In article . com,
"Boltar" wrote:

I live in a flat in north london and in the last 12 months
we've had thieves dumping a car in our carpark

Oh no a dumped car! Call the marines!

and youths with knives and knuckle dusters smoking pot

Smoking pot! Whatever next - you know where that leads... It's grim up
north London but I didn't realise that it's the end of civilisation as
you know it.

E.

Boltar wrote:
Richard J. wrote:

I would hardly call painting the Mona Lisa "defacing" the canvas.

The canvas was there to be painted on. Someones wall isn't. Perhaps
this is too complex a concept for you to understand?

No, it isn't, but the context of my comment to the preceding posts is
evidently too complex for you to understand.

Yes, there *are* graffiti artists who create real works of art on
surfaces which previously had no visual value. For example, a
café-front shutter in Paris (see
http://images.fotopic.net/y74ltp.jpg )

Is that supposed to be the best example you can find? It looks no
better than a million pictures in childrens books. Its hardly on par
with Da Vinci.

I didn't claim it was. It happened to be one I saw being painted, and my
photo of it was already on the web. I merely said that I regarded it as
a work of art without commenting on how good a work it was. If it was
done without the owner's permission, it was also vandalism.

[Rest of your post snipped, as you seem to have completely misunderstood
the drift of my posts in this thread.]
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Tristán White wrote:

Good grief Mait where do you live?

I live in Plaistow, not the safest of areas as anyone who opens the weekly
local rag can testify. But in 9 years living here, I haven't experienced
anything like what you have, and I go out all the time as I live a very
active social life.

As I said earlier, Tristan, I live in one of the "better" roads in
Fulham. Houses in my road cost in excess of £600,000, (Prince Charles
used to date a girl living a few doors down, Lady Jane Wellesley) and
the thugs who frequent my road don't live here (they can't afford to),
but it is a cut-through between the high street and various council
estates and other problem areas. In fact, the street running parallel
behind mine is far worse: it has a high proportion of "social housing"
(Mr. Freeman, a previous Labour councillor and now a bigwig in the
legalise cannabis campaign was one of them) and I keep my car door
locked when I drive through it even in daylight. The street which forms
a T junction with mine at the far end recently had a gang-related raid
where teenagers stormed into a house with firearms. They are the sort
of people that pass up and down my road to get to the main road and
make me frightened to leave my home at night.

Funnily enough (I've lived here for 42 years - my entire life) there
was a notorious criminal family living a few doors down from us. I used
to play football with one of the sons. We got on really well, and they
certainly kept all trouble away from this road - not ****ing on one's
doorstep as it were, and when someone stole my bike from my front
garden about 35 years ago, within hours of them finding out about this,
it was returned!

Marc.

Adrian wrote:

) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

Are you really scared? Has anything ever happened to you?

snip woes of "one of the better streets in Fulham"

Move somewhere less pikey.

Why should I move from the house in which I was born and lived my
entire life just so that the lunatics can really run the asylum with
impunity?

Marc.

John B wrote:
Fine. So it's self defence, you're acquitted, and all is fine legally.
It's only if you try and kill him *while he's running away* that
there's a problem.

It seems to me there's a little hole here. Mr V is threatened
by Mr Y. Mr V feels his life is under threat, and begins to
act to kill Mr Y with a handly weapon. In between the time
V begins his "defensive attack" and the time the weapon kills
Mr Y, Y has (quite sensibly) turned to run. Y is therefore
(e.g) shot in the back. Should V be judged on the situation when
he decides to act and commits himself; or on the situation when the
bullet strikes home?

ObTransport: Interview with Bernhard Goetz
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...17/lkl.01.html

#Paul

In article ,
(John Gilmer) wrote:

If you believe that the civil offence of trespassing justifies the
murder of the trespasser, then why not stand for Parliament and
try and get that enshrined in law?

Breaking into an occupied dwelling more that the "civil offence of
trespassing."

But it no more entitles the property occupier to shoot the miscreant in
the back.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Jonathan Morris wrote:
Perhaps I was overly harsh on the original poster - however, if
you're
not aiming to be racist, it's probably worth avoiding words that began
as racially abusive terms when describing someone of the ethnic group
that the term was originally used to describe.

Perhaps, but the meaning of words changes over time (e.g. 'gay') so you
have to take things in context. For a start, how would anyone have
known if they were Irish travellers?

Fred Barras and Brendon Fearon (sp?), it was widely reported at the
time.

But not a very bad one. I'm genuinely amused and amazed that people
here have equated graffiti to terrorism... it's a scribble on a train.
If you're terrified and intimidated by a scribble on a train, you might
as well kill yourself now, because life is going to get appreciably
harder than that...

Should people kill themselves because they feel afraid? I am sure some
do - especially those living in areas where they suffer a lot worse
than just spray paint on walls.

