Moron oxide - the sweet smell of success

Quite straight-facedly (monkey’s bollock though that face resembles), and being no stranger to hilarious irony, the BBC provides a showplace for our corrupt and useless political class (Labour Division) to offer excuses for its abject, knowing, and deadly failures of morality, duty, and courage.

No excuses' over family's deaths

There were "no excuses" for failings which contributed to the deaths of a mother and daughter who were hounded by youths, the home secretary has said.

Fiona Pilkington, 38, killed herself and Francecca Hardwick in a burning car after years of abuse on their estate.

An inquest jury said Leicestershire Police and two councils had not handled complaints from the family properly.

In much the same way that, for example, the UK Labour Party and Conservative Party did not handle the rise of fascism and Nazism properly between 1933 and 1940.

Alan Johnson said the agencies were wrong to regard such anti-social behaviour as "low-level crime".

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is to investigate the handling of the case.

Speaking to BBC News, Mr Johnson said: "This should never have happened and there are no excuses for this and there can be no excuses for this.

"This is an example of a complacency that we are determined to eradicate wherever it is."

Dosed with a new blend of sodium pentothal and Rohypnol, he added: “We’ve only been in office for 12 years and so now, having put our unique talents to work in the education, health, and benefits systems, we now move forward onto the broad, sunlit uplands of the pre-election months to notice that some people break not only the tolerant taboos of diverse and liberal free speechers, but also laws, windows, hearts and minds- some of them belonging to really quite unimportant people, but still, every little helps.”

Speaking about the anti-social behaviour the family experienced, he added: "In Fiona Pilkington's case there was insufficient attention to this, it was classified as low level when it is high level if you are experiencing it, that is for sure."

While accepting that the police had made improvements in the past two years, Mr Johnson said the fact remained the existing powers had not been used properly.

"It is the police's job, along with the local authority and social services and housing and all the rest of it, to ensure that people are not driven to the kind of despair Fiona Pilkington was driven to.

“Our dozen years running down the prisons system and the whole ideas of incarceration and punishment have no more to do with this kind of savagery as, say, unprotected promiscuous sex has to do with venereal diseases and pregnancy rates.”

"She did that terrible thing because she felt at her wits' end and she had to get a message to someone and if we go through a load of excuses about this we will not tackle the root problem."

Forensic examination tent at Earl Shilton

The bodies were found in the burning car in October 2007

Mr Johnson added: "I take my responsibilities seriously here.

Okay, okay. Calm down at the back there. Hysterical laughter is undignified. Wipe your tears, put your teeth back in, and read on.

"I'm concerned that we've coasted a bit on anti-social behaviour…

Well spotted. You’ve also spent a bit, borrowed a bit, and got into a scrap or two. But let’s not exaggerate any of this, shall we?

We need to ensure now that right across the country there are consistent standards."

Oh, I think that outside Islington and certain areas of Gloucestershire, you’ll find the scuffers unwilling to provide any time for observing, recording, and preventing mob violence and class hatred.

I think it’s officially called ‘persecution in the community,’ or some such.

Conservative leader David Cameron said it was "an absolutely horrific case" which raised questions for both the police and the council.

"But also we have had a decade of a Labour Government telling us about anti-social behaviour legislation and instructions and orders to the police and it just isn't working," he said.

"We've got to get rid of the police paperwork, we've got to get them back on the streets, we've got to make them feel empowered to intervene and clear these people off the streets and make them accountable locally so there are consequences if they don't deliver."

“And therefore I pledge my administration to closing down the Probation Service and most open prisons and the Children’s Minister and spending the money on new prisons and borstals. I will oblige magistrates and judges to operate ‘a one chance and then you’re inside’ policy for all acts of violence, domestic damage, threats and housebreaking, and parole will begin only after ¾ of any sentence for violence, abuse, and illegal entry to homes.”

Say, didn’t Pink Floyd do an album cover reminiscent of the likelihood of this?

Yeah.

The inquest at Loughborough Town Hall heard Ms Pilkington, her daughter and her son, Anthony, who has severe dyslexia, suffered more than 10 years of harassment and threats from a gang of teenagers living on their street in Barwell.

10 years during which a harmless woman and her poor distressed daughter and son were vilely persecuted, insulted, intimidated, threatened and abused, and during which time they received exactly no help from strutting ‘police officers’ in their comic opera uniforms poncing around like banana republic generalissimos, council officers drew their wages and ignored the many complaints.

