In which I see the light

Ever wondered how the majesty of England’s legal system became symbolized by sober, thoughtful, wise old men in wigs and robes?

Dumb Jon seems to be ungrateful once again for the enlightened regime of peace, freedom and human dignity which our new masters have wrought.

If an unemployed man who returns from a terrorist training camp with extra mobile phones, wads of cash and information so sensitive he needed to swallow it to prevent the police reading it can’t travel freely anywhere throughout the United Kingdom, then what does the very word ‘freedom’ mean?

Another example or two or three of all this is a small price to pay, surely, for a foreign-born father of five and associate of terrorists not to cool his heels skulking in some flat above a kebab shop in Gloucester or Polperro, surely?

I remember well the righteous anger with which left-wing and liberal human rights activists (and our own pals of the right-wing libertarian persuasion) opposed New Labour’s former plans to introduce 90 day court-granted detention periods for terrorist suspects, and it must delight us all to know that reason prevailed, with ‘control order lite’ such an effective measure and alternative to some harsher regime of, say, locking up or deporting known associates and enablers of terrorist groups?

Or, maybe not.

Or maybe it is, but the official Left wants the new lighter rules to be enforced in a tougher way? Why, some of them do. Nothing typifies the Left’s profound sanity and illuminated intelligence better than its forthright calls to make something work that can’t work by making it work by being really, really tough because it’s better than doing something that can work. Such as prison or deportation.

Proudly, my formerly bellowed Conservative Party opposed the 90-day regime and wanted less stringent measures instead. You can see how well that’s working out.

Less stringent measures, such as an internal equivalent of our nation’s delightful ‘open-door’ policy of immigration seem to be protecting the rest of us satisfactorily, as in “Here’s an open door, Mr. Terrorist Enabler, but please don’t slam it behind you.”

It’s a fine example of our humourous political class that they can argue our security downwards for months, the Labour government starting as more authoritarian (read ‘security-conscious’) than the traditional supporters of national security and law and order.

So, yes, Mr. Magag should be free to carry cash and several mobile phones and to come into what’s left of London where, at worst, he will speak approvingly of terrorists and maybe contact them and advise them and perhaps even to travel abroad again to join them and help them. 

That’s only free speech and freedom of movement; fundamental human rights not to be curtailed lightly. I see the light at last.

On the other hand, the Political Class is not so doctrinaire that it won’t allow the long detention in harsh conditions of a man who had sought to travel abroad in order to be rude (and possibly quite truthful) about Islam and for an assault for which there seems to be no actual - what’s that word? evidence -  and for ancient mortgage fraud charges that seemed not to have been considered by the authorities in the case of Peter Mandelson while allowing his livelihood to be destroyed and his associates intimidated, or the incarceration of someone who stayed right here in England to be (admittedly very) obnoxious to members of ethnic minorities in person.

You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. I feel safer already.

So the judge’s wigs as symbols of a just and sensible legal system? Now pretty much abolished outside some smaller courts and  House of Lords big occasions.

But not all is lost.

Pictures from here and here.

Paul Blart: Internet vigilante

Read the awesome brevity of the original first. Dumb Jon exposes official secrecy at the Met here.

The very idea that our paid, professional protectors are loath to co-operate with a charity (I think it’s some kind of victims’ pressure-group, but let’s let that pass) that simply reports incidents of violence will need some explanation.

In a statement, the Met said: 'We do not endorse the reporting of street crime through the MPS website or any other third party website.

'This is predominantly due to concerns over victim safety and the importance of deploying officers in person as quickly as possible to scenes of serious street crime.

'Street crime is taken very seriously by the MPS, and in order to reduce street crime and catch offenders, the MPS urges victims to contact police in the quickest way possible by calling 999 or speaking to an officer on patrol nearby.'

Of course, some of today’s Twitter-addled youth might just be stupid enough to believe that posting a crime report on the Net is as good as calling the actual police (they’ve been ill-educated enough to think their self-esteem matters above all other things including what we adults fondly call ‘reality’, so  that publishing their pain is being just as good as being an active citizen), and if so that seems a fair enough concern.

Except… What’s that ‘predominantly’ doing there? What else might worry the professionals?

