, they're dead after they succeed, so can't tell anyone what worked well and how they would do it differently next time. Of course it is a more dangerous form of terrorism. It has to be, or else you would have no reason or excuse to assault civil liberties built up over centuries in it's name. And, were I a Muslim, I would be heartily sick of the way that I was being demonised by all of this. Of course, there are bad Muslims. There are evil, dangerous Muslims. There are loud, noisily self-righteous Muslims who use this constant drip-drip of hostile media coverage as a lever to try to recruit more  Muslims to their brand of noisily self-righteous hate-fuelled Islam - and I am sick of them, too.  It's getting to the point where I think that most of the Muslim problem would simply vanish in a puff of newsprint if the media gave themselves a week off from reporting all of these tiny stories, linked only by the involvement of someone Muslim in them, as if they are all part of a grand over-arching zietgiest. Not least because if they carry on doing that for long enough, it will be. Europeans have been panicked into a herd mentality that permitted industrialised hatred, and ultimately led to genocide, before. Within living memory. Have we learned nothing? Have we learned that the solution is NOTHING TO DO with the way the object of the fear, paranoia and hatred actually behave? The we they behave is THEIR responsibility, not ours. The way WE behave is OUR responsibility, not theirs. THEY cannot MAKE us do ANYTHNG we do not want to do.   I strongly believe that the only we we can be manipulated is to manipulate our emotions, not our intellects. Fear is an emotion, and we are being given lots of reasons why we are supposed to fear Muslims. (And it cuts both ways - Muslims are being given lots of reasons to fear the West, America, Christians, etc.) We ALL need to wake up and look at what we are being fed. In whose interests is it to hate one another?

15.10.06 14:31 Permalink / 1 Comment / comment

Junk is for junkies And I'm not one, so all the porn and viagra bots that are filling my guestbook here with utter spam can just fuck off please.

19.6.06 17:46 Permalink / 1 Comment / comment

Crime and Punishment 3 The very next day - Monday - I got a call at work on my mobile - the insurance had come through with the last seven of my DVDs and video games. As they were mostly new replacements for obsolete titles, I hadn't seen or played any of them. The weather was grey & miserable that day, so I was looking forward to going home and watching/playing some of them. By the time I left work, the weather had turned warm, clear and sunny - a very pleasant spring evening. So I wasn't too surprised to see my next door neighbour (let's called him Mario - not a million miles from his real name) leaning on his gate outside his front door as I pulled in to park. I looked across and smiled but, while he waved and beckoned me over to talk, he didn't smile back. Once I'd parked and walked over, he told me I'd been broken into again. Where we'd done a quick & dirty repair on the door, there was a new hole in the chipboard. Mario said he'd come home for his lunch break around noon and found my door swinging open with the hole in it. He called the police and waited for them to arrive, but nobody did before he had to go back to work. He assumed the police had called round after he had to go back to work (he's a delivery driver for a plumbing supplies business) because someone had closed the doors at the front & back of the house. When I opened the door I found a note on police notepaper telling me this was indeed the case, and giving me a number to call. This I did straight away, and was told that they had "made the property secure" (i.e. closed the doors and checked nobody was inside), and that the burglary squad would try to come out that evening. In contrast to last time, I was pretty sanguine about it, perhaps because it had seemed so odd that the burglars had left things worth stealing last time around, and because I knew I would be covered pretty straightforwardly on my insurance. The first thing I did was ring my boss to let him know what had happened, and that I'd need to take the next day off (again) to sort out the police, insurance and so on. (After last time, I knew that even if the burglary squad came out that night, the CSI team would not be there until the next day.) He was cool with this, indeed, he said to take as much time as necessary to get it sorted properly this time - he doesn't want me being broken into again any more than I do. I was pretty certain from the start that it was the same people as the first break in - it was too convenient that they'd taken the things they'd made moves to take last time but not done so. I rang my friends who'd been so helpful two months before, more to tell them about it than anything else - in a "you'll never believe what's just happened..." type of way. Being the star he is, Andy (not his real name) offered to come straight over. Being more or less unruffled, I told him not to bother with tools or