It's not good to be back

Just back from a brilliant holiday, no internet or telly (through choice, not because I was on holiday in Cornwall or anything), or other such distractions. One of the first stories I read when I got back was this horrifying case with an absolutely staggering 'sentence'.

So much for an eye for an eye, with our judges living in some bizarre different world, we now have community service for an eye.

I really don't know what more to say, I would not wish this kind of thing on anyone; so I will not go as far as to say that I hope the attacker who walked free from the court does the same to the judge.

At least the CofE are embracing non-religious ideas

Off-topic, but I couldn't help notice the madness spreading.

Can't fault them, the Church of England have taken a very public-sector approach to their problems;

When everything is going to shit, you need more managers!

We often hear the police complaining (quite rightly so) that there are ever fewer police on the beat, but ever more senior managers in ever more ludicrusly invented roles. The same thing is constantly reported from those in the NHS; never enough medical practicioners, but plenty of managers, managing... erm, well not managing an awful lot really.

I remember when I was in the RAF, after one particularly large round of cutbacks, they got rid of a lot of us flightline monkeys (the guys who actually service the jets and get them off the ground), and created a load of nice cushy Wing Commander posts - great! That'll do the trick!

I've not quite seen so much of this since I've had proper jobs, so I'm sure the private sector's nowhere near as bad for this kind of caper as those organisations funded by the taxpayer.

It will be interesting to see if the church start hiring consultants on £1000 a day.

(Don't even get me started on consultants...)

Now then

Three cheers to the brave officers who effected this arrest, as the kind of character "threatening to cause criminal damage" could be quite a nasty piece of work.

Except when it's a father trying to have a 'protest picnic' with other parents after the council effectively tried to burst their kids' football.

I am not commenting on the council's rules and demands, that's a different issue, what I am commenting on, as the name of the blog implies is the actions of the police.

You often hear that the police aren't interested in clocking up easy arrests for nonsense crime, they want to help the community, blah blah blah, that it's just a myth that they'll always take the easiest 'detection' available etc, yet the simple fact remains that a sworn officer, granted the power of arrest, thought it was a good idea to arrest this man.

Nice work boys...

Prison doesn't work?

There's a few things that don't quite make sense about this story, especially to a mere pleb like me. Maybe my gracious betters in the judiciary could explain it...

Craig Chilman, one of Peterborough's most prolific house burglars has been allowed to walk free from court after a judge decided prison was doing little to prevent his offending.

Now I don't claim to be a legal expert, but I'm pretty sure that when he was in prison he was not burgling houses. However the judge said:

"He has a substantial record as a domestic burglar, and he shows every indication of continuing in that way (if he is sent straight to prison). The only legitimate alternative is a suspended sentence."

WTF? The judge feels that the guy is extremely likely to break in to more people's houses and yet he thinks it the best thing to do is let him walk straight out of his court, back on to the streets, and possibly in to your home?

Then of course we have the special world of Home Office maths;

In 2002 he was jailed for three years, he was given a four-year prison sentence in 2004 and then he was again locked up for three years in 2007.

Erm, hmmm, erm, hang on...

Individually, 2002 + 3 = 2005, 2004 + 4 = 2008, 2007 + 3 = 2010!.

Or even better 3 + 4 + 3 = 10, starting in 2002, yet it's only 2009 by my calendar.

Gotta love automatic early release!

Now m'learned friends will immediately jump up and down screaming "oh the guidelines, we're bound by the guidelines!" as to why they continually let this type of scum continue their careers, but as stated in this story, under the guidelines anyone convicted of three house burglaries should get no less than three years inside. So it seems that judges only follow guidelines if it means they can send nasty, recidivist, prolific criminals back out to make our lives a misery.

When this man reoffends, will the judge be held to account for the fact that his actions directly led to an innocent person's house being burgled? Nope!

I'm going to repeat this quote again, because it is so breathtakingly unbelievable, and perfectly illustrates how the judiciary fail to grasp that the entire premise of the CJS is to protect innocent members of the public from criminals.

a judge decided prison was doing little to prevent his offending.

If my house is ever burgled by a man (or woman) who is in prison, I will give them my car as well.

