Human Nature

Back in the land of whippets and ferret-juggling ex-mill workers again, but humbled in my ironic sniper’s rooftop perch by the piece below.

Just in case anyone’s feeling I’m running down my home region a lot these days here’s a bit of that internet cliché Good News from The Bolton News for your edification. Lancashire bravery in the spirit of the Accrington Pals.

Hero care home worker Carol Bostock honoured following blaze

THE care home was filled with thick black smoke and a fire was raging downstairs.

It was New Year’s Eve, and Carol Bostock, who cares for three disabled tenants at Stowell Court, Halliwell, had already led two of them to safety.

But a third man was trapped upstairs, fearing for his life.

Without a thought for her own safety, Mrs Bostock went back into the burning building and rushed to his aid.

I disagree about this – it’s a journalistic cliché. I bet she thought long and hard about her own safety: imagining falling prey to smoke inhalation and suffocating in darkened corridors, or her clothes and hair bursting into flames; or maybe inhaling fire and feeling her lungs scorching and melting as blood and fire boiled her from within. I bet she was really, really aware of all this in her future, but that something inside her decided to think about that third man as someone preciousand worth of life even at the cost of her own.

She put a coat over his head to shield him from the smoke, but then faced an agonising wait as she used the stairlift to get him to the ground floor.

Waiting under fire (literally in this case), when all your instincts for self-preservation tell you to run, has to be one of the clearest examples of sustained courage that Fate throws at our species. We admire and expect such conduct in infantry - young and trained and possibly not too imaginative about death yet and motivated by pride and standing amongst friends and comrades and bolstered by all that - but in a middle-aged civilian all alone but for her charge and fellow human being?

I suspect that she was not all alone at all.

Firefighters arrived within minutes but by that time, the 55-year-old had already saved all three residents.

Yesterday, Mrs Bostock relived the daring rescue after receiving a commendation from the Greater Manchester Fire Service.

The modest care worker was overwhelmed by the award but said she feared for her life.

She said: “I was very scared. I couldn’t see for the smoke and it was taking so long to get him down the stairs.

“I just knew I had to get them all out. I didn’t know whether I could do it but I had to try. It feels fantastic to get the award.”

Just so you know.

At the ceremony at Bolton Central Fire Station, firefighters told Mrs Bostock she was a life-saver.

Watch commander Ted Andrews, who was on duty that night, said: “If it wasn’t for Carol we would have had a fatal fire on our hands.

“By the time we got there the fire was very well developed. Luckily, Carol got everyone out.

“Not many people could do what she did.”

Mrs Bostock received a County Fire Officer’s Certificate of Commendation from Deputy County Fire Officer Kieran Nolan.

Presenting her with the award, he said: “Carol didn’t want any fuss but it is important that we recognise what a brave thing she did.”

Mrs Bostock is now working back at the care home in Stowell Court with the three residents whose lives she saved.

It’s an old argument but human beings: are we merely wild animals who’ve learned to think - clever meat whose evolution provides instincts of group solidarity which sometimes help the species to survive? Or something more? A touch of angel, perhaps, or a fragment of deity?

To add to the above argument and not to take away from the huge courage involved, there’s the link below to an event nearby that’s the moral opposite of Carol Bostock’s heroism.

Pensioner attacked

Read that, compare it with the above story, and tell me poor housing alone make people evil, along with the lack of recreational facilities and ‘jobs.’

The Left is right again

...and it’s beginning to bug me.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Between them the Asian News, the Times, the Telegraph, the BBC and Refuge,the women’s charity, seem to have arrived at the truth. Or some truths.

Just not the same truths, is all.

All agree that Malik Mannan stabbed his wife, Sabina Akhtar, to death. All agree that she had previously informed the police about his repeated attacks and death threats against her, and that after being warned and bailed out he frequently broke his bail conditions by continuing to threaten her, (threats that she reported to the police), and he then carried out his murderous threats when the CPS and police ignored her.

The Telegraph doesn’t mention that Refuge is suing the Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service over failing to protect this poor, terrorized woman, but that’s obviously a sign of extreme-Right-wing bias and boyish high-jinks on the Telegraph’s part and nothing to worry about.

The most important facts are that she is dead, murdered by her husband and that the ‘authorities’ did nothing for her once he was bailed out for stalking and otherwise harassing her. It’s ‘just’ a human tragedy at this point; no need to get political, right?

Well, ‘human rights’ legislation is being used by the charity Refuge. Hum-ho, what’s wrong with the law of the land?