wood, as this time I was in a cool frame of mind and knew I had the necessary tools & materials. I asked him to bring some screws as I wasn't sure mine would be long enough, and said I'd certainly appreciate the extra pair of hands & the company. As it was such a nice evening, with at least two hours of daylight left, I waited outside for Andy to arrive, chatting to Mario. He told me he thought it was probably the same kids that had been causig the trouble the night before. He said he'd seen the tall kid and the girl in a group of 4-5 walking down the street just after he got in from work, pointing at the cars with broken bits and laughing. They also (apparently) pointed at my house and laughed. While we were chatting, the woman who lived across the street came over to us and said that she'd also called the police after seeing me door swinging open with a fresh hole in it. She said she'd been disturbed by more shouting outside the same house that had been the target the night before, and gone to look. The man had disappeared, and a woman who said she was his mother was looking after the place, so the kids (two of whom were the tall boy and girl we'd all seen that night) dispersed pretty quickly. This was at about 10am. Immediately after this, my neighbour woman noticed my door was open.  So we now had quite a short time window for the burglary - between 8.25am when I left for work, and 10am when she saw the kids and noticed my open, broken door. And some suspicion about possible suspects. Meanwhile, another resident form farther down the hill saw a group of us chatting in the street (me, Mario, Andy and the neighbour woman) and came over. She started talking about the night before, asking if any of us had given our names to the police. I said I had, and that I'd also been broken into again that day. Once again, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself (it seems these days that if you don't do this yourself, nobody else will either, but they are only too pleased when you do). Let's call her Angela. She had been one of the dressing-gowned people talking to the police, and her car had been damaged. She remembered me talking to the policeman, and wanted to know if I'd got a good look at the shorter lad. I said I had, and she said she's a criminal lawyer and she had some passing knowledge of him - he's a regular trouble maker, it seems. She told us that the boy had been in custody at the station all day (so he had about the best alibi possible, the little turd!), and that he was being charged the next day. But - get this - the offences he was going to be charged with related to an assault and a weapons charge (another knife) from the Saturday night, when he'd 'done a runner' as soon as police arrived. So the prick was not only a troublemaker who could handle his ale, but an idiot. I mean, what kind of fuckwit commits the same crimes within spitting distance of the police two nights running? While he might be a bad seed, she told us he's grown up in the care system (as many criminals do) and still lives in a hostel for the young homeless petty criminal a few streets away. I have to say now that I don't see this as a nimby problem - the hostel has been there at least five years longer than I have lived here, and as I said before, it's been a very peaceful and trouble-free area until about January this year. I would have said February when I got broken into, but as Angela told us all this, the neighbour woman (an odd little creature - one of those people that makes you wonder whether their mother smoke & drank during pregnancy) said that her sons' mopeds (two sons, two mopeds) had been vandalised regularly since about Christmas. By now, the sun was setting and it was getting darker. There was no sign of the police, so I rang again to check. They said they were extremely busy, and would try to come over, but couldn't say what time it would be. Knowing I would be at home the next day, I suggested they postpone until then, which they agreed to do. So Andy & I set about fixing the door (again), this time nailing an even larger sheet of chipboard across the whole front of the door. This took us up to about 9.30, and it was dark by the time we'd finished. I felt much less guilty about Andy's help, since this time he was helping me to fix my door, rather than fixing my door for me. Even so, I decided that I owed him a beer, and we went to the pub, where I determined to buy all his beers all night. This was exactly what I was in the mood for, so we stayed until it closed at midnight. I arrived home lubricated, but not inebriated. I half hoped that I would catch them in the act, but nothing of the kind happened. The next morning the police arrived just after 9am. They looked around with me, and then we settled down to write up my statement. The way this seems to work is - they ask lots of questions and write down a precis of my replies, then at the end, I read through what they've said and sign each page. On the last page, I sign immediately underneath the text so nothing can be added later without being obvious. What complicated