The fashionable left continues its attempt to co-opt and elevate gangsters and violent thieves by an extremely poor article in the Guardian on the Duggan shooting. The Guardian acknowledge that Duggan had a gun, and that it was loaded, but call him “unarmed” on the basis that it was in a shoebox. The police, incidentally, deny that.
It is still completely beyond me why so many commenters on this blog seek to conflate the genuine problems police confront as they are increasingly faced with violent armed criminals, with the genuinely indefensible police actions in cases like their killing of Jean Charles De Menezes. Refusal to acknowledge the difference devalues the arguments around what is and is not reasonable for the police to do. Duggan is not De Menezes. The police were quite right to believe that Duggan was armed. Something went wrong in that Duggan was shot – but it was not an action without reason.
At a banal level, I had a really horrible journey down from St Andrews yesterday on a very overcrowded East Coast train, with the now routine problem of people sitting on the floor between coaches. In the coach which I was in, two tables of young people were listening to extremely loud music on a boombox. It really was very unpleasant, and prevented others from sleeping, reading etc. Two or three passengers asked them to turn it down, which they would do for perhaps thirty seconds and then turn it right up again. One notably old lady who had the misfortune to be seated back to back with them was called a “stupid old cow”. The train staff seemed cowed and resorted to treating it all as a big joke. I tried to reason with them and got “Fuck off fat man” for my pains.
They were wearing sportswear. I pondered what a pity it was that they did not kick the old lady to death and go out and smash some more shop windows and steal some more sportswear. Then commenters on this blog could have explained to me they were an enlightened part of the revolutionary vanguard.
I am not a ‘fashionable lefty’ and I certainly would not elevate any criminal or gangster to that of hero, idol or martyr.
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I do know with respect to Mark Duggan the IPCC have some questions to answer. How did they manage to put out a press release stating that Duggan died in an exchange of fire with police? Why did the IPCC not tell the family that Duggan had been shot and killed?
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I am concerned that a CO19 member discharged his gun, a Heckler & Koch MP5 carbine twice at an unarmed man and that his first shot ricocheted and would have killed or injured another police officer or member of the public or a child or children at the scene (near a hustling tube station and a busy bus-stop).
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A modified and loaded .38 starter pistol was found at the scene unconnected forensically with Mark Duggan; in fact, another man Kevin Hutchinson, of no fixed address, has been charged with with assault and possession of that gun with intent to cause fear of violence at a hairdresser’s in Hackney on 29 July 2011 and transferring the same gun at some time between then and the time it was found where Mark Duggan was shot dead…
Thanks for the clarification, Anon. Though…
it’s difficult to be polite when the people you are confronting represent a threat to your health, I’d say. I’m devil’s advocate here, but demos often go far beyond what their civilised organisers intend, and they usually involve a bit of spittle-flecked ranting in the face of the police line. I wouldn’t ask them to be superhuman. I couldn’t do it. And giving some nasty little fuck (sorry) permission to behave like a cunt (sorry again) towards rail passengers because the police swear at demonstrators is less logical than I would like.
You are so wrong on this one Craig. Yes Duggan was a crook and it appears he had a gun in a shoebox as he travelled in the taxi. However, he was not armed when he was shot dead as he lay on his back in the street. The shoebox was empty and in the back seat of the taxi. A gun was found behind a fence about 14 feet away. It is likely that he threw the weapon away before he got out of the car. The initial police report that he fired a shot was a lie. The police do a good job mostly but it seems, from this and previous CO19 operations, that they shoot first and ask questions later. Innocent people have died and not just Charles de Menezes.
As for your train journey I think you were just having a rant at the working class again.
As regards Mark Duggan, Craig, in earlier posts, said that someone in whom he had faith had furnished him with information about Mark Duggan having links to criminal or gang activity, and since then Craig has been opposed to any challenge to police actions. My understanding is that the IPCC struck some kind of deal with the Duggan family, they interviewed a woman from the IPCC who I think was overseeing procedures and who promised a fair inquiry; presumably to stop further rioting in Tottenham – after which the rioting ceased. I don’t condone anybody carrying a gun (not even the Police). There was a time when the Police did not carry arms in this country – but as a slave to the US we now follow their gun-law philosophy on the streets and other battlefields.