Point to the Left – the law of the land wasn’t used properly to protect Mrs Akhtar:

It emerged that Mannan had been arrested for breaching his bail order but was released shortly before he carried out the murder because the CPS had ruled that there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution.

and…

The case was reviewed by a CPS lawyer who decided there was no case to answer despite the previous complaints. Bail restrictions on Mannan were dropped and he sent Sabina a text boasting: "I am a free man. Case file closed. Isn't it great?"

And Baroness Helena Kennedy has been advising and supporting the lawsuit. Rent-a-Leftie-Brief…Face Of Hate…Hatchet-faced Marxist dy…Usual suspects…Monstrous Regi…Ah, nuts. They’re right on this one, in the short term.

Okay, so you’d expect a women’s refuge charity to be pretty much dominated by Left-feminist thinking and perspectives and just by having a negative view of some aspects of this country and which differs from mine doesn’t automatically make you insane or evil (though it’s a good sign and I keep my eyes peeled for such wrong-headedness).

Here she is:

Lady Kennedy said that the police needed to be confronted with their duty towards the victims of domestic violence. She told the BBC: “The police failure to act in domestic violence is something well known to us. In fact, they have improved their game considerably but in some forces it is not good enough.

Talk about the stopped clock!

And guess whose feathers are ruffled? Guess who is shocked - shocked! - that Refuge is going to law?

Senior officers in GMP are “surprised and disappointed” by the threat of legal action. They believe that they responded swiftly to Ms Akhtar’s concerns, offering support, installing a security alarm in her home and placing a full file before prosecutors.

Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable, has since campaigned for friends, relatives and neighbours to come forward more readily with concerns about domestic violence. The force deals with 68,000 cases of domestic violence each year.

Love that ‘since.’

It’s all the rage is ‘since.’ As in: ‘since I was caught out buggering about, I’ve been campaigning against it to avoid further blame.’

First syllable of ‘sincere,’ is since.

These would be the excellent and generously-funded ‘police service’ in Greater Manchester that can do this:

Greater Manchester Police is flying the flag for an international event to raise awareness of prejudice against gay and transgender people.

The force is flying a rainbow flag above its Chester House headquarters.

It was raised by the Chief Constable Peter Fahy ahead of Sunday's International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO).

The flag is the internationally recognised symbol for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

Mr Fahy said: "This shows Greater Manchester Police's commitment to ensuring people, whatever their individuality, can feel safe in the city.

Where were the police at 1.30 on Sunday morning when two women and a pal of mine got threatened (him) for wearing a skirt and a bit of mascara? Okay, they were elsewhere in Castle City and not in Greater Manchester’s defensive inner ring as it were but still I wonder just how long they’d have taken to arrive, if at all, had the track-suited morons not legged it when faced with composure and courage…Hang out no flags: a non-authority-abdicated police force might come in handy.

The feminists have got it right; if the police are playing a deadly game of mouse and mouse with their limited budget and resources then it’s a nice bit of social shadenfreude to see the Sisters putting the boot in on the silver-bling-capped no-to-zero-tolerance PC and doubtless self-serving senior ‘officers.’

As a conservative, I bemoan the need for such alien measures as ‘human rights’ legislation being used above the common and criminal law, but Refuge isn’t just on the side of the angels on this one: it is the angel, and an avenging angel at that. It's how authority asserts itself in a civil society, just as the Abolitionists and the Evangelicals did in civilizing Victorian Britain. I may doubt some of their statistics, but there's a chunk wrong with British manhood that needs fixing.

But, not being one to miss an opportunity when Uncle Joe’s Auntie is involved, guess which information is present in all of the other accounts but which the BBC strangely and for no apparent reason misses?

I can’t be sure how germane ‘Bangladesh’ and ‘arranged marriage’ are to this case - there are more than enough brutal or would-be brutal men everywhere I’d guess, but quite why the BBC wants these facts left out I’ll leave to the reader to speculate, and why this was put in (other than copy and pasting information from the Refuge website)

According to Ms Hypolite, at least two women in the UK are killed at the hands of a violent partner each week.

She added: "Domestic violence transcends the whole of the economic and social strata - we as women are likely to be abused by the men we form relationships with, whether we are poor or rich."

…remains a mystery.

…and as for why the Times alone mentions this:

On one occasion he had told her to prepare for death by reading passages from the Koran adding: “I am going to get a knife and when I return I am going to slaughter you.”

…we’ll probably never know.

It’s just some dog that didn’t bark for anyone else, I suppose.