Antisocial Neighbours And House Prices

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2111907/Homeowner-sues-couple-sold-house-lying-Asbo-neighbour-hell.html

One can only sympathise with anyone who finds they have moved in next door to an antisocial idiot, or like us in the past had such a family moved in.  That the criminal law is ineffective is obvious.  ASBOs and the like only work on people like us who don’t need them issued.  The law needs radical change.  One hopes this case succeeds but it’s doubtful any compensation can really account for the damage done.

The scary issue is that we do seem capable to moving people who have a political point to make away from their protest sites, but can’t do much, if anything, about people causing distress through violence, intimidation and noise where it really hurts others in their homes and neighbourhoods.

Anyone caught up in such circumstances may as well just move.  Even this is made more difficult as one is expected to declare the problem before selling.This will probably make your property unsaleable.  One of the reasons we buy houses is to be away from the shits.  You may, strangely enough, be better off in council property, weird as this seems.

If you watch neighbours-from-hell television, notice how much evidence the victims often have and the constant replication of counter claims by the perpetrators.  My guess is most victims need solutions on the spot from cops able to confiscate ghetto blasters and the rest, and able to get everyone in court for meaningful binding over and directions from the court on what will happen on breach.  We have to bite the bullet and make it illegal to do anything in your home that infringes the peace of neighbours criminally illegal.

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Sgt.Mark Andrews

Just a quickie – a solicitor incident has made me too angry to write and has in any case diverted my attention.

I didn’t like what Mark Andrews did and can be seen doing on CCTV.  What really upsets me is the way  what was a minor incident became such a big problem and waste of money.  I worked with and through people like Andrews when I was a cop and we all “benefit” from hairy-arsed coppers.  Working with him and present at the time I would have stopped what he was doing whether below or above him in rank.  It was wrong and, in my view criminal.

With this view one might expect that I support his arrest and conviction.  I don’t.  That he was convicted and then this was quashed by “Judge Roy Bean” seems to me to demonstrate just how ridiculous and unfair our CJS has become.  The arrest and treatment of the woman concerned seems equally absurd.

It’s too easy in cases like this to get into arguments like ‘one rule for us, another for the police’.  The truth is we are getting all sorts of stuff out of proportion.  Gadget’s ‘argument’ that you have to know about dealing with drunks and so on doesn’t hold either, but is part of a valid, wider set of considerations.  What we need in situations like this is a discipline and supervisory system that works and what’s exposed here is that there isn’t one, even when police officers initiate a complaint.

Whilst I don’t condone Andrew’s behaviour I also know the dangers of working with officers who won’t get stuck in.  The current system is encouraging them not to.  It needs radical reform.  The answer, and only in part, is to have civil tribunals we can trust to bring such matters to light and deal with them through discipline under public scrutiny and in ‘real time’ (i.e. ‘quick’).

We should be looking for ways to stop police custody incidents through night courts and other measures to bring speedy resolution.  I’m fairly sure I would work with Andrews and would see his treatment as unfair if I did (unless this is his general form).  This doesn’t make me feel the woman’s treatment was remotely decent.  And how did Andrew’s come to feel he could get away with it in front of other officers?  And how did they come to believe they didn’t have a duty to stop him at the time (in my view a general duty of decency towards the woman and towards a colleague ‘off on one’)?  I believe what we might call “Gadget immorality” played a role in that.

Without enough detail I’d guess Andrews has been the scapegoat in a system that has lost all sense of proportion.

 

Casey Brittle Case And Hapless Policing

The IPCC has produced a mildly critical report on the death of Casey Brittle at the hands of her dangerous ex-boyfriend.  The guy was clearly a total shit and not fit to be on our streets.  One wonders how many more like him there are and why our CJS can’t deal with them.  I am not aware of any case studies of successful police and legal action in dealing with this kind of scum.  One would expect such material to be collated and in use in training.