The only upside of this tragedy is that it brings this issue into the open

Mark Golding, Mencap

Mencap will, of course, be calling for the public birching of those found guilty of insulting the mentally handicapped.

The council has admitted the Simmons family, who live nearby and are thought to be among those involved, still cause trouble in the area. When asked by the BBC if his children bore any responsibility for the deaths, the father said: "That's for the authorities to decide."

Werl, he don’t know what responserbilitty means, do he, poor lamb?

Ms Pilkington is believed to have poured the contents of a 10-litre can of petrol over clothes in the back seat of the car, and set them alight.

The jury found Ms Pilkington killed herself and her daughter "due to the stress and anxiety regarding her daughter's future, and ongoing anti-social behaviour".

The jury foreman said the police's response had had an impact on Ms Pilkington's decision to unlawfully kill her daughter and commit suicide.

Relatives described how Ms Pilkington had complained for years about youths "taunting and abusing" her at her home, but six months before her death had told them "I give up".

Temporary Chief Constable Chris Eyre of Leicestershire Police said he was "extremely sorry" that police failed to help Ms Pilkington and her daughter.

Mark Golding, chief executive of Mencap, said "hate crime" against people with learning disabilities was common and should be taken as seriously as racial abuse.

He added: "I think this case will be the wake-up call that gives it that kind of profile.

"Until now it's been seen as low-level, it's being treated as misbehaviour and people's lives are being ruined as a result."

Here it comes. The stocks for spaz-bashers, for sure, right?

Mr Golding said more education about disabilities was needed in schools, and authorities needed to work together to support people with learning difficulties and stop a similar tragedy happening again.

He added: "The only upside of this tragedy is that it brings this issue into the open."

The filth who did this aren’t in any schools, Mark Golding, you witless oaf.

They’ve been truanting almost all their lives from schools that are now free of all authority, sanction, respect, or power to compel attendance, thanks to thinking like yours. You and your tribe did this – caused it – it’s your soft-headed, soft-power, soft-option system, Mister Golding. You’re not too far from the political ‘authorities yourself’, are you?* What expertise or knowledge of life in, or on the edge, of underclass ‘neighbourhoods’ can you possibly have?

However, it does lead us quite nicely to the BBC’s political class mantra. They’re actually going to allow comments on this story and so must think that they’re onto a winner.

Have you suffered from disability discrimination? Do you live in Barwell? Have you been affected by the issues raised in this story? Tell us your experiences using the form below.

A selection of your comments may be published, displaying your name and location unless you state otherwise in the box below.

They can only think - if that’s not too strong an expression – and confront this problem (which certainly is too strong an expression) in terms of a clash of competing victimhoods.

You see, Francecca Hardwick wasn’t burned by her distraught and desperate mother as the result of 10 years of barbarians persecuting them in their home and the utter abdication of the authorities from their paid and, in the police’s case, sworn duties – far from it.

She died because some individuals still don’t understand people with ‘learning difficulties.’

*How much of this is truly voluntary rather than from local and national government and quangos?

I don’t know.

But let’s look at Watford Mencap, shall we? You need page 13.

To be fair, the pulp fiction formerly known that the conservative Daily Telegraph lets him spout his victimhood poker line here.

Illustration from here.

The road not taken

As a result of our add-the-next-paragraph-story posted in a blog in a parallel universe where the political parties offer contrasting and mutually opposed platforms of policy and legislation for the electorate to choose between, and in which our weirdly inverted counterparts were invited to imagine an insane reality where this wasn’t the case, we have received a winning entry from someone bizarrely named ‘South Southwester’ who added the following in his antimatter kind of way:

Customer: “I’d like a dog flop smoothie, please, Mister fruit squeezer.”

Fruit squeezer ; “Certainly sir. Would you like raspberry, banana, or blueberry flavour?”

Why, I think blueberry would be a nice change. I’d like one of those, I think.”

Meanwhile, back in our lovely world here, Theodore Dalrymple lays down a delightful and schadenfreudey few paragraphs describing Albion's fallen and indeed thrust down and prostrated status while leading up to the shock diagnosis that there's nothing much other than soft tissue, lymphatic fluid and Carlton Club Two-For-One table d’hote lunches between David Cameron's skull and his coccyx.

Illustration from here.

Britain freezes over

In Hell, according to Dante, the lowest depth of the innermost circle of the Inferno is reserved for traitors.

Even the shades of those who have betrayed some duty or trust are discriminated between and graded in a diverse and degraded hierarchy of evil.