As Jon hints, it might be that such a map might show some disquieting patterns after a few months of use. Perhaps – and you’d better hold on tight here because it could get rough – it would show an uneven distributions of violent crime reports. What if (to choose absurd examples and for effect only - do NOT try this at home) Golder’s Green and Kensington and Chelsea showed a disappointing lack of violent street attacks but that, oh, I don’t know, Brixton and Tower Hamlets sprouted a veritable forest of little flags? That wouldn’t be fair, would it, because it’s unequal and inequality’s the worst thing in the world ever: rproper Room 101 stuff, yeah? Perhaps to even up certain social inequalities thus exposed it might prove necessary to accentuate the crimes that are never punished because no-one in power cares. Someone could add flags for hurtful snobbery, or not renting spare rooms to welfare claimants, or being visibly religious – amongst the Left’s most feared and most untouchable 'real' crimes. Or somebody could add in the positives in cheerful colours to break up all those tedious patches of red and orange - cool blues and soothing greens, perhaps - for posts such as;”It was 3.30 AM on Tuesday and through my bedroom wall and along all the joists in the roof and from the very foundations of the house I could suddenly hear the sunny sounds of merriment as music redolent of warm beaches and rum-filled pineapples. This replaced my anxious dreams about tomorrow’s early shift at the warehouse with a comforting reminder of multicultural reality here in London,” or; “It was nine-thirty PM on Saturday and I was followed from  my home by a group of good-natured youths who very vocally and charmingly complimented me on my modest good looks and the glittering dress I was wearing for a night out dancing, and who invited me to party of their own. At one point, their flattery became quite insistent.”

Nah.

I think a likelier explanation is that the Met is concerned that somehow cyber crime reporting will be inauthentic. A poster would miss out on the true feeling of reporting assaults against person and property in today’s professional law-enforcement environment. Perhaps high-ranking police officers areconvinced by their own personal experience that a virtual event that is enjoyed crouched in front of a PC or Apple is likely to be less rich and engaging than the real thing with all its sights and sounds and smells, such and the tactile joys of Police Station plastic benches pressing up against the tired thighs of a freshly mugged pensioner. If any single group in the land knows the difference between online and real world experience personally, it’s likely that London’s New Labour-endorsed Met hierarchy is it.

Perhaps the clever people at Witness Confident should ask their techies to make streetviolence.org more real for their customers. After all, in an industry that produces games where you mow down hundreds of realistic-looking zombies or race virtual Ferraris around London’s smooth, unblocked streets, surely streetviolence.org’s functions could be redesigned to fit in a five hour delay for posts to appear on the browsers of the capital; only then to be wiped an hour later and require re-posting with all the fun of filling in endless fields and ticking boxes all over again - and maybe then it still fails to post inexplicably? Perhaps after two days they could send the victim a helpful email sympathizing with their plight and offer them a phone number for victim support? And after that no more communication from streetviolence.org, ever?

The Witness Confident spokesman seemed to think so.

Mr Dehn added: 'As a way of telling the police you can help, the site is a welcome alternative to hanging behind at the scene, standing around at a police station or waiting in line at a call centre.

'This matters as there's little chance the police can make our streets safer if witnesses don't come forward.

'One of the things that has been lost in recent years is engagement with police ... If you want to help police, this allows you to contact them 24/7 at the convenience of your computer.'

Actually, on reflection I think my own musings and Mr Dehn ’s above might be more than a little naïve. 

Now, if Witness Confident were to market the website to the Met as the culmination of the decades-long evolution of police work and crime reporting from its primitive and barbaric past they might win a greater acceptance from the Met.

They should look wryly back together to an unlamented past when police officers physically pursued criminals (how quaint that judgmental old word sounds today!) with the intention that the evidence, witness statements, the process of the law and sensible magistrates and twelve good men and true would come together somehow to put a miscreant off the streets for a time long enough to a regret hurting other folk (as if that ever worked at all!). 
Then the Met would realise that streetviolence.org is the final step towards the intelligent design of the Last Men who - long ago warned off by the Police against ‘having a go’ or ‘taking the law into their own hands’ and terrorized against becoming that supreme evil; a vigilante - will simply and passively enter the tragedy of their crime-ruined lives where they can become anonymous and ignored statistics as is right and proper.

Isn’t this what modern policing actually wants from us?

At least the fat bloke had a mission statement (however gentle) to combat rowdiness in his New Jersey shopping mall by calling for official backup;  

Detect, Deter, Observe, and Report.

What’s the Met’s mantra for those poor bloody cockernies?

Complain, Endure, Ignore, and Forget.

Picture from here.

Caliban’s Taliban.

O brave new world! That has such people in it!

…

We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

Via House of Dumb.

“Catherine Silverton, for Shahzada Khan, said he was brought up in Afghanistan, Pakistan and then the UK by a couple he thought were his parents but discovered when he was remanded they were his aunt and uncle, his real parents having died in a car crash when he was young. He had expressed remorse.

She added: 'Nothing I say on the defendant’s behalf is intended to suggest that these offences were anything other than the stuff of nightmares.'”

Or what we swivel-eyed hate-crime racist types with parking ticket records as long as your pinky finger prefer to call the reality of liberal England.

The stuff of nightmares or liberal England: which is it; because surely it can’t be both, can it? 

You decide.