You can almost understand why the police don't bother any more...

Religion

Christianity. n; The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

Right, cards on the table here. I hate religion. All religions. They have caused unimaginable harm throughout history, and they continue to do so. I do not respect anyone's religious views. Not one of them. If you chose to believe that Mohammed rode up to heaven on a winged horse, I will call you foolish for believing something so absurd. I will happily allow you to believe it; you can believe anything you want, but I will absolutely not respect it. I also despise the way religionists indoctrinate children. The very concept of 'faith', that is belief without evidence, is a dangerous one. Religion is divisive, it causes people to segregate themselves according to which fairy-story they believe in, or even according to which version of the same fairy-story. In many cases it teaches that people who don't believe in the same fairy-stories are inferior, unworthy, dirty, and even deserve to die.



Anyway, in the comments section of an earlier post, a police blogger known as 200 called me a bigot.

He called me a bigot because I was attacking the catholic church for being able to duck out of anti-discrimination rules and continue to discriminate against non-catholics and homosexuals. (Despite my objections to the cathloic hatred of homosexuals I was also branded homophobic)


I can only assume that 30 years in the police removes one's sense of irony.


The catholic church has so much to answer for; it is difficult to know where to begin. The masses of instances of child abuse maybe? Where the church not only turned a blind eye, it actively protected the perpetrators. Priests were having sex with young children and the church allowed it.

Or was that just a cheap shot at the catholics? What about the untold millions who have died of AIDS and other STDs as a direct result of the catholic stance against condoms. How much more morally abhorrent can you get than telling millions of people who believe your every word that condoms have tiny holes in them, and that it is a sin to use them?


Hmmm, how much morally abhorrent can you get than that? Perhaps the muslim leaders who caused the failure of the World Health Organisation's attempt to wipe out Polio could stake a claim. Yep, as I write this, the entire world could have been completely Polio free. But our friendly religionist nutters told people that the vaccine was a trick by the evil west to make muslims impotent, and that no muslim should take the two small drops of liquid. As the project hinged on getting everyone vaccinated in a very short time of each other so that the virus had no hosts, the entire project failed because of this. Polio is now rife again.

Nice work faith-heads.

Of course it isn't just koran-bashers who like to stand in the way of disease prevention. Yep, bible-bashers would rather see women die from cervical cancer than allow HPV vaccines to be given out, in case it causes girls to be more premiscuous. You can't make this shit up. Maybe we should create some more STDs, that'll put people of the horrible sinful act of sex, what do you reckon, bible-fans?


As I said earlier, 'faith' is a very dangerous thing. Muslim suicide bombers have 'faith' that they will live on in heaven with 72 virgins. They actually believe this.
Had it not been for religion, those guys would not have flown planes in to buildings on September 11th. There is no evidence at all that people live on in a magical world up in the clouds, yet these people had 'faith' in it. Now they are dead, along with thousands of innocent people.


Why do religionists think that their absurd beliefs should be respected? Why do they think that the rest of us should accept them? Why is it considered rude to question somebody's religious views, and point out how stupid they are? It is fine to question someone's political views, their taste in clothes, or anything like that, but when it comes to religion; views no matter how absurd, must be respected.

Not here they ain't.

Peace

200 was right!

Equality laws don't work! Taken from this little story; where a tourist attraction wants to hire someone to play a witch.

Note how I said someone, as opposed to a woman.

Due to sexual discrimination law, the job cannot demand that the post is filled by a woman.

Under sexual discrimination law, unless Wookey Hole can provide "documentary proof that the original witch was female it can't issue a gender-specific job description".

Brilliant!

Bible bashers

You may or may not be pleased to see that this post is a break from the normal themes, but this little article reignited my anger over this issue...

How on earth is this allowed to happen in this day and age? 'Equality' laws are applied to the extreme in most cases, often resulting in ridiculous cases like this, yet once again the god-squad are going to be allowed to openly discriminate against people who don't believe their stupid fairy-stories.

