That paragon of virtue, Pete Doherty is due to be released from Wormwood Scrubbs this week after serving just 29 days of a 98 days sentence for possession of drugs.
The papers often describe him as having "fought a battle against drug addiction". If he is any example of fighting a battle you sure as hell wouldn’t want him in your army.
His sentence is reduced by half automatically, because it makes the judicial system seem harsher if you sentence to double what they actually serve. He also gets 18 days knocked off because the government have repeatedly failed to make arrangements to imprison people & haven’t got room despite being in power for years & the overcrowding problem not having crept up on them. He gets another two days off because of time in police custody.
So despite having a four month suspended sentence for a similar offence last October & re-offending so soon, he still manages to serve less than a third of his latest sentence.
That’ll teach him then.
I was amazed to find a discussion forum dedicated to this waste of space. It’s described as "The best Pete Doherty discussion on the net", you mean there’s more than one?
News last week that one in three motorists are being caught & fines by speed cameras or parking wardens.
In 2006, 9.8 million drivers received fines said to be worth £800 million. I find this quite staggering really, given that I’ve been driving for 30 years or so & never had a ticket or a fine, there must be loads who have had several.
Apparently, the motorist contributes over £30 billion a year to the government in taxes. Where does this money go? It certainly doesn’t go on the transport system; only £6 billion gets spent on that a year. We pay the highest fuel duty in Europe with almost 70 pence in every pound spent on fuel going to the government. I can remember a few years ago being part of a group who travelled to Eastern Europe. We were able to fill up 6 vehicles for the same price as one vehicle in the UK.
We pay a for a vehicle Excise Licence (Tax Disc) which will increase in several hunded percent in some cases, depending on emissions in the misguided hope that this is actually doing something to take less efficient cars off the roads. And again will increase the tax coffers so the government can waste it on non-transport related matters. What it will actually do is penalise the less well off since those who can afford gas guslers can either afford to pay the increases or can simply buy a different car whereas the poorer motorist will be forced to find the extra money for car tax or just not pay it at all & the government will criminalise them.
We have to pay congestion charges when going into London. Other cities have plans to introduce them. I have no idea whether congestion is reduced as a result of these charges but I suspect that the cash raised is spent on non-transport related stuff as is the rest of the funds the motorist adds to the economy.
Petrol prices have shot up and are at the highest levels. We now pay about £1.10 for a litre. The government could reduce the levsl of tax it takes by a few pence or not raise it with every budget but it is quite happy to take increased revenue.
We paid over £1.2 billion in parking fines last year which equates to £20 for every man, woman & child in the country. And this is not to mention the millions we pay in parking fees to the local councils & hospitals which are simply revenue generators. The government in introducing more surveillance cmeras specifically to target the motorist & make it easier to catch them breaking the laws so they can wring the next drop of cash from them without having to do any actual work.
Toll roads are creeping in so that private companies can have their share of free cash. OK, they build the roads, but they don’t do this as an act of charity, they want profit.
One of the biggest problems I have with all this money-raising through the motorist is because it targets the law-abiding. We are the ones who register our vehicles, pay the required taxes & fees & fines. It’s really, really easy to hit us for more cash.
As a motorist, I expect to pay for the road network I use, I expect to pay towards profit for the fuel companies & motor manufacturers. I also expect to pay towards some of the environmental damage I’m doing when getting to & from work & other essential journeys. I don’t expect to pay towards the myriad of other things my car-cash goes towards simply because I run a car. And I’m fed up to the back teeth of having to fork out left, right & centre.
So the National Union of Teachers went out on strike this week after failing to accept a pay deal run up by the government & whatever the teacher’s pay award body is called.
It seems things aren’t going to well for Gordon Brown at the moment. He seems to change his mind more often than a rampant housewife in an Anne Summers’ trolley dash. All you need to get him to ’see the light’ & do a U-turn is threaten to revolt.
Notwithstanding the rights & wrongs of the teacher’s strike & whether or not they had a democratic mandate, it gets to something when teachers go on strike for the first time in 21 years & as as good an indication as any that the government are pretty bloody useless when it comes to pay deals.