The IPCC report is tiresome and lacks any self-criticism, or criticism of the system-level. The cops put up for minor disciplinaries are all constables or sergeants – this despite the Nottinghamshire force having form for such failure and having no domestic violence policy in force for more than a year.  In defence of the IPCC, one can say there remit is woefully inadequate, but they’ve been around long enough to protest this and get it changed and have, instead, been led by inadequates drawing massive salaries who couldn’t say boo to a goose.

The report gives us no idea how rife (or otherwise) the problem is.  My own experience indicates the problems are extensive and policing of them hapless.  The issues are not merely policing ones – our CJS (indeed wider legal system) is not fit for purpose. Resources are committed to clown libel cases or interest only to the rich and the feeble-minded who gawp at such stuff through the ‘mejar’ (a far more appropriate term than media, suggesting narcissistic voyeurism).

The systemic failures are not correctly pinned on Response officers, dud as these often are in effect.  My guess (fairly reasonably informed) is that this case is the tip on an iceberg.  I believe the actual problem is that we don’t equip our cops with the tools to do the job and actually skill the incompetence they and other agencies demonstrate,  The IPCC make several references to forms not being submitted to a domestic violence unit working 9 to 5 (well almost).  Piss-poor bureaucratic solutions will only lead to clown form-filling that will only help in cover-up.

What’s needed is a system that drags these bastards in front of a court straight away, much as the night courts rustled up to deal with the recent rioters.  Police officers are being asked to deal with questions they can’t answer and which it would be wrong to give them personal power to deal with.  Sure there were officers who ‘dealt’ with these incidents on “area search no trace” form – but this is the ‘record’ of most Response policing (including mine 30years ago).  No solution that doesn’t recognise the mostly young, inexperienced and wet-behind-the-ears Response cops (some remaining this way for 20 years) aren’t Solomons will work.  They need somewhere to ‘bag-off’ these problems and this place should be ‘judicial’ and the bastards (and some innocent parties) need to be taken there, and directions given for proper investigation under which all parties are made aware of consequences, and resources allocated.

There are glaring faults in the policing in this case, yet we keep coming back to the same old story, most of which is cover-up with each case dealt with as though it is separate from the actual and much wider problem.  This problem is that our justice system is run by the rich for the rich and is too slow to have much deterrent effect amongst the repeat offending scum whose presence dominates the CJS and policing.

Much policing actually works on the basis of keeping people out of court because this costs so much money.  I think it’s time to reverse this and get more of these problems into a courtroom as they arise, with courts issuing injunctions with powers of arrest as soon as possible with the effect of a binding over and directed police and other agency investigation.  This would bring about ‘partnership working’ far more directly than current pontification about it.

We should be looking to improve police work, but as with 50% of our kids who can’t benefit from education designed for the intelligent, we can’t keep on pretending we can make cops just out of training school into Solomons capable of solutions none of us could manage and they are expected to deal with because white collar people and all kinds of stuffed shirts want their weekends free for ‘golf’ or fear they would turn to dust if forced to venture into the 24/7/365.

In terms of resources, I think we could design out the CPS, the need for the judicial element to consist of expensive lawyers, use this element instead of elected police commissioners and remove many senior police ranks, the IPCC and look to further savings by a less adversarial CJS and reliance on dated concepts in evidence such as ‘credibility’ and in some cases ‘proof’ through a more discursive yet binding approach.

One thing clear in the IPCC report is the absence of senior officers (amazing given the lack of a domestic violence policy for 18 months) giving advice or being available to give any.  Several should be sacked and the disciplinary record of the poor sods trying to actually do the job, however badly, expunged.

I believe our cops are much worse than our general public image of them – they are much more unpopular amongst people with recent experience of problems needing police support.  That a statement like this is so often received as criticism of all officers is also a statement of the paranoid-schizoid position cops take too easily.  Police always make out their job is very difficult, but rather than using this as an excuse, we should be looking for the reasons why the job is so difficult and solutions to it.

Even in proposing immediate referral of many street issues to an investigative court, I’m aware that the worst court in Britain is the Family Court and this is stacked out with professional advice.  This court is so bad it keeps its proceedings secret.  We need something quick with follow-through, using mediation with enforceable arbitration.

