Two wrongs don't make a right

It’s remarkable really. The government is to reduce the compensation payments it makes to its victims so that it can increase the compensation payments it makes to other people’s victims.

Doesn’t that strike anyone as a little odd?

Yes, I know, the judiciary is independent of the state but you really don’t want to go through that territory. Down that road lies questions about culpability for believing the judiciary and imprisoning the innocent on their request. Only following orders? Yeah, that’s going to work.

It's hard to work out what the government is trying to achieve here given that the compensation figures are so low. Having said that, if you were a nasty piece of work in a government hell bent on removing the checks and balances that can prevent miscarriages of justice wouldn't you be looking for some pre-emptive way of reducing the impact of your mistakes in the future?

The wanky arm of the law

Astonishing. And to think that I didn't know it was illegal. Just imagine how many thousands upon thousands of other laws I must be in ignorance of.

I blame politics

The law is a fascinating subject made even more so by the simple fact that those who interpret it and in many cases understand it (law lords, judges etc) are not the same people who create it (elected politicians) who in turn are not the same people who enforce it (police) who are generally not the same people who chatter about it and sometimes suffer under it (the public).

The above is a very good reason why the law must be crafted very carefully, enforced equally and fairly and why it is in constant danger of being seen as an ass. Carefully crafted law is beyond the capability of our politicians in many instances and equal and fair enforcement seems, from the perspective of the pubic, sometimes to be beyond the capabilities of the police force.

Ask a man in the street what he thinks about the arrest of a young woman for reading out a list of dead soldiers at a war memorial and what he thinks about a police escort for marchers who call for the beheading of people who insult a religion and you will get a perfectly reasonable answer. Namely, that the law is an ass.

He has no interest in politically motivated demonstration exclusion zones and no interest in the finer points of legislative acts of parliament. All he is interested in is whether things seem fair. Reasonable. Right.

Increasingly they don’t seem to be and there is great danger in that because bad law, seemingly unfair law and seemingly inconsistently enforced law serves only to weaken the respect that people have for the law in general.

Those who are responsible for law in the United Kingdom used to know that, but they seem to have forgotten it somewhere along the line.

Oi, you can't do that to us

This from Ian. A farmer discharged a shotgun during an attempted robbery at his home. The attitude of the criminals as they fled (how often do they flee these days) seems to have been one of incredulity:

"They sped away and had the cheek to say they were going to phone the police."

The criminals in this case have no fear of the police, they are breaking the law in the first place by being on the farm and trying to nick a quad bike, they try to use their car as a weapon and when someone returns fire they feel that the police & the law will be on their side. In this case they may be proved wrong the police have asked the farmer and are happy that he was acting in self-defense and are now looking for the real criminals, but is does show just how well protected the criminals feel in this country.

LA on the radio

David Carr, from the Libertarian Alliance and samizdata.net, puts in a strong performance on the Jeremy Vine Show (mp3) broadcast this morning. His point is that he cannot see why creating extra legislation to protect members of the Emergency services will make any difference to the behaviour of the thugs and vandals who are already breaking the law. Those supporting the new legislation fail to explain their reasoning and fail to make their case.

He can't hear you

Hands up who thinks the blogosphere has been silent on the subject of the police and terrorism. No? No takers? Well it seems that Sir Ian Blair, top cop in the met, needs to broaden his horizons:

Making his first public comments since the government's failed bid to extend the time terror suspects could be held without charge to 90 days, Sir Ian voiced "frustration" at the public "silence" on what it wanted the police to do.

Of course we don't actually know what he means by 'public' as he hasn't made that clear. Indeed it is hard to know what kind of public forum would satisfy his concerns. A phone in? A government appointed focus group? A referrendum? A tally of all letters sent by the public to their MPs? A visit to the local pub?

The Guardian elaborates:

In his lecture, Sir Ian is expected to say policing is hampered by the fact that there is little dispassionate, thought-through public examination of just what it is we are here to do in the 21st century - to fight crime or to fight its causes, to help build stronger communities or to undertake zero tolerance." Britain needs to articulate what kind of police it wants. "The silence can no longer continue."

...

"My central thesis is that the the British people need to decide what mechanisms they need to work out what kind of police force this should be, otherwise it will drift into doing it on its own, and that's not right."

Actually it all sounds eminently reasonable.

Labour party activists

Before The Englishman said Read that last sentence again I already had. An astonishing use of important policemen by the government to lobby democratically elected MPs.

Blair doesn't seem to understand the relationship between the state, the police and the public. Using the police in government politics is habit forming and dangerous as is the expectation of the police to be used in this way. It gradually alters their view of their position in our society. Who is doing the slapping down these days?

The House of Commons yesterday perhaps but that is a single knot on an extremely greasy rope.

I've been looking forward to the film release of V for Vendetta but I fear the longer it takes to come out the closer it will resemble a documentary.

Bah! Giles notes that the film has been delayed.

A tool of compliance

I was listening to a very interesting news item today on Radio 5 Live. The subject matter was some kind of suggestion that tasers should be made available for wider use within the police forces in Britain rather than being limited to use by qualified firearms officers as an alternative to lethal hardware.

As part of this programme they played an audio snippet from an altercation within the United States where a police officer had stopped a female motorist for an unspecified reason and demanded that she terminated a telephone call that she was having. She refused. The officer asked her a number of times to end the call and each time she refused. At some point the officer started stating that if she did not end the call he would taser her. She continued to refuse and he continued to threaten the use of the taser. The audio ended in a number of long screams from the woman as the officer fired his taser and deliberately delivered a number of shocks to her. It was a shocking piece; the woman was clearly in a great deal of protracted pain.

This has been seen as mission creep where an alterative method to lethal force has been used (on a number of occasions apparently) by the police for situations where lethal force should and would (hopefully) never be used.

The term banded around during the broadcast, and I think it’s an excellent and accurate term, is that tasers are increasingly being used as tools of compliance.

This was the argument that was put forward by an interviewee who was against the wider issuing and use of tasers by the police within Britain. It was a compelling piece and a compelling argument. Let us not forget that tasers have two reasons for their application. Firstly to incapacitate an individual and secondly to cause an individual pain. It should never be used simply for the later but, as is apparently happening in the United States, its application as a method for delivering pain is a compelling and attractive property of the device for some officers.

One man's security light is another man's limelight

It's a sorry tale:

We don't need more laws. We don't need new initiatives. We don't need more statistics. We don't need more police powers. We need our police off their arses and out on the streets. We need police who understand who they REALLY work for. We need the laws we have always had rigorously enforced, and all "binge legislating" (as Andrew Marr tellingly described it) of recent years ignored until public order has been restored.

Photographing the police

Here's a story about the lengths that some police officers are prepared to go to when a photographer witnesses them practicing various Vulcan death grips.

Violent crime up 6%, but don't worry

The Home Office said the figures for violence reflected better recording of crime and more proactive policing.

What, again?

Youth seeks girlfriend, love

Gareth points out that English Blogs seems to have been hacked. The message left on the front page indicates a certain xenophobic mind set ("f*ck english") which, frankly, harks back to the bad old days of the school playground where anyone with an unusual skin tone would likely be subject at some point to similar verbage.

In this progressive age it seems that someone has been left behind.

When the tools are available

...they often have many uses:

The fuzz have taken down all the particulars – and are probably, even now putting out an A.P.B. on the slap-headed desperado…..

Whoa! There's more:

"Whoa there Tiger", I replied. A standard ‘sorry you were offended, but the phrase was taken out of context’ letter simply would not do. Cable made an outrageous comment – and I require satisfaction. If this were 18th century France, I would be dressed in a frilly shirt, with my faithful Second at my side and tooled up with a pair of duelling pistols demanding satisfaction from that snivelling wretch of a LibDem..

Blogopheric Amber Alert

Any US readers out there with a blog please help spread the word about Jordan.

I guess it will also help if all blogs, regardless of location, help to spread this.

Good luck to you and yours Kim.

Via Scott.

Parliament Square Police Summonses

From the Countryside Alliance:

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has now summonsed three further Metropolitan Police Service officers as a result of the Parliament Square inquiry, making a total of five officers to date to receive a summons.

The IPCC is using its own investigators to inquire into complaints made against officers policing Parliament Square last September, during the final stages of the bill to ban hunting with dogs.

A total of 31 Metropolitan Police Officers have been served with notices advising them that they are subject to a disciplinary investigation, 15 of these have now been withdrawn. To date, 17 files have been submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, five officers have received summons, four are awaiting further advice and the remainder have been returned to the IPCC marked no further action. The IPCC has submitted four files to the MPS for consideration of disciplinary action.

I wonder if any of this extra activity has been prompted by the fact that the IPCC has finally managed to get access to information previously withheld by the Guardian Media Group.

My CCTV did exactly the same thing!

It’s really annoying you know. I recently installed a few CCTV cameras at the front of the mansion to record anyone coming to the front door. I then hired a small team of maintenance workers to ensure that the cameras remained in working order and I also got a management team to draw up a best practice document and a suitable maintenance schedule. These cameras were cleaned, checked, reviewed, pampered and oiled for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and all I got were a few tapes of passing cats and dogs. Then someone put a brick though my window and that’s exactly when the equipment decided to fail. The tapes were blank. BLANK!! Sometimes I don’t know why I bother.

Oh no. Here we go around the unhappy circle of virtue again

Social services spokesman says:

"We need wider understanding and acceptance that the principles of sentencing are not just founded on punishing offenders."

Of course, this all means fewer prison sentences, more early release, more crime and more victims. You may not believe me, and that's fine. We should just wait until the next round of social services style rhetoric comes from the usual quarters. Trust me, their motivation will be high crime, their analysis will be that criminals just need a little help to change, their conclusion will be less punishment and more happy, happy, clappy.

It's easy to criticise, you might think, and in truth it is. But that's not my fault.

My suggestion? Don't treat criminals as if you are answering a cry for help. Attack those things that entice the innocent into crime in the first place. Work harder on changing the effort to reward ratio offered by crime and by that I mean increased crime solving rates and successful prosecutions (note - not detection rates).

Instead we have a situation where the ratio is going in the other direction. Crime should be hard to commit successfully and, when unsuccessful, the criminal should know in no uncertain terms that it was far more trouble than it was worth.

Meanwhile, in local news

"I then saw a police car going up Kingsbury Avenue. The passenger side door was open and a policeman was leaning out with what looked like a Kalashnikov rifle."

Bwahaha. Yeah, right.

A little too late

She told them so.

Spray to disable to protect

A good article in the Times by Robbie Millen (via Citizen Stuart) on pepper spray, a self defence product designed to be non-lethal which is legal in many civilised countries but not in this one. Millen makes exactly the right point about the current state advice to, effectively, run away from criminal thugs and then to report the whole running away incident to the police:

Others object that if people fight back, more incidents might escalate into violence. Instead, we should follow the Met’s advice of flight, not fight. But the result of this advice is not virtuous; it means that neighbourhoods are ceded to hoodlums, making the streets ever more vicious.

Exactly.

A bed named disrepute

Gone are the days when people could say “well, if you break the law you deserve everything you get” and automatically occupy the moral high ground. It is becoming increasingly important to actually look at the law that is being broken before one can pass judgement.

Sometimes it is hard to believe

My conclusion is that these two police officers were either extremely brave in deciding to approach this gun wielding individual or they knew the gun was a toy and decided to get all drama queen on the kid. Either way they were clearly to lazy to actually put their desk sergeant’s money where their mouths (or asses) were.

"One officer spoke sharply to my son and said that he could arrest him, but because he was going off duty it would be too much paper work.

"We have always told our children the police are here to help us. But I think our son finds that hard to believe at the moment."

In reply to criticism about the incident police said:

Mr Astley was welcome to lodge a formal complaint.

We used to say similar things in the playground at school, though we used to phrase it differently: Come on then, let's see you try it mate.

Gunnnnssss! GUNNNNSSS!!

This particular Obsever article on (and I'm making an educated guess here) BB Guns ranks somewhere near the top of the most confusing and trashy gun articles ever written.

Reality meets face

You may remember this little diatribe by Katie Grant:

Where the English are unattractively soft, the Scots are endearingly tender. Where the English are yobbish and aggressive, the Scots are manly and tough. Where the English are insufferably arrogant, the Scots are grittily stubborn.

Well, via Freedom and Whisky we see that somehow Katie's world view has recently been subjected to some unfortunate and deplorable revision:

ON FRIDAY morning, I looked out into our small garden to find a certain amount of chaos. Pots had been smashed, the bench overturned and all manner of climbing greenery pulled off and scattered. Yobs had invaded, tempted, no doubt, by the piles of scaffolding irritatingly left outside our back wall by the firm constructing new flats opposite.