Further there have been too many Police firearms’ “accidents”. Even if Mark Duggan had a gun in the car in which he was shot there should be no reason to shoot him and then start to ask questions. I realise the Police have a difficult job.
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As regards the train, I sympathise. It even annoys me when somebody drives past blasting out their music – because usually it’s shit – otherwise they woudl not be blasting it out. But what bothers me is why the Railway Police did not remove the offenders from the carriage. Train companies are also to blame. They have 30 first-class coaches that are virtually empty and 4 or 5 coaches where people are cramped up like cattle-trucks.
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Another link to the Bush/Blair trials in Malaysia.
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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211007.html?mid=5330
Mary (and others)
I’ve checked out the Bush and Blair war crime trial in Kuala Lumpur. It is a mock trial similar to the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. It has no legal authority but will pass on its findings to the International Criminal Court. Sadly the ICC has already refused to indict Bush or Blair for war crimes.
O/T, Matthew Gould schmooze news:
http://tzedek-tzedek.blogspot.com/2011/11/british-ambassador-coming-to-lemaan.html
Anyone got a supply of patriotic sickbags?
Komodo, I’ve got a stars and stripes toilet-roll. Will that do? And from a puerile poem:
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With a big, big, bundle of stars and stripes
Uncle Sam gets up and calmly wipes
his gerontocratic arsehole clean,
then pulls the chain in the earth’s latrine,
The White House.
Don’t wish to seem dotty, but someone — either Craig himself or someone else — has for almost 24 hours now been preventing a comment of mine on the Duggan affair appearing here. It contains six paragraphs & one link.
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I’ve tried to post it on about eight separate occasions, from two different devices. I sent Craig an email yesterday politely asking if he might be able to shed any light on the mystery. He has yet to reply.
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All advice gratefully welcomed.
Hmm koshers scones with Mathew Gould, clandestine plotter and activist for the cause.
Have you received even so much as an acknowledgement for the questions you put to him Craig?
Awaiting Craig’s report with interest. But I doubt he’ll be getting answers from Millibean…
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/58414/ed-milibands-links-israel
Komodo
“Just to labour the point[…] I would listen to them calling the yoof a fucking little fuck as they did so, with complete equanimity.”
Yeah but no but yeah but, whole thing about role-models, employment opps, drugs easiest choice, law of the street, etc.
So it’s not the actual words, the attitude and the inherent aggressiveness that’s wrong – you mean it’s fine for the police to behave that way, but wrong for the systematically, morbidly uneducated and discarded. If all they know is aggression – from peers, parents, care homes, schools, police or whoever – then you don’t teach them there’s a better way by reinforcing in them what it is you say you hate them for.
Sigil – again as devil’s advocate – if your tragically underprivileged yoof haven’t got the message by adolescence, it’s almost certainly too late to change their ways by example. “Fuck” isn’t a big deal for them to use – why should it be a big deal for them to hear? Do you seriously think a polite Guardian-reading policeman respecting the rights they do not respect in others is going to do anything other than piss themselves laughing?
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As the Jesuits say, (regrettably ambiguously) “give us the boy before he is 7 and he is ours for life”. The problem you refer to lies in getting hold of the youngsters and straightening them out. How? I don’t know. Maybe you do. Later, containment and less gentle deterrence are the realistic options. (I’d just add that violence played a not insignificant part in my own early upbringing, but it was legal then, and directed towards making me behave. And it worked, more or less).
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Perhaps you have not been a member of the armed services or police, whose ethos I take to be similar. A certain measure of aggression and determination is essential to success. I cannot see the police being functional if they are forbidden to respond in terms the offender at any rate will understand well.
…that should of course have been “…make them piss themselves laughing..