National Service and a New National Language

The BBM Bruni handgun found at the scene of Mark Duggan’s shooting is probably one of the starting pistols that could be legally held until June 2010.  It was classified as a prohibited weapon because it could be easily machined to fire live rounds.  There was a police amnesty on these weapons and many were handed in.  Some converted weapons turned up in criminal activity.

A week after the shooting we know very little except that two shots were fired by police, both hitting Mr.Duggan, one killing him and one probably the one that lodged in an officer’s radio.  The IPCC are out appealing for witnesses and have presumably, belatedly, interviewed the minicab driver.  There seems some suggestion police initially gave the IPCC the impression there was an exchange of fire.  A bullet was ‘up the spout’ in the Bruni.

In the meantime Mr. Duggan has been described as a ganster, the impression given that police were involved in an ‘exchange of fire’ and officers not culpable.  The issue isn’t really whether the officers involved acted appropriately – though this is obviously important to Mr. Duggan’s family.

The wider problem concerns press reporting, the nature of investigations into police and investigations generally and what and when we should be told about the enquiries, particularly as our courts take a view on this and a case may be influenced (should it in modern times?)

We have seen riots over English cities, ‘sparked’ in some unknown extent by the people who marched on Tottenham police station, feeling close family had not been told enough, treated properly and through feelings of injustice.  I can remember similar in Manchester 30 years ago – though although there was a disorder, there was no looting.  The accused in this instance did not deserve the ‘support’ and was a cheap hood.  A Test against Australia was also cancelled by people supporting George Davis spoiling the pitch – he was later caught on camera in a bank raid.

Britain is supposed to be a free society and we should protest injustice where official channels fail us.  I don’t know what our rioters were ‘inspired’ by and suspect they don’t know.  Most of them were obviously too thick for much considered decision making.  My own contention is that economics has failed and the social contract is broken.  I doubt this can be addressed by ‘new systems’, other than on press reporting and a change in law on contempt and what is thought to influence a fair trial.  There is a clear need for better notions of openness here and to drop the idea that courtroom space needs protecting from ‘undue influence’ as though people must only be influenced by what they witness in it.  That is psychological and practical fairyland these days.  We need scrutiny of police and IPCC investigations and CPS decision-making.  There is a lot unhealthy in this area and no sign the organisations themselves remotely understand.  British notions of authority are still medieval and those of objectivity based on Victorian notions of journalism.  We have Supreme Court judges who confuse objectivity with outward control of emotion.

The fix for me in terms of general society (Not possible without reframing economics) is the establishment of a 2 million strong modern National Service (not necessarily military but certainly using skills in our armed forces) combined with school-leaving at 14 for half our kids into disciplined work and training.  Later, I would halve university places and change 16 plus education to work and training.  Politically, we need to understand the rich have stolen the money to do this, even if this is a form of ‘institutionalized stealing’.  This is obvious from GDP figures since 1979.  Governments are in of this racket because of the role of banks they privilege in raising government borrowing.  There is no need for any ludicrous ‘Soviet’ – indeed the rich have now accumulated more wealth and power than any centralised government dreamed.

What links the Duggan shooting and the state of our nopolitics society is the mass lack of willingness to insist on truth as an automatic feature of our world.  The crowd that gathered in Tottenham were not satisfied by the police-IPCC response, and it’s clear now that claims we are increasing education standards hapless lies.  “Democracy” no longer relies on argument, but reaction at unconscious levels  that actors dig into in audiences.  No one has ‘facts’ and this is not because of any intellectual relativism.  It’s programmed in through useless education that is never about the real world.

On Duggan it should be automatic to explain what the investigation will be and what is being found. in reasonable time.  The law should be changed and clarified to encourage this – to make it second-nature instead of the current disdain of the public and that one somehow should keep them in the dark.  Disclosure and data protection should be straight-forward parts of ordinary jobs and not involve anyone with the words in a job title.