She reflects:

THIS trifling story is not nearly as exciting as recent ones concerning toddler vandals with spray guns or disrupted funeral processions. Having a plant pot or two broken is hardly the equivalent of being "happy-slapped". It does, however, illustrate that mistake of thinking that yobbery is confined to one section of society.

One section or one nationality Katie. Keep repeating that.

Phew, what I don't know about crime could fill a small country

Andy introduces me to a new definition I had not heard of before. It’s a humdinger and I thank him for correcting me on my obviously stale opinion on what I thought it meant. Apparently, and for some reason this passed me by, law-abiding means anybody who isn't working class committing a minor crime. I can now dodge that particular bullet with confidence.

It's the law don't you know

Apparently the peasants are preparing to take the law into their own hands. The unfortunate thing about this is that these particular peasants, feeling the need to arm themselves against a threat they believe to be all too relevant to them, have been purchasing various items which, to their surprise, are illegal to own. Some come with a mandatory minimum five year prison term.

”How can it be so?” they wonder. ”I certainly don’t feel like a criminal” they say. But that’s the thing isn’t it? It’s all well and good turning a blind eye or presenting a completely disinterested front when the state shakes its warn out ban stick at one group or another from a window in Westminster, after all it’s no skin of your nose. But it sure grabs your undivided attention when all of a sudden there’s a policeman in your face for the first time in Lord knows how long and he’s staring at you. Pointing, even.

”Sorry sunshine, that’s illegal.”

”But……”

”Don’t you but me matey. You’re nicked!”

”But……”

”Tell it to someone who cares.”

”But…….”

”Look, both ACPO and the government have been campaigning for years to ensure that this kind of stuff does not find its way onto the streets….”

”It was for my bedroom.”

”….onto the streets, or into your bedroom. Years I tell you. This kind of stuff is for the police only.”

”Who are ACPO? I didn’t vote for them.”

”Now let’s not have any of your cheek. Mind your head when you get into the car.”

And so it goes on. I suppose these criminals can take solace in the fact that the number of policemen they are about to see in their daily lives will improve immeasurably. After all, low numbers are something they’ve been complaining about for years.

As an aside, did you know that the experts at the Times say replica handguns, which, using materials that can be bought at any DIY store, can easily be converted into lethal weapons? I have a number of replicas at home and have been giving this matter some thought. I’ve come to the conclusion that if I strap an iron mallet to the side of one of my replicas these Times reporters could well be right.

The Times feels it neccessary to clarify the law regarding the legal use of an illegal firearm.

Also, I'm wondering, are these the first signs of an emerging gun culture in the UK? No, not that gun culture, this gun culture. I doubt it.

It's written here, look, in our working practices documentation

Police and emergency services help youth gunshot victim in complete safety.

More examples of proper working practices here and here.

This from the Times, which I am sure must be quoting out of context or something:

A police spokesman said that when shots are fired and someone is injured police had to make sure the gunmen were not still in the area before moving in.

I mean, it must be. Surely.

Data protection business scam

We (our new company) have just received a letter from the following company:

D.C.S (ENFORCEMENT SECTION)
CITY BUILDINGS
21-23 OLD HALL STREET
MERSEYSIDE
L3 9BS

The letter begins:

DATA COLLECTION SERVICES
(ENFORCEMENT SECTION)
NOTICE: NEW BUSINESS
NOTIFICATION UNDER THE DATA PROTECTION ACT 1998

Our records show you have not yet submitted Notification to the Information Commissioner in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. This act replaces the Data Protection Act 1984.

Failure to register is a criminal offence: on conviction an offender is liable to a maximum fine ot exceeding level five on the criminal justice scale. At present this level is no greater than £5,000.

The Data Protection Act 1998 requires every business processing personal data to register. The Commissioner maintains a register and general description of businesses storing data. If you are processing personal data, (data which relates to a living individual who can be identified) for the following purposes you must register immediately.

The letter goes on to detail these purposes and then says:

Complete and return the form overleaf with your of £95 payable to D.C.S to commence registration immediately.

This company, D.C.S (or DATA COLLECTION SERVICES) are, in my opinion, SCAM ARTISTS. They have nothing to do with any official agency and are just trying to scare businesses into handing over cash for no reason.

Apparently, and we know this because we phoned the official government agency responsible for data protection registration, they have already been subjected to two successful prosecutions but no one has managed to close them down yet.

Scum is a suitable word for these people. If you are a blogger and run a small business (or even a large one) I would appreciate the spreading of the word before any other (and you can bet there have been some) unfortunate individuals fall for their disgraceful tactics.

ASBO - It's great - can be used anywhere

I'm not sure if I could make this up. You know those Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO's) brought in by this government to deal with anti-social behaviour (noisy neighbours and the like)? Well, people are beginning to get somewhat creative in their application.

You see, anti-social behaviour is a rather broad area:

On Thursday, magistrates sentenced her for three public order offences after deciding at an earlier hearing that throwing herself into a river did constitute disorder.

The Asbo seeks to prevent her doing anything which could cause alarm or distress to the public.

It was clear from the start that the current voluntary option of not throwing ones self into a river was failing and, thankfully, the state and its judiciary have now stepped in.

United front

Well, I have to say that this is a fine idea.

I've never tried playing Online Poker. I've played the real game and I am curious how Online Poker holds up against it, but not curious enough to find out.

I suspect that, in truth, Online Poker is actually a more crappy version of proper poker.

Talking about poker, my mum used to play quite a bit in the old days but I'm not sure Online Poker could hold a candle to the sight of five or six Italian dinner guests sitting at a large table containing piles of money. Man, the shouting.

Online Poker must be rubbish in comparison.

Filed under crime and crime prevention.

PS. Online Poker.

Yes, but what about clarification

Can I deliberately keep a weapon, say a baseball bat or a household knife, in a suitable place so that if I am woken in the night by a burglar the weapon comes easily to hand? If I use this weapon on the burglar will the fact that I had premeditated access to it be used against me or considered in any way whatsoever when deciding if I should face prosecution?

Those two questions are simple enough and important enough to warrant clarification. Yet, the recent publication by the Crown Prosecution Service which attempts to teach misguided householders their rights fails to do so.

Reasonable Force - a letter from the local paper

This is a scan of a letter which appeared in the most recent copy of my local newspaper. I include it here because it relates to issues recently discussed on this site. It is the first time I have seen a letter in the local paper that suggests firearms can be anything other than tools for the wicked.

Who do they think they are kidding?

You know those figures about the number of householders prosecuted for hurting burglars? Yes, the ones you heard on the TV on the weekend. Well it turns out that they don’t actually mean very much:

"There are no statistical details of these cases - they aren't kept. It is not a particularly accurate list and we never said it was. It is quite possible that there are other cases."

The Telegraph found another 7 cases in an hour. Still not very high but that is not the point. The point is that it was known that the statistics provided were not a true and factual representation of the picture and yet the lie was used on TV, on the radio, in the papers and in the halls and chambers of Westminster by the few to justify their position on the law affecting the many.

Why would they do such a thing?

Couple the rubbishing of these statistics with the fact that the prosecution of householders is not the only measure to consider and we see that the government’s position is not as credible as they would like us to believe.

On the question of trust and the social contract we have with the state to protect us this is a backward step. On the subject of self defence in the home some, if not many, members of the public feel disadvantaged. The government’s answer to this is to trot out things that can kindly be described as half-truths and to state that householders are confused.

This weekend we were subjected to a TV programme showing dramatisations of legitimate householder defence. In one dramatisation a burglar is stabbed to death while rifling a draw in a kitchen. The householder, hearing the noise, grabs a knife which he has been keeping under his bed, creeps downstairs and stabs the burglar in the back without warning. The experts told us how this was perfectly legal.

Another showed a burglar running from a house with an armful of booty. The householder shouts at the guy and then chases him out onto the street, smacking him on the back of the head using a golf club (was it a one iron? I think it might well have been). He collapses. The experts tell us again that this was a legitimate use of force to protect property.

Yet we know from what we have seen and heard with our own eyes that such actions have been the beginning of long, hard and often ruinous periods of threatened and actual litigation by the state upon householders that have done very similar or exact same things.

They try to address our confusion with facts and scenarios that are so obviously not true that we have to question their motivation. What do they like so much about the current situation? Why do their fear actually empowering the householder? Why do they come out of this looking more confused than the rest of us?

Crime is down, but there are more criminals somehow

So now Judges should avoid jailing criminals if prisons are considered overcrowded. Colour me surprised.

I wonder what other solutions might be available other than the swapping of a prison sentence with a community sentence, fine or motor sport day trip? Perhaps someone in the building trade might have an answer?

More interesting is the following little snippet:

The jail population at present is 73,085 but longer-term projections expect it to be between 93,000 and 109,000 by 2009.

I thought that the government said that crime was down and that we were just scaring ourselves rather than being scared of any actual, you know, real life crime.

Less crime, more criminals. I'm not good at statistics so someone help me please but does this not mean that one or more of the following are true:

1. Criminals are generally being given longer sentences for the usual crimes.
2. More serious crimes are being committed hence longer sentences.
3. There are more criminals but less crime because each criminal is now committing fewer offences.
4. Something to do with a general increase in the population (stop having criminal babies, ok).
5. Someone is telling porkies.

Prosecuting householders is not the only measure

In this BBC report we see that Michael Howard, leader of the Tory party, accuses Tony Blair of performing U-turns over rules on using force against burglars. Expected and not particularly interesting but what did catch my eye was this little snippet in defence of current legislation by the director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald:

only 11 householders or occupiers of business premises have been prosecuted in the last 15 years.

He would say that wouldn't he, probably because he knows the figures better than most.

What he doesn't mention is the number of householders who have felt persecuted by the police after offering up violence to an intruder. Take Derek Godfrey-Brown for example who spent nine and a half months under the spectre of a trial for grievous bodily harm only to have the case dropped by the CPS a week before the trial was due.

It's not all about prosecutions.

Blogger ransacked

JacobsRoom has been violated. After you receive your crime number from the police Giles I suggest you call the pyjamahadeen head office and ask for their ninja department. Justice will be swift and factually rigorous.

Sincerely though, I hope the bottom feeders are caught and you get your kit back.

Public service announcement

If you live in the UK and would like to report a minor crime to the police you can do it online here.

The England Project - Everyday life made easy

Clarity is a shady business

So it seems that the law governing how householders should treat visiting burglars will not be changed. All that is needed is for the current law to be better explained to all concerned, especially for householders. I assume that burglars are already well versed in their rights hence the lack of need to have it especially explained to them too.

Here is an early indication of quality of the explanation that us householders are waiting for with baited breath:

Information would shortly be published and advertised to the public so people were clear "that the current law ensures that appropriate steps to protect themselves, their family and their property will always be justified".

Take that you burglars!

Erm, any idea on what they mean by appropriate. Isn't this the very heart of the issue?

How to police the hunts

Some people have raised the question of how the police can actually implement the new law on hunting when (and whenever) it comes into force if fox hunters are determined to ignore it. We now have an answer:

I've asked the Chief Constable recently about how we're going to police this if it does break down - you know, civil disorder, the rest of it - and he said it will be exactly the same as when we dealt with the miners.

My only advice would be to put different tyres on the vans, you know, ones with deeper tread. Oh, and also for the police to train their cavalry to jump ditches and hedges and the like at a full gallop. Otherwise, good plan. Can't fail.

And what were they supposed to do about it?

You can't legislate against this kind of incident. What you can do is legislate to stop the victims from being able to do anything much about it. An England Project white flag award to the first politician or campaigner to bring up this incident as an argument for more useless law.

The case of the missing conviction

Neil Herron joins Prisoner JW7874 in pointing out that demands for payment via fines without first achieving a conviction are not compatible with the Bill of Rights 1689 which states:

That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void.

Now, I don't seriously expect these objections to go very far but, frankly, I can't put my finger on why. As Mr. Herron points out:

As stated in the ‘Metric Martyrs’ Judgment in the Supreme Court of Judicature, Queen’s Bench Division (18th February 2002) by Lord Justice Laws and Justice Crane (I will paraphrase, but have included a full copy of the Judgment with the relevant sections 62 and 63 highlighted):

62 “We should recognise a hierarchy of Acts of Parliament: as it were ‘ordinary’ statutes and ‘constitutional’ statutes. The special status of constitutional statutes follows the special status of constitutional rights. Examples are Magna Carta, Bill of Rights 1689, The Act of Union, the Reform Acts etc.”