this, and slowed it down, was the CSI woman arriving partway through, so I had to stop the statement and show her where they had broken in, what had been touched, etc. This time, she got some decent prints, as the thieves had sorted through my DVD collection to decide which ones to take, rather than just grabbing handfuls. There was also a clear and full handprint on the inside of the front door. It was much smaller than mine - either a child's or a woman's. CSI then left, and we finished the statement. I mentioned what my neighbours had said about seeing kids linked to the disturbances of Sunday night in the street that day, but they said they couldn't really do anything with this. Apparently, the kid that had been in custody had been the likliest suspect in the area; the kids that were with him they knew, but didn't think it would be them because, and I quote, "they didn't have the balls". Certainly not for breaking & entering in broad daylight close to the rush hour. I'm not sure I would, either. Anyway, they said they didn't think the kids would have been involved, at least not directly, and it was probably another known burglar moving out of his or her usual patch. I had already begun pulling together a full itemised list of stolen property, but hadn't finished it, so I could not give it to them there & then. They gave me a stamped addressed envelope to send it in, said they'd asked the Crime Prevention Officer to contact me and advise on home security, and they left. They spend about another half an hour knocking on doors and talking to my neighbours, then left altogether. So I set to drawing up a list of stolen propety. This time, the replacement XBox had gone again, along with all its games - including the two or three new ones I'd bought myself since the last break-in. The BFR had gone. They'd gone upstairs to root around, and taken one of the two I keep under my bed for holiday luggage & such. They'd taken my DVD player, and (once I'd sorted through them all) about 70 DVDs. In bulk, and in value, they'd taken about twice as much this time. Clearly, they hadn't been disturbed on this occasion. Next, I hit the phone and rang my insurers. I ended up speaking to the same woman as before at my contents insurers - she was all "oh no! Not AGAIN?". And this time, I read my buildings insurance form cover to cover, being determined to get the door fixed properly or, better still, completely replaced. As it turned out, I was an idiot. The £1,000 excess only applied in cases of subsidence - all other types of damage carried a £50 excess charge. DOH! They said they could send someone out the next day to assess the damage and come up with a quoted price. After putting the phone down, the CPO phoned and we arranged for him to come the same day, so I wouldn't need to take yet another day off work. Then I phoned work to let them know what was going on and would it be okay to take another day, this time out of my holiday entitlement. They disagreed - not with me taking the day off, but with using a day's annual leave to do it. They are good, aren't they (mind you for the pittance they are paying me they should be, but that's another rant)? I'll finish this later.

25.5.06 17:18 Permalink / comment

Crime and Punishment 2 Almost two months after the break-in, on a Sunday evening, I had spent a very pleasant couple of hours luxuriating in a hot bath with the papers. I'm one of the people who can't just skip to the supplements that interest them; I live alone, so it feels like a waste if I don't read all of them in at least some detail. I skip most of the sports stories that are on topics I don't follow (another way of saying I only really read the rugby section), and I only really skim through the travel, but the rest I read almost all of. Sure, I skip the odd story here and there, but usually I'll read the first paragraph or so even then. At about 11.30 pm, I padded downstairs in a bathrobe/dressing gown thingy, grabbed a cold beer from the fridge, and idly watched some TV. For about the last hour in the bath, I'd heard the odd shout from the streets outside, but put it down to high spirits on the way home form the pub - since licencing laws have been relaxed here, kicking-out time spreads more thinly, so you get fewer drunks at any one time, but over a longer period. My bathroom is at the back of my house facing away from the street anyway, and it had only been sporadic, so I'd thought nothing more of it. But from downstairs, the noise was louder and clearly coming from my street. While it is a cul-de-sac for traffic, there are several footpaths that lead off from the dead end, so it gets used as a short cut on foot. (This is one of the best things about living there - it's usually very quiet, but it's easy to get to & from my home to go out, do shopping, etc.) I remember watching the Snooker World Championships on TV, which is a quiet sport, and becoming more curious / annoyed by the noise outside. Clearly, whoever it was wasn't just passing through. At about 00:15, by now just finishing my second beer, I got curious / annoyed enough