In a post on the Police999 forums I was amused to read that one member there was driving home from work when he heard Gordon - about as much use as a old school blamonge - Brown spouting forth about the teachers. Apparently the poster, a Met sergeant, nearly crashed his car when he heard Gordy announce, "The pay award given to the teachers was agreed by an independent arbitration panel, and we would expect the teachers to agree to this, as we have."
It seems Gordon has a very short & selective memory. Doubtless he will, in light of his new stand on arbitration panels, be reversing the decision not to award the police our full 2.5% pay award & I can look forward to the £200 he owes me.
You may not have heard of the ‘Opiate Dependent Prisoner Litigation Scheme’, if so, let me enlighten you.
This is a scheme where yet more criminals get yet more free cash from the tax payer.
In this case it relates to prisoners who have been awarded up to £4,000 in compensation. These prisoners were/are heroin addicts who were forced to go ‘cold turkey’ when they were imprisoned & their methodone treatment was withdrawn.
The government had, until their imprisonment, been funding their methodone which is a heroin substitute designed to gradually wean addicts off heroin & stop their need to to commit crime to fund the purchase of heroin.
In May 2006, the High Court ruled that withdrawing their methodone was a breach of their human rights. The government have paid out £750,000 compensation to 197 inmates. Following the court decision the tax payer has now funded 9,250 inmates’ methodone at a cost of up to £15,000 per course.
I wonder of the founding fathers of the Human Rights Act envisaged that it would have such far reaching consequences & would actually protect those who seek to break the law more than it does everyone else in society?
Jamie Bauld is an 18 year old lad from Scotland. He had a run in with the law last year & his story is told this week in the newspapers & radio.
Jamie was investigated, interviewed & charged with an offence of racially aggravated assault last year. Nothing unusual or newsworthy in that. The thing which made it hit the news was that Jamie has Downs Syndrome & a mental age of just 5.
Jamie was at college last year (in the special needs department) when he was involved in an incident with a slightly older Asian girl, also with Downs Syndrome. Jamie’s family said that he had previously complained to them that the female in question followed Jamie around & her behaviour scared him. The parents advised Jamie to walk away. In September the girl apparently came up to Jamie while he was eating his dinner. He pushed her & told her to go away. Later that day they received a call from the college explaining what had happened & advising that both Jamie & the girl had been reprimanded.
You’d have thought that would have been the end of the matter, after all, Jamie’s parents summed it up when they said it was like a couple of 5 year olds arguing.
No, this is Great Britain, the land where everything has to be approved by the state. Later the family saw an advert in a local paper asking for witnesses to a racial assault occurring the same day at the college. They then received a call from two of Scotland’s finest who proceeded to interview Jamie getting a ‘cough’ from him to slapping the girl’s face. The officers advised that there was nothing to worry about & they would advise the procurator fiscal of Jamie’s condition & thought that would be the end of it.
Oh contrare, the family received a letter from the prosecuting authority to say they had enough evidence to prosecute Jamie for the assault. Seven & a half months later the received a letter saying the proceedings had been dropped.
Another victory for justice, a detection for the Scottish stats.
I know I should not be surprised at some of the things which happen in our legal system, & I know that in the end charges were dropped. But I can’t believe that we have a legal system which allows a lad with Downs & a mental age of 5 to go through the rigmarole of being cautioned & interviewed & charged with a criminal offence over what was basically a kids spat dealt with by staff at the time. The lad clearly has no concept of racisim & no understanding of the judicial process. I wonder how much damage this has done to the lad. His mother said he had no understanding of what the police officers who interviewed him were doing - he thanked them & shook their hands when they finished. Some time later he said that his mum & he should run away to Australia in case the police came back.
I don’t know who deserves more criticism, the government for introducing systems which make the police think they have to follow every reported incident to the nth degree or the local police department for not having anyone in the chain of review stepping in to say, wait a minute, there are cases which deserve our time & effort & those which don’t.
I think the whole case is a pretty sad indictment on the state of our legal system.
Never one to miss an opportunity to report on another scummy solicitor, news of one Thomas McGoldrick, a solicitor in Cheshire who has, this week, been jailed for 10 years for stealing £1.25 million from a client.