OK, so I should have been more tactful in the original post; I accept
that continued harrassment can drive people to suicide, and that that's
a very bad thing. Seeing some graffiti on your train is not an example
of the above.

Fine. So it's self defence, you're acquitted, and all is fine legally.
It's only if you try and kill him *while he's running away* that
there's a problem.

Did you read what I said? It happens in a matter of seconds. So the guy
turns and runs as you're about to attack. Can you stop? Will you stop?

As another poster has pointed out, you will be acquitted even if you
don't stop (indeed, had Tony Martin lied that that was the case when he
shot Fred Barras, then he would have been acquitted).

I have no idea what I'd do in that situation and I bet you can't
either. What if you come home and find the burglar already inside and
your wife has been murdered? The guy is now trying to run. Do you still
let him go because he's running away? I bet you'd go after them - even
if they had a knife or gun. Instinct takes over. By your logic, you'd
be considered a cold-blooded killer if you got him before he got you.
Maybe you would lie and say it was self defence.

Strictly, according to the law, you'd be guilty of manslaughter due to
diminished responsibility. In practice, it would be hard to find a jury
who'd convict you.

I'm not an idiot. Sure Mrs Jones at number 63, who's 91 years old,
thinks it is great to see PCSOs walking about or driving in their
marked Vauxhall Corsa, yet with virtually no power to do anything as
the local chavs give them the finger. She is convinced the police are
out there to protect her. While the CSO is around, she probably IS
safer than normal. Whoop-de-do. Crime doesn't fall. A few penalty
tickets are issued to the trouble makers, but like a high percentage of
fines, they aren't paid.

Many people are being conned into believing we have more police.
Meanwhile the police have virtually no respect for CSOs and hate
working with them (still, they are useful for doing the mundane jobs,
like 'guarding the bees'). At least special constables are now more
highly regarded! My friend is a DCI and speaks of the memos going
around telling officers to try and treat CSOs properly, while
unofficially they're told to keep a straight face when watching the
CSOs trying to do something, so as not to undermine them. CSOs have to
ask for advice on just about everything, and the police get tired of
it.

Visible policing only looks good too. An officer on foot isn't always
that useful when the need to react to something a distance away occurs.
In many cases, you may as well just use CCTV.

I agree absolutely. But the point of CSOs is to make Mrs Jones happy to
go outside, and less scared that the muggers and rapists she reads
about in the news will mug and rape her. Which is fine, because they
almost certainly won't - crime victims are overwhelmingly concentrated
among men aged 15-24.

According to opinion polls, this is working. It wouldn't be my use of time and money
in an ideal world, but anything that calms the hangers-and-floggers
without actual hanging and flogging is better than the alternative.

Here's a suggestion; More REAL police offers and a return to the more
intensive training we had 10-20 years ago (both for street police and
traffic police).

Has police training (for non-CSOs) got appreciably easier over the last
10 years? Genuine question.

Opinion polls? What was the question? Do you think there should be more
uniformed officers on the street? Have you seen more officers on the
street (a lot of people can't tell the difference between a police
officer and a CSO)?

"How scared are you of crime?"

I do recommend more CSOs, for the reasons above. And presumably you
know that if someone breaches an ASBO then they stand a good chance of
going to prison?

No they don't. More than 50% of ASBOs are breached, but you have to be
caught breaking it too - and even then, you don't automatically go to
jail. Wake up and smell the coffee! Even the authorities know they're
not working, which is why they're trying to look at a way of improving
enforcement.

How do you know that more than 50% of ASBOs are breached, if the people
breaching them aren't caught? & I know that people who are caught don't
automatically go to jail, but enough of them do for it to be a serious
prospect.

But sending people to prison costs *an enormous amount of money* ("an
expensive way of making bad people worse", according to some clever
Tory whose name escapes me). Either you send everyone who's ever done
anything bad to jail forever, or you delay the problem until they
escape. The former is barbaric and ruinously expensive; the latter is
merely useless.

Any criminal off the street is saving someone money. You seem to forget
that. Look at the damage done by the graffiti artists at Camden Town
station. How long could you lock the offenders up before 'running at a
loss'. What about habitual offenders that have been done 400 times and
caused millions of pounds of damage in vandalism?

I'd be interested to hear from someone at LUL about how much the Camden
debacle actually cost... some scrubbing and some white paint really
oughtn't to be that expensive. But I'd tend to agree with you in the
specific context of vandalism(/arson/etc) that - because the crime is
both expensive and a deadweight loss rather than a transfer - prison is
probably more cost effective than for (e.g.) shoplifters.

Where the hell do you live? I'm in a not-especially-rich bit of
northeast London; I've never seen any of that kind of thing (I have
seen big gangs of RPIs harrassing upset-looking commuters, and the LUL
inspector who PF-ed me for forgetting to renew my Travelcard last year
treated me with such utter contempt and disrespect that I was vaguely
hoping one of these mythical hoodie types would come along and knife
him, but sadly they remained mythical).