From bad to worst it goes:

Betrayers of kinsfolk;

Betrayers of polity, nation or state;

Betrayers of guests;

Betrayers of lords and benefactors.

Why be hung up – ha ha! – on the words of some homophobic foreign Papist whilst sitting here with mild backache in the sunlit uplands of the enlightened Twenty-First Century after the birth of some dead white Zionist?

Why, indeed, when I myself surely wouldn’t make it out of Hell’s reception room, if lucky, and would probably be roasting and toasting and enshrined in a tomb a bit further Downstairs myself?

Because some truths are universal, and they’re often expressed in literature, and they’re not all about nice stuff like getting married eventually.

The ancients and medieval folk weren’t just down on sin because they’d been brainwashed by the patriarchal military-workshop complex and lacked community organisers: they did it because thousands of generations of rural and city life had taught them that certain attitudes of mind generate behaviour that harms individuals and the polity a t large.

And it’s still true.

Via the Ranting Penguin and Julia amongst others, here’s real-life sin from fewer web pages than you have digits on one hand.

Betrayers of kinsfolk;

Gang torment woman 'sat in dark'

A woman who died inside her burning car with her disabled daughter would sit in the dark listening to the gang that tormented them, an inquest heard.

And

Despite police requests, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council had no record of the problems, the hearing was told.

Council officer Tim Butterworth, who was responsible for dealing with anti-social behaviour, said he had "no concerns" with the situation.

Rugged individualism can be fine on some levels, but I think that at some deep level even the most doctrinaire Objectivists and natural-rights libertarians (who tend to be hyper-ethical in their private lives and public dealings, despite my newfound conservative prejudices) believe in something like common humanity – we may not owe a living to our healthy fellow-men, but in some ways they are our kin: and as such do not deserve to be left alone to be tormented. If this isn’t kin betraying kin, then it’s close enough for the authorities to be damnable, if not actually damned.

Betrayers of polity, nation or state;

Anti-social behaviour 'not police job'

A senior police officer told the inquest into the deaths of a family terrorised by a gang of youths that it was not the responsibility of police to tackle anti-social behaviour.

And

Earlier Ms Davison, assistant deputy coroner for Leicestershire and Rutland, asked whether Mr Butterworth remembered a meeting with a police officer.

She said: "The police officer wanted an anti-social behaviour order and as the best course of action to issue an anti-social behaviour warning. "He appears to want action from the council and he appears to want you to take action. Do you remember this?"

Mr Butterworth replied: "I don't think we have that statement anywhere."

Is Britain better or worse off for these ‘authorities?’

Betrayers of guests;

Hundreds of children are going missing from Britain's care homes and foster families each year, many falling victim to violent and sexual abuse, prostitution and drug addiction.

And

She tempered her unhappiness at a new foster home by drinking a lot of White Lightning cider, ran away and spent time in a children's home. The situation was exacerbated by sexual abuse from a carer, her rape by an older man who liked to prey on vulnerable children's home girls, and dropping out of school without GCSEs.

If fostered children and children in care aren’t guests, then what in heaven’s name are they?

Betrayers of lords and benefactors.

At the inquest into the pair's deaths yesterday, Superintendent Steve Harrod, head of criminal justice at Leicestershire Police, acknowledged that the criminal justice system was set up to avoid sending juveniles to prison.

He said police officers were only allowed to issue warnings to young troublemakers unless their behaviour was judged to be serious.

"I'm not sure if people know but low-level anti-social behaviour is mainly the responsibility of the council"

Supt Harrod suggested that officers got "frustrated with not being able to do some things".

"From my personal experience, if a juvenile goes into detention, they are likely to mix with like-minded people during their time there and they are more likely to reoffend."

And

For really improved outcomes, residential care and foster care need to be transformed. "Residential care needs to be top notch and that's expensive," said Wes Cuell, director of children's services at the NSPCC.

Look at your next wage slip or, if self-employed, your next tax return. Compare the top lines and bottom line and note the difference. Remember how residential carers, foster carers, police, social workers and local authority antisocial behaviour officers are paid, and by whom.

Who then are these armies’ lords and benefactors, if not us?

Now, we are supposed to endure endless taxes and regulations and criminal records checks and dutifully put our ticks in ethnicity boxes of various forms and scrawl X’s into other boxes twice a decade to change not even the guard at Buckingham Palace. We have to dawdle and daydream in pubs until our huddled friends come in from the rain after a cigarette, and we have to watch our soldiers’ coffined homecomings from their just and much-needed but under-strength and ill-supplied service overseas.