to get up and look out of my window. Three kids were shouting and screaming. None of them looked old enough to be out after 9.00pm on a school night, let alone gone midnight. There was a lull. I cracked open my third beer, settled back with the snooker, and took a sip just as a fresh cacophany came from the street outside, including what sounded like breaking glass and a drum-like sound. Wearing nothing but my bathrobe (done up) & slippers I walked outside, holding my mobile phone in my hand. Loudly and with pantomime gestures, I told the shouting kids that I was going to call the police and that they should stop messing about. One stood outside my front gate (my house is set back from the public pavement by perhaps six or seven feet) and ignored me completely, shouting so loud that I couldn't hear the operator asking if I wanted police, fire or ambulance. I had to ask her to repeat it. I asked for police, and when I got through to them, I began explaining that there was a disturbance in my street that had been ging on for some time. The breaking glass looked like it had come from at least two side mirrors on the cars parked in the street - one I could see was hanging off by a wire. The drum-like noise probably came from the small white van parked in front of it, which had a large and obvious dent in its side. There were two boys and a girl making all the racket. The girl was in tears and looked more upset than angry. The smaller of the two boys - he looked about 15 in the face, but was scrawny and looked barely 5'6" or 5'7" - was doing most of the shouting, while the taller - who looked about the same age, but was less skinny (while without the physical bulk that comes with full adulthood) and looked closer to 6' tall - was quieter. The taller boy was waving around what I later found out to be a windscreen wiper that had been ripped from the white van, while the shorter clutched an unopened champagne-style bottle. The sort that's made from heavy, thick glass to stop it bursting under pressure. It turned out that most of their anger was directed towards one of my neighbours, perhaps 10 doors up the street. He was outside on his own, silently watching the fun. Closer observation revealed that all four of the cast of this impromtu street theatre were at the very least drunk. While I was still on the phone to the police, the girl walked up the street (I live on a hill) towards my neighbour. Before she was halfway there, the two boys ran, shouting, past her towards my neighbour. The smaller one threatened that he was going to 'bottle' him. Drunk, as he was, my neighbour was driven back a little, it seemed more in surprise than any great pain or distress. Now, he is a full-grown man so has the broad shoulders and stockier build that comes with manhood. Watching pigeons fluttering around a statue, sometimes the fluttering clamour creates the illusion that the statue itself is moving. This assault (in both the literary and legal senses) created the same impression. But not for very long - a moment later, perhaps just long enough for adrenaline to kick in, the man surged forwards, knocking the boys back like the children they were. In a few instants, the smaller boy was running back halfway down the street (about level with me), while the taller lad was physically bundled face-first into the pavement, leaving his cheek grazed and bleeding. I don't see how this could be described as anything but self-defence, and if it ever came to court I would say so with a clear conscience. Once this was done, the man seemed to sink back inside and reverted to a drunk, wobbling about slightly. The boys, on the other hand, went wild. I swear, it was like watching a nature documentary, when the young male chimps feel threatened by an older, more powerful male. They might try a direct confrontation, but would lose it, so they swing about in the branches, breaking off twigs and screeching more in fear than anger. Instead of trees, think cars. Instead of twigs and branches, think side mirrors and windscreen wipers. Instead of chest-beating and teeth-baring, think taking off a t-shirt to reveal a scrawny torso while screeching "you fucking..." this and "you fucking..." that. If it hadn't been real damage to real people's property, the comedy value of dubbing a David Attenborough commentary in my head would have made the whole scene quite hilarious. After a moment or two, the frenzy receded back to the general shouting that had been going on all night, and it became possible to work out some of what was going on. The girl, between sobs, would say to the boys things like "leave him alone, he didn't know". The taller boy kept saying, to himself as much as the (increasing number of) bystanders , "he's a perv", "you don't know", "it's his fault" and "fucking silver B M fucking W", presumably a reference to my neighbours car. And the shorter boy said things like "she's my bird", "she's my girlfriend", "he's been messing with my girlfriend", and "she's only 15". At one point, he addressed these exclamations directly at me. I said "And...?" "'And...?' Whaddya mean 'And...?'