We always get the inappropriate disclosure as in the ‘blue-rinse fairy’ story or Duggan the gangster.  This is world-wide in police cases.  Some of it comes from police, the majority is just hapless reporting to our own indolence and voyeurism.  After the Tomlinson case we have reasons to worry about police investigations or matter involving themselves and CPS decision making. The IPCC did a good job later, after their idiot then leader proved himself so out of touch he didn’t expect CCTV coverage in the middle of London.  Quite why the Duggan family could not be assured we don’t know, but we do know most victims who complain to the IPCC feel angry.  One ‘trick’ all the authorities use is to make anyone complaining into a malevolent complainer.  This, as the police action lawyers group found, is in their very language.

But if we have police figures getting what truth can be told wrong, our politicians no longer speak anything except ‘Orwell’.  They can get away with this because our education system doesn’t even teach anyone to listen.  In the Duggan case forensics have already demonstrated two police bullets were fired and that the other gun found probably wasn’t.  They will be looking for fingerprints and DNA to link the gun to someone, Duggan or not.  Witness statements will be taken.  The job will be done.  I’m concerned on the treatment of non-police evidence and that police will be allowed to collude of theirs.  This matter could be fixed with modern notions of evidence and should be.  Even forensic evidence needs to be on a better footing.  We are not good at responding to basic problems like this.

The Government is insisting police numbers can be cut whilst focusing more officers on the street.  They don’t talk to us about the full picture.  The riots are plain criminality – yet really this isn’t the case, sickening as they were.  Millibore is saying we need a culture of responsibility across our society, which is right – but how?  We shouldn’t be canning 16,000 police officers – right – but how do we afford not doing it?  The ‘Orwell’ is appalling – no consideration of the problem and fixes for it is made clear.  Animal language is turning out to be more complex than we realised – but these people may as well be grunting or seducing.  Whist we have problems at levels like police investigation and through the justice system, they are small beer in comparison with public dialogue.

While we blame parents, schools, police, vile bureaucrats or evil poor the very talk takes place in an economic system that is barking mad and colours everything we say.  We can suggest role models, child care, more police – whatever and none of this gets to grips with the tragedy or the bullshit means politicians and media have been using to hide it.  We have been so feeble we haven’t been able to stop people running about in hoodies and masked faces.  We will hear over and over that the financial position is this and there is nothing we can do about it.  Cameron re-writes the Riot Act – clearly only a ‘solution’ in terms of hiding the problem and making people victimised like me think the real offense these rioters committed was to bring their estate routines to view.

We could clearly invest in a modern National Service by asking our rich to fund it for 5 years.  They have enough money.  But we don’t like direct language like this.  We speak ‘Orwell’ which contains indefinable terms like ‘responsibility’, probably thought to be something the right kind of individual has as a virtue.  Political language is always escapable, much as Popper said of pseudo-sciences like Marxism and Freudian terminology.  Our “responsible” rich have put it about that they will leave with all “their” money if we ask them for anything.  In ‘Orwell’ this position is already defended by wider language – that we all work hard for our wealth, ‘self-made men’ and the rest.  Through this kind of guff one emerges to the economic model of ‘trickle down’, itself guarded by the lexicon of entrepreneurial innovation – indeed one oceanic language-game after another which one cannot prove.  One can make arguments against it all – but this flies in the face of something we’ve known about argument since the Greeks – one can argue well for all kinds of positions equally well.

We need a new National Language.  I once thought science was it, but teaching made me realise very few can understand what counts as evidence., let alone the maths and logic and all this relates to creative speculation.  What we get in ‘Orwell’ is blather by people being paid to blather, as though hearing this somehow allows balance.  I don’t believe any of this is any more than a cover to prevent the real accounts being seen.  None of us could ‘read’ the RBS balance sheet before it collapsed, but then most of wouldn’t know governments do false accounting on a regular basis either.  The ‘noble cause’ was once not to let gold leave the country.  False accounting is a long story – the mistake we always make is believing integrity ever works at all other than to stop us seeing the real books.