Oh, and to continue Dumb Jon’s metaphor about what floats on the top of ponds, the justly punished would-be rapist Caliban has been portrayed as a hero/victim by several impeccably enlightened, one might almost say liberal thinkers, since to understand all is to forgive all, right?

Us

Dumb Jon makes much of how the Tory administration, via that millionaire man of the people and down wiv da kids septuagenarian Kenneth Clarke, is honouring the European political aspiration that justice should be blind. And Europe’s good, right?

In fact, they honour it so generously that they’ve improved it with a whole raft of 21^st Century upgrades: now justice is deaf, insensitive, spineless and severely mentally impaired as well!  

Actually, irrespective of any smart-arse comment I might be inclined to make anywhere about all of this, the story about Gabrielle Browne kicks away yet another leg of liberalism’s nothing-to-see-here-nothing-to-worry-about platform of quasi-complacency about the criminal justice system.

Aside from taking that name literally, libs make much of the so-called “independent judiciary,” and how the independent judiciary (and the independent judiciary alone) can protect us from the Creeping Fascism Horror that otherwise would stalk the land, Daily Mail in pocket: hassling the kids; victimizing women, blacks and gays and hunting the unemployed from horseback.

Just what is the modern judiciary supposed to be independent of?

I mean, if the Justice Secretary doesn’t want overlong or excessively harsh sentences for the most vulnerable rapists and non-sexual violent attackers in society and the judges (such as the limerick-inspiring Judge Beverley Lunt) don’t want overlong or excessively harsh sentences for the most vulnerable rapists and non-sexual violent attackers in society, and when the frontline magistrates are chosen from the ranks of social workers and those who openly reject the very notion of judgment and who are recruited according to the iron-bound strictures of ring fenced and officially-enforced diversity, you’ve got to wonder who, if anyone, the independent judiciary will not be influenced by.

Wonder for about two seconds, that is.

Conservative Pre-Crime

Dumb Jon anticipates the wave of unpunished murders of the future as those forward-looking humanitarians of the United Left fulfil the liberal ideal of absolute individual responsibility in which no-one is ever charged: let alone tried and convicted, of destroying another human life unless there’s full video and audio footage (in context) of the offender pulling a trigger.

Nothing else will do to protect inalienable human rights than the Platonic Ideal of Justice: pure, simple, blind to custom, circumstance and personal moral responsibility.

Then they’ll declare the use of video footage to be ‘invasive’, and the path will be clear to slaughtering your neighbours without reference to class, race, age, nationality, gender or sexual orientation.

Then we’ll have a paradise indeed and as the remaining conservatives point out to the bereaved and our masters alike in our minority report that we saw it all coming well in advance, they’ll describe our criticism as ‘moral panic.’ After all, we were wrong about the death penalty, softer sentencing and probation, decriminalizing drugs and all those institutionalized attacks on the family.

Liberal World: where tomorrow’s crimes are designed today.

Picture from here.

Because I’m worthless

The quality of mercy is not strained.

These days, thanks to whack-job liberals so dozy they make dormice seem like multiple Asbo-violators on Taurine-rich energy drinks, mercy is getting on for claiming its on zillionth victim of an isolated act rooted in a unique personal experience.

Surprisingly illustrated, by the BBC…

Boy detained over bleach attack in Leeds restaurant

A teenager who poured bleach over a woman at a restaurant in Leeds has been detained for 12 months.
Jordan Horsley, 16, was found guilty at an earlier hearing of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent.
Leeds Crown Court heard how Annette Warden, 46, asked the boy and his friends to be quiet during a film at the Vue cinema on Kirkstall Road.
Later, as Mrs Warden and her family ate in a nearby restaurant, the boy came in and poured bleach on her head.

So far, so yawn. It’s also 1970s; all so Moral Panic: you know, that pathology that the Combined Left ascribe to conservatives who’ve been saying for decades that if you deliberately remove some of the props and safeguards that have been built up over centuries to protect civilisation, eventually you will get...less civilization. Or none.
And it gets beyond Moral Panic when some ‘Right-wing pundit’ chooses to point out which came first: the donkey or the hearse. Or the plastic surgeon I’m afraid, in this case.

I’ve been told to be brief, so I’ll cut to the chase.

It was revealed in court that Horsley had a previous conviction for hitting someone over the head with half a brick and had also been cautioned for assault on a separate occasion.
The boy, whose mother died when he was young, had suffered a violent relationship with his father and was living by himself at the time of the attack.
Judge Peter Collier QC, said social services had been involved with the family but said matters had not been resolved "satisfactorily".
"You have not been well-served in your life by your father and there must be some concerns as to the intervention that was attempted as you were growing up, which never resolved the issues which you still have," he said.

According to this judge, then, Horsley was, and remains a victim.