63. “Ordinary statutes may be impliedly repealed. Constitutional statutes may not…”

As you are no doubt aware, Sunderland City Council went to quite considerable lengths to achieve the Metric Martyrs Judgment and the precedent set by Lord Justice Laws is clear and unambiguous.

Mr. Herron should know, because he was there when the judgement was made.

Who and how many is not the issue

Some of you may be beginning to notice postings on other blogs about this issue of how homeowners can treat or should be able to treat burglars. Things like how this is only on the agenda because a rich white man was killed during a break-in or how the current calls by some for a change or clarification of the law should be addressed by mentioning the fact (not withstanding any increase in hot burglaries) that burglaries are actually dropping.

I think that this reveals some negative prejudice in these commentators. Firstly, it reveals their belief that those bringing up the issue are overly concerned with the makeup of the victim without providing anything but very loose and highly improbably circumstantial evidence.

Secondly it implies that the rights of victims and of burglars should in some way be dependent upon the number of burglaries that are committed each year.

I don’t recognise either of these two points as significantly legitimate with respect to what the correct legislation should be. Poor black victim, rich white victim, one hot burglary a year, five million hot burglaries a year.

The legitimacy of a homeowner’s method and intensity of resistance or retaliation is not and should not be dependent on those issues.

Home defence and security

Here's a little more from Sir John Stevens on self defence in the home:

"The bottom line is that everyone from the public to the politicians are behind it, apart from one or two lawyers."

Sir John also backed people's right to arm themselves at home in order to defend themselves.

"People do have baseball bats to defend themselves, after all they are in their homes and it is not an offensive weapon. I draw the line at firearms but people are entitled to be in possession of such things in their own homes.

Also, don't miss this Mark Steyn article in the Telegraph in which he suggests that the increased security used generally in our homes simply helps to encourage determined burglars to go for the easy option ie the front door when someone is there to answer it.

An Englishman's home is not his castle, but his dungeon and ever more so - window bars, window locks, dead bolts, laser security, and no doubt biometric recognition garage doors, once the Blunkett national ID card goes into circulation.

All this high-tech protection, urged on the householder by Pc Plod, may make your home more secure, but it makes you less so. From the burglar's point of view, the more advanced and impregnable the alarm systems become, the more it makes sense just to knock on the door and stab whoever answers.

An interesting point of view and one that I think has some merit.

The Prime Ministers Official Spokesman says that we are all a little confused. We have been granted by the government all the rights that we need and just need a little clarification on the whole burglar thing. Part of that clarification is to tell us that we should not 'actively retaliate' against a home intruder.

No advice was offered as to why 'active retaliation' was a bad thing.

Sir John Stevens has given his support to the Tories for their plan on the issue of home defence. Some critics of the plan suggest:

...it could create a "have a go" culture among some householders.

No news yet on what the negative aspects of have a go culture might be.

Never forget that the primary reason for the unreasonable farce we find ourselves in is the desire, which is irresistible for some, to protect the burglar from the home owner.

A mini crime spree

Via Mugged by reality, via Blognorregis we have this story in the Jerusalem Post:

Two intoxicated female British tourists who were sexually assaulted by their Jerusalem Arab taxi driver fended him off with blows which left him hospitalized, police said Tuesday.

The incident, which took place late Sunday night, began after the two tourists, who are in their 20's, were picked up by the driver from the city's popular Underground Disco and asked to be driven to the youth hostel in the Jerusalem community of Shoresh.

On the way, the driver pulled over on a darkened patch of the road, and started to commit an indecent sexual act on one of the tourists, police said.

The two fought back, beating the driver and even damaging his cab.

The surprised driver – who was so badly beaten that he required medical treatment at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Hospital at Ein Kerem – was placed under arrest.

He was later released on bail.

The two tourists involved in the incident were questioned by police, and are still in Israel, police said.

I can't help but wonder how this incident would have been dealt with over here in the UK. Being so distant and, of course, not having all the facts it would be easy for me to judge harshly but I gotta say it looks like a mini crime spree. Sexual assault, grievous bodily harm (or perhaps actual bodily harm), criminal damage and, perhaps, something to do with being drunk for good measure. Lots of arrestable offences, all in such an enclosed area. Bargain.

Historical vandalism

Via Guido at dodgeblogium we see that vandals have wrecked a memorial commemorating the local Fartown and Birkby servicemen who fell during the Great War.

The people who did this then added further disgrace by scrawling Die 4 no reason, long live Hittler on what was left of the monument.

I find it hard to understand how anyone could do something like this, but then again things go on every day that I find impossible to fathom and vandalism in general goes on all over the country, every day of the week. But this particular brand of vandalism goes far deeper than most for me.

It is historical vandalism that belittles the sacrifice made by so many of our men and boys. It reaches far back and wrenches at some of the very things that define our nation's place in the modern world. I don't for one minute think that the people who did this actually understand the meaning of the local monument, which is just one of thousands that stand in the villages, towns and cities of the United Kingdom, blessed and at the same time burdened with the names of the men who once lived in those communities.

They don't understand because if they did they would not have shown such disregard and disrespect. How could they?

So why don't they understand? Why can't they empathise with what the memorial stands for? Not for war, but for sacrifice.

Because these individuals have no reference within themselves, no check or failsafe that would or could have stopped them in their tracks for even contemplating such a disregarding act.

The toppling of that statue, that bronze copy of a first world war soldier, was to them a symbol of their 'struggle', their beliefs and their desires. Them, them, them. These are the very people who are completely lacking in the exact qualities represented by that statue.

It has been toppled, vandalised, and daubed with insulting remarks and it still contains in each name engraved onto its surface, more value than is contained within the hearts of the thugs that tried so hard to destroy it.

Of reasonable force

So close and yet so very far. This time it's England's most senior police officer Met commissioner Sir John Stevens who believes that burglars are feeling emboldened by the current state of self defence laws in England. At the moment we are entitled to use "reasonable force" to defend ourselves and our homes. Stevens says:

My own view is that people should be allowed to use what force is necessary and they should be allowed to do so without any risk of prosecution.

Necessary, reasonable, meh.

Currently if one were to, say, smack a burglar in the mouth for manhandling ones TV it would be seen as using unreasonable force (protection of property in this country using violence is only possible if one is willing to break the law and be punished if caught or if one is a certain type of state employee) and I doubt that Sir John Stevens intends this to change.

We will increasingly see, I am sure, more of these old fashioned policemen, clinging to ideas that are out of step with the needs and the desires of the population, talking fast and cheap on subjects like this. It is my hope that never being able to step over their own liberal lines in the sand will be their eventual undoing.

Tim Worstall is a bit more upbeat about Sir John Stevens' comments:

This would bring us back to the rather comforting situation where an Englishman’s home is his castle. We may not be allowed to change a light bulb in the kitchen but we can beat up or kill someone threatening us.

I suppose my above little diatribe does seem somewhat over zealous in the circumstances, given that I do welcome the remarks made by Sir John Stevens.

Maybe I was wrong when I wrote I doubt that Sir John Stevens intends this to change on the subject of the thumping of TV carrying burglars. Stevens did say that:

those who defended their families and property should only face prosecution over injuries to intruders in "extreme circumstances", where they could be shown to have used gratuitous violence.

Obviously we are down to loose definitions of extreme circumstances again but I accept and welcome the comments as trying to help redress the balance in the current state of affairs.

This leader in the telegraph accuses Sir John Stevens of a certain muddled thinking with his comments on the Tony Martin case:

But in his interview today, Sir John betrays a certain muddled thinking. He cites the case of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who shot dead a 16-year-old burglar, as one that has skewed the debate about the rights of homeowners. Sir John emphasises that the burglar was running away when he was shot, and that Mr Martin was using an unlicensed gun, thus suggesting that Mr Martin is therefore undeserving of sympathy. (It became clear during the trial that Mr Martin had suffered numerous burglaries of his farmhouse before the lethal event.)

If Sir John's argument is that there should be a presumption in law in favour of the householder in his dealings with an intruder, then surely it is irrelevant whether or not the gun was licensed. Sir John appears to be suggesting that a homeowner who detects a burglar should submit to the intruder if he remembers that, say, his shotgun licence has expired. If there is to be a presumption in law in favour of the householder, it must be almost absolute.

Overreaction

Do not let your children play in the street with toy guns. Why?:

Many of the guns are very realistic and we cannot take the risk that they are fake when we are called to an incident.

Of course, the police established very early on that the guns were .99p toys which begs the question why keep one of the kids locked up for five hours?

I have a letter from the Home Office at home somewhere in which an official tells me that new laws were not there to prevent children playing cowboys and indians and the like but, instead, to help the police put a stop to dangerous criminal activity.

Now I accept that the police were right to act upon the call from the member of the public but I think that there is a tendency to overreact.

The overreaction Puts me in mind of this incident from last year:

But they had noticed her seven-year-old son Jake's plastic sword lying on the back seat, and, she says, threatened to arrest her for displaying what looked like an offensive weapon.

They said she could be arrested if she did not put the foot-long object in the boot.

Armed and somewhere

Hey, we all make mistakes. I blame the lack of ID cards.

Make the punishment fit the crime

We need more prisons in this country. Specialist ones that concentrate on making the punishment fit the crime. New swanky buildings that glimmer in the moonlight built with the local community in mind by offering it low cost sporting facilities, cinema screens, bars, amusements and excellent eating facilities. All subsidised by the products and services provided by the incarcerated.

One of these new specialist prisons should be reserved for people like this (Cambridge police nab UK spammer). It would classify as having specialist status because of certain regimes followed internally.

For instance, the only protein available on the diet in SPAM prison would be, unsurprisingly, SPAM. As much of it as one would care to eat in fact. When not eating SPAM the incarcerated would be asked to sit in front of a computer for 3 hours of each weekday filtering through computer generated e-mail inboxes. The exercise would require them to remove any SPAM they might find without deleting any real mail and they would need to do this by just looking at the subject, to and from lines. A poor rate of filtering or poor accuracy would be punishable by additional servings of real SPAM, the consumption of which in this case would be compulsory.

The remaining hours of the day would be spent in production of various items for sale, the generation of electricity (exercise) and the provision of whatever services can best be provided by overweight SPAM averted individuals with excellent typing skills. Profits would help subsidise the local community services attached to the prison.

If David Blunkett, in the time that he has left, includes such an idea in a future policy statement remember where you heard it first.

After the fact

This is just a guess at this stage but it looks like the police tidying up exercise is going rather well:

A man is being questioned in connection with the murder of a City financier who was stabbed to death in his own home.

It is a great comfort to the rest of us to know that in times like these (that is after the fact) we can rely on such a great service.

Protection rates

In this very recent exchange between Blair and Howard on crime rates our politicians fight over rates of offence and detection rates. One thing they will never discuss, because it probably isn't even on their radar, is protection rates. How many successful instances of protection by the police of members of the public were there last year, the year before, this year? These should only include protection during a violent crime in progress and should be expressed not only as a count of successful protection events but also as a percentage of the total number of violent crimes in the same time period.

The UN rides to the rescue, of some

The UK government has been urged to review its policy of detaining foreign terror suspects without trial, by the United Nations Committee on Torture.

But of course the UN would urge this review. No sign yet of them urging a review of the UK government's Civil contingencies bill.

Drake wades into the Civil Contingencies Act over at The Edge of England's Sword.

No crime number

Of course, by today’s modern day sophisticated standards this is assault:

The villain clutched his chest and screamed "I've been shot!" and his "friends" dropped the bag and ran off.

The shot man fell on the floor then jumped up and run off yelling into the distance at which point, the guy shot him again in the back of the head.

He fell writhing on the ground and his mates came back and dragged him into the van which then sped off.

But then again, someone learnt an important lesson that day.

Sometimes you need to take responsibility for what you have done

All those arrested for possessing mace spray were women, who said they carried it for self-defence, and they received cautions.

Last night my wife brought up the subject of mace spray. Perhaps I could get some of that the conversation went. It frustrated me no end when I told her that it was illegal to carry mace in England.

We have a problem you see, and it is one that I do not wish to go into in too much detail about, but suffice it to say that we suspect that an acquaintance of ours is of the predatory nature and a particular risk to women but cannot do much about it at this point in time due to a commitment we have made to his wife and children (who have moved out with our support).

