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Developed by:
| September | 10 |
| 2006 |
Some stories just make you throw up your hands in despair at the police:
A mother of two has been fined for swearing at yobs who terrorised her neighbourhood.Donna Appleyard, 32, finally snapped after months of misery in which the youths jumped over fences, trampled through gardens and shouted and swore at residents.
Ms Appleyard said she had made several complaints to police about the gang outside her home in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, but no officers had been to visit her to take the issue further.
Instead, she found herself under investigation when officers received a complaint from a 13-year-old girl, after Ms Appleyard finally lost her temper and pleaded with her tormenters: "Please, just f*** off". Two weeks later, officers called at her house and issued her with the fine.
...Ms Appleyard was given an £80 fixed penalty notice following the incident on March 30. However, she refused to pay and was taken to court last month, when magistrates raised the sum to £120, which she must now pay or face a jail term.
...Sergeant Neil Haley, from West Yorkshire police, defended the force's actions. He said: "We appreciate that anti-social behaviour can be frustrating for people but they should not take the law into their own hands."
Time for some accountability and democracy.
MessageSpace
Black-quill has just touched on this one too. The travel writer Bill Bryson wrote that something was operating in modern America to suppress thought. I read today of the prisoner who was released a few weeks into a fifteen month sentence - paroled. "They" are now truly in control
I don't think it's fair to judge anything or anybody on the basis of a short sensationalist newspaper account. That's especially so in the UK where yellow journalism appears to have become standard operating practice. If every single major newspaper in the UK could get the recent war in Lebanon so very wrong, I really don't think any of them can be trusted about anything very much any longer. I don't think however that the newspapers are in any way setting the moral tone in society. Actually, I believe it's the other way about: British society is morally bankrupt, so it stands to reason that Fleet Street will reflect this.
On a tangential note, I don't think this sickness emanates from those on the Left or the Right of the political spectrum, so much as from the society itself. Like Weimar, the underpinnings of British society are rotten to the very core and it's not going to take very much to blow the entire house down.
I used to believe that France was more or less alone in Europe in being a nation of prostitutes led by a government of pimps. I now realise that much the same thing can be said about Britain. Especially so in light of the recent coup against the only truly principled man in government, a man innoculated by natural character and upbringing against the current epidemics of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.
Well, I just heard something that not only trumps this, but beats it all into a cocked hat. You heard about young Jesse James, a wholly innocent fifteen-year-old barbarously murdered on Moss Side, the last of a whole series of murders. Do you know how the police reacted? According to ITV, they appealed to the gangs to stop the killings. I though the general idea was that the police went after the gangs, not that it pleaded with them.
You may have missed this - Joshua won't like it, it could be construed as sensationalism.
" He was woken in the night by two police officers who warned him that the solar-powered gnome, dressed in full police uniform, was offensive to his neighbours. They served him with a notice under the Protection From Harassment Act 1997 for "placing a garden gnome with intent to cause harassment to Mr John McLean ".
Is it...........
A: The plot for a new BBC sitcom?
B: The plot for a new Monty Python film?
C: April 1st?
D: Just an everyday tale of life in New Labour's Britain?
Yes, all the gentlemen above have a point but don't you agree with Joshua's comment that: "...this sickness emanates from those on the Left or the Right of the political spectrum, so much as from the society itself." I'm currently running a survey and the majority view is that it is the social disintegration which is the main threat.
"We appreciate that anti-social behaviour can be frustrating for people but they should not take the law into their own hands."
Lost you a little there, P-G. Read your link and links to links and so on but what is your point for morons like me, for the ridiculing of?
James:
Ah - a little bit of obscurity nourished just there.
The link is to the principles of Policing, that readers of old Pollard here might consider how many are broken by the police in this instance.
I reckon that they have failed to uphold nos 1-3, 7 in particular (the public are the police and the police are the public, which runs rather counter to the "taking the law into their own hands" rubbish), 8 in spades (the police turning up and issuing a fine) and 9 rather spectacularly in the lead up.
4 & 6 relate to the use of force which does not seem to have been an issue here, so we are left only with principle 5 ("Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law. ") to which it would appear there has at least been a passing nod.
Overall score: 1/9 - detention for you I think Sergeant Haley.