In a sense, our bewigged intellectual titan is correct: the lack of a family (and that means relatives of the abusive father or late mother) around him to protect him or take him away, and without any real community around him to notice and report on any brutalizing violence, of any teachers prepared to go the distance (or few such teachers, we may find that reports were ignored or filed if this is ever investigated so ‘lessons can be learned’); let alone previous judges who might have tempered ‘mercy’ with sanity, and any idea of right and wrong and moral agency on the part of the last-resort social services do seem likely to have compelled this boy to grow up as a merciless and spiteful savage which thinks a pint of Domestos is a fitting reply to some fuddy-duddy who doesn’t see the fun side of texting throughout some dreary old Quidditch scene.
Whatever.

Any part of civilized life might have prevented Horsley from degenerating into a Morlock, but you can bet that at every level the liberals have been busy causing this problem and making it worse every blood-stained step of the way, and especially undermining the very notion of authority, and especially in relation to children who fall under its power.

Spare the rod and spoil the child doesn’t mean if you don’t beat them senseless then they’ll turn into chocolate-addicted demanding, sailor-suited Little Lord Fauntleroys, but rather that their very lives will be ruined, along with a great deal of collateral damage. If you don’t enforce the boundaries as well as explain them to children, you won’t get children; but Junior Huns instead. Horsley’s ruined, and his own learned evil is only the proximate cause.

Given the register of the judge’s language, I‘m not convinced that he is off the hook liberal-stupididealism-wise…

…and there must be some concerns as to the intervention that was attempted as you were growing up, which never resolved the issues which you still have.

The SpokesPlod concerned comes over as a bit, well, cumulo-nimbus, too: perhaps the victim of a Confundus Charm, or is maybe acting out a favourite scene from Heartbeat.

…a West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "Jordan Horsley's actions were utterly vindictive and understandably left people shocked and sickened.
"The victim had made a perfectly reasonable request for him and the group he was with to be quiet during the film. She could never have expected that he would react in such a nasty and violent way….

Perhaps he’s weakened from malnutrition, by dint of being on a fast. Or a Vegan.

No, really: from your actual Vega.

Poor Mrs Warden might have been lucky enough not to live where abuse and violence from tearaways is expected, but what sort of ‘Police officer’ would imagine otherwise.?
I’ve missed something, I know it. What is it?

Hat tip to Shlomo over at House of Dumb.

Christmas Appeal

You know, at this very special time of year our thoughts are drawn to those less fortunate than ourselves. Amongst these are the destitute and the hungry; the homeless and the dispossessed and the refugees. But it is not just the physical and financial worlds where poverty can cause great anguish to our fellow men. There is also the poverty of the troubled mind and the anguished soul: the depressed and the lonely; the mentally ill and the ignorant; the delusional; the paranoid and the violently, incurably and criminally insane; and those who willingly seek employment.
Most seriously damaged by the hurly-burly of the ever-greater changes and challenges that we meet in our modern existence is one group that rarely reaches the headlines, and one for whose benefit one rarely (if ever) attends a charitable concert or even a jumble sale. And yet their suffering is as deeply felt, I’m sure, and those from the more widely known victim groups, and it is on their behalf that I’m appealing to you today. I am referring, of course, to law abiding taxpayers.

Christmas is an especially cruel and painful time for these unfortunate people. It is not easy for them to join in with the rest of us and embrace all the jollity and excitement of this, the greatest commercial festival of the trading year. Law abiding taxpayers who find themselves standing in line in the Post Office, queuing to buy stamps or perhaps to send a neatly-wrapped parcel or two, rapidly begin shaking and soon turn apoplectic at the sight of Kimberley-Rhiannon blithely pocketing fistfuls of their money via child-related entitlements in the Welfare State and which she will never, ever, use to properly feed or clothe the diversely-surnamed glistening-nosed little scamps who are even now variously whining to leave, or screaming and fighting amongst themselves and running into and around the pensioners. Pensioners who wait patiently for the latest payment of the rewards for their own lifetimes of honest work - or at least for imaginatively concocted Incapacity Benefit claims.

Whereas many an ordinary Briton can happily get through his busy day discussing his sex life and organizing his social schedule on a gunmetal grey mobile phone that matches both his facial piercings and the steering wheel upon which his other hand so lightly rests, law abiding taxpayers are compelled to obey the speed limit and the offside rule on motorways and ‘A’ Roads alike. It does not usually fall to a taxpayer’s unhappy lot to share his simple love of popular music with anyone and everyone in his own neighbourhood or with all the strangers in the neighbourhoods through which his car passes thanks to the remarkable advances that this young century has already seen in music amplification technology for home and hatchback alike.