If that wasn’t bad enough in itself, wait until you hear the circumstances surrounding the case which are even worse.
Kieth Anderson was paid £1.8 million in compensation after being rendered quadraplegic following a road crash. McGoldrick acted as his solicitor & compensation was paid into the solicitor’s account. I believe the normal practice is for the solicitor to take their fees & then forward the balance to the client. The money was never paid to the victim, who was finally alerted by police who advised him that he had just £200 of his compensation remaining.
McGoldrick meanwhile had forged a letter claiming his client had ‘gifted’ him £900,000. He used the money for holidays, cars, private schools for his children & his £800,000 house. The judge accused him of "obscene extravagance" & that he had lied his way through the six-week trial.
I’m, on the whole, a supporter of PCSOs; I work with quite a few who are excellent and do a lot of great work in their community, have assisted in many arrests, detained quite a few suspects & dealt with loads of calls the police officers are either too busy for or can’t be arsed with. (even if some of them do go round in pairs)
It is with some disappointment, then, that I bring you the following clip:
Yet another story of how our illustrious MPs have their snouts in the trough.
Today we are graced with the news that a three-year battle by Parliament to block us from knowing how much certain MPs have claimed on ‘expenses’ was lost & they were forced to reveal the truth. Having seen them it’s no wonder they wanted to keep this stuff secret. I mean, it wouldn’t do the people who pay their wages being entitled to know how much of it is trousered under the guise of ‘expenses’.
Not only do we find some MPs paying their children tens of thousands of pounds for doing non existent work but they’re also claiming tens of thousands of pounds for mortgages on mortgage-free properties. Apparently the rules allow them to get the public to pay for a second home, even when that second home has already been bought & paid for. In 2005/2006, Gordon Brown was allowed to claim £18,000 for a mortgage-free London flat. Claims include such things as over 6 grand in food for John Prescott (now we know who ate all the pies), Tony Blair had a new dishwasher & we also paid for his TV licence. The Speaker of the house is already being investigated for claiming £4,000 for his wife’s taxi fares. (that’ll be the chap who is charged with heading the investigation into MPs expenses - talk about lunatics taking over the asylum!).
So let me get this right & correct me if I’m wrong. MPs who apply & are successful for a position within their party & then get voted in are entitled to a second home. OK, I follow that, especially if they live more than 100 miles from Parliament & don’t want to commute like the rest of the people who work in London. So we have to pay their mortgage on the second home & when they retire, move on or fail to get re-elected they get to keep the house which has probably increased massively in price thus making a huge profit on a second home which we’ve paid for? And they don’t have to pay anything back?
And we have to pay the extra expense of food because, presumably they didn’t eat anything when they weren’t MPs and being an MP incurs additional expenses such as eating? And the free house their getting on the tax-payer has to be cleaned so they can claim, say £4,981 (Gordon Brown) to clean the house. My house is quite clean but it didn’t cost 5 grand to keep it that way.
Oh, and the reason they refused to reveal these figures & it took a 3-year legal battle? Because it would reveal their address & security information about them & their houses. Nothing whatsoever to do with wanting to keep their little nest eggs free from interference. Strange that, given that the info came out today & I didn’t see anything about how many CCTV cameras are installed at 95 Take-us-for-a-ride Mews.
You know, when I joined the job, our wages were considered quite low. In order to attract people into the job they had to offer inducements, these were in the form of either free accommodation or a rent allowance which we could put towards a house. We were able to claim medical fees back. Some of us had expenses towards clothing if we didn’t wear the blue suit provided. We could claim the cost of injections to protect us against some of the diseased with whom we come into daily contact.
Gradually, over time, all these expenses were taken away by the same people who are grabbing sheds full of cash from people who don’t know any better (us).
And they had the cheek to deny us £200 in back pay.
It’s great news that 9-year-old Shannon Matthews has been found alive. There can’t be many of us who thought after nearly a month she would be found alive.
In the biggest operation for quite some time, hundreds of officers & many thousands of man hours have led to her being discovered in the house of an uncle of her step-father. The surprising part is that she’s alive. What’s not so surprising is that "A local MEP demanded to know why Donovan had not been questioned sooner, saying that relatives were often involved in cases of this kind."