The above quoted text comes from this police web site document on the recent Wimbledon sporting event which they did a good job of policing but, no matter how much I support the police and the difficult work that they do, I cannot help feeling angry and let down by the situation we find ourselves in and I cannot help feeling a certain amount of disgust at the implementation by the police of a law that helps prevent the vulnerable from helping themselves.

While the police make arrests and dish out cautions my wife is sitting at home on her own with only a telephone for company. You can use whatever argument that you want in support of the current laws on self defence and self protection in this country but right now, feeling as we do and in the situation that we find ourselves in, you would be wrong.

Those who would support the current state of affairs need to take some responsibility for the way my family, and the family of the young woman we are helping, feel right now.

You have played a part in taking away something that you have no moral right to take away.

The old girl

We've all had one. An old girl. My first was an Escort MK1. Cost me £90. Sold it after a year for £100. Ms. Jones also had an old girl which she tells us about on her blog (scroll to October 25, 2004 - The Old Girl, pemalink not enabled for some reason):

Sadly, on the evening of Thursday 21st October 2004, a gang of youths smashed The Old Girl’s passenger window, hot wired her and drove her into the ground around the council estates of South East London. She was found abandoned on the road side, smashed up and un-driveable.

Over that last two years The Old Girl has forged a special place in the hearts of many and she will be sorely missed by friends, footballers and family members alike.

So here's to The Old Girl. May she Rest In Peace.

An unfitting end for anyones old girl if you ask me; I hope that the culprits are caught and punished.

Fiddling about

Libby Purves in the Times:

LAST YEAR, learned Government lawyers advised ministers that “as members of the public, burglars have the right to be protected from violent householders”. How sapient! We lurk like spiders, we householders, luring simple-hearted burglars to their doom! A thief, slipping through a window wide awake and well prepared, must be given all possible protection against a sleepy individual in pyjamas clutching some ludicrous approximation to a weapon. A fit, determined, callous burglar needs saving from the menace of a poor drowsy Joe terrified for his sleeping children. Violent householders: the modern menace!

Oh, all right, I suppose there may be a few real vigilantes: perverted individuals who actually hope to kill. But not many. By and large, people want a quiet life. Burglars, on the other hand, presumably do not. It is a naturally dangerous activity. We do not rule that drunken drivers need protecting from brick walls, or worry about bank robbers jarring their backs when the getaway car accelerates. If you prod a sleeping dog it will snap; stick your hand in a fire and get burnt; frighten somebody in his own home and he might lash out. If your victim happens to be lucky, or strong, you could be badly hurt. Well, hard luck. When you forced that window, you forfeited your right not to be thumped.

Articles like this have been quite common place these past few months, a fact that can not have escaped our rulers.

Indeed, Libby Purves states that the Home Secretary, David Blunkett has indicated that he is open to suggestions about rewording the law which is very magnanimous of him but I wouldn’t hold your breath that anything significant will come of it because the problem is not the wording, it’s the intent.

The state wants to ensure that householders do not use a level of force that is disproportionate to the level of threat that the householder is under and that is pretty much what the law itself says. No amount of jigging with the words will make the current meaning any clearer and there is absolutely no way that they will be able to write in the definition of reasonable force. Consequently, householders will remain confused and burglars will remain emboldened.

A change in intent is what is required and, let’s face it, the bit that needs to change if anything changes at all is the intent to protect the burglar.

Anything else is just fiddling about.

What would you have done?

This is an interesting development. It looks like a number of firearms officers have either handed in their weapons or are considering doing so after two officers were suspended for shooting a man carrying a table leg in a plastic bag.

Readers in the US might be scratching their heads about now but, I believe, in the UK officers volunteer for firearms training and duty and, consequently, can choose to give up the roll (someone please correct me if I am wrong on this one).

Now, from what I have read in the news and seen in various broadcasts we know that the police had already been informed by a member of the public, incorrectly as it turns out, that the item in the plastic bag was a shotgun and that the officers shot the man dead because they thought that their lives were in danger.

However, what I have not heard very much about is why those officers thought that they were in mortal danger. A clue to something told to me by a firearms licensing officer some time back appears in the BBC report linked to above:

One of the two officers, Pc Kevin Fagan, told the jury he was convinced he was "looking down the barrel of a shotgun".

You see, the information I was given is that when challenged the man presented his bagged table leg to the police officers as one would present a shotgun when just about to fire at a target (namely raising to the shoulder and pointing it). Now, this was just idle chatter about various issues involving firearms related incidents that I had with the licensing officer some time back but I have no reason to doubt him.

I have to say that if those were the circumstances I can understand the frustration of the officers who are now refusing firearms duties.

Who can you count on?

After an incident where two sisters were gunned down at a BBQ and the emergency services waited what seemed like an extraordinary amount of time before entering the premises to offer help I asked if this is what we can expect from the emergency services during such dangerous situations.

Well, evidence would suggest that this is indeed the case:

Earlier, the coroner was told Mrs Pemberton pleaded with a police operator that she had "about one minute before I die" as she hid in a downstairs cupboard while her husband rampaged through their home in Hermitage, Berkshire.

However, despite receiving the call at 7.11pm, police did not enter the property until 1.53am the following day.

A 16 year old was also killed in the incident.

The situation in the house was unknown to the police, which is why they did not enter the building earlier. They wanted to ensure their safety. That’s all fair enough, I suppose. If you are not willing to take the risk on behalf of a helpless victim then who am I to suggest otherwise?

However, what this does highlight again is the fact that in certain violent situations you really are on your own. In the first incident above a woman lay dying but the police refused to allow medical help to enter the building for an hour on safety grounds.

In the second incident no one knew the state of the victim. It was a black box situation. But, dead or alive, she was on her own for hours. For safety reasons.

Later the coroner remarked that the police could not have prevented their deaths, adding that:

…in his opinion, the deaths were inevitable.

"Nothing could have prevented him (Mr Pemberton) doing what he did," the coroner said.

That’s just the thing isn’t it? In situations like that you can only rely on yourself because the state is incapable of helping. The police are too slow and too safety minded to cope with such circumstances. But how can you protect yourself when the need for personal protection (and I mean from violent and determined attack) is not considered important enough in this country to warrant the legal ownership of equipment capable of saving your life and for the purposes of self protection?

Where does this leave the rest of us? Is it right that we ignore these extremes by not providing now for people that may find themselves in such situations in the future? Are these situations really that extreme? What level of damage to victims is acceptable and at what level should we say, enough is enough, someone needs to protect these people and they themselves are the best people for the job?

These may be difficult questions to answer but what we do need to avoid is the situation where we measure performance by the amount of riga mortis that has set in.

Buzzer man and me

I went to the police station this morning at about 7:30. There was no one there. Well, when I say no one what I actually mean is that two other members of the public were there but no policemen. One visitor said that he’d been to two other police stations that morning but they were both closed. At least this one was open, though seemingly unmanned.

He pressed the buzzer near the front desk. Again. That was fun for a while. We waited.

Then one guy left.

We waited a bit longer.

Buzzer man pressed the buzzer again.

Then I left.

I did see one policeman as I walked through the car park towards my car but he was in his patrol vehicle and went through the exit before I thought to shout over to him or throw a stone to grab his attention.

I don’t know if what I had to tell them was important or would have been judged so by them because, well, I don’t tend to get involved with things that may or may not require the attention of the police so I have very little life experience of what actually matters to them in their professional capacity.

It was a swan. Sitting in the fast lane of the A414, obviously injured but able to sit upright with a fully extended neck, watching the traffic come and go. That’s a large swan I thought, I wonder if it’s large enough to cause an accident? Someone should really do something about it. One car swerved to avoid it so I decided that someone should be me.

I’ll phone the police. No. No I won’t. I don’t have the number to the local station and phoning the emergency number (999) should only be done in emergencies. We’ve been preached this over and over again in recent times. Is it an emergency? I have no idea if it will be judged that way or not so I decided to go 5 minutes out of my way and visit the station.

I visited. Nice building.

Plastic policemen

Joining the laughing policeman and the sleeping policeman in an inner city estate this October.

Mr Blunkett will announce there were a record 139,728 police officers by the end of August in England and Wales, up 10,000 on two years ago.

But he is particularly pushing up the political agenda the CSOs [community support officers], who do not have powers of arrest but can detain people for up to half an hour.

Make those criminals late, that'll teach 'em.

One farmer, one gun, one shot, one wounded burglar

So, Kenneth Faulkner, the farmer who admitted discharging his shotgun after finding a burglar attempting to break in to a garage is not going to face prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Service remarked:

"This decision was not taken lightly and only after a thorough review of all the available evidence and careful consideration of the specific circumstances of this case.

"On this occasion we have made the decision not to charge Mr Faulkner on the basis that a prosecution would not be able to demonstrate, to the high standard of proof required in criminal proceedings, that he had committed an unlawful assault.

"I would stress that our decision was reached only after taking into account the particular circumstances of this incident.

"It does not mean that anyone using violence against an intruder is above the law and would not face prosecution."

Now, as far as I can tell the only way this peculiar situation can have arisen is if Mr. Faulkner only admitted to discharging the shotgun in what can generally be described as in the opposite direction to the burglar. The CPS then decided that even though the burglar was indeed the recent recipient of a number of lead shot and was captured about a mile away from the farm a little while later the balance of the evidence would suggest that they could not prove that it was Faulkner who actually shot him.

Ahem. Yes, I know. It sounds like a load of rubbish doesn’t it. It stinks in fact.

My guess is that the decision not to charge the farmer was a political one. A way of avoiding further embarrassment, if you will. I mean, why argue on the side of the criminal when you can avoid the whole subject altogether.

The lottery

Laban Tall fills us in on the lottery winning rapist story. For those that don’t know the long and short of it is that a convicted rapist has won 7 million of our British quids on the lottery. The big issue on BBC radio five live the other evening was should the criminal be able to keep the cash? The news this morning on the same station was that David ‘Nailer’ Blunkett (our dear Home Secretary) was thinking about introducing new legislation to deal with the situation and, presumably, others like it. Man, that guy. Is there nothing he can’t fix?

The real story though is, of course, why was the fucker allowed out of prision in the first place? I mean, as Laban Tall shows us, at the man’s final reckoning the judge said:

Paramount in my mind is that every moment you are at liberty some woman is at risk and I believe it to be my duty to protect, so far as I am able, women from the risk you represent.

This is the last in a long line of appalling offences committed against women and the only sentence I can pass is one of imprisonment for life.

Every moment you are at liberty. I wonder what the judge meant by that? Every moment except the weekends, perhaps? We should be thankful, of course, that the hoo-ha is about something as trivial as a cash win on the lottery rather than about, well you know the story. It’s called the Offender in the Community lottery. That’s where members of the public get a shot at victim hood courtesy of the British criminal justice system. Unlike the National Lottery the Offender in the Community lottery offers the chance of multiple winners each and every day.

The best odds in Europe, some say.

We're sick of it

From Michael Howard's speech on law and order delivered today:

Ask these people what they think is at the root of many of the problems we face in society today, and they will say obvious things.

The things many politicians have been too frightened to say for far too long.

Why do some parents allow their children out until the early hours?

How does it help parents instil discipline if they are told that they cannot smack their children?

Why can't teachers discipline disruptive pupils any more?

It is to the people who ask these questions, who have been resolute but silent for so long - the backbone of our country - that I am addressing my comments to today.

Conservatives will stand up for the silent, law abiding majority who play by the rules and pay their dues.

We will put their rights first.

Like them, I have had enough of the culture of political correctness - which is designed to blur the distinction between right and wrong.

And like them, I have had enough of excuses for poor behaviour and crime.

This is exactly the kind of talk that traditional conservative party supporters want to hear. Why? Because it is the truth.

The current liberal social experiment is failing and has been gradually ruining Britain. I'm not just talking about New Labour though who are, if you like, just the tip of the yoghurt. It’s more systemic than that. Systemic in our policy makers (except, perhaps, the Home Secretary who is beyond classification), educators and in those that would like to and try to make policy through their media broadcasts and news commentary. You know, the politically correct brigade.

So much liberal poison has been injected into society that it is hardly surprising that some of it has been absorbed and to make matters worse there has been hardly any opposing message. Now, for some, the whole notion of taking responsibility is unimaginable. They already think that they are responsible. They feed their kids. They send them to school. What more can they possibly do?

But that is only part of the problem. There are many, many more people who understand the true meaning of responsibility. Responsibility for themselves, for their children and, in part, for the actions of those around them. But understanding responsibility and actually taking responsibility are two very different things and that is where the failure is felt the most.