?" "I mean, whatever this guy has done, do you think you're going to solve anything by shouting in the street about it in the middle of the night and breaking bits off the cars of people with nothing to with it?" He scowled in thought for a fraction of an instant as the idea penetrated his drink-addled brain, visibly rejected a line of logic that might put him in the wrong, and repeated "but she's 15". In light of all this I assume on of to possible scenarios: 1. That my neighbour had met a young woman in a pub or nightclub or such who looked old enough, had maybe slept with her and later found out she was underage, and wisely broken off the budding relationship. She, distraught, had confessed to her 'boyfriend' (or the boy her age who thought he had this job at least) who, with his best friend, had cooked up a plan for petty revenge over a night of illicit booze and/or drugs by deciding to vandalise the car of the man who'd corrupted the innocence of his virginal future bride (my arse). On attempting this, they found the object of their hatred in and awake, and not in the mood to watch his car trashed by pissed-up kids. 2. My neighbour - who has not been seen in my street since these events - really is the kind of "perv" these kids seem to think he is, and "groomed" this young girl into an underage and exploitative relationship with him. The kids, while perhaps misguided, misdirected and unfocused, perhaps had a noble motivation. Either way, the kids started moving as a group down the hill just as that (open) end of the street was lit by a car approaching and then stopping. As well as headlamps, there was the unmistakeable blue and red flashing of a police car. From making my call to the police, it had taken perhaps ten minutes for them to arrive, which at the time I thought quite impressive. Later on, I found out that about six separate people had made calls from my street, the first over an hour before I had made mine. The mounting concern of residents, coupled with the passage of time, had pushed the incident higher and higher up the priority list. The drunk neighbour stood somewhat forlornly in the middle of the street outside his house. My immediate neighbour and his wife had joined me outside, and as we chatted over our connecting wall about the night's happenings, the drunk man approached and addressed me directly. "Do you want some an' all?" he enquired, not entirely politely. "See those lights at the bottom of the street, mate?" I asked him. "That's a police car. I think you'd better just go to bed." Somewhat sheepishly, he ambled back to his house and went inside, and has not been seen there since, as I mentioned. Several of my neighbours were now milling about in the street. A man opposite me was not best pleased at being kept awake until 1am, having to work his shift from 4am. And two or three other were walking down towards the police car, either to tell them what they had seen or to just be nosy. With a foot in both camps, I asked my next-door neighbour to keep an eye on my house while I walked down toward the police car, careful not to make sudden movements lest my bathrobe flap open in the night breeze and get me arrested for indecent exposure.  Near the car, a policewoman spoke calmly to the still-sobbing teenage girl, while the taller lad looked on. In the lights of the police car, his faced was still bleeding from his pavement encounter. The smaller boy was being defensive under questioning from a male policeman. The boy took an innefectual swing at him, at which point what little patience he had left evaporated and he arrested the boy in fine Starsky and Hutch style i.e. the boy was propelled face-first onto the bonnet of the patrol car, hand quickly cuffed behind him. While in this position, the constable searched the boy's pockets as I looked on, and found a small, cheap-looking plastic craft knife in the back pocket of the boy's jeans. So as well as assault, the officer cautioned him for carrying an offensive weapon. At this point, these charges were purely for offences the officer and I witnessed while stood near the car - the rest of the evening's law-breaking being moot. While we were distracted by this, the other boy sloped off back up the hill. The policewomen having satisfied herself that the girl had done nothing wrong (if not anything stupid) told her to go home and sleep off whatever she'd been drinking, and she joined her friend and they disappeared, I assume to go home grumbling about the unfairness of the world. As soon as the police had taken names and contact details from the five or six residents now milling about, including me, they made ready to leave, and after some typically British stoicism, eye-rolling and grumbles, we went home to our beds. As I get back to my house, I thanked my next-door neighbour, said "By the way, we've never properly met - my name is Julian". He shook hands and introduced himself too. Prior to this we'd always been on nodding/smiling/"hello" terms, but never known one another's name. Also typically British, even though he's Italian. There you go...

