An Investigation Should Not Be The Same As A Conviction.

Whilst I'm not a fan of hobby bobbies- aka Police Community Support Officers- or of sex offenders come to that I don't share the outrage over this:

A suspected child sex attacker was recruited as a police community support officer and is alleged to have indecently assaulted a female colleague, The Times has learnt.

The case raises serious concerns over vetting standards in the Metropolitan Police because the 19-year-old man was able to join the force despite disclosing that he had been investigated for a sexual assault on a three-year-old girl.
...........
He was not charged over the incident but that he had been the subject of a criminal investigation into a sex offence should have barred him from joining the police service.

It's revealing that they can't even follow their own vetting procedures but is a blanket ban on anyone who has ever been the subject of an investigation remotely justifiable, regardless it seems of whether they were convicted, prosecuted or even cleared?

It isn't even as if it protects the public because even supposing it does prevent someone who was guilty of a sexual offence (but never charged) become a PCSO, it isn't as if they can do noticeably more harm in that role than as a member of the public.

More Vibrant Cities.

Okay after the posting on New Orleans here is Foreign Policy's list of 5 murder capitals of the world:

Caracas

Population: 3.2 million

Murder rate: 130 per 100,000 residents (official)

What’s happening: The capital of Chávez country, Caracas has become far more dangerous in recent years than any South American city, even beating out the once notorious Bogotá. What’s worse, the city’s official homicide statistics likely fall short of the mark because they omit prison-related murders as well as deaths that the state never gets around to properly “categorizing.” The numbers also don’t count those who died while “resisting arrest,” suggesting that Caracas’s cops—already known for their brutality against student protesters—might be cooking the books. Many have pointed the finger at El Presidente, whose government has failed to tackle the country’s rising rates of violent crime. In fact, since Chávez took over in 1998, Venezuela’s official homicide rate has climbed 67 percent—mostly due to increased drug and gang violence. Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, who recently resigned as interior minister, claimed in July that homicide has dropped 27 percent since January—but experts say he’s just playing with numbers. As for Caracas, some speculate that its murder rate is closer to 160 per 100,000.

If the real murder rate is 160 per 100,000 then that means that over the course of a life time a resident of Caracas has around a 1 in 8 being murdered which is insanely high.

The rest of the Foreign Policy list consists of New Orleans, Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), Moscow (which isn't as dangerous as the other listed cities) and Cape Town.

Places Not To Move To

New Orleans gave us Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino and many other musicians who the world idolised. We gave them Ray Davies and they fucking shot him.

The point of that introduction is to present this astonishing statistic about the city:

from the criminal-justice system (which is so dysfunctional that in 2008 there were zero trials and zero convictions in the 179 murders committed that year)

How on Earth can a city be that screwed up?

Politics Disguised As Science.

The New York Times' science reported John Tierney has a couple of good articles about scientists who advocate political views by pretending that they are scientific, or perhaps honestly conflating the two:

Dr. Pielke, a professor in the environmental studies program at the University of Colorado, is the author of “The Honest Broker,” a book arguing that most scientists are fundamentally mistaken about their role in political debates. As a result, he says, they’re jeopardizing their credibility while impeding solutions to problems like global warming.

Most researchers, Dr. Pielke writes, like to think of themselves in one of two roles: as a pure researcher who remains aloof from messy politics, or an impartial arbiter offering expert answers to politicians’ questions. Either way, they believe their research can point the way to correct public policies, and sometimes it does — when the science is clear and people’s values aren’t in conflict.

But climate change, like most political issues, isn’t so simple. While most scientists agree that anthropogenic global warming is a threat, they’re not certain about its scale or its timing or its precise consequences

Read the whole thing as they say. The other article is here and covers similar ground.

Somewhat alarmingly two of President Obama's appointees- Energy Secretary, Steven Chu and Science Advisor, John P. Holdren- are examples of this error.

Quote Of The Day.

A spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern said none of its government