Taking responsibility has been made almost as difficult as one can imagine by the state and by an small army of well placed people who have absorbed a mind set that they think is compassionate but which is actually a cancer, eating away at the very things that made Britain a great place to live.

Respect, responsibility, justice.

Respect, these days, can be bought for the price of a handgun, taking responsibility for your own safety is a well lit path to prison and justice continues to confuse the criminal with the victim.

We need more opposing messages, like the one delivered by Howard today and I have a feeling that the time is right for such messages too. People are fed up of being told what they may and may not do only to see an increasingly large criminal element enjoying life at their expense.

"Don't smoke or eat cake but do install that burglar alarm".

We're sick of it.

The increasingly obvious choice for all discerning victims of crime

This story seems to be doing the rounds at the moment (appearing at The Englishman's castle and at Laban's place):

A farmer was being quizzed by police today after shooting at a suspected burglar.

Police said the farmer, 73 - who has been burgled twice in recent months - had spotted a burglar at a detached garage at Keys Farm, in Ockbrook, at 6am.

A Derbyshire Police spokesman said: "The offender fled from the farm. During the incident the farmer fired a shotgun and a 22-year-old man was later found a short distance away, suffering from minor pellet injuries to his left leg."

The victim was taken to the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary for treatment. Both the farmer and the victim are now under arrest.

Detective Supt John Briggs said: "We are carrying out extensive searches at the farm. We know already that the farmer had been subject of at least two previous burglaries in recent months.

"We have discovered that a car stolen from Leicestershire has been driven to the farm and abandoned. We now have to find out how it got there."

I hope that the victim is ok and that he doesn't suffer too much at the hands of the UK's criminal justice system (which seems to have a thing against farmers).

Anyhow, there is a moral to this story that I don't think has been mentioned yet and it is this. If you decide that it is necessary for you to take responsibility for dealing with a crime in progress, and if you feel that circumstances require you to use force while dealing with that crime, then you should try not to involve the authorities. Their notion of what constitutes a victim and yours are unlikely to coincide to any great extent.

Your tagging problems solved

Hey fella! Feeling down? Ashamed? Embarrassed?

It’s not easy being an electronically tagged offender these days, especially to a fashion conscious streetwise person like yourself. Grey plastic is so suburbia.

Your mates are looking at you like you are some kind of office worker or something. Your girlfriend has left you for your best mate. The people you meet down the pub have stopped giving you the kind of respect you deserve. Man, the government was right; being a tagged offender is no walk in the park.

Here at StreetWise Industries we understand the problems faced by a player such as yourself. We know all about the shortcomings of the standard government issue offender tag and have poured all our resources and best people into solving the problem for you.

Introducing the StreetWise Industries - RESPECT MKIII Street Tag.

It has a click counter so that you can keep tabs on the number of offences you commit in any particular day, indexed to an integrated personal information management system. A diary, so you never miss that appointment with your community personal liaison officer. A foldable knife cleverly hidden in the strap and yes, it can even be used to tell the time.

Why not take the plunge and order your very own StreetWise Industries - RESPECT MKIII Street Tag today? It’s a snip at only £120 (any denomination, used notes only please).

StreetWise Industries - Stylish tagging for the 21st century offender.

Not terrorism

Greg Avery, an animals rights campaigner and activist argues that this is not like terrorism at all:

Animal rights activists are planning a training camp on direct action techniques including unarmed combat, scaling buildings, infiltration and skills for sabotaging hunts.

He could well be right but his idea of what constitutes terrorism may not match your idea and it certainly does not match mine. He says:

It's a funny terrorist movement that's never killed anybody.

Well, no one's laughing except perhaps at the notion that a terrorist must kill to be awarded the title.

A serial offender who admits he has lost count of the number of times he has been in jail, Mr. Avery is determined to keep on the straight and narrow:

I'm quite clear about what I do now; I campaign within the parameters of the law. It's laughable to call us terrorists.

Again, with the laughing. Of course his choice to stick to the straight and narrow is admirable and, though I am not against a certain amount of civil disobedience and law breaking as a valid method of protest, I certainly think his choice of not breaking the law will do his cause more good than harm.

His training camp does concern me, however. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with training people in unarmed combat. It is an admirable quality often called by its other less emotive name of self defence. Scaling buildings is an odd skill to offer but in itself is not in the least bit illegal as skills go and affords one a certain 'super-hero' like quality. Infiltration, well, we all do it don't we? It's rewarding as hell and harms no-one. And sabotage; what other skill fits infiltration in such a glove like manner? Bravo, I say.

No, my concern is not for Mr. Avery and his camp and has nothing to do with the perfectly legitimate skill sets that his graduates will have acquired when they leave. Skills that, I am sure, will never be put to this kind of use.

My concern is for the Home Secretary and his health. David 'Nailer' Blunkett is not getting any younger and his frothing is not getting any, well, less frothy. The mere suggestion of a 'training camp' on British soil could tip him over the edge.

Snap. Silence. Then the white heat of rage.

The value of justice

It’s astonishing really, the way some people argue against justice by playing the tax card. Just go take a look at Peter Cuthbertson’s posting 1/7 of a life should mean 1/7 of a life and then read some of the comments.

Not many people enjoy paying taxes, well perhaps people called Polly do, but to object to long prison sentences on the grounds that incarcerated people could be let out to get a job and not live off the state in prison is like slapping the victims (those that remain alive) in the face. No, sorry, it’s even more disgusting than that.

By all means suggest that a murdering toad or thieving swine should be forced to do something useful (perhaps even financially rewarding for the tax payers) while in prison but don’t even look like suggesting they should be let out on tax grounds.

Some people have absolutely no sense of justice and no sympathy for victims.

I simply cannot believe the steaming pile of nonsense that some continue to contribute to the comment section on Peter's site. It's as if these people have never lived in a community with real people suffering from real crime. I can't imagine a single one of these 'intelligentsia' lasting five minutes trying to explain their views to someone who has just had their house burgled, wife mugged or daughter abused. It's all about the criminal and never about the victim with these people.

A minor education

By the way, while on our little trip my little six year old boy was shot in the backside by BB gun wielding kid. My boy came running back to the tent from the playground in tears with a couple of other young lads acting as escort. When he told me what happened the universe split into two and the following scenarios took place:

Universe 1: I called the people at the campsite reception who quickly dispatched an on site medical team to our tent to treat the very small red mark on my boys bum. They also dispatched a small security team to see if they could track down the ‘thug and his weapon’. I also called the police who dispatched a helicopter and two Armed Response Unit vehicles which arrived within 20 minutes. These units refused to enter the campsite for a further two and a half hours because they could not be sure of the situation ‘inside the gates’ but they did prevent movement into and out of the site, helping to secure the safety of the local surrounding community from ‘the lone gunman’. The press turned up and did a sympathetic interview with me and my family and took a couple of pictures of my boy holding up a BB towards the camera lens. The next day the story broke in the local papers – ‘CAMPSITE MAYHEM AS SHOOTER BLASTS TODDLER IN PLAYGROUND’. The paper later started up an anti-gun campaign calling for the licensing of all toy guns, BB guns, airguns and shotguns. The ‘crazed gun fanatic’ is never caught.

Universe 2: Within 5 seconds of being told the story I run full pelt from the tent and into the playground where I find the culprit just as he has clearly decided that now would be a good time to run off. I catch him and give him a good old fashioned telling off. I take his gun off him and quiz him about his knowledge of the law concerning such things. He has no idea that he is committing an offence just by having one on him in a public place without good reason. I continue, with some zeal, until he is visibly shaking mainly due to my comprehensive verbal ranting skills. I send him on his way and he never returns to the playground for the rest of the holiday. A number of young impressionable and attentive children in the playground who are within earshot learn an important lesson about BB guns, the law and angry grown up members of the public.

Fancy taking a guess which universe this version of me was in?

The sound of failure

Richard North coins a term for the common sound of a house alarm going off whether it is for good reason or due to a faulty system: The Sound of Failure. I think it works well and I also think that it can be extended to car alarms.

The annoying noise is now a normal part of the urban environment. It is the sound of failure - the failure of the police to protect property.

Indeed.

In reality protecting property against thugs, vandals, thieves etc in this country is not something a member of the public can realistically do. Sure, we can install various devices and position the property that we wish to protect in less accessible places but these are just difficulties to be overcome by the thief. He does not fear this kind of strategy in itself but, instead, it is the likely-hood of retribution and retribution itself that he fears.

The house alarm is intended to scare the thief off. Its sounding is a warning to the thief that retribution may be on its way.

The locked door or window is a physical barrier the circumventing of which is likely to bring attention his way, in the same way that an alarm might. It is not a preventative measure in itself but, rather, a contribution to the likelihood of retribution. There are very few domestic doors and windows that can stop a determined thief.

The fear of discovery, capture and retribution are all that stands between the thief and our property.

We are experiencing a failure in the measure of that fear. It is ebbing away.

I have said that in reality the average member of the public cannot realistically protect their property from the thugs, vandals and thieves that have their eyes on it. This is, effectively, because the public has been stripped, at every opportunity, of its ability to do so. The single most effective force for fear and promised retribution for those that pursue the property of others has been castrated by the very people who are notionally supposed to have common cause with the law abiding public. The public has been informed, and in no uncertain terms, that it is not for them to contribute in a direct manner to the fear factor.

They can act as a broker between the thief and the states official bringers of retribution but that is effectively all they can do. That has been the deal struck by the state with the public. They will protect our property and in return we must not harm a hair on any thieves head.

Tragically this deal is a sour one. The process has broken down. It seems that the resources required to maintain an adequate level of cover for the public are greater that the state is either willing or able to deploy. The fear of retribution is ebbing away leaving the general public high and dry, gasping on what’s left of an unfulfilled promise.

The thugs, vandals and thieves do not fear us and it is becoming increasingly apparent that they do not fear a promise of retribution that is rarely fulfilled.

The sound of this failure can be heard every single day of the week in every town and city in the United Kingdom .

'ello, 'ello, 'ello, goodbye

Dr. Richard North, aka prisoner JW7874 finally had a police officer (in car naturally) visit his street today. A street that has seen more than its fair share of burglaries. Offering only a brief glimmer of hope to the residents, the officer quickly finished up his business and left before managing to actually fight any street crime.

Why was he there? To deliver a speeding ticket of course.

Who is good and who is bad?

Richard, over at the EU referendum blog, is in a spot of bother with the authorities. He is refusing to pay for a service he feels he is not receiving.

I sympathise greatly with him. He feels let down and bullied by the very people who are supposed to protect him and who will not allow him to protect himself.

Can we describe Richard as a bad man. No, I don't think so. This is why I find it so frustrating that he will, in all likelihood, be dealt a greater measure of justice than the criminals that have been plaguing him and his family for so long.

Good luck Richard.

Richard was indeed sent down but was sprung by a wellwisher. He has started a new blog called Prisoner JW7874:

dedicated to exposing the incompetence and inadequacy of the police, and the craven stupidity of the magistrates, extolling people to stop paying for a service that we are not getting.

The musical box

Here is a box. A musical box. Wound up a ready to play. But this box can hide a secret inside. Can you guess what is in it today?

A tale of two cultures

In Britain, before you can visit violence upon a criminal who has already proved their own propensity towards the delivery of violence you need to enter into a contractual arrangement whereby the criminal signs a waiver form which you need to countersign and then deliver, in triplicate, to the relevant government department giving three weeks advance notice. The department will then review the documentation the top copy of which, with a bit of luck and a strong tailwind, will be delivered back to you stamped with the relevant “Self Defence Approved” mark. After that point the criminal is toast.

In America you can shoot the fucker in his sleep.

Getting our email back

If guilty, five years in prison plus a $250,000 fine is the least that this spammer deserves. I’ve had it up to here with him and his kind and no longer consider spam as a mere nuisance. It’s theft; theft of my time and my families time. It dramatically lessens the value of a service that I pay for and that I used to value highly until Mr. Jason Smathers and his kind crept out from under whatever stone it was they were hiding.

Even after significant effort on my part which delivered promising results early on I still receive more spam than I can comfortably handle though, thankfully, the viral payloads have been well and truly eliminated.

To his sentence I would add one of those orders that prevents technology criminals from using a computer. Even touching one would send the bugger back to the nick. He is a serious technology criminal whose actions and greed have adversely affected the lives of, probably, millions of individuals across the planet. He deserves to be made an example of, the tosser.