Our people should be revolting rather than the strange crew looting.  The message seems to get through to the least educated.  Education has taught us not to look for what is wrong.  I suspect technology and engineering are the main reasons for our current productive abilities, not economics.  And that thieving banksters have the real responsibility for the riots.  We will pretend otherwise with harsh sentences and the imposition of yet more secret policing.  We are as thick as mud.

London Riots Bring Out The Old Fascist Mentality

There should have been a curfew in London and across England last night.  There is no excuse for the kind of violence we have seen.

I would like to believe the violence is a political reaction to quite hapless, greedy-rich “government” – but it isn’t in any direct manner.  This is nopolitics Britain.

The facts are pretty clear – most of the trouble is being done by those labeled ‘mindless, criminal and violent’.  It’s doubtful this is all these people are, though the behaviour is that of scum.  Cops clearly could not cope with the outbreak of this mindless, criminal, violent group – which rather suggests they are not normally this, leaving open the question of what the tilting point was.  Many of us have suffered because the police don’t take the goings on of these bastards seriously enough and write matters down as antisocial behavior.

Police clearly failed to control anything much and Gadget is claiming officers were talking about the Tomlinson case as an excuse, fearing they would ‘become Harwood’ if they got stuck in.  If this is true our officers have sunk to a new low.  Mr. Tomlinson was subject to an unnecessary attack by a clod (Harwood) in front of other officers who should have stopped him.  If police really see the Tomlinson incident in this light (most police blogs don’t) they need disabusing and re-training or replacement.  I don’t believe it, though just as the scum out on our streets are a minority, there is no doubt a scum minority in the police who have the fascist mentality on brutality.

We don’t yet know who Mr. Duggan was, but it is now emerging he was shot twice and not involved in any exchange of fire with police.  There is lots about in the press about Mr. Duggan – my reading left me with the impression he was a hood.  This kind of information always seems to get out well ahead of facts, and often turns out to be wrong.  This has been subject of considerable academic scrutiny, and it’s accepted that police get the ‘misinformation in first’ – the Rodney King beating is the classic example.

I know how difficult armed duty is (and even worse what unarmed duty feels like when you expect the opposition to be armed – the trauma lingers) and I also know the public has little clue.  Instead of the cosy dinners with media bosses and misinformation tactics there should be better education of what being armed means and what police have to deal with – combined with honesty about incidents (this latter point requires change in the legal system).  There is no reason interim statements could not be made quickly and not just of the form ‘we can’t say anything because there may be a court case – no reason, but there is law which is out of date.

There is no ideology behind the riots (unless a sect has found ways to influence and/or take advantage the ‘mindlessness’ – some of the fires are suspicious in this respect).  But this doesn’t mean some tragedy in our society is not responsible.  Most of the lackwits I’ve seen couldn’t get out of bed without being led by the nose.

If I get a message that a few mates are meeting for a few pints I’ll probably go.  I am not going to be moved by ‘let’s go looting’.  So why are any of these kids?  Mind is at work, even some kind of collective mind and we need to know its content.

My guess is that there is no longer moral authority in this country.  Most of the people who have expressed this to me have been living or working abroad.  The basic revulsion of the ex-pat is often yobbery and nothing being done about it.  The collapse of proper legal action – most of this being said to me in countries with dictatorship!

I despise what the culture of my own country has become – yet in Germany I hear the same thing.  There the comment is often ‘the country is flooded with foreigners’.  Germany treats its own non-academic youth much better than we do, as do other northern European countries.  The blight of non-onomics is there too, but better controlled.

Other countries around the world control the kind of ‘mentality’ that may be behind our riots through dictatorship and arrest and imprisonment more or less at will – with more or less unaccountable police.  Go go go the Gadget battalions?  I don’t think so.

We are not hearing a beep in our media about the economic conditions other than ‘youth clubs being closed’.  Factors from hardly any white taxi drivers through to the thieving rich probably play a part.  Police have been shown to be outnumbered, outclassed tactically and other jumble by these ‘mindless criminals’.  Even the cops in Miss Marple were smarter than that!  Of course, none of this rot is true – it’s argument from my dog can drive to the moon is blue cheese.