Self-appointed expert on policework & missing people, Edward McMillan-Scott, Conservative MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, said statistics should have led police to check all family members more comprehensively. He said: "In more than three out of four cases like this a family member is involved so a thorough search would have included the suspect in this case." These quotes are taken from the Daily Mail, which then went on to say "Mr McMillan-Scott said he would not criticise police without knowing the full facts about the case but had requested a meeting with officers in West Yorkshire." Er, I think you’ve already criticised the police without knowing the facts.
I’m sure the next few days will see others crawling out of the woodwork to blame the police for not finding her sooner. I wonder how many will come out to criticise a family whose lifestyle is such that at the age of 32 a woman has seven children by five different fathers.
I never let my kids walk home alone at the age of 9.
Maybe I’m just turning into a grump old man the closer I get to retirement, or maybe things just are worse than they ever were.
I was driving out of my road today on my way to a DIY store for some essential supplies. The road I live in has a T-junction on to a slightly bigger road. As I approached the junction I could see a couple walking along the main road towards the same junction. I was maybe 20 yards from the junction when they looked at me and just stepped out into the road, walking slowly across & forcing me to give way to them. They weren’t feral teenagers although I suspect they used to be a few years ago. They were well into their 30’s and looked like aging chavs. The guy had his baseball cap on, looked like he’d never lifted a finger for anyone in his life & his girlfriend looked like Waynetta off that Harry Enfield programme.
Normally I’d just make some comment under my breath, let them get on with it & drive off thinking about which size bolt I needed at B & Q. I found myself shouting at them. I can’t remember what I said, to be honest, but he was saying something back so I wound the window down. I then said something about it was lucky I was paying attention & not either pissed or changing my CD player ‘cos they’d have been mown down, but pretty soon realised that this was beyond their level of reasoning so ended with something which went along the lines of "Fucking idiot!"
It was just another in a whole myriad of examples on a daily basis how fucking selfish & arrogant these people are. ‘Me, me, me & fuck everyone else."
When I think back, a lot of street trash used to do that when I was driving the police car. I used to make a point of not giving way, driving towards them and getting really close then dipping the clutch before revving the arse off the engine & sounding the horn. It wasn’t big nor was it clever but it was bloody satisfying seeing them defecate themselves.
Steve Scott presents a show that goes on patrol and on the hunt with police forces across the UK in the never-ending battle against criminals and law breakers. Nightwatch gets closer than ever before to the hard side of life on the front line with Britain’s law enforcers.
Tonight, Bedfordshire Police deal with a group of youths who kick an empty Diet Coke can down Dunstable High Street. A special police unit in Warwickshire spend time sitting in the back of a transit van playing cards whilst waiting for a disqualified driver…who never turns up. In Cumbria Wildlife Liaison officers catch a local man sitting in a bush. The Suffolk Police helicopter is grounded when a warning light fails to go out during the annual inspection of the police observer’s boot allowance claims.
Nightwatch - making Open University Physics programmes look like Rambo 4.
Funny how so soon after my post on disgraceful footballers another football story emerges as if to provide back-up.
Here it’s not just footballers but the very organisation which runs the sport, the F.A.
Ashley Sestanovich was a member of Grays Athletic who play in the Blue Square Premier League. He’s not currently able to play as he is being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure whilst serving 8 years for conspiracy to rob.
Sestanovich tipped off two illegal immigrants that 11 grand would be at a roofing company. The cash wasn’t there & a 42-year-old father of a newborn was shot, he died 7 months later.
Where does the F.A. come in? They kindly agreed with the player’s appeal against Grays Athletic’s refusal to pay him after his arrest. The club has been fined £500 & told to pay Sestanovich £14,000 within 2 weeks or the club will be banned from the league.
Club chairman, Mick Woodward, said the club would not be paying the money to someone who attended 3 training sessions & played 20 minutes of a pre-season friendly due to being involved in a ‘heinous crime’. He offered to pay the £14,000 "wages" to the victim’s family but the F.A. are enforcing their decision.
If this is not yet another reason to switch support from football to another sport, I don’t know what is.