Of course, Komodo, the solution isn’t instant, and nor can it be retrofitted.
All the same – Guardian reading plods aside – in teaching, with which I am familiar, patience with and care of the most difficult vastly improves their behaviour and results, where shouting and threatening do quite the opposite.
Sigil: agree, thank you.
My own familiarity with teaching, from the other side of the chalk face, suggests that shouting and threatening are signs of weakness in a teacher, which can reliably be exploited to complete his nervous breakdown within the year. This is nothing new or radical. I was not suggesting that teachers should shout and threaten. However some carefully controlled and coolly administered corporal punishment appeals to the most basic deterrent sensation in all young mammals – pain. And as long as it is successfully associated in the young mammal’s brain with the bad behaviour, that works.
“All advice gratefully welcomed.”
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Jonangus, a short while ago I had two comments held “for moderation” for no apparent reason at all. They didn’t even have one link in them. About 24 hours later they appeared, and it seemed like Craig knew nothing at all about them. HTH
(I think the spam filter occasionally goes ga-ga)
Nuid – I agree with your statement that they are answerable, absolutely. I just think they’re doing their jobs with one hand tied behind their back.
@ Komodo: yes, I always used to think, in school, that if only they could institute some kind of ‘coolly administered’ pain deterrent – wiring up our chairs to the mains for example – how much better our juvenile behaviour would be. Of course it would have instilled in us a deep and bitter loathing, which could then be voiced, untramelled, down back alleys where no such electro-shock punishment existed (as even out immature brains would have eventually worked out) but the point is at least the system would have tried.
What fun this blog has become!
Jonangus, if it’s any consolation I sent Craig an email about three days ago which I think might be of importance and asked him to respond with a simple “Got it” to let me know he’d received it. I guess his email box is so full he has to make arbitrary decisions as to which he reads and which he doesn’t. I won’t send anymore to keep the messages down.
Komodo You put a link up earlier about Matthew Gould and Richard Ottoway, Chair UK Foreign Affairs Committee, going to Israel. The link was full of Hebrew place names and organisations.
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This entry under News on his website is absolutely hilarious.
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Atlantic Bridge
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Date Filed: Monday, November 07, 2011
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Richard Ottaway, Conservative MP for Croydon South, commented today on the late registration of a visit to the USA in 2007 sponsored by Atlantic Bridge. The entry in the Register states: Overseas visits. 9-11 July 2007, visit to the USA to attend seminars and meetings with elected US officials and policy forums. My return flight and accommodation were financed by Atlantic Bridge. (Registered 20 October 2011)
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He said:
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“I have no idea why this was not done in 2007 after the visit.
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“There was no reason for the omission and I am at a loss to know how it happened. It very much falls into the ‘cock up’ category of human error. It was a low key, short visit 4 years ago when I was an opposition backbencher. Meetings were held with members of the Republican Administration and some policy forums. I have very little precise recall of the visit.
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“I recognised the name of the organisation and checked the registry recently as a result of reading about Atlantic Bridge in connection with Liam Fox MP. I was surprised there was no entry in 2007 and I took immediate steps to remedy the omission.”
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His entry on Wikipedia makes for interesting reading with regard to his expenses. Usual greed on expenses and second home and some paying back was done. There was no hauling over the coals for him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ottaway
Don’t know if it’s just me but this video of the Bush and Blair trials seems to be getting more fragmented every time I try to listen to it.
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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211007.html?mid=5330
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I hope Bush and Blair are shitting themselves, but doubt it.
There has been another death of a member of the UK forces in Afghanistan, making a total of six in the last three weeks.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15812123
Craig.
Off topic – but important. The Telegraph on Sunday tells us (and seems to support the development) that Italy’s new government, chosen by the unelected Mr (Super) Mario Monti, has not one elected politician. It seems that all the government departments are to be run by unelected bankers and “technocrats” including the foreign ministry; the ministry for the interior; the defence ministry and the justice ministry. Monti is to be, not just the Prime Minister but also the minister for the economy (chancellor). Greece seems to have gone the same way; who’s next? Spain? Portugal? France? Britain? Is democracy doomed?