And we have to mind our Ps and Q’s and be lectured when we vote for the wrong people by the shamans of the very tribe that abolished punishment in the first place.

I can see why treachery is the worst sin of all in Dante’s imagination.

To take the name of kinsman: of protector; to become both public servant and recipient of public funds; to assume the rank and titles and respect and uniforms of guardians and to inexpertly wield the power of legitimate force and to fail on every level of your duty is sin, pure and simple.

It causes harm to the human family of your neighbours, to the guests in the institutions of child protection, to the country’s peace and prosperity, and to the very people who pay for your comfortable living.But for now; it’s someone else who’s being punished.

Let's bring these sons of bitches down

Celebrated talking buttock Hazel Blears said this last year:

“"The most popular blogs are right-wing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes," she said.

But she added: "Unless and until political blogging 'adds value' to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and pessimism."

This was a classic piece of Political Class slander against New Media honesty and truth-telling, and in support of controlled and ‘responsible’ ‘reportage’, i.e., the censorship of any and every fact, experience, person, book, belief system or world event that might contradict or expose the collectivist mindset that she represents and enforces.

Let’s see what she was against and celebrate a victory for truth and freedom of speech.

According to the National Review, the Alinskyist Gramscian Marxist front ACORN has now lost so much credibility thanks to Fox-News broadcast investigations in four separate cities into its employees’ willingness to break the law in favour of a ‘pimp,’ a Congressional hopeful, a ‘prostitute,’ and the trafficking into the USA of under-aged children for prostitution, that the Congress has decided pretty much to announce that the party’s over as far as funding from, access to and co-operation with federal agencies.

Now, most Americans have never heard of Gramsci or Saul Allinsky and until Glenn Beck exposed Van Jones as the 9/11 Truther and Marxist entryists that he is, and until the blogosphere carried the story out beyond Fox News’ viewers, many of them were happy to accept the mainstream (controlled) media’s censored and whitewashed coverage of both Jones and ACORN. They’d have gone on believing these people were just regular guys, looking after the little people and the birds and the bees and letting them do their real job of being President Obama’s ideological storm troopers of the sort we know so well here in Britain - and assaulting and infiltrating the US body politic.

All that’s stopped now.

Fox - the only national US channel that allows conservative or libertarian speakers anything like fair or equal access to the TV screen compared with their liberal and socialist rivals – started the ball rolling whereby these dangerous and treasonous subversives were exposed and some of their public funding cut off.

There’s no UK equivalent of Fox News, so we’re pretty much on our own in the British Dextrosphere barring a handful of national print dailies and a couple of weeklies, but this was a big blow to our civilisation’s most serious home-grown enemies, so mark one up for the good guys.

This is exactly what freedom of speech is for.

Talk about adding value.

Never let a day go by

I’m reading The Divine Comedy at the moment.

Italian poetry was not at the heart my English literature studies, though the Lord only knows that everybody up to the 19^th Century novelists referred to it often enough, the unoriginal swine. How unlike us innocent and constantly innovating 21^st Century bloggers.

Anyway, bit of false advertising on Dante’s part because - aside from a really rather good crack about a bishop and a baboon and the famous running gag about the size of the Pope’s crook - it’s not exactly proving to be a laugh a minute, know what I mean?

The point of it being a comedy is that it’ll get better by the third part (Divine Comedy 3: in Paradise it’s a Scream), but at the first it’s pretty grim as we see the sinners punished in Hell in a variety of imaginative and appropriate-seeming ways for such crimes as incest and adultery and sodomy and greed.

And sometimes all of them in the same act. Kyewl!

Neutrality in the sense of never taking a stand over any moral issue gets you eternity running after a military banner and being stung by wasps and hornets (and anyone who’s ever heard an Italian scooter engine will know how annoying that can be). I can’t wait to see what saying the N word while white will get you.

It’s all very satisfactory so far in a Daily Mail Readers’ Comment Section sort of way.

One frequent feature of the sinners when Dante and his guide Virgil (not Virgil as in W-w-w-well, Mi-Mister T-Tracy, but the other one) interview them along the lines of what have they got you in here for?, is their dishonesty in their attempts to delude both themselves and their visitors about the nature of the sins and their own culpability for them.

The sinners will do anything; say anything, to deny the rightness of their torments and the wickedness of their damning sins.

It’s all very modern-seeming…

Good news from the doughty Guardian newspaper.