How those boundaries do bend

As the Purple Crusader said, the boundaries of the law are flexible. It seems that the member of Fathers 4 Justice who threw that condom filled with four at the PM has been arrested again, this time for breaching his bail conditions.

You see the father, Ron Davis, has been banned from the City of Westminster but was caught entering it earlier today. Plod were there in an instant and nabbed the guy.

What a great job, you might think. The coppers must have really been on the ball. A great job keeping such a water tight ring of impregnability around the City. Oh yeah?

…he arrived at today's Fathers' Day march in a bus which passed into the Westminster area.

Glen Poole, a spokesman for the group, said the police had deliberately re-routed the bus away from the Camden side of Lincoln's Inn Field in central London to the Westminster half.

Mr Poole said the police took Davis to a sign in the square and pointed to the Westminster post code.

He said: "They have arrested him for breach of bail conditions - a situation they appear to have manipulated."

Is the penny dropping?

Brilliant!

Britain’s leading shooting organisation, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) and the anti gun-crime group Mothers Against Guns are to jointly host a national conference to seek new policies in the fight against armed crime.

...

"Mothers Against Guns has no objection to law abiding shooting and we hope that through co-operation with responsible organisations such as the BASC, we can find new answers."

New answers! Exactly. The old and tragically unsuccessful methods of legislating against the law abiding have failed. It looks like at least one anti-gun crime group have realised this.

Could it be that the dangerous dinosaurs have finally been rumbled? It certainly looks like a step in the right direction.

Purple Crusader in North East rampage

The pressure group, Fathers 4 Justice, have created a new character called the Purple Crusader. His mission? To carry out a campaign of traffic disruption in the North East of England and to spread the groups message (if you don't know who Fathers 4 Justice are then go here).

A police spokesman has issued the following warning to the Crusader:

Everyone has the right to peaceful protest and to make their views known, but any protests must be carried out within the boundaries of the law. Any breaches of the law will be dealt with.

To which the Purple Crusader, resplendent in his flowing satin cape, replied:

Earthman, you do not frighten me with your talk of your laws and its boundaries . Boundaries are as flexible as the fabric of the Universe. You yourselves have taught us this.

You failed to trap Spiderman with your inept boundary shifting shenanigans and you will fail to trap me.

I am the Purple Crusader! I have the powder!

This is a stealth post

Dumb Jon speaks about the apparent stealth racism in the police force:

Ooooh…that's the worst kind. Racism for which there is no actual evidence at all. You need special techniques to expose them, for example many racists can't detect if you put salt in their tea because they don't have taste buds like normal people, also many racists own cats and big cauldrons, and if you tie them up, then throw them in a pond, they'll float instead of drowning.

I was once turned into a newt by one of these racists. I got better.

Is this what we can expect?

Is this really the measure of the kind of help we can expect from our emergency services if we should find ourselves unfortunate enough to be victims of violent crime?

Whichever way you look at it, they were either incompetent or the answer to the above question is yes.

As David Carr says, by the time the emergency services got to the victims:

…there was definitely no risk to life because the victims were no longer alive.

How can we honestly respect those that would choose this course of action while women lay dying?

And if they would not put themselves in danger to help these women what can the rest of us expect?

A disgrace. What a tragic disgrace.

The go home prisoners

So, what do you do if you’ve managed to catch a whole load of criminals but have run out of room to keep them all?

The old outdated traditional way: Build more prison units allowing the criminals to pay back their debt to society in full.

The new way: Release the prisoners early.

Call me old fashioned but I still prefer the traditional way. Something to do with my outdated sense of justice which favours the victim and all that.

Now, no doubt someone will soon accuse me of being so right wing that I am on the verge of breaking the right-wing-measurerometer and that we can’t build more prisons because they are expensive or because no-one wants one in their back yard.

Well, to them I say “phooey”. The money is there; it’s just being used in the wrong places. If the politicians who consistently let down the people they are supposed to be representing actually had the will, they would find the way. This is Great Britain; we can afford to build some buildings for Heavens sakes. We can afford to run more prisons.

As for where to build them this, I agree, is an actual real problem. My suggestion is to take a leaf out of the 1960’s hand book of bad design and build up. Then take a leaf out of the Japanese book of modern design and build down. More units, similar footprint.

Also, make all prison furniture out of that orange Formica stuff. That should give the crooks something to think about.

Happy birthday Johnny

So, some time back members of the UK government looked at the rising gun crime statistics and the blood drained from their collective faces. They saw guns being carried as fashion accessories or as necessary tools of the drug trade. They saw the indiscriminate firing of sub-machine guns in the streets and seemingly motiveless shootings of innocent citizens going about their day to day lawful business. They heard reports of robbery and murder at the drop of a hat. They could not believe their eyes and ears and they knew that something needed to be done.

Naturally the first thing they did was to call an amnesty. No surprise there then. This is where a group of generally law abiding people hand in a bunch of old crap they’ve had lying around for ages. The media showed loads of pictures of old guns in buckets and the police and the Home Office cried success.

Then the government sent a few representatives out to various gun-control meetings across the country to make vague promises about curbing gun culture. Right noises were made, advice from gun clubs and associations was dismissed, and everyone agreed that guns were evil, nasty things that had no useful purpose except to those with criminal intent.

We will not become like America, they said. Never, never, never.

Then they sat down to draw up their new laws. Yes, laws so devious, so mighty and righteous that the criminals will have no choice but to sit up and take notice.

First off was a five year minimum jail term for anyone caught in possession of a prohibited firearm. Two birds with one stone this one. A law that would deter the criminals who were shooting at each other in the streets and annoy those that were to judge them in the courts all at the same time. No longer could those pesky judges let someone off lightly.

What could they possibly do to follow this?

It had been noted that some clever criminals were converting a particular and reasonably well defined type of air pistol, commonly known as the Brocock, into real live firearms. Eyes darted over to the mighty ban stick. Converting the pistols was already a criminal offence but to ban the gun in its original sporting form would show that the government meant business. It was an opportunity for the stick that could not be missed.

Never mind the community that had taken to using these ugly and dangerous guns for their dirty and wicked sport. The government has pushed these kinds of people around before. A pathetic minority that could be safely ignored.

So the Brocock, or self contained gas cartridge pistol, was effectively banned. It was no longer legal to sell or transfer ownership of them in the UK. Existing owners could either hand them into the police (bucket collection style) or apply for a special license so that they could keep their property until it fell into disrepair. No need for compensation because a clever law like this doesn't require it. It's not really theft. Governments do not steal.

And so it was done, with a grace period just to allow for the sporting minority to hand in their property or apply for licenses.

This grace period runs out in just a little over a day.

However, there is a problem. You see, most people don’t follow the government’s legislative process very closely. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that they are busy doing other things. They think that if the government wants to tell them something important, like that airgun you brought your son for his birthday last year is illegal now they would. After all, it tells you when you are too fat, too fast or too smoky doesn’t it?

So now we have the situation, fantastical as it is, where almost all of the 75,000 banned airguns are still unlicensed and in circulation and where there is a minimum five year sentence for anyone caught in possession of one. This is the stark reality of knee jerk ill thought out legislation, a term now synonymous with UK gun law:

"The stark reality is that if people ignore the changes in the law they could ultimately end up in prison," said Chief Supt Paul Robinson, of the Metropolitan Police.

So happy birthday Johnny and merry Christmas to each and every one of you state made criminals. Recorded gun crime could be about to jump to its highest level ever. An astonishing result given the original intention, even for this government.

Mamma mia!

The Italians are changing sides:

A committee headed by a leading prosecutor is currently drawing up proposals for a wide-ranging reform of the penal code. Addressing an electoral meeting on Saturday, Mr Castelli said: "In the new penal code, we shall be changing the concept of legitimate defence, which today is too far unbalanced in favour of the criminal, to the detriment of honest people."

In this country you can only get physical with your neighbourhood burglar if you can show in a court of law that your use of force was proportional with the physical threat posed to you personally by the crook. Or some such.

Punching his lights out because he was repeatedly walking in and out of your house removing all of your stuff is out of the question.

Can we suddenly expect an influx of Italian gangsters into the UK looking for easier pickings? Frankly I don't think so. We are pretty much at saturation point over here and trying to muscle in would be more trouble than it's worth.

Accidental criminals

Here’s a prediction.

Sooner or later we will see accidental criminals in court over this:

From May, gas-propelled air weapons will be outlawed under anti-social behaviour legislation.

Illegal possession of such weapons could result in a minimum five-year jail term.

An unwanted and forgotten gift or purchase could turn out to be a time bomb for unsuspecting and previously law abiding members of the public.

Obviously, a passing interest in owning and using an air gun must be punished but five years in prison is a little harsh.

Here’s another prediction, no criminal who wants to carry a gun will have to go without.

What's your magistrate street name?

I quite fancy being a magistrate. My local area has a shortage and the local press have run a few articles recently calling for volunteers.

Can you imagine how quickly those prisons would fill up under my guiding hand? A characteristic that would no doubt be reflected in my street name, The Imprisonator.

Unlike this magistrate whose street name is The Kindly School Teacher:

Mark Jones, 19, faced fines totalling £417 after admitting a string of driving offences and possessing cannabis.

But instead of making him pay up, Port Talbot magistrates offered to waive the fines - if he sat at the back of the court for 30 minutes until lunchtime.

And the dog ate my homework

Every now and again a judge makes a decision that is so out of touch with reality, so ridiculous and so transparently wrong that you are left with no other choice but to doubt his very motives. Was he listening to the evidence? Did he turn up to court at all? Does he fancy the defendant? This judge here, for instance:

A Birmingham MP has criticised a judge after he decided not to jail a man who took a loaded gun into a nightclub.

The man told the judge that he found the gun in the car park and thought that it was a cigarette lighter. The judge believed him.

Did you know that the Criminal Justice Act 2003 introduced a minimum sentence of five years for possession of a prohibited firearm? Did you know that young sporting shots below the age of 17 were banned recently from carrying their sporting airguns from their homes to their clubs even if they are unloaded and in secure cases? Did you know that the recent Anti-Social behaviour bill made it illegal to carry a toy gun in public without good reason or lawful authority (an authority, I might add, that can never be given)?

All this in the name of tightening up the laws to reduce the tidal wave of gun crime on the streets of Britain.

We have some of the most restrictive and harsh firearms laws in the world and each new one that is passed further restricts the ability of sportsmen and women to pursue their chosen pastime. But that’s just the thing isn’t it? The guaranteed effect of these laws is that the law abiding will obey them, whereas the criminals will continue to ignore them. Yet we see more and more of them and the legislators just never seem to get it.

Another law here, another restriction there, another tweak to this piece of legislation and all in the name of reducing gun crime and kerbing gun culture when year after year, decade after decade all we see are further restrictions on the legitimate and law abiding while the criminals not only continue to ignore the law but actually, when caught, use their old schoolboy excuses to get off.

It's not mine, I found it outside in the playground.

Whatever you might think of the desire of a minority of people to pursue shooting as a hobby you must at least be beginning to think that legislation is no longer the answer. The politicians, anti-liberty campaign groups and the media have been banging on at you for years, decades that gun laws must be tightened and you have nodded and agreed and let the legislators get on with it.

And what have they delivered to you in return?

A Britain where gun crime is rising out of control, where young girls are gunned down at parties, where policemen are shot at by passing cars and where criminals carry the right gun to the right place just to prove they know how to accessorise properly.

Don’t be fooled any longer. When they say to you that we need more gun laws tell them you are no longer interested in their lame excuses and their poor performances.

It’s time they started putting their efforts and money into catching and punishing the criminals.

They have run out of excuses.

I have updated the bit about what act introduced the minimum 5 year sentence for the possession of a prohibited firearm. I said that it was the Anti-Social behaviour bill when in fact it was the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Police cars to be fitted with CCTV cameras

Yay! They should fit them with zoom lenses too. That way there will be even fewer reasons to get out of the car.

Only Jedi mind tricks can be used for self defence

Via Kevin at The Smallest Minority we have this:

A man who stabbed to death an armed intruder at his home was jailed for eight years today.

Carl Lindsay, 25, answered a knock at his door in Salford, Greater Manchester, to find four men armed with a gun.

When the gang tried to rob him he grabbed a samurai sword and stabbed one of them, 37-year-old Stephen Swindells, four times.

Mr Swindells, of Salford, was later found collapsed in an alley and died in hospital.

Lindsay, of Walkden, was found guilty of manslaughter following a three-week trial at Manchester Crown Court.

He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.