So when you see them on the streets of this country’s villages, towns and cities, as they walk; pitifully erect and tragically purposeful towards some dreary and uncool paid employment or as they wait; leather-shod and docile to actually pay for goods that they intend to consume or take home to their families, have some pity. Think a moment of these most miserable of souls: freshly washed and clean of shirt as they are: their breath innocent of the comforting perfume of super-strength cider; their blood and dreams unwarmed by either smack or crack; their skins unadorned by the smallest depiction of violence or brutish sexuality or both; nor even by the most modest of obscene slogans. Not for them are the simple pleasures that the rest of us take from the enjoyment of other people’s property or from operatically discussing a bedmate’s moral and carnal imperfections after the pubs close at 3 AM. Still less do they possess the ability or the inclination to rejoice in the wisdom and rationality of Britain’s merciful criminal courts and the gentle good sense of PACE and the Human Rights Acts.

No law abiding taxpayer can ever lead a truly normal life in today’s Britain…but you can still help. For just a few syringes’ worth of cash you can bring weak, hopeful little smiles to their freshly-shaven faces; even as they struggle through life with with comp-li-cated clothes fastenings such as buttons, shoelaces, and belt buckles.All it takes (just like every other problem in life) is money.

# Just £4.80 will buy four hours’ parking at the unattended car park nearest to some fortress-like police station where a taxpayer can make his statement about what happened on the day in question, and where he can later spend some time; forehead pressed firmly against his steering wheel, wondering how on earth it has come to this.

# A mere £6.99 this will buy him a quite acceptable bottle of supermarket festive ruby Port, which is fair enough given what the Chancellor allows him to keep at the end of the day. And let’s face it, Christmas is just once a year and it’s back to the office or shop for the poor sap early next week or on Monday the 4th January - which is three whole fun-filled days for you before the Thursday when you have to sign on again if you can be arsed. That’s only £6.99, and what could you spend £6.99 on: a bunch of plastic-wrapped convenience store carnations, perhaps, to strew across the pavement with all the others in front of the police sign asking for witnesses?

# Around £30 will buy an elderly taxpayer a sturdy, rubber-ferruled walking stick which he or she can wave weakly around if you and seven of your mates decide to have a bit of a laugh. Such an item might later be tagged. bagged, tested for your blood and his DNA and dusted for fingerprints. Much later on it might be used as Exhibit A in the taxpayer’s trial if the kindly police and the decent Crown Prosecution Service decide that he’s violated your human rights by using unreasonable force. Or The Filth might just lose track of it altogether; in which case it’ll become an ordinary eight-against-one witness case and he might just walk. But at least you know where he lives.

# The price of one week’s Housing Benefit at the generous new Local Housing Allowance rate for a typical mother and her four children by three previous partners can purchase for a taxpayer half the cost of some panel beating; replacement windscreen, wipers, windows and trim, and some basic re-spraying at a local garage after her kids have played a jolly Christmas game of Envy Hopscotch down a row of parked cars in a neighbouring posh area.

So please, as you settle down in front of the wide screen on Christmas Day; full of Stella Artois and Turkey Nuggets and being constantly supplied with fresh drink and roll-ups by your new bird, and when you look fondly on as her children open the many smart and brightly-wrapped parcels that you brought home for them only the previous night whilst the taxpayers were at the pub or in church and you wait eagerly to see what each one might contain, spare a thought for those less fortunate than yourself - not least the despairing people from whom those brightly wrapped presents originally came. Spare a thought and maybe a little cash. After all, it’s not your money anyway, is it?

Liberalism ruins lives #2863

Captain’s log, supplemental.

Following yesterday’s half-hopeful post about the apparent redemption of ubermuppet and punishment-intolerant judge, ‘Judge’ Beverley Lunt (yes, James, that is her surname), Julia commented that the prisoner will likely re-offend. True enough. He’s a yo-yo; I should think, and will - like Arnie - be back.

And as for the lovely Bev’s ‘previous,’ which is as long as her arm, and indeed as long as the arm of The Law, we can see how her long record of aiding the criminals at the expense of the victim has probably led to further injustice - condemning the innocent to jail.

Poor Mr Hussain, jailed for 2 ½ years for beating up a burglar who’d tied him and his wife up and threatened her with a knife. As Ranting Stan points out, this judgment is part of our rulers’ collective and ubiquitous insanity. But what might Mr. Hussein have done instead of chasing after the violator (one of a gang of three) of his home and armed aggressor against him and his wife?

The Solomon-like wisdom of Judge John Reddihough puts us straight:

Jailing him, Judge John Reddihough said some members of the public would think that 56-year-old Salem 'deserved what happened to him' and that Mr Hussain 'should not have been prosecuted'.

But had he spared Mr Hussain jail, the judge said, the 'rule of law' would collapse.

He said: 'If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting the criminal justice system take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.'