19.5.06 16:21 Permalink / comment

Crime and Punishment 1 Well, I've been a bit rubbish at blogging lately. This is mostly caused by me having a new job (finally). It's running the IT and business documentation (in the absence of any kind of MRP system) for a small electronics sub-contract manufacturer in Gloucestershire. I only started here at the end of February, so I'm not even quite through my probationary period. I'd be lying if I said it was my dream job - in terms of responsibility, salary and the type of work I'm doing, it's pretty much the same as I was doing ten years ago, and the business culture is, shall we say, relaxed (for which read unprofessional, at least by comparison to other places I've worked) - but it's a huge relief to have a job at all, believe it or not. Meanwhile, on the home front I've had three unusual events since I started working. The first happened on my second day in the new job. I left for work at something like 8.15am, and after work I went straight to my local theatre; there was a one-act play festival that the theatre group I belong to had entered, and I wanted to check out the competition (www.swindonweb/ottc - plug over). I got back home at about 11.15pm. It was bitterly cold, with a strong wind and flakes of snow in the air. My front door was made from painted wood, with the top half carrying a large pane of patterned glass. There was a large hole in this glass pane. My first thought was that the gusty wind had finally taken its toll - I've lived in my house for almost 10 years, and there have been plenty of occasions when the wind rattled the door quite violently, so it seemed plausible. The lights were all off in the house, naturally enough. I opened the door and went in, avoiding the broken glass on my hall floor (no easy task, as it's uneven and in the process of having the tiles taken up, so it's like an indoor gravel path - another story). The house was freezing cold, but the radiators were wamr. The reason was there was a strong cold breeze coming form the back of the house, so I made my way to the back door in my kitchen, switching the lights on as I went through. The back door was wide open, with swirling snowflakes coming through into the kitchen.  I closed it, still thinking "gosh, that MUST have been a big gust of wind to blow open the back door AND smash a hole in the front. But hang on, the broken glass was inside the house, so that must have been broken first. And the difference in air pressure caused by a change in wind direction sucked open the back door" (like most external doors in the UK, it opens inwards - all those narrow streets). Then I turned around and saw that my "BFR" portable stereo (the B & R stand for "big" and "radio". Bet you can't guess what the "F" is for...) was missing. This was the first time that burglary crossed my mind. I went into my dining room, in the corner of which I keep my PC workstation. That was all undisturbed at first glance, so I went into my lounge to check my entertainment kit. In the middle of the floor was my BFR. It wasn't a burglary after all - clearly, one of my friends who used to live in my spare room had got drunk after a work function (he still works in my town). Having no way of getting home, he had broken my door to get in, moved some of my stuff into different rooms as some kind of drunken good idea or possible as a joke, and was snoring soundly upstairs. Just as I was rolling my eyes and thinking along the lines of "you scamp!", I noticed that my XBox and all the games for it were missing. It really WAS a burglary. I called 999 and asked for the police. They said they were really busy (it was pub closing time, so that was understandable) but they'd come as soon as possible, and asked me not to touch anything. It was now about 11.30 pm. My first thought was to try to phone work to let them know what had happened and that, depending on how long the police took to arrive and to take statements, etc., I might be late or absent from work the next day. Both my bosses had their mobile phones switched off, but happily the MD's wife is the Finance Director and she works from home. I managed to catch the MD, who had just come home from an evening out. He was fine - supportive and sympathetic, and it was his idea for me to take the next day off altogether, not mine. So that was one less thing to worry about. So now I'm in my house at approaching midnight with a hole in my front door, afraid to do anything in case it spoiled any police investigation. I phoned my mum to have someone to talk to and generally be unafraid of being upset in front of. They offered to come and look after the place, but there was no real need and I don't like to feel dependent on them. I had a rant/cry and felt a bit better. Thanks Mum. Then, I phoned my friends who I'd been at the theatre with. She's a teacher, and it was her half term break, and he works shifts and had the next day off, so I knew they'd still be awake. As soon as I told them what had happened, their first question was "do you want us to come over?" - bear in mind that it was nary ten minutes away from midnight. The police were taking longer than I'd hoped, and I didn't want to wait on my own for them, so I said yes. It would take them about quarter of an hour to get here. Within about five minutes of coming off the phone to my friends, the police arrived. They were really good, and I felt SO much better once they arrived. They asked lots of questions to build up a statement, I made teas and coffees are required, and felt very old since they looked incredibly young. They said that they would send out the CSI officers the next day, as they don't work night shifts (just as well no crimes are ever committed at night, eh?), and would also ask the burglary squad to come around then. My friends arrived with some board to close up the hole in my front door, tools to fix it with, and cold beers to drink while doing it. Once the police had seen and noted what had happened, they okayed it, and my friend set about fixing my door for me while I was still going over my statement. I am blessed with great friends. One