After the case, Detective Chief Inspector Sam Haworth said: “Four men, including the victim, had set out purposefully to rob Carl Lindsay and this intent ultimately led to Stephen Swindells’ death.

“I believe the sentences passed today reflect the severity of the circumstances.”

Three other men were charged with robbery and firearms offences in connection with the incident, which took place in February last year.

There has to be something more to this case than what was reported in the above. I mean there just has to be.

Oh no, wait a minute, I see it. The crook was stabbed four times. Yes, I suspect that is the reason why Mr. Lindsay is now under lock and key; because while minding his own business in his own home doing his own thing he had the temerity to stab a home invading criminal not once but four times.

Via Glenn Reynolds we are pointed to this news item which indicates that there was indeed more to this story. Mr. Lindsay may not have been the innocent homeowner I thought him to be and my comments on the matter seem somewhat over-egged.

I wonder why I and so many other bloggers jumped to similar conclusions?

CCRKBA opens London office

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) have opened an office in London. They say that they are here to join:

...with embattled British citizens in their fight to restore their firearms rights.

"British citizens and gun owners from other European countries will be funding this effort," Gottlieb [the CCRKBA Chairman] said. "Just as with America's war against international terrorism, we are taking the fight against international gun control to our enemies. With the attack on gun rights becoming global, it is important to fight these battles on every continent before we find ourselves isolated from an important human civil right.

"Extremist gun control measures have disarmed the British people," Gottlieb continued, "leaving them vulnerable to criminal assault. Incredibly, if they do defend themselves, they can be prosecuted and imprisoned. Since the United Kingdom banned privately owned handguns in 1997, gun crime has nearly doubled. What more appropriate place for the Citizens Committee to be than in the middle of this battleground, offering whatever help we can to British citizens in their efforts to take back their neighborhoods and make their communities safe once again?"

The CCRKBA have employed veteran Conservative Party activist Greg Smith as the organization's European representative.

"The British example," Smith said, "is conclusive proof to anyone who proposes gun control that it simply does not work. You can take guns away from law-abiding citizens, whose only desire is to protect their homes and families. However, our experience has proved that you cannot stop criminals, who are reportedly bringing guns into the country illegally, while honest citizens find it nearly impossible to even own a sporting shotgun."

I'm not sure what affect this will have on actual firearms legislation but I'm convinced that it will cause fits in the pseudo-offices of the UK's Gun Control Network. All of its six or seven members must be spitting teeth right about now.

They don't make yobs like they used to

The trouble with yobs these days is that they call the police at the first sign of trouble.

In the old days if an old woman started taking photographs of you and your mates while you were taking drugs, drinking heavily, vandalising a few cars and what-not you would usually just put a brick through her window and that would be that.

But no, not these days. Yobs don't want to take responsibility for their own problems any more. Instead, they just pick up the phone and say that someone is pointing a gun at them. Then they relax and watch someone else do all the terrorising:

A DISABLED grandmother who tried to film yobs terrorising her neighbourhood was ordered out of her home by a police Swat team who suspected she was armed and dangerous.

Terrified Maureen Jennings, who is only 4ft 10in tall, received a call from a police negotiator at 1.30 am telling her to look out of the window of her bungalow.

A police Armed Response Unit had surrounded the house and Mrs Jennings, who suffers from a chronic heart condition and diabetes, was told to put her hands in the air and step outside while police searched her home.

Maureen is at her wits end:

"It is terrible living here," she said. "We've all had enough and I can't sleep at night."

"I have had them boozing and taking drugs on my front steps. I can't take this anymore. Doctors have sent notes to the council because of what it is doing to my health. But nothing ever happens.

"I love my bungalow but I want out of this estate. It is ruining my life."

…

She has regularly complained to police about the gang on The Moss estate in Macclesfield but claims that officers rarely bother to investigate.

Wise up Maureen, there is a way you can get the police to turn up and investigate and you'll probably be able to get a few good snaps of some helicopters too.

Monsters in front of the bench, monsters behind

Handing out community service sentences to those that abuse children should not be tolerated.

Two young children were forced to drink washing up liquid by their foster parents, a court has heard.

Lesley Broughton, 31, and Lynne Sheridan, 30, from Greater Manchester, were arrested after neighbours became concerned about their foster daughters.

The couple pleaded guilty at Minshull Street Crown Court to child cruelty charges involving the seven and nine-year-old girls.

They were given community sentences of 180 and 240 hours each.

This sentence is made even more sickening by the fact that these two child abusing women were doing it for years:

But secretly they put the two sisters, aged 11 and nine, through two years of hell, a jury heard.

They punched and slapped them, made them drink washing up liquid, stand in silence for hours and sit with their noses pressed against a wall.

Neighbours at Little Holton, near Bolton, called police after seeing the girls frogmarched around the garden.

Sometimes Daily Mail sentiments are right and this is one of those times. Giving out such a ‘Touchy feely’ sentence to this couple is inexcusable and sends out exactly the wrong kind of message to other abusers. This is what you get even if you are caught!. Outrageous.

New Labour's answer to crime

A three pronged approach has been chosen by New Labour to battle the criminal element in this great land of ours. The first two are described here and the third is described personally by the home secretary, Citizen Blunkett, every time a crime comes to his attention. The approach:

1. Rename Her Majesty's Prison Service to the National Offender Management Service.
2. Rename the Crown Prosecution Service to the Public Prosecution Service.
3. Issue identification papers to all British citizens.

This strategy will then be followed up by allowing most criminals to vote while they are serving out their sentences. I would have said prison sentences but many will never see the arse end of a prison, serving instead a few hours in the community or alternatively being required to wear a tag.

In the old days these tags used to consist of a heavy iron ball and chain and would most often be worn whilst the prisoner was actually incarcerated. These days, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the tags are very light and made of plastic and do not require the attention of prison officers on a daily basis.

To back up this assault on the criminal element New Labour now employs more police officers than ever before, a fact which is so obvious it is hardly worth mentioning. I mean, they are everywhere. You can't make a move without seeing them.

Unless, that is, you decide not to drive.

The progressive dilemma

From a David Goodhart article in the the Guardian ( via Andrew Sullivan) we have this:

It was the Conservative politician David Willetts who drew my attention to the "progressive dilemma". Speaking at a roundtable on welfare reform, he said: "The basis on which you can extract large sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the recipients are people like themselves, facing difficulties that they themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask: 'Why should I pay for them when they are doing things that I wouldn't do?'

This struck a chord with me and certainly warrants some thought.

Perhaps it strikes a chord because it is just another way of saying “hey, that guy doesn’t deserve my tax money because he’s wicked”? You know the kind of thing, where a criminal tries to claim legal aid to sue a farmer after getting shot during a burglary or where a terrorist who shouldn’t even be in the country claims state benefit. What about young thugs going on holiday or partaking in a little motor racing at my expense? Yeah, that’s the kind of thing.

I know, I know, the progressive dilemma is more subtle than that and is not specifically (or even mainly) about criminality but that’s the chord it struck.

What could she do?

Alone and with no form of defence available to her by decree of the state this poor woman was faced with a simple choice. Allow her property to be taken from her with no questions asked or try to get it back. Retrospectively she made the 'wrong' choice but it was a choice that countless other women would make.

Of course, some readers might suggest that a third choice was available to the young lady. She could have marched off to the nearest police station and lodged a complaint. With luck she would have eventually received a crime number which would have facilitated in her insurance claim for the stolen lighter. Eventually.

Never walk home alone, they will say and it seems like good advice, but what is the real story behind it? The streets are not safe, you are not permitted to carry any item for self defence purposes and we cannot protect you. Bring a friend or you're on your own.

Welcome to England

Home of the caring, sharing society where householders share the the contents of their home with you and where the state is your friend.

Blogrolled

In a wild and indiscriminate game of blog roulette I happened to land on this:

The worst thing about the influence of Liberalism on the legal system has been the politicisation of the law. Instead of upholding the law as passed by Parliament, every decision is now carefully weighed against political considerations. Is it any wonder respect for the law is going downhill when the law merely serves to provide an excuse to push the political idea d'jour ? So now we have the situation where police openly discriminate in favour of some victims and against others. Which leads to situations like this:.......

The blog owner, one Dumb Jon, relays to us the story of Huntington Life Sciences quest for a little justice. A new blogroll entry is born.

Bugger, again

It seems that some crook has stolen the delivery van that contained the soldier 95 camouflage trousers, respirator pouch, DPM forage cap, British army woollen gloves and 7000 rounds of ammunition that I ordered.

How is a man supposed to skirmish without trousers?

By the way, I thought that some of you might be interested in some of the other items equipment that I use during a skirmish (the kind that has been delivered without interception by crooks).

This is my Tokyo Marui MP5-SD5.

It’s quite a good copy of the original Heckler and Koch and is properly licensed by the manufacturer so that they can add all the little extra touches, like the Heckler and Koch name, to the copy. Visually the biggest difference is that this copy is 5mm longer but I can forgive Tokyo Marui for that I think. It also doesn’t sport the 3 shot burst option available on the original but the single shot and full automatic modes work perfectly.

It’s light, very manageable in all kinds of situations (in the mud, up a tree, in a ditch, in a bush or what have you) and is very reliable.

This is my backup weapon:

It’s a Tokyo Marui Tactical Master and is loosely based on the Beretta 92 created, I believe, by Carlo Beretta, Vittorio Valle and Giuseppe Mazzett in 1970, first bought into production in 1975 under the designation Mod. 92 cal. 9mm Parabellum (or so I’m informed, I just use the thing).

I wear it in a shoulder holster and have had to pull it on two occasions when the magazine on the MP5-SD5 emptied and I had no full ones available on my belt. Facing down a group of men with fully automatic skirmish weapons when all you have is a pistol is heart thumpingly unpleasant, but it’s better than a stick.

Blunkett is at it again

The Home Secretaries proposal to reduce the burden of proof required by a court to convict a suspected terrorist is exactly what we have come to expect from the man and is incompatible with my belief that capital punishment should once more be legal in the UK.

I cannot support it.

How to be a victim

I've stopped being surprised by articles like this one:

The story was told by an American student named Valerie Ruppel who had returned from a term's study in London. Two days after her group reached Britain, a policewoman came to South Kensington to brief them on how to keep themselves safe.

I pick up Valerie's account in her own words: "Her first question was to the women, 'How many of you brought Mace?' Three girls raised their hands. She told us we couldn't use it, shouldn't even carry it, it was illegal.

"Had any of us brought any other type of weapon, such as a knife? Several of the men in our group indicated that they carried pocket knives. She told us to leave them at home too."

"Then she instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack."

"The reason (and she spelt it out in no uncertain terms) was that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the aggressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball it would be quite clear who the victim was."

Franlky, in a situation where a criminal offers up violence I would have thought it appropriate to make it as difficult as possible to tell who was the instigator and who was the intended victim.

As Jeff Cooper once said:

One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.

It's the way we tell 'em

Normally, and in many countries around the world, when accumulated records show that a particular thing has increased the message is one of, well, this particular thing has increased. It's reasuring that (though the saying there are lies, damn lies and statistics is well known) there is a certain symetry that is being maintained or at least an attempt at consistency.

People feel a little more informed and there is a little more certainty to their lives.

Not so in Great Britain. In Great Britain we collect records (much as any other country), collate them, analyse the results and then blurt out that regardless of what the results are showing we should not really believe them because we are using a new measure, method, practice or some such.

This is true of many measures including new figures from the Home Office which this time shows that violent crime has risen by 14%. But it hasn't.

The Home Office said much of the rise in violent crime had been due to an increase in the reporting and recording of violence.

Home Office Minister, Hazel Blears, said: "It is important to put the increases in police recording of violent crime into context."

She said better recording policies meant police forces now had a clearer picture of crime in their areas.

Yawn. If I had a pound for every time I heard this kind of thing from the Government I'd have 100 million pounds.

I would have had somewhat less than that but I've changed the way I record these things.

The BBC report originally stated that the high violent crime survey was from the British Crime Surver rather than from the home office themselves. I have updated the above posting accordingly.

Also, it makes me laugh that the following appears:

The British Crime Survey is seen as having the most reliable figures, and is based on interviews with the public.
Recorded crime represents incidents reported to the police.

So recorded crime shows a massive increase in violent crime but ministers see the figure based upon a survey as a more reliable indicator of trends.

I wonder what they'd think if the results were reversed?

Another disgrace

Another old woman beaten half to death by a wicked thug who knew very well that there was little his victim could do to defend herself. A terrible crime and one that Detective Inspector Frank Robbie of Greater Manchester Police can't understand:

I cannot understand how someone could have punched this frail and defenceless woman and then just left her lying on the floor while they stole money from her.