Now Channel 4 has a completely different story on Mark Duggan than first issued.  Only two shots were fired and both hit Duggan.  The Incompetent Poodles of Constabulary Corruption (IPCC) are just getting round to interviewing the taxi driver involved!  FFS!

No one was able to anticipate the scale of criminality last night – why not?  Last night followed a previous night of large scale rioting.  A no brainer!

Channel 4 finally ask a black lad in Grand Theft Auto garb and he says the problem is with police not liking black people, Asian people and they don’t even like their own people.  Why are we not hearing more from such sources – he may well be wrong, but didn’t sound ‘mindless’.  He had a rather clear view.  As did the guy ‘harassing’ Boris telling the reporter he didn’t need to comment because we all know about wages taxed to death and mortgage payments hard to make (think of Gadget refusing to tell the truth openly because she’d lose her mortgage-paying abilities).

Cops should be out with the Army tonight and there should be a tough crack down.  But not on sick old guys Gadget, while other cops look on.  That view is clown fascism and the start of the slippery slope to exactly the kind of ‘law and order’ of the police state.  Our cops are fortunately better than this, despite your agitation.  Frankly, it’s a mind-state as stupid as that of the rioters.  This stupidity is a result of “ejukation” so dim most of our population can’t ‘read’ GDP figures and balance sheets that show untold wealth in so few hands but probably sense the chronic unfairness and the fact we have no democracy to cope with putting it right.  We only have the fascist propaganda that it’s about meritocracy (debunked 40 years ago) and scumbags who won’t work and immigrants stealing our jobs (which is a problem for poor people and known to be).

We have lost compassion and our economists, politicians and vile rich are doing nothing to make markets honest and work to provide reasonably shares in wealth.  I have no problem with tougher policing to give us breathing space to do something effective about this.  At the moment, the only people who seem prepared to take action are ‘mindless, teen criminals’ – which says something about the rest of us.  I’m leaving – and it’s not the teen-thugs behind my reasoning – it’s the rest of us – spineless and mean, prepared to cling to clown propaganda when the evidence is clear.

There is no moral authority in this country.  It’s ripe to the point of something rotten in the State of Denmark.  The thieving going on in financial services, the suppression of jobs and wages (plus immigration to poor sectors) and funding of a special economy for the rich and a legal system accessible only to rich interests are the reasons for the riots – even if the daft sods doing it think they are playing Grand Theft Auto.

Typical academic consideration of police lying

Police lying is not best described as a "dirty little secret."' For
instance, police lying is no "dirtier" than the prosecutor's encouragement
or conscious use of tailored testimony2 or knowing suppression of Brady
material;3 it is no more hypocritical than the wink and nod of judges who
regularly pass on incredible police testimony4 and no more insincere than
the demagogic politicians who decry criminality in our communities, but
will not legislate independent monitoring of police wrongd~ing.~
Police lying is no "little secret" either.6 Juries, particularly in our
urban criminal courts, are thoroughly capable of discounting police
testimony as unbelievable, unreliable, and even .mendacious.' Judges,
prosecutors and defense attorneys report that police perjury is commonplace,'
and even police officers themselves concede that lying is a regular
feature of the life of a cop.g Scandals involving police misconduct-
brutality, corruption, criminality-are regularly featured in the daily
nei~spapers,'a~n d periodic investigation reports and blue-ribbon commis-
sions come up with the same conclusions: police scandals are cyclical;
official misconduct, corruption, brutality, and criminality are endemic; and
necessarily, so is police lying to disguise and deny it."
there has been a fierce
controversy on how the procedural requirements placed on police conduct
encourage police lying and duplicity in order to tailor the facts to these
legal requisites.I5 Specifically, scholars, judges, pundits, and law
enforcement professionals argue back and forth on whether or not the
exclusion of illegally obtained evidence actually deters police misconduct,
or rather encourages police perjury and "scamming," while rewarding
undeserving criminal offenders.16
Proving the Lie:
Litigating Police Credibility
David N. Dorfman*
Pace University
DigitalCommons@Pace

I take the view that police lying and the kind of stuff going on in the hacking scandal give us the paradigm case of much going wrong across society.  In this article, if you read long enough in the opening above, you can see part of the concern is that the apparatus of rules of evidence encourage lying.  This is not an attack on cops and it does not become one in the 50 or so pages that follow.