Man, I swear that Judge Reddihough uses the Internet recreationally. What is there in Britain today that might have indicated to Mr. Hussain and his brother that if letting the criminal justice system take its course would lead to anything like justice for that or any terrorized family? What makes Heady Reddy think that the rule of law exists at all, or that we are still in a civilised society?

Judge Brainy explained:

'The prosecution rightly made it plain that there was no allegation against you, Munir Hussain, in respect of the force you used against Salem in defending your own home and family or of the force used by either of you in apprehending Salem’.

You simply have to follow a few simple guidelines.

You have to know what they are about to do and wait for them to get in, it seems. It’s only sporting.

You can be sure they won’t be back on the streets any time soon; and that they don’t intend to kill you, so why even consider using violence?

Okay, even violent, blood-soaked and drug-crazed strangers who break into your home after assaulting pregnant women deserve fair warning in case you pick up a knife and they die from wounds later after fighting off medical helpers.

That’s our criminal justice system. Keep on paying those taxes, chaps. You know it’s worth it.

A worm turns?

There’s good news. And then there’s bad news.

This from The Lancashire Telegraph.

Judge jails violent Darwen mugger, 19, with 43 convictions

By Wendy Barlow

A VIOLENT teenage mugger from Darwen with 43 previous convictions has been sent to detention for three years for his latest crimes.

Burnley Crown Court heard Paul Smith, 19, had flouted court orders and licence.

He had previously been given a community order for robbery-prompting a judge to say: "Perhaps if he had been detained earlier we wouldn't be here now."

OMG! Wonders never cease! You’ll never guess who the judge is! It’s only Beverley Lunt, that's all; your actual Beverley Lunt.

And if she can do her job, then any of them can do their jobs.

Judge Beverley Lunt also told the defendant the offences were nasty and that he was a bully.

She said a sentence measured in days was never going to happen again.

The judge told Smith: "You are only going to hear the word years.

"You are in a different league now. It's a Crown Court."

The defendant, of Winterton Road, Darwen, admitted attempted robbery, robbery and asked for an offence of robbery to be considered. All took place in the Blackburn area.

Sarah Statham, prosecuting, told the court on May 5, a man with learning difficulties went to his local shop and the defendant asked for a cigarette.

The victim told him the word please wouldn't go amiss. Smith said 'please', the victim gave him a cigarette and the defendant then told him: "If you make me say please again, I will kill you."

The victim went into the store and came out with a carrier bag of lager and wine.

As he got home, he was approached by the defendant, who grabbed his nose and snatched the bag, ripping it and smashing the bottle.

He then repeatedly punched the victim, until his mum intervened and Smith ran off.

Miss Statham said on May 29, a 17-year-old was walking away from an off-licence when he was approached by three men.

The defendant asked the victim for a cigarette, then punched him and his two accomplices joined in.

Smith then stole the victim's phone while he was on the ground.

The prosecutor said on June 17 the next victim, who knew the defendant and had had disagreements with him in the past, was walking away from a shop.

He was approached by Smith who punched him in the face.

The victim's mouth bled and he ended up on the ground.

Smith carried on the assault, took £15 from the victim's pocket and walked away.

He was arrested two days later and questioned.

Miss Statham said the defendant's previous convictions included wounding, robbery, theft and battery.

Peter Warne, defending, said the penny was starting to drop for his client and that Smith's father would say he thought his son was growing up.

Defending lawyers have to say something to help their clients, I’m all for that, but one wonders what victims of crimes 1 to 42 would think if they heard this little swine’s was beginning to ‘get it.’

I also love that conditional ‘Smith’s father would say.’ Where is the dear fellow at his son’s time of need? Working on his allotment, perhaps: judiciously spreading well-rotted compost to condition the soil over winter; or assiduously re-cladding his pigeon loft before the winter’s cold bites too deeply' or some other poor but honest action typical of Northern working-class manliness.

So has Judge Lunt become, after so many years promoting Lancashire’s crime wave, learned her lesson? Been mugged, perhaps?

Or has Laban’s exposure of her anti-punishment, one-liberal crusade against ever inconveniencing criminals finally obliged her to realise that the worm must turn? Anyway, it's a possible sign of hope before Christmas.

And the wiener is...

Finian's Rainbow is a musical with a book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Burton Lane. The Irish-tinged score also includes gospel and R&B influences.

Finian moves to the Deep South from Ireland with his daughter Sharon, to bury a stolen pot of gold near Fort Knox, in the mistaken belief that it will grow. A leprechaun follows them, desperate to recover his treasure before the loss of it turns him permanently human. Complications arise when a bigoted and corrupt U.S. Senator gets involved, and when wishes are made inadvertently over the hidden crock. All ends happily.