Are you having a laugh? Open your eyes mate.

You're sitting at home writing that visible policing works, CSOs are
great, ASBOs are enforced, crime is down and hoodies don't exist. Where
is this part of north east London? I've lived, worked and travelled
around Enfield, Chingford, Woodford, Leyton and Ilford - and you won't
have to wait 5 minutes before you see someone or something dodgy. The
places I'm talking about are less than 20 miles away. You must have
done well to turn a blind eye to all of this.

Finsbury Park. And aside from the occasional smokings of weed, drunks
****ing against a wall, and one time when a dickhead in a chavmobile
was randomly throwing eggs at passers-by, I've genuinely not seen or
experienced any crime while I've been here.

As for your penalty fare. What was the problem? You had no ticket and
got a penalty fare. Say "Oops", pay the £20 and go off to renew the
ticket! By all means appeal and hope they'll sympathise (if you can
produce years of season tickets, you might well be let off) but stop
whingeing. You didn't have a ticket and yet you were hoping someone
would come along and knife him. My god, is this the same person that
has written all of the above?

Obviously I wasn't *seriously* hoping that someone would knife him.
However, his attitude was deeply unpleasant (and this was all on
Oyster, so he could already see in his reader my last few months' worth
of season tickets) - he seemed to really enjoy the fact that he was
costing me money and making me late for work, rather than showing any
kind of respect or empathy. FWIW, I also got PF'ed when I was 17 and
travelling without a ticket or a real excuse; the inspector was
perfectly polite and reasonable, and I was happy to pay the fine and
came away with no malice towards him at all.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

Jonathan Morris wrote:
Well being a liberal lefty you naturally have your blinkers on so you
wouldn't. I live in a flat in north london and in the last 12 months
we've had thieves dumping a car in our carpark and youths with knives
and knuckle dusters smoking pot in the communal garden on at least half
a dozen occasions. Though I suppose in Cloud Cuckoo Land Avenue where
your house resides I suspect nothing of the sort happens.

This is what a website he writes for says;

"John Band is a London-based writer and business analyst. He enjoys
Talking And Writing About Business And Politics, bad puns, good pubs,
bad punk, strange pieces of technology, and offending people. His views
on at least some of the above have been quoted in the Economist, the
BBC, the Financial Times and the Telegraph (and less impressively, the
Daily Mail and the Metro)."

So, he's written for the Daily Mail!! Maybe he's not proud of it but I
bet he accepted their money! Perhaps this is why he also claims it is
full of crap - he possibly wrote it!!

Not paid - well, not directly - I was doing it for my then employer
(expert interviews and PR pieces). It did give me a good understanding
of how well-researched the different papers a the Economist and the
FT are very rigorous; the Metro will print any old ****; the Daily Mail
will print any old **** as long as it suits their agenda (genuine
story: I put out a PR piece on confectionery, and got a call from a
Daily Mail hack asking if people were buying more traditional sweets
out of a desire to return to the 1950s...); the Independent will
misunderstand you and print something you didn't even say, by mistake
rather than because of their agenda; and so on...

I think what this means is that he likes to wind people up. He doesn't
believe any of the drivel he posts - it's just a game. Gold help us all
if that isn't the case.

Gold usually helps people, I'd suggest. ;-)

The reason I get involved in debates on crime issues is because I
vaguely hope that someone might read what I have to say and realise
that they've been looking at things the wrong way. Far too many people
don't understand that crime and the fear of crime are both actually
falling; far too many people don't realise that the vast majority of
victims of violent crime are the same 15-24-year-old males they are
scared of, rather than people like themselves; and so on.

I'm aware that coming armed with some facts and without Chicken Licken
beliefs about the sky falling in is unpopular and largely gets you
accused of being a drivelling maniac, but it's a price I'm occasionally
willing to pay. But sod it - I've said my piece now, anything else will
just be nitpicking and midgets fighting over bugger all, so I'm drawing
a line under it. I'll try and stick to Oyster and Crossrail in
future...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

On 13 Jan 2007 07:26:55 -0800, "John B" wrote:

John Rowland wrote:
Tony Martin is a hero who killed a pikey scumbag in
the dark and who shouldn't have been on his property.

And who cares about the ethnic
origin of the child he killed? (well, racists might, I suppose).

Is pikey a race? I thought it was a behaviour pattern.

The primary meaning of "pikey" is "Irish traveller",

Was. These days it's interchangeable with the more common "chav".

But it no more entitles the property occupier to shoot the miscreant in
the back.

Not as a "matter of right" but the circumstances could be that the "property
occupier" has reasonable fear that the "miscreant" still represents a threat
despite having his back turned.

Seems to me that the "boys" started it. They initiated the confrontation.
The "property occupier" should not be expected to operate with 20/20
hindsight.

--
Colin Rosenstiel