Komodo – I agree with much of what you say on all sorts of things and am grateful for your knowledge and insights; but on the matter of school discipline, I am entirely with Sig.
Coercion of youngsters using the methods you describe can never be right – it never really works; dispassionate love, in the old Xian sense, can be the only effective way of influencing anyone for theirs and the greater good, and that isn’t to say you have to be weak or indulgent. My experience in bog standards taught me that even the most awkward kids responded better to a refusal to engage at their level and a quiet firm voice, than to threats – empty or otherwise.
I didn’t like your remark on an earlier thread, regarding what you wished for James Murdoch; are you familiar with the concept of hate the sin, love the sinner?
Mary, I suspect that because Atlantic Bridge was supposedly a charity they thought they could get away with not registering members’ interests. My guess is there’s a lot more where that came from.
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As Craig never responded to my email I may as well make what information I have available. I don’t have the finance to investigate something that might be of some significance. What I will say is that there are strict regulations covering solicitors’ practices. My understanding is that if a firm of solicitors goes into liquidation, another firm of solicitors has to take over that practice, and insurance schemes are in place to ensure that happens. My guess is that Beesley, McElhinney, Williams became Evans, Beesley, Williams, presumably through a change of partners. Later they went into liquidation. Why might this be important?
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Stephen Mac Williams, who may be innocent in this affair, was one of the directors of UK Health Supply Services Limited and UK Health Group Limited. At least one of these companies had Stephen Mac Williams as a director and also Adam Werritty. As another commentator, Calum Carr pointed out:
“Stephen Jac Williams is a solicitor; was suspended for 6 months in 2008 see here; later the solicitors of which he was a partner – Evans Beesley Williams went into liquidation. Their address, 13A Shad Thames, London, SE1 2PU, was the address for 2 companies involving Adam Werritty – UK Health Supply Services Limited & UK health Group Limited”.
As you say Canspeccy – “There’s much to be said for the British yob.. scum of the earth as Wellington described the valiant English troops who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. They just need the right handling.” May I take it from your earlier commentary that by right handling you mean “birching and borstal”
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What about bankers who bankrupt their banks, aristocrats who misbehave, MPs who fiddle their expenses – are you suggesting “birching and borstall” for them as well. The truth of the matter is that near a century of ever growing Statism, Centralisation and Bueaucracy has denuded our regions of opportunity and the fault for their unemployment (and bordom) does not lie with your so-called yobs, but with the elites who have so selfishly caused the economic mess. The Ialians say a fish rots from its head, and that is certainly the case in the UK.
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Besides is there not a little bit of historical inaccuracy in your statement. Surely ¾ of the allied troops at Waterloo were German or Dutch. In fact if you subtract the Scots and Irish from the British contingent, the English who served in Wellington/Blucher’s allied army, brave as they were, cannot have been much more than 15% of the total allied force.
There’s an interesting article in the Guardian online concerning the IPCC and Mark Duggan which reports that two members of a group set up to ensure community confidence in the investigation of the police shooting of Mark Duggan have resigned.
One of the members, Scott, according to the Guardian said: “I have been alarmed to learn that not only have the IPCC broken their own guidelines by giving out erroneous information to journalists regarding the ‘shoot-out’ involving Mark Duggan and police that didn’t actually happen. But I have discovered that their investigation … is flawed and in all probability tainted to a degree that means we will never be able to have faith in their final report into the killing.”
To me the case has all the hallmarks of the IPCC protecting the Met, who I believe are heavily into drug distribution and handle some members of gangs. It may have been that they wanted to set Duggan up or worse.
And this is the link to Ruth’s comment.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/20/mark-duggan-shooting-watchdog-panel
Vikram Dodd, who reported derogatively on his fellow Guardian reporter, Stafford Scott, regarding the Mark Duggan investigation, is also the reporter who someone earlier commented approved the government’s position on the Dr David Kelly death (murder).