Oh, no, it’s Finnigans Rainbow.

POLICE chiefs in Lancashire are celebrating after the force was today named the country's top performer.

Calm down at the back. Were talking about public sector benchmarking and value addition here: nothing dirty.

The force, which is led by the Chief Constable, Steve Finnigan, is ranked joint first with Leicestershire…

Sparkling company, that.

Puts the Red Rose County’s top rozzer alongside this lambently beautiful fellow: 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”.

He, to be fair, was only explaining why Leicestershire Police are a bit worried that if juveniles (such as the gang that brutalized Fiona Pilkington so often and so long that she committed suicide and killed her disabled daughter in despair at the absence of police action) go to prison or something, they’ll likely turn to crime once they get out again.

You can’t fault the logic in that: punish them for their years-long campaign of abuse, threats, persecution of a family and violence against their property and they’ll instantly become criminals at the drop of a gavel. Public sector moral philosophy imitating art.

‘"He's a villain, sir."
"A villain..."
"And a jail-bird, sir."
"I know he's a jail-bird, Savage, he's down in the cells now!’

…out of 43 forces assessed by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabularies (HMIC) for service provided to local communities.

However, Lancashire's Assistant Chief Constable, Chris Weigh, said that there was no time to be complacent.

You know, that’s just what I think. Complacency’s the last thing you want in a county constabulary: right after treason, torture, rampant corruption, cannibalism and just not doing the job properly - or indeed at all.

And she… (Sic. I looked him up. He’s a slap-head in the finest traditions of the Northwest’s northbound hairlines) the(n) added that there was still work to be done to improve their performance in some key areas.

He said: The Pledge is about the delivery of good services and I am obviously delighted with the HMIC grading. And I think that this accurately reflects the hard work we have carried out in Lancashire.

This is the pledge.

It describes how the police intend to do the job of being police by employing such state-of-the art techniques as police work. And also spin, plus some meetings with local groups and setting higher standards of attendance to the practically bionic ‘within 60 minutes’ for the vulnerable and upset and interestingly, at incidents ‘that we have agreed with your community will be a neighbourhood priority and attendance is required.’

I’d love to know who constitutes ‘your community’ and what their neighbourhood priorities might be, but still. But still, if someone’s breaking into your house, by that measure, the gallant Bobbies of the County Palatinate are pledged to arrive at the scene before your body’s gone cold, and well before your property reaches eBay.

Outstanding.

(Non-geek readers will notice that the Pledge is available in pdf format, in common with many, many public sector authorities who think that pdf is cute, and not the unmanageable and difficult to read POS that it in fact is. There is a little known clause in the Single European Treaty that stipulates that the use of pdfs must never, ever be explained to those who are expected to read them by anyone who knows how to use them. Compared to the Common Agricultural Policy, however, this is as logical as A is A, or 2+2=4.)

We are only nine months into implementing the Pledge and whilst we are delivering in most areas, we will not be complacent or stand still.

We aim to continue to improve the basics.

And, in the words of the late, lamented Heath Ledger’s masterful characterization of The Joker: Here we go.

That includes answering phones, attending crime scenes, responding to emergencies and working with neighbourhoods to agree priorities about crime and policing in local areas.

To be fair, I don’t expect they’re intending or even implying the breakneck speed of that 60 minute response time when it comes to answering phones and working with neighbourhoods to agree priorities – that kind of essential back-up service takes time.

Our reputation for delivering neighbourhood policing is second-to-none.

And worth twice as much as that, I’d guess.

I've seen Lancashire Constabulary’s shiny-vehicled roadshows heading into the war zone council estates nearby. One estate contains a house owned and operated by Police and Community Support Officers, but who (according to no-doubt malicious local rumours) never leave that house during the day on the estate at all until it’s home time. They prefer to plod about the nicer terraces and semis of the city’s owner-occupied neighbourhoods. These are the communities with whom the brave officers of Lancashire Police liaise; I’m sure, prior to meeting with said communities.

I’ve almost always had PCSOs out to me when my car’s been vandalized rather than the police.

And much of the Pledge is delivered through this approach. However, the Pledge isn't just about neighbourhod policing.

This is about all departments and areas of policing working to deliver a top quality service that meets the needs of communities in a truly citizen focused way.

That’s reassuring: I’m glad to guess that we’ve moved to from treating, say, the invading Romans and occupying Normans better than the people who were actually born here, though I’m fairly sure that if my new Polish neighbours are burgled while they’re out at work they’ll get the same victim support leaflet that I was given on the seven occasions when I reported the migration of my wing mirrors. I’m not greedy, I gave up calling them in after incident number seven. Wouldn’t want to distract the fuzz from their relentless pursuit of prizes…

I am very proud of the result.