Our legal system has long relied on fictions like ‘witness credibility’ and our business system.  Journals on business ethics carry similar papers on the dirty world of commerce and banking.  For that matter, none of us in the UK or US know why our soldiers died and are dying and why we’ve been killing people in wars we don’t understand.  There are questions about our institutions, education, media and the state of public knowledge and how it is influenced we should be asking.  The repeated problem might be described as the ‘back-fire of ignorance’ – what should be dialogue turned to adversarial debate.  How can an MP, after the expenses scandal, be fit to ask a former Met detective about cover-up and corruption when they all so singularly failed with their own – a matter that only came out by whistle-blower leak for money to the press?

Scandal blows away – otherwise how could Keith Vaz be chairing a committee on, essentially, corruption (as Dickiebo despairs if you need reminding)?  There’s a better way to be doing this kind of thing.  It isn’t academic debate, though should be much better informed by this – a difficult matter as most people don’t read and are very set in their ways.  We still do public debate through Idols Francis Bacon outlined more than 400 years ago.

We have the technology (a combination of IT and ideas) to change.  History always throws up ‘cheating’.  Central banks all cheated the gold standard when it was being used, practising “sterilization” to prevent gold entering the money supply – a direct contravention of the rules.  They had ‘noble cause’ excuses just like the Met.  The ‘Innocent Project’ has thrown up at least 50 cases where DNA proves innocence and yet the defendants confessed (these are people without low IQ or mental problems).

My own belief is we are scared of transparency, partly because all our cupboards hide skeletons.  When the ‘red witch’ placed at the heart of the hacking scandal admitted she knew her organisation had paid police officers, this was seen as a blunder and admission of ‘criminality’.  This is not the right approach and seems to be putting people we want to tell the truth in the same position as the police officer having to ‘game’ in the legal system.

Our own IPCC (four words all made lies by the first?) privilege what police present in a manner that can only suggest they are ignorant of academic material – and they are well-populated with graduates (this is not contradictory to me as I mark graduate submissions and find little critical ability or evidence of reading).  For all the blather about not wanting a blame culture, they (and the rest of us as public) remain clueless about what one is.

If we didn’t live in such a medieval society, I’d be a rational optimist.

Fair Shares

Huge numbers of people don’t do their fair share.  I’m constantly amazed anyone thinks they do.  We have some squalid evil poor families that cost, say, 250K a year by the time you take their benefits, legal aid, social workers, housing and various crime and vandalism costs into account.  We have footballers, bwankers and all many of worthies in charge of letting kids die and so on costing as much.  Claims from left and right are that such is ‘justified’.

We need something new.  The idiot right wants us all working as serfs for a ‘globally competitive wage’ (i.e. we all drop to Chinese levels) – serdom.  Idiot Sino-formerSoviet notions actually produced that.  But wages have been in real decline in the west for 30 years as productivity has markedly increased.  The bread of circuses of all shades of our government have been bought through debt.  There is no example without this once you include public and private debt.  The rich have been taking a vastly bigger slice.  I’d argue there is a Politburo in the West – unable to establish itself in government, it has merely used other means..

 

There’s no point in bleating on work ethic in any of this – the term may as well mean a bad pass from Rooney on the field or to an ageing prostitute.  There are no fair shares.  We can’t have them because the morality is not in our own hands.  We need something radical and are too scared of the responsibility.

More Dopey Dope On Drugs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/02/drugs-drugspolicy

The way we go about trying to deal with the problems that surround illegal drug use is pathetic, stuck in moral attitudes from a time when we peddled the stuff abroad whilst issuing prohibition here.   I can see no problem with drug-taking of any kind that doesn’t breach the peace or inflict costs on others beyond give and take.

