Coppers was good tonight (C4), at least showing the drunken mile well. Most of the cops were good, though I don’t think the aggressive one much good in provoking idiots. I preferred the guy whose description of a cold Stella was so good I went looking in the fridge. The Chief Constable of Leicestershire predicted these scenes long ago. I wonder just who has made money from this establishment of booze zones in our town centres, and how many clown politicians used the ‘cafe society’ line against all evidence?
Newsnight was good too; finally some admission this crisis is much worse than being stated and that inflation is the only way out of the debt, pretty much all over. It struck me there is a lot of commonality between the financial markets hiding everything off-balance sheet (and governments) and what has been stacked up in society – crime figures always falling, yet antisocial behaviour rising faster.
Economics has long been split between the basic decision on whether to generate ‘wealth’ by encouraging money to make money, or by making things (including worthwhile services’. Even now, this leads to trusting markets (which I doubt we can) or trusting to more power to national governments (which I’m sure is a disaster). In the Athenian Democracy, Solon got rid of debt by administrative fiat, simply abolishing it after his mates had bought up the land. Our equivalent now is printing money, and probably devaluations. Portugal, Greece and Spain may get cheap again. Deep questions remain as to whether we can work this trick without social upheaval.
In a webcast, the director of Coppers described the drunken mile as infantile, clearly borne out. He also used the word to describe much of the policing he has witnessed making the series – much as Gadget, in that he meant the cops being forced into more and more bureaucratic action by ever changing regulation and management speak – being made infantile through this rather than able to act in discretion and decent common sense. We talk of a benefits culture, but we are, in fact, perpetuating childhood all over.
Around here, the BB gun is in vogue. One of my grandson’s mates is ‘carrying one for protection’. My lad wants one as a kind of follow-on to Black Ops. I don’t think I’m getting through on it being illegal to carry one, or possess one off my property etc. I’ve seen groups of idiots posing like gangsters with them, and they are firing the plastic bullets in the street. On the Internet, you can see videos of clown kids shooting up old windows with machine gun versions. You need to be 18 to get one, but it’s obvious kids are getting them. A twit across the road shot his sister with one a week or so back, and my lad was hit in the mouth by a ricochet yesterday. Wander 100 yards away and I could start pointing to houses where older, criminal clowns could be locked up at will. By then you’re on the Everglades. I’ve seen estates like this for more than 40 years.
I suspect the massive difference over the 40 years is the reduction of manufacturing jobs from 8 million to 3 million. For work discipline to work, it needs to be a discipline of available work sows’ ears can get without being made into silk purses. We need to look at this and don’t.
If I could do ‘Secret Millionaire’, I’d have IG and his people up here anytime to show GMP what to do – but as he makes clear, it’s revolving door stuff – we don’t have a post-arrest system in place worth spit.
We are as far from social answers on crime as we are from economic healing – the two are linked. Even pensioners are becoming more criminal, even in Japan. I despair, yet Germany and Japan rose from literal ashes. As MrG points out there has been a good blame game around for donkeys’ years. We have known the danger of money making money since Aristotle. Some of the creeps our local Bobby hauls off are as old as me, but with the same language and attitudes I can place amongst our worst 13 year-olds, and much the same bullying and violence, upped with adult strength. Much colludes, from street crime to the money markets, against us even describing the truth of what is going on, less ‘confidence’ collapse.
I can’t think of much other than spending more time abroad. It’s not that I don’t think there are solutions. I could go ‘learned’ on them.No money in that, I’ve banged my head against enough walls and it’s time to take my family away. It’s easier to live as an alien outside your own country. Portugal is impossible to do business in, but the fishing is good, crime is low and I’m exchanging my flat for a bungalow after they devalue. Two more years in Broken Britain to go.
Allcoppedout's Blog 
The title says it all but I wonder when/if we will see ‘action’ to stem the rot? I would also be minded to take the option outlined in your last paragraph, if only for the financial ability?
It’s horribly complex. I can say we need something as radical as science to sort it out, but what would that be? I know, having seven WPCs to send out on shift from the Crescent, I would have welcomed Mark Roberts with open arms, whatever I think about the videos. Economics is a contradictory.