Well, I’ve certainly stopped reporting minor assaults on property, so I’m proud that with my newfound determination not to add three more car trashings to the statistics I have done my best.

But I am also very clear that the work doesn’t stop here."

Areas of activity specifically highlighted as good practice in the HMIC assessment report included: a drop-in centre for Eastern European members of the community;

You mean you hand over the Tough shit, you’ve been burgled. What do you expect us to do about it? leaflet with a cup of tea and polite chatter about accordions, beetroot soup and stuff? I for one am glad that our new neighbours are being treated with the same respect that I got, mostly, after the hoody horde passed by and disappeared untraceably to their ASBO-postcode council houses.

…the creation of one-stop shops to provide enhanced customer service;…

What was that old-fashioned word they taught us in school again? Petard? Paleolithic? Police station?

Whatever.

…community volunteers to enhance neighbourhood policing;

And what’s the betting that these volunteers will last right up to the very nanosecond when some volunteer is accused of ‘brutality’ by some freelance furniture mover or herbal remedy salesman, and the real police decide that he ‘took the law into his own hands’ instead of waiting for Scotty to beam down two red shirts with phasers on stun within 60 minutes of seeing them break some door down or passing goody bags to some neighbour’s teenage kid?

…publicising neighbourhood teams and their priorities; keeping victims of crime up to date of progress; and introducing Citizen Focus Bureaux to deal with dissatisfaction.

…and introducing on drums, it’s Citizen Focus Bureaux! Give ‘em a big hand folks, they’ve come all the way from the West coast to be here tonight.

Friends, I know that there are coppers of all ranks out there still doing the job: still getting bricked and bottled and shot at and abused by people unworthy to shine their boots (if Magnum combat boots can shine, that is). I know that there are a number who also feel oddly free with the hitting at demonstrations - a few that shake my faith in the guardians of law and order. But there’s the rub – it’s the guardians of something or other, rather than the telegraphs of law and order, that make me despair.

Perhaps this is a Twenty-First Century revival of Bobbies-on-the-beat with an inescapable added gloss of bureaucratic groupthink.

But what’s the betting that in fact Lancashire and Leicestershire have won an in-house award by meeting standards set by our dopey central government and was assessed and handed over by people in the same invertebrate chatstream, and not the ones on the sharp, dirty end of the permissive society?

So is Castle City and its north-western sister towns safer for The Pledge and the award that it brings? Perhaps.

Bet your life?

Only the Shadow knows.

But hey, it doesn’t take much to win an in-house award here, now does it? Not when it only takes 14 days in your new job to change the world and the whole way it does business, by helping out prospects for world peace.

I’m beginning to wonder if I might be in line for an award myself someday soon.

When I found myself much to my surprise in this social conservative lark a year or so ago I assumed I’d be in for a long apprenticeship. You know the kind of thing: I’d spend a few months feeling unaccountably tense upon noticing skateboarders and then move tentatively on to pricing up net curtains from Wilkinson’s, and perhaps draught a strongly-worded but never published letter to the local free sheet about the late-night noise from Castle City’s many nightclubs. Maybe in a few years I’d have worked my way up to frosty altercations on Saturday afternoons in Market Street with Green Party recruiters or Amnesty canvassers or leading a boycott of cruelty-free goods from the city’s Sainsbury’s, and all the while quietly dreaming of pipes and snuffboxes and bidding modestly for the collected non-Narnian fiction of CS Lewis.

Eventually, I imagined, after putting in several hard, dedicated, grumpy decades of showing not only how the world was going to the dogs but also identifying the particular breed of dogs and the hereditary diseases that each strain is prone to, I might finally be recognised by my peers for my efforts and presented with the traditional dreadful post-war Kenneth Moore/Freedom Association curly side-swept haircut and bow tie. And maybe, just maybe, just before my retirement a Lifetime Resentment Award would be mine; complete with its iconic shabby Demob tweed jacket with double oak leaf clusters and shiny suede elbow patches.

But now it’s looking much more hopeful if mobs like the showers above are getting peer-reviewed plaudits at the public expense. Reach for the Sky is no longer the limit. At this rate, if I can get my fellow sociocons to see my sterling work for the miracle of contemporary pessimism that it is, I could be looking at international glory for my charitable work championing the beleaguered panda baiting tribes of Red China as they try to cling on to their traditional nose-clamps and paw-traps, or perhaps I'd be in line for some kind of major cash prize for outstaring Britain’s most deeply-masked and abusively-married hooded women. I can’t expect much kudos from publicly dismantling the ’Tory’ Party’s leading homosexual victimologist piece by piece because it’s already been done.

However, nobody’s so far taken the obvious golden opportunity of punishing on You Tube those pinko French dolphins that refused to mine the Rainbow Warrior.

Now, where did I put that trebuchet?