Boxgrove bureaucrats

One inch of Global Warming fell on Castle City on Sunday night, reducing its roads to a sparsely-used 4-by-4 demonstration circuit; unpopulated by Post Office vans and school-run private cars alike.

Off the main drag (say anywhere more than 1/8 mile distant from of city hall, police station, tax offices and court buildings) the ‘main’ roads are today cleared in only the middle and their gutters are used as sidewalks by pedestrians who are utterly afraid to use its ice-rink pavements.

Shops are under stocked and unvisited, the elderly have been banished from the streets, and I’m told that ambulances are now only attending those who firmly state that they are dying.

One of the chief justifications for putting up with government and all its control of us and its endless taxes is that it can provide cheap, efficient, collective protection measures against disasters and thus maintain civilised life in the face of emergencies and routine, large scale problems where there’s not a relatively easy and tax-efficient quid or two to be made in the usual ways of imagination, organisation and hard work. Thus the poor and the weak and the sick and the elderly who could never afford expensive road-gritting services; who don’t have large domestic staffs or employees to draft in to help; and who aren’t strong enough to remove the ice from their own pavements need not be imprisoned in their homes now short of the basic necessities of life, such as food and drink, or rapidly chilling if they haven’t paid their heating bills on time due to the snowbound non-collection of their pensions.

If any natural rights or consequentialist libertarians want to suggest insurance-based schemes in a low-tax environment, go ahead. You might be right on this one. You can scarcely be worse than our tax farming master muppets. The might also suggest that everybody pull themselves together all pioneer manly-like and copper up for snow shoes or skis, but wait till you get arthritis sonny-boy, and see where it gets you.

Castle City is still an ice rink two days after the tiniest snowfall and although the relatively young and fit can get around town - along with those lucky enough to live near where the politicians and their attendants do their stuff; of whom I am one - the suburbs out of shouting distance of the administrative centre was pretty much Wrinkleyfrei today. You could even get around Marks and Spencer’s at lunchtime and teatime. So, one inch of snow = pedestrian death trap for the over-fifties; the disabled; nursing mothers; the mentally deficient, and children.

Sixty-five years of the Welfare State and what you can expect after a couple of hours of ordinary winter weather is the choice between imprisonment in your home or risking life and limb. Lord Beveridge, you should see this day.

As Dumb Jon commented on my disbelieving post yesterday, you can bet that the bureaucracy will grow from this, and not shrink. I was already thinking along these lines, but good ol’ Jon, well, he just loves to point out where I missed a little bit of Leftie evil up there in the shadowy corner where even my polemic splatter marks don’t quite reach.

So I thought; why wasn’t this dealt with better by the authorities? I mean, we’ve always (most of us and most of our ancestors) lived on a large island in the North Atlantic between the Gulf Stream and the Arctic for thousands of years – since it was a peninsula, in fact.

Are snow and its icy consequences any surprise? Who should deal with the aftermath and learn any lessons that need to be learned, I wonder? Do the leaderships of Castle County and Castle City regard their dealings with the weather as a triumph? As a job well done? Mission accomplished? Meh? Must try harder? Do they blame the previous administration? Acts of God? Sabotage? Alien invasion? Diabolic possession? Racism?

Knowing something of the bureaucracies involved, and having filled out several forms for jobs with each authority, I can be sure that whoever will have the job will have been recruited not only for an impeccable CV and a career structure that will have ticked all the right managerialist boxes, but will either exactly fit the desire racial mix that County and City want, or will be statistically accounted for as something to improve upon. And all this useless knowledge will have been gathered, stored and pondered upon by numerous people whose salaries might have been spent on something else. Such as more salt or grit.

Instead, they are likely doing jobs like these, or asking the NHS for protection money, as in: Nice little hospital you go there Sunshine: wouldn’t want it to fill up with all these broken gaffers and grannies, now would we?

Here comes the positive, which we might expect from a conservative government we’re not going to get:

Mandatory emergency work commitment for all jobseekers during times like these.

If your rent, council tax, food, lighting and small quantities of food and clothing are paid for by the public and all you have to do is watch TV and make more babies, then it wouldn’t be reviving the Triangular Trade to insist that you turn up at City Hall to be given photocopied maps and shovels and brushes and directions to a number of residential areas to clear, starting with the main paths from ‘social housing’ and especially sheltered accommodation for pensioners, to the nearest shops or buys stops into town.

One ‘diversity awareness’ session per year for each City and County employee to be replaced by training each one to join a rota to co-ordinate church and youth groups to do emergency shopping for the elderly and those on Incapacity Benefit or Disability Living Allowance. The Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit departments of the local authority who have such information on computer could contact such people by phone to see if they need help after, say, two days to see if there’s any problem, or send scouts out to the phoneless on the third day (hah!)

Phone lines to be made available to charity groups (and the teachers whose schools are closed for ‘safety reasons’) to co-ordinate further and tailored needs of particular individuals such as those who must attend hospital or GPs very soon. Dialysis and maternity cases a priority, perhaps.

Clearly, they’ve got this much worse dahn sarf, but the North will cop its own packet one day, sure enough.

Now, lots of folk can look after themselves, but there are tons who can’t and I’d guess that some of them live all over the country an icy pavement or two away. It wouldn’t take a genius to think up a few coordinating jobs for local government to do in these cases, which is handy because I doubt that local government has one.

Homo Heidelbergensis survived in Britain half a million years ago with sticks, stones, and bones, and unless we go down the Leftie route of saying that things were much nastier in the past, so why all the hoo-hah about violent crime today?, I’d like to suggest that modern man, with all his technology and vast tax wealth and communications, could do a little better for the elderly and sick during a cold snap than just laissez-faire, or enriches vous, or sauve qui peut.

Disgust.

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.