I believe the moral approbation current practice in the UK relies on on drugs and sex needs to be swept away.  This would be to clear the way for much better control of health and peace in our communities without criminalisation.  I also believe we need sweeping changes in our legal system and that these issues could be the test ground for producing a new system more clearly linked to a fairer system based much more directly on public dialogue.

The squalid depravity of drink, drugs and the sex trade need to be exposed, as well as gross unfairness that lumps someone taking cannabis to ease pain with some scrote blaring out music, acting as a neighbourhood fence (for anything from stolen jeans to under-age sex) and ruining lives around him/her.  Just changing possession laws is not the answer, and could lead to even more difficulty dealing with associated problems.

I’d go for key changes in administrative law, including the tracking of criminal profits to prevent vice turning to rackets.  The Dutch have taken very significant steps, but have not got it all right.  I certainly prefer coffee shops on Main Street to shebeens on estates.  Pubs and clubs might just be places to allow supply and use.

Politicians totally fail us in this area.  We need the debate and decisions out of their barking interests and in our hands.  This would be a great area to try our new techniques of public dialogue and referendum.

Human Rights My Arse in Burton’s Window

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392349/Paedophile-illegal-immigrant-finally-thrown-Britain-claiming-deportation-breach-HIS-human-rights.html is the story of a massive waste of money on a Pakistani paedophile, finally deported.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392273/Burglar-freed-human-rights-look-children-history-violence.html is about a scrote threatening a headmistress and using the HRA to get out of jail.

The Human Rights Act has been around a long time now.  It’s worse than useless and typical of how lawyers make legislation that merely gives lawyers rights to earn fees.  Most of us can’t use it because we can’t afford it – a typical way real human rights are flouted.  We need our own act in order that this European mush wastes away.

The human rights industry cares little for individuals in the normal run of their lives.  We need such protection against monsters foisted in our midst who would be run out of town on a rail if it weren’t for the law.

We are soon going to find that criminals, many of whom ‘hide’ revolting crimes in drugs, prostitution and violence behind ‘family life’, supported by poor police and local authority attitudes and welfare, can rest easier and victims have even more to fear from ‘due process’.

I’m not sure where the ritual involving Burtons came from, but victims may well have to start engaging in it to try and embarrass our clown establishment into action.  This idiot legislation gives nothing to the many, whilst protecting the violators of human rights.

Sharon Shoesmith Not Guilty Shock

So Sharon Shoesmith wasn’t given due process and can now appeal against her unlawful sacking.  ‘Strangely’ she nows looks a lot less like Cruella de V ille after all the stress of being made the fall guy.

Peter Connelly was killed by cruel idiots.  We even have a video of a senior social worker being suckered by the simple psychopath ploys of the mother.  As far as we know, the important questions and learning may or may not have taken place.  Our press is not concerned to make copy.

Balls ballsed-up by not following disciplinary procedures, a common error.  It seems amazing it’s taken the Appeal Court to make this plain, as the law is not complex.  The appeal will be appealed, making me wonder how the business of sacking can be so complicated.

At the moment, we can be sure Sharon has been much better protected in law than Peter Connelly or any poor victim of crime and anti-social monsters.  Quite what the state of our law is when she can bring its weight to bear for her case, yet Mrs. Pilkington was driven to take her own and her daughter’s lives, really beggars belief – let alone shaggers and superinjunctions.  I saw a Supreme Court judge on TV the other night, claiming a shortage of resources in his childhood had turned him to the law – whilst at Rugby School.  More or less says it all.

I suspect the issue we should focus on is not whether Sharon was any better of worse than others doing this kind of job.  I suspect they are all likely not to be much use because our promotion systems and what we make such jobs into.  Not much good is likely to survive.  The focus should be on bringing in something like judicial review on behalf of victims, at the point at which it would matter.  In fact, we rely on people just like Shoesmith to do this, and they routinely fail victims’ interests and support the fatal nexus of professions and politics that feed them.

My guess is she will be paid off in order to keep the ongoing mess under the carpet.  One suspects any poor sod in the middle of such terrors is a voiceless as ever.