of the two police (a man and a woman came out) told me that it was unusual to have moved things and not taken them, and that they had probably been disturbed. I had a twinge of worry that now they'd seen inside my house, and earmarked some things but not taken them, they might come back later, but I was told it was really unusual for anywhere to be broken into more than once. In the end, the tally was 22 XBox games, the console & 2 controllers, my old (backup) mobile phone, and about 25 DVDs. I couldn't be exact, because at that point I had never really catalogued them and I have a large collection (now that I have catalogued it it stands at 322!). The next day I stayed at home waiting for the CSI unit and burglary squad to call, and to make insurance claims. CSI turned up first thing - two young (and very attractive) women, and an older woman (within a few years of my age) from the burglary squad. There wasn't a lot the CSI people could do - they only got one decent print. Unlike on TV, where pretty much any surface can yield crisp clear prints and be matched on a computer in seconds, only shiny surfaces and fresh prints are easily retrievable, and only unsmudged ones are useful for indentification. For cases like mine, anyway. They told me there ARE ways to get prints from matt surfaces, but they almost always damage the item they are taken from. Since I didn't really want to throw away my BFR, Bluetooth headset, or the other things they'd touched but not taken, there was no point. Oh, and in passing, almost all "CSI" units in the UK were called "SOCO" (Scenes Of Crime Officers) until a certain TV franchise started showing on British network television. Who said life never imitates art? And burlgary squad were only really calling out of courtesy - my statement form the night before had covered everything they needed. They did knock on a few doors nearby, but my immediate neighbour on on side is a frail, deaf old lady, and on the other, the only noise they reported was the banging of my mate fixing my front door after midnight. This wasn't all that surprising - the house had been empty for almost 15 hours, so the break-in coud have happened any time that day. The next task was insurance claims. My door didn't look very pretty, but the police said it was solid enough to be going on with until I could get a new one. Foreign readers should know that in the UK, it is typical to have buildings cover for the structural integrity of your home, and separate contents insurance for any  possessions (i.e. for the contents of the building). These policies can be with different insurers - mine are. I checked the buildings insurance first, and the statement said there was a £1,000 policy excess. I couldn't imagine that a new front door would cost more than £500, so I'd have to pay the whole cost of that myself even if I made a claim. I decided not to bother. My contents insurance, on the other hand, only required me to pay the first £50 of any claim, so I rang them up and told them what had happened. They asked for a crime number - a reference number given out by the police after any reported incident - which I had to hand, having been given it over the telephone that morning. They arrange for their loss adjusters to call me, gave me a claim number, and that was that. A week or so later, the loss adjusters called and asked to make an appointment. I took an afternoon off work (using annual leave this time, rather than relying on my employers' generosity) and we went over many of the same questions that the police had asked (how old was I, how long had I lived at the address, etc.). Rather than a cheque for the value of the stolen goods, I was to be provided with replacements. This had been introduced some time ago to prevent insurance fraud, I was told. People who were legitimate usually anted replacements anyway, and the ones most keen on a cheque were usually fraudsters, so they whole insurance industry had moved to replacements as the default. The woman who visited said that she'd try to arrange for swapping some of the older DVDs, which she doubted they'd be able to get hold of. She also said that she'd ask about possibly trading up to an XBox 360, but wasn't sure if this could be done. She would pass my list of stolen items on to another third party (a fourth party, I guess) who would actualy do the replacing, and they would be in touch shortly. Much of the list I gave her, especially of DVDs, was a combination of memory, guesswork and wishlist. Not having kept a definitive catalogue, I was only certain of about 15 of the missing 25 titles. I knew there were 25 form the size of the gap left on my shelves, but some of the titles were at best a guess. Some others, I admit, were not ones that had been stolen, but new ones I wanted but hadn't bought yet. It's not that I was completely making them up - they were replacing  one of the 25 stolen that I couldn't remember the title of or didn't particularly want, but I still felt a twigne of guilt. Within a week, the supplier phoned. They had most of what I needed in stock, but not all of it. Did I mind if I swapped some of the older DVDs for newer ones? This immediately made me feel less guilty about my minor dishonesty, as it was effectively what I'd done myself with titles I didn't want replaced or just couldn't remember. They couldn't deliver at weekends, so I gave them my work address, and the loss adjuster hadn't specifically asked them to raise an XBox 360, so they'd already packed up the old-style Xbox. Not a big problem... A day or two laters, a big box arrived for me at work, with lots of goodies inside. Some of the games were incorrectly replaced - instead of titles I'd finished or almost finished playing, I was presented with games from the same franchise (e.g. Star Wars) I'd never tried. This was not a bad thing, I thought. All but four games and three DVDs were replaced in this batch. The others were the ones that needed to be swapped for more current titles. All was right with the world. Or so I thought...

18.5.06 15:26 Permalink / comment

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