Of course not. But then there is nothing to understand, there is just acceptance. Acceptance of the fact that there are wicked, nasty, evil people in the world who will do anything that they can to satisfy their own selfish desires. The Mrs Jackson's of this world are not frail old ladies that deserve respect and consideration, they are obstacles to be overcome in the pursuit of another’s booty.

The detective, true to form, remarks as follows on the one armed Mrs Jackson's disability:

She lost her left arm in a works accident many years ago so there would have been no way in which she could have defended herself.

No, not in this England. But there is a tool out there that frail old ladies can use, one arm or two, to defend themselves from the human dross that hunts them.

Unfortunately the powerful men and women of this country do not think that frail and infirm people like Mrs. Jackson should be permitted to keep one in their homes for situations exactly like the one she found herself in last Friday afternoon. Alone, unarmed and terrified.

All Party? I don't think so

Here is the report Combating the threat of gun violence from the 'All Party Parliamentary Group on Gun Crime' (PDF).

Apparently the one party absent was any major group representing supporters of private gun ownership in the UK (Airgun Training and Education Organisation is by no means a major or representative enough group). It's not surprising that the report reads like an anti-gun manifesto.

And if we turn to the back page we see:

Published by Saferworld, Secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group in association with the Gun Control Network

Well, no surprise there then.

(PS. The Chair of the group is notably Diane Abbott MP who, as we know, has been a bit loose with her principles in recent times.)

Micro anarchy

Not only do I not understand how people can behave like this:

An ambulance car responding to an emergency call in Staffordshire has been attacked by vandals.

I don't really want to. I don't care for their reasons. Read the article. Read about what the ambulance was doing at the time. Read about the injury sustained by the ambulance technician from a neighbouring service.

I dearly hope that the thugs that did this are caught, charged, found guilty and thrown straight into prison. That's the kind of use I want to see my taxes put to.

More women on the beat please

So, "bobby on the beat" experiments fail while women on patrol initiatives succeed:

Women living on a housing estate in Northamptonshire are so sick of crime they are patrolling the streets at night....in the five weeks since Street Watch had been formed crime on the estate had reduced dramatically.

It's all very peculiar.

Mercs4Crims

Iain Murray is lost for words and it’s not difficult to see why:

Prisoners are being ferried about in luxury chauffeur-driven Mercedes cars, it was confirmed today.

The prisoners from Holloway, Pentonville and Wormwood Scrubs in London are driven in £30,000 E-class Mercedes Benz cars with leather seats, air conditioning and professional drivers to hospital and other appointments.

A spokesman for Corporate Cars, based in Whetstone, north London, defended the use of luxury cars today, claiming that the high-class cars were used because of security risks.

“Do you want to know why we use Mercedes?” he said. “What is the most reliable car on the road?

Well, I’m glad you asked. The most reliable car on the road is a Mazda.

It’s those same old myths, if you want a reliable car buy a Mercedes; if you want to be a criminal be one in the UK. No wait, that last one’s true.

It seems that some don't see the problem with using air conditioned mercedes for prisoner transportation. The fact is that, joking aside, it's not just an issue of reliability and economics. It's also matter of justice being seen to be done and this kind of "justice" is hard to swallow for the honest guy that has to take a dirty London bus into work every morning.

The primary responsibility of the prison service is not to cut costs but to ensure that the prisoners pay their debt to society. Many in society do not include mercedes and air conditioning as part of the deal.

Safety in the city

So, you're thinking of moving from countryside to the City. What do you do? Organise the removal service, redirect the post, hire the SAS for some city survival training:

Mr McGrath, who spent 15 years in the army, explained: "We were running the gap-year course, when we got a call from a woman who was worried not because her daughter was going to Cambodia - but because she was moving from Suffolk to London."

Shameful

It’s astonishing, the lengths some people are prepared to go to, in an attempt to show how much contempt they have for their country and for the sacrifices made by others on their behalf.

A man has been arrested after graffiti was daubed on Cambridge's war memorial hours before a Remembrance Day service.

The base of the war memorial in Hills Road was spray-painted with 10 18-inch high monkeys overnight on Monday.

A 27 year old male has been arrested, question and released on police bail without charge pending further enquiries.

Despite efforts to clean the memorial, the graffiti could not be removed. Veterans draped the memorial in flags to hide it during the 11 November service.

"We've tried cleaning it off but it won't budge. I think it will need sand-blasting," said Mr Hawkins, president of the Cambridge branch of the ex-service organisation.

You know, I have a great idea for a bout of community service. It involves a cotton bud, a bucket of water and about three years hard labour.

Here's a picture of the memorial:

This is not the first time that it has been desecrated. It also happened in March 2003 during an anti-Iraq war march.

Here's another interesting factoid about the memorial:

In 1931, however, the Daily Herald headlined 'The Empire's Armistice Call: There shall be no more war', and went on, 'Never again! That will be the vow in every sane mind throughout the British Empire today.' Hannen Swaffer asked: 'Now that Economy has come, will they really cut down those health services...Why don't we do something to stop the next war?' Two years later the first recorded alternative wreath was laid at Cambridge War Memorial, by the Cambridge Student Anti-War Movement, with the inscription: 'To the dead and wounded of all nations, victims of a war they did not make, from those who are determined to prevent all similar crimes of imperialism.'

I guess a few years later the same student anti war movement found themselves battling against Nazi imperialism.

Oh look, another anti-war march by Cambridge students that passes the memorial. This time the Indymedia Tour of Shame.

Sheesh, let the dead rest in peace will you. They've earned it.

Mistaken crime correspondents muddy the waters

It's reporting like this ("Executive war games fuel illegal guns market") that contributes to gun crime in this country. It does so by muddying the waters and by distracting parliament, crime fighters and other groups from the issues that really contribute to gun crime.

From Jason Bennetto 'reporting' it's obvious that he is not qualified to comment on the subject. Let me tell you why.

The boom in executive-style war games, such as paintballing, is providing criminals with a ready supply of guns that are being converted into lethal weapons, a confidential Scotland Yard report says.

So, lets crack on with it then. You wrote the leader Mr. Bennetto, please show us how executive war games are providing criminals with these convertible guns.

The reports also highlights a small Derringer blank-firing pistol, which police say is easy to convert into a deadly weapon and has become particularly popular with the girlfriends of drug dealers because it is easy to hide.

The compact Kimar Derringer blank-firing pistol is "notoriously simply to convert," says the report.

Interesting. We should discuss this further but it is not relevant to executive war gaming, such as paintball and airsoft skirmishing. The report apparently has highlighted this particular weapon as convertible, you have written an article that leads with the evil of executive war games and yet the first nugget you throw us is nothing to do with the games.

"Derringers are particularly popular with female companions of 'Yardies' [Jamaican crack cocaine dealers] because of the ease of concealment."

To convert the Italian-made guns, a hole is drilled through the blocked barrel. "The whole process takes less than two hours and would cost usually around £50 in a backstreet workshop," the report notes.

Are you still going on about the derringer, which is not used by war gamers Bennetto?

The Metropolitan Police study concludes that one of the main factors behind the current spate of shootings is the conversion of replica and air weapons into pistols that fire live ammunition.

Indeed, they've said this for quite some time. They are referring to real blank firing steel replicas and the brocock style self contained air cartridge gun. Neither are used for paintball or airsoft, the two most popular forms of executing war gaming in the UK.

Gun crime in England and Wales has risen to record levels, with 10,250 incidents, including 80 murders, involving firearms in the year up to April.

The restricted internal report, "Tackling Gun Crime in London", was written earlier this year by officers from the Metropolitan Police's specialist crime directorate.

And no doubt you've read it so please tell us how this disgusting executive pastime is shown up for what it is by the report. Nothing but a disgraceful supply chain of readily convertible weapons.

The report warns: "In recent years there has been an extraordinary improvement in the quality of the replica weapons available on the British firearms market, and, in particular, a rapid growth in 'air-soft', black-powder, CO2 or 'blank-firer' replica weap-ons, directed in particular at war games enthusiasts and at other 'sport shooters'.

Nowhere does it say that paintball markers are contributing to the supply of convertible weapons yet paintball is the most popular form of war gaming in the UK. In spite of this Mr. Bennetto runs with the nasty executive wargame theme.

It is true that paintballers use compressed gas to provide the propellant for their markers. However. Mr. Bennetto, have you seen a paintball marker recently? I would like to know to what extent these are being converted and used to fuel gun crime. I would wager that there is no fueling going on whatsoever from this piece of equipment.

Then there's the growth in Airsoft. It's true to say that the toy guns used in airsoft skirmishing are realistic looking and it would certainly be seen as a problem if these could be converted into real firearms. So Mr. Bennetto, please show us an example of a converted airsoft gun. Please enlighten us with the engineering techniques that can turn a plastic toy that can be broken, simply by dropping it, into a lethal firearm. You would not believe how interested I am in the process involved in turning a battery operated air powered toy that has no firing pin and a barrel that can be bent by the poorest of spoon bending magicians into a lethal weapon.

Or are you talking about the gas powered plastic BB firing handguns that would explode in you hands at the mere hint of gunpowder. The ones with the tiny 6mm diameter internal barrels with all the strength of the frame of a cheap umbrella.

Do you in fact know what you are talking about at all?

"Replica weapons can be purchased directly from sports goods stores, gunsmiths or from Army and Navy-style market stalls, in stores dedicated to the pursuit of war game equipment and clothing, mail order advertisements that appear in gun magazines or they can be obtained from suppliers who advertise over the internet."

We know this and that's a good thing from a consumers point of view but it is totally irrelevant because the wargamers equipment is not providing a source of guns for criminal conversion. However, the report does say 'internet' so there must be at least a little evil in this story.

The air weapons are converted by drilling out the gas cartridge, which is used like a sleeve for the live round of ammunition to fit into. The airguns can be sold to anyone over 17 because they are not classified as firearms.

Once again Mr. Bennetto is talking about the self contained air cartridge system provided by Brocock. These have never and will never be used in war gaming because they are capable of inflicting injury. No war game and no war gamer uses this equipment Mr. Bennetto. It is simply not relevant to the pastime.

The Met believes most gun incidents now involve converted weapons.

The study says that the number of firearms incidents in London increased by about 700 to 5,410 in 2002. The most recent figures show that the Met secured a drop of about 14 per cent in gun crimes in the year to September.

Recent action against armourers includes a raid on a suspected mini arms factory in south-east London last Thursday. Police seized about 60 gas-fired, replica firearms that were being converted to fire live ammunition.

And how many of these gas-fired replica guns are used in paintball or airsoft? Will you tell us that Bennetto? I'd be willing to wager against your credentials as a crime reporter that the answer to that is none.

The firearms assessment warns: "A big threat facing the Metropolitan Police Service at present is the availability and use of converted replica weapons.

"The legal replica market of air weapons and blank firers is growing in the UK and there is no control system in place. Weapons are sold through a variety of means including sports shops, backstreet stores, magazines, mail order and the internet."

A not very new or interesting couple of paragraphs that has as much relevance to war gaming as Mr. Bennetto has to accurate and balanced crime reporting.

Mobile phones

Take this:

Police and cab drivers are teaming up to use text messaging in an innovative project to fight crime.

and take this:

In three weeks a new law will come into force banning drivers from using mobile phones while at the wheel.

then ask yourself how many cab drivers are likely to pull over to read the text messages. Be honest.

In other news, legislators deny that using a hand held radio is at all similar to using a mobile phone. Taxi drivers, police and truckers all sigh with relief.

The secret's in the training

Here’s an interesting project. MP’s are calling for more armed police officers to deal with the current level of firearms crimes in the UK. Well, it’s worthy of note that twenty years ago there used to be many more of such officers but this changed after the shooting of Stephen Waldorf by a couple of these officers. My understanding is that they thought it was better to have less officers who were better trained than 13,000 of them with a lesser training.

Now here’s a problem. To be a firearms officer requires a whole bunch of training, most of which I am not familiar with. One aspect that I am familiar with though is the actual shooting bit. I know that the development of skills such as accuracy, safety, the development of the correct habits etc only come with a great deal of practice. And this practice can never end.

Your project is to work out and develop a top class on going training regime for all these thousands of required officers that does not include any practice on personal time (the personal and private use of most guns is banned). This regime must leave the officers enough time to actually spend significant time policing. And don’t forget to leave enough time for all the administration that they have to do.