The murder rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years, with 648 homicides recorded in 2008/09 – 136 fewer than the year before. Home Office statisticians said the drop was "not a blip".

Annual crime figures published yesterday show the number of murders and manslaughters and infanticides fell to a level not seen since 1989.

Let’s come back to that good news later, shall we?

A detailed breakdown follows:

The crime figures also show that the recession has so far had a less than expected impact on the underlying crime rate, although domestic burglary has risen by 1% in the past year, fraud – including credit card and online fraud – has risen by 5% and shoplifting has increased by 10%.

But the overall crime rate in England and Wales in the 12 months to March 2009 is officially declared to have remained stable with an estimated 10.7m offences as measured by the British Crime Survey (BCS).

That’s only about one ‘offence’ per six people resident in the UK. Knock off ‘offences’ like the illegal use of dustbins to dispose of rubbish and reporting school bullying, and it’s Earthly paradise, here we come.

Crime in England and Wales actually fell by 5% according to the less reliable police-recorded crime figures.

Now if anyone; anyone at all, wants to explain why police recorded crime figures are held to be less reliable than those produced by the noble Home Office statisticians, then feel free to use this blog’s comments facility.

Home Office statisticians asked yesterday about the impact of the recession on the crime figures said: "There may be pressures coming through. This recession is quite different from the last, which happened at a time of increases in crime. This is one where crime is falling."

Now this is really rather good news for someone, ideologically, and well worth remembering. The previous recession - and I suppose it must mean the one under the Tories as I don’t recall any part of the last 12 years being described as a ‘recession’ until a footnote in a BBC article about the ‘recovery’ on the BBC last week – made crime rates rise. Do you remember it back in the early/mid 1990s and even before that in the manufacturing jobs holocaust of the 1980s – all those poor, underfunded single mums and former lathe operators and Yorkshire pit pony replacements breaking into the homes of the rich to steal fresh fruit and vegetables and proper text-books for their malnourished and non-grammar schooled children?

It had been expected that domestic burglary, which rose by 4% during the calender year 2008, would continue to rise but the 1% increase recorded in this set of figures implies that the economic slowdown is not having the expected effect on the underlying crime rate.

New Labour’s recession – so prudent and prosperous that even the poor feel less need to housebreak.

Some individual categories of crime, such as credit card and online fraud are showing increases. But an apparent 25% surge in personal thefts, including pickpocketing and "stealth" theft, which show up on the BCS, is recorded as a 12% fall in the police-recorded crime figures, suggesting that the picture is unclear.

No – not unclear. It suggests in fact that A) bureaucracies tend to become politicised and therefore they do what politicised bureaucracies do, and that B) both Home Office and the police ‘service’ are politicised bureaucracies, and that C) personal theft is possibly up, possibly down, but definitely moving in one particular direction, but we’re not sure which direction, just like global temperatures appear to be changing, but generally in a downward direction, which is why we call it global warming and not global cooling. Remember, we’re both using the Al Gore-invented Internet here, dear Reader - bear with me.

The figures also show a 313% increase to 818 cases in frauds by company directors.

A development so sinister; so obviously and unequivocally hazardous to our way of life and indeed to the continued existence of multicellular life on Earth itself, that the Guardian needs to offer no more details.

(Author’s note – evading legitimate taxes and ordering goods and services that a director has no intention of paying the suppliers for are Bad Things, and I’d like to know more and see such criminals punished severely for it.)

The reduction in the homicide rate, which includes murder, manslaughter and infanticide, means the annual total of 648

That’s fewer than two per day. Rejoice.

… is now close to the 1979 figure of 629. Attempted murders also fell by 7% last year.

Nice choice of date there. After 12 years of murder rates reducing, New Labour have got the number down to the low level it was at the end of the last Labour government to bankrupt the nations’ finances.

Overall violent crime was reported to have remained stable by the BCS and fell by 6% on the police figures. Violence against the person involving injury fell by 7% to 421,000 incidents.

There was a significant further fall in gun crime with the number of incidents involving a firearm down by 17% to 8,184. The number of fatal shootings fell from 53 to 38.

Good on our paramedics – and bad on all those illegal gun owners whose sharpshooting appears to be on the wane. Hmm, law abiding sportsmen and firearms enthusiasts have been disarmed for twelve years now. And yet, somehow, a few dozen people are being shot each year. Could it be that the threat of death by gunshot is coming from some other community than amateur target shooters and huntsmen? I wonder how much of officialdom takes the rap for these encouraging figures?

