17 June
This is a long blog, I hope you don’t mind.
I’ve just noticed that I typed the wrong date on
yesterday blog. How that happened I don’t know, I do know that the last week or
two I’ve been able to keep what day it is straight in my head. That’s probably
what’s happened here again.
Jan is off to Slimbridge again today; she wants to
spend some time in the Kingfisher hide to try to get better shots of, well,
kingfisher. Jan has a lot more patience than me and will there for hours and
waiting, that’s why I haven’t gone with here. But even with that I couldn’t go
anyway.
We got ready to go into town on the scooters for a
couple of hours yesterday afternoon and having set up the scooters we tried to
set off. However, Jan’s scooter decided it wasn’t going to play ball. We tried
three fully charged batteries on it and none of them worked. The power dial
shows the power level but the charge isn’t getting to the drive motor. We have
to wait until next week before we can it sorted. As it happens, there’s a few
odds n ends I won’t to get done here anyway.
Right, I’ve just watched last night’s Despatches that I record every week.
This week it was on racial prejudice in the police as a whole but mainly in
Met. It made for nervous viewing, no matter what race you are! Racism is still
a major problem and although some attempts are being made to address it, they
seen to be light handed and half-hearted at best. But the thing is, I really do
believe we get the police force we want. I also believe that there is a large
race problem here in the UK anyway.
Legislating against it will only make the issue worse
in my view. By forcing a racist to conform and accept a person from the group
they dislike will only make the dislike of that group, even more intense.
Racism isn’t one side though is it? It’s not just white against black, white
against Asian and so on. It work just as much as the other way round. I have
personally heard two Asians talking about how much they hate the English.
As I see it right now, there is no clear way out of
the situation we as a country are now in. Our hope must be that the current
close friendships between multi-race kids at school continues when they leave
school. However, it is at that point that in some case the added burden of
religion comes into play. Some of those religions forbid marriage and even
close friendships between adherents and non-adherents. The long held and
ingrained prejudice comes in from history and no amount of legislation will
prevent that happening. The new charges where forcing someone to marry against
the wishes are made criminal offences are likely to back fire here badly. I
wonder just how many such marriages will happen simply because one party is frightened
of the consequences of fighting back and calling the police. And so we come
back to the police … … …
I have very little faith in our police. Don’t
misunderstand me here, I’m not a criminal and apart from the odd speeding and
parking ticket I’ve never been in trouble with them. However, I have had to
call them on a number of occasions and have been fobbed off by them. After once
such occasion I got home and sat typing all my grumbles about them. Ninety
seven thousand words later I had the first draft of my first book, The Mission. Here’s those first few
words …
‘Damn coppers, they really are bloody
useless aren’t they! They come knocking
at our door when something happens and promise the earth but deliver nowt. I don’t know why I bother to phone them, I
really don’t. Look at all that fuss over
the break in over the back last week.
“Well, if you see or hear anything strange going on give us a call and
we’ll be out straight away,” they said.
And look what’s happened now. The
bloody dog going nuts out the back at just after nine pm and there’s another
van out there. I call the cops and it
takes them over two bloody hours to get here and get us up out of bed when do
come ... and the sodding van has gone!!!
I really don’t know why I bother.
And what about that kid who was having the shit punched out of him by that
bloke? They arrived quickly enough but
didn’t do anything when they got the bloke, no evidence they said, no
witnesses. What about me and the woman
by the phone box? We both gave names and
addresses saying we would attend court. So where do they get the ‘no witnesses’
idea from? Oh yeah, and remember those
kids I caught trying to set fire to the rubbish bins out the back the other
Sunday? The cops said they’d send the
local beat bobby out when he comes back off leave ... deeerrrrr ... I wonder if
the kids will wait for him. And what
about all that copper wire I saw being loaded in to a car across the way and
the guy on the phone didn’t want to know about it. The following day there was the report of
twenty grands worth of wire stolen for a supplier in Nuneaton. And what about when our lad was hit by a car
while he was riding his bike. The lad was
given a false phone number by the car driver, written on a betting slip. The lad even pointed out the car to me but
did the cops do anything about it? Not
bloody likely, too much bother, too much work involved!
Look at all those coppers who were sat
around at the services in Corley the other week waiting for whatever they were
waiting for ... I wonder if it turned up?
Then when you need a copper you can’t get one, they’re all out on jobs
they say. Probably all on courses like
Inspector Jack Sanders told me about some time ago. They get a brochure that comes
round at the nick; they call it the holiday mag and it has all the courses they
can go on over that year. They read it
and choose which ones they fancy for a few days off, paid of course! “Better than the crap we get on the streets,”
he said. No bloody wonder they get crap
on the streets when they behave the way they do.
Look at the latest farce, pretend coppers,
PCSO, Police Community Service Officers.
They can’t arrest anyone, issue any fixed penalty tickets or do anything
a real copper can do, Oh no, they have to call for back-up if they need to do
any of that. Someone called them Plastic
Police, about right too. It’s no bloody
wonder there’s so little respect for the copper on the street.’
These days of course, when a big case hits the
headlines they pull out all fingers and go in hard. But lest face it, it’s not
all that often is it? And we also need to consider why. They will no doubt say
it’s because a serious crime has happened. I would say that all crimes are
serious to the victims! However, I do have a feeling that the truth is that
there’s a good chance someone can make a name for themselves, and that why it
happens. In some instances specialist
teams work hard and their own issues, but day to day policing out on the
street, I see very little effort being made.
Now here’s a case in point …
I shot this scene on the
A444 at the island by the Bermuda industrial estate. As we drove by I could
clearly see there was no damage to either car. So have the been stopped, and
more to the point, why have they been stopped on a major traffic island like
that when there’s a lay-by a couple of hundred yards away?
Today’s funny then continues my hobby horse rant …
A truck
driver was driving along the highway when he saw a sign, “Low Underpass Ahead.”
Thinking his truck could for sure make it, he drove under and got stuck. Soon
all the cars were honking their horns and shouting. Before long, a cop came and
said “what’s the problem, got stuck, huh? Thinking quickly the truck driver
smiled and said “no, I didn’t get stuck, I was delivering this bridge and ran
out of gas.
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