My missus is a teacher, and she cannot get a job in a catholic school (if she wanted one that is). Yep, in the UK, in 2009, a fully state funded organisation can legally say "we are not employing you because you don't believe in the same utter utter nonsense/religion as us". How on earth is this the case?

Arrrggghhh!

Courts defend crims - again

Well, the Ministry of Justice to be precise, but that's not very catchy.

They are refusing to release the names of escaped prisoners.

Yep, that's right, they won't let the public know which convicted criminals are on the run. Normally, these kind of absurd decisions are based on the Human Rights Act, but on this occasion it's the Data Protection Act. The very same DPA that allows the DVLA to flog your details to anyone with the cash. The very same DPA that allows ISP to monitor every packet of internet traffic on millions of people's broadband connections. (and let BT carry out a covert trial without telling ANYONE)

But I digress... What 'Data' needs protecting? We're not asking for bank details and copies of birth certificates. Even the police - hardly an organisation known or their public-spiritedness - sometimes give out the names of wanted people. So why do those in power go to such great lengths to protect the least deserving, whilst riding roughshod over the rest of us? What exactly do the MoJ hope to gain from this and other stupid policies?

The utter, utter contempt that such authorities hold the public in is just staggering. And it's us that pay their bloody wages too.....

A big well-done to the police.

This story's got everything! Lezzas, car crashes, domestic violence, PSD complaints, fraud, and er, donuts.

Normal service will be resumed shortly...

Great Britain - Champions of Europe!

At violent crime that is.

This is down to two things:

1) Complete apathy on the part of the police when it comes to dangerous criminals.

2) The near outright refusal of the courts to put these people behind bars, for long enough to give the rest of us a break.

I am not blaming the CJS for causing there to be so many violent, nasty people; quite how we seem to have bred (and imported) so many of them is a different matter. But the reasons above explain why so many aren’t forced to change their ways , ie stop attacking people.

Because of the first point, thugs know they can attack strangers with very, very little chance of getting caught. They are also encouraged by the police’s famed tactic of heavily pursuing victims who attempt to defend themselves, often instead of going after the attacker. The reasons for this are simple: The police know that many people (although now ever decreasing) still see the police as being on their side, and as a result of this will be completely honest with the police, thus implicating themselves to what ever crime plod wants to stick on. For example a decent bloke who is violently attacked but manages to defend himself, who then reports the matter to the police will be asked to say what happened,

Decent bloke “he jumped me from behind and punched me in the back of the head, then tried to steal my mobile”

Plod “Oh yeah, what did you do?”

DB “I managed to land a good punch on his nose, then he ran off”

Plod (with detection signs in his/her eyes) “You are under arrest for ABH etc etc etc”

As more and more people are treated like this by the police, more and more won’t report attacks as they fear being criminalised themselves.

The thugs know this. They know that an ever growing proportion of people will not report the matter to the police, or will not attempt to fight back.

Cases like this also involve an amount of work, which is why desk sergeants and call handlers do all they can to discourage victims reporting them. The top reason for plod’s aversion to dealing with such crimes is that they take time and may not result in desired detections. Why waste time locking muggers up, when you can dish out PNDs for SMS-based rows in minutes; the result is the same – a detection!

The fact that one career scrounger in a free council house getting PNDed is of no benefit to society whereas a violent thief being arrested clearly is, is of no importance whatsoever in modern policing. As far as the police are concerned, 10 nonsense detections for nonsense crimes are far far FAR better than one for a real crime, with real victims.

A detection is a detection is a detection.

All that said, I can sort of see why the majority of officers take that approach; because when they do actually put someone before a court, well, nothing happens.

Point 2) to follow….

Heatwave warning! (police) dogs die in hot cars!

This is absolutely bloody awful.

I've got a lot of respect for police dogs, they do a good job in difficult circumstances, and the vast majority are hard working and decent. So for two of them do die an agonising death of heat-stroke and dehydration is pretty grim.

I'm not even going to use this as an opportunity to slag off the police, but I hope the officer(s) involved are done for animal cruelty.

As an asside, legal minds, what would the courts dole out if the police brought them someone they'd arrested for smashing a car window to allow a dying dog to get some air? What about if it was a baby left inside a car?

Stay cool.