The Home Office chief statistician, David Blunt,

His name, no doubt, proletarianised from David Blount-Instrument.

… said there was little change, however recorded, in overall levels of knife crime. This is despite recent government claims to have made progress in the most-affected areas. The number of fatal stabbings has fallen in the past from 270 to 252 but attempted murders involving a knife were up from 245 to 271. Robberies involving knives were down 2% from 17,058 to 16,701.

That’s about only one stabbing per 5000 people in Britain. not bad.

It’s reassuring to think that, of the next 5000 people you see on the high street and at the supermarket and at motorway service stations, only one of them will suffer from the serious prospect of having several inches of steel stuck into their body or scored across their face this year.

Credit card fraud, particularly involving online shopping transactions, continues to rise, with 2.8m fraudulent transactions recorded last year. "Card not present" fraud has soared by 243% since 2001 in line with the rapid growth of online shopping. To meet the problem banks are replacing online use of pin numbers and security codes with passwords.

The annual crime figures also show sex offences fell by 4% to 51,000 recorded offences, but within that figure rapes of women increased by 5% to 12,000 cases.

Yey! The porn industry’s either dealing with the soft-core flashers, peeping toms and gropers by taking them out of the picture by putting their dreams into the pictures, or is inspiring more to take it to the next level. Maybe improved and cheaper supplies of dental hygiene items and globalisation cheap clothing and toiletries are getting a few more of the former sort laid once in a while? Good thing we’re not so messed up about sex after decades of liberalism and freedom.

One thought concerning some of these rapes; how many are gang–based, and what, if any, is the demographic breakdown? Or are these highly specialized burglaries from the declining/not declining stealth theft figures? Who can tell?

There was a slight rise in the risk of becoming a crime victim in England and Wales – 22% to 23%. This compares with the 40% risk when crime peaked in 1995.

Despite this sustained fall in crime in England and Wales over the past 14 years the majority of the public – 75% – believe crime is increasing nationally. People tend to have a more positive view of their own neighbourhood.

Like me.

I voted on YouGov recently to say my own neighbourhood was OK – but the one next door isn’t – there was one of that dwindling number of murders in the next street but one earlier this year, which is over the canal. But the poll didn’t ask me about over the canal – just about my neighbourhood and the country as a whole.

Only about half think crime is on the increase in their area.

Public confidence in the police and local councils to tackle antisocial behaviour appears to have increased and is up from 45% to 49% even though the home secretary, Alan Johnson, said recently he believed the government had been "coasting" on the issue.

This is the last annual set of crime figures to be published before the general election. Johnson called them "encouraging" but the Conservatives claimed the government was covering up the scale of the problem of knife crime.

Now, back to that first good news.

The murder rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years, with 648 homicides recorded in 2008/09 – 136 fewer than the year before. Home Office statisticians said the drop was "not a blip".

Annual crime figures published yesterday show the number of murders and manslaughters and infanticides fell to a level not seen since 1989.

the number of murders and manslaughters and infanticides fell to a level not seen since 1989.

the number of murders and manslaughters and infanticides.

murders and manslaughters and infanticides.

Let’s look at a few weeks’ news from a town that’s been Labour forever, and which should therefore be an earthly paradise and not the sexist, patriarchal, homophobic Christian Paradise of Italian poet Dante.

murders. Only attempted. Phew!

murders. Not so phew.

murders and manslaughters and infanticides. Maybe the full set, but let’s wait and see what the court decides.

Arson (but not against young children this time) seems to make the cut here and here, and the heroic rescue by local MP from would-be self-arson by an immigrant here.

Regarding that last one, I actually like living in a country whose elected representatives value human life so much in person that they risk burns to save their deranged fellow-man. I could and do join one of the commentators in wondering why this worthy and not very expensive UK MP is spending our valuable time looking after an illegal immigrant rather than her actual constituents and countrymen, but still and all her motives were of the finest.

And that’s why we ought to save Western civilisation (formerly known as ‘Christendom’), and not try to delete it.

Despite this sustained fall in crime in England and Wales over the past 14 years the majority of the public – 75% – believe crime is increasing nationally. People tend to have a more positive view of their own neighbourhood.

Compared to the neighbourhood next door, mine is Paradise of Earth. But only compared to them.

And so, dear Guardian writer, would you care to speculate why the majority of unenlightened and honest (because anonymous) layman polled members of You Gov and crime surveys don’t believe or trust mutually contradictory official crime statistics?

Do you know what your sin might be?

We know what the punishment is, and who’s on the receiving end.