A man feared his wife Peg wasn’t hearing as well as she used to and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her, he called the family Doctor to discuss the problem.
The Doctor told him there is a simple informal test the husband could perform to give the Doctor a better idea about her hearing loss.
Here’s what you do,’ said the Doctor, ’stand about 40 feet away from her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone see if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and so on until you get a response.’
That evening, the wife is in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he was in the den. He says to himself, ‘I’m about 40 feet away, let’s see what happens.’ Then in a normal tone he asks, ‘Honey, what’s for dinner?’
No response.
So the husband moves closer to the kitchen, about 30 feet from his wife and repeats, ‘Peg, what’s for dinner?’
Still no response.
Next he moves into the dining room where he is about 20 feet from his wife and asks, ‘Honey, what’s for dinner?’
Again he gets no response.
So, he walks up to the kitchen door, about 10 feet away. ‘Honey, what’s for dinner?’
Again there is no response.
So he walks right up behind her. ‘Peg, what’s for dinner?’
A solicitor from Essex has tried to take out a private prosecution against the parents of Madeleine McCann for child neglect.
A quote from the Telegraph website says, "Anthony Bennett, 60, faxed an application for a summons of Gerry and Kate McCann to Loughborough magistrates’ court in their home county of Leicestershire.
He was spurred to act by a "lack of action" by authorities in Leicestershire, and comments made by Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ spokesman, that their actions were typical of many British families on holiday."
I know I’ve blogged on this subject before but I really hope someone has the bottle to grasp the nettle and sort this one out. I have my doubts that this particular chap will succeed and I think he will be in for some not inconsiderable criticism but I have to agree with him. If Mr & Mrs McCann were Wayne & Waynetta Chav they’d have been done by now.
For me to put a post up for the 4th of November in order to maintain my all time world record of a post a day for, er, quite a few days. So here’s a gratuitous photograph.
I don’t know who this is but I think I’ve been out with her!
It seems the Soham murderer, Ian Huntley, has been taken to hospital from his cell at wakefield Prison having taken an overdose. I wonder if it was a reaction to facebook having removed his profile from their website when they were alerted he’d registered using the name Ian Nixon (his mother’s maiden-name).
Nothing trivial I hope.
(It doesn’t appear to have hit the news websites yet, so no link to the story)
Back-stabbing ex-police officer Nina Hobson’s meteoric rise to mediocrity over a year ago in the "Dispatches" TV programme hasn’t gone entirely to waste, apparently.
The ‘journalist’, Ms Hobson appears to have been given her own 3-part series on ITV which starts tonight with an ‘undercover investigation into the real ingredients in childrens’ food’.
Judging by the level of information she managed to expose on the Dispatches investigation into what police officers really get up to on duty, we’ll probably be treated to such revelations as ‘children’s food includes ingredients’, ‘kids eat them’ & er, that’s it.
Personally, I’ll probably save that particular half hour of my life by just reading the back of the packets.
It seems the police aren’t the only ones these days with targets which do more harm than good. How else to explain the actions of council wardens in west Sussex.
57-year-old grandmother, Barbara Jubb was pushing her granddaughter in a pram when the 20-month-old, Emily, dropped her bag of Quavers.
Dutifulyy, Mrs Jubb picked up the bag but 2 quavers fell out onto the path. As it was raining the Quavers started to disintegrate & that’s when Mrs Jubb made her fatal error; instead of disposing of the 2 errant Quavers in a responsile manner, she kicked them into the gutter there to dissolve into small-snack heaven.
Fortunately for the local council bean-counters, two eagle-eyed councl wardens were on hand to issue an £80 fine for litter. Another triumph for truth & justice.
The grandmother was last seen leaving the town centre trying her best to avoid picking up further fines for ‘walking on the cracks in the pavement’ & ‘looking at people in a funny way’.
I was in the newsagents today and I saw one of the headlines which went along the lines of ‘9 day’s later the Police still haven’t got a clue who took her’ or words to that effect. I’m referring to the awful situation in Portugal of the missing child, Madeleine.
I was instantly reminded of that spoof American Police Department voicemail message which starts off "Please select one of the following options: To whine about us not doing anything to solve a problem that you created yourself, press 1." *; It’s often easier to blame the police than the real cause of the problem, that being the parents of 3 children under 4 who thought it acceptable to leave the children unattended in a hotel room in a foreign country while went off to share a meal at a nearby restaurant. So they returned every half hour to check on them, as if that makes leaving the kids unattended somehow OK. I’m a parent, a lot can change in two minutes let alone 30, especially with toddlers.
Am I the only one getting fed up with all the hand-wringing in the media about how brave the parents are being and how caring they are? Is it, I wonder, anything to do with their ‘middle class’ social & financial standing that they are not being criticised more for what, had it happened down the street in one of our own towns, have probably have led to an arrest for child neglect? (oh yes, I can quote several jobs where parents have been nicked for leavig their kids unattended) I wonder if a single mother from the local scum estate had left her kids alone while she went up the road for a swift few halfs of white cider would be subject to quite the same amount of support.
I can’t believe any parent would think it OK to do this, even at home, let alone in a holiday home in a foreign country where you haven’t got the first clue about who might have access to your flat while you’re out. If you’re thinking I’m being harsh just ask yourself this, how much cash would it take for you to not want to leave it unattended in a hotel bedroom? £100, £500, £10,000? And how much is a child worth?
It’s like those people who wouldn’t dream of driving home with a brand new 8 piece crockery set costing £150 loose on the back seat of the car but think nothing of allowing the kids to jump around without a seatbelt.
Isn’t it about time we learned what is really important in life?
* I’ll post the full version of this voicemail message later, for those who haven’t come across it.
Solicitors don’t usually have a very high level of respect amongst most police officers. Tales of defence solicitors using every trick in the book to get guilty people off & poor quality prosecution solicitors failing to secure convictions are as old and abundant as the hills (in the Lake District, not Lincolnshire, obviously).
Not one who easily passes up the opportunity to have a pop at a solicitor, I bring you this story which featured in the national press and various websites last week;
Jim Beresford runs a firm of solicitors in the Doncaster area. Just 4 years ago Beresford was a ‘small town lawyer’ working out of an office in Doncaster. Today he has a £1.8million private jet, 2 Aston martins, a Ferrari & several racehorses. Last year he took home nearly £17million & operates from a plush 38,000 sq ft office complex & employs 200 staff.
What happened in the last four years to rocket this man to his current wealth? He hit gold when his company took advantage of a government scheme to compensate miners for ill health suffered as a result of poor working conditions over many years.
Basically, a solicitor acting on behalf of a miner to claim compensation from a fund of £7.5billion set aside by the government, gets paid a set fee of £2000, by the government, for what often amounts to little more than filling in a few forms.
It is alleged by the Daily Mail, among others, that Beresford’s firm also creamed off fees and various ‘expenses’ from the compensation amount over and above their £2000.
It is alleged that many miners were encouraged to take out insurance should their compensation claims fail and the DTI sought to recover legal expenses in defending the claims. In order to fund the insurance, miners were encouraged to take out loans for which Beresford earned commission. The DTI claims that it does not claim costs back from failed claimants so the insurance, and thus the loans were a complete waste of money.
One miner signed with Beresford was hoping to seek compensation to fund a digital hearing aid which costs £2000. Beresford opened an account for the claimant with the Bank of Scotland, they then debited this account with charges for £358 for ‘case investigation’ £171 referral fee when Beresford passed the case on to another firm, £1,522 insurance premium, £120 disbursements, £320 unidentified costs, £672 interest. Then there was a £400 cost of a hearing loss medial arranged by a company called Melox Ltd, 90% of which is owned by Beresford’s wife.
In December 2005 the miner was awarded £3,750 compensation but by this time his costs amounted to £3,591 which left him just £158 to fund his £2000 hearing aid.
Beresford’s firm represented between 58,000 & 90,000 (depending on which report you read), That’s an awful lot of Two grands & other ‘expenses’. 17 miners represented by the company were finally awarded between 1p & 99p, 65 between £1 & £2, 81 between £3 & £4, 68 between £5 & £6.
Beresford is described as the country’s richest solicitor, he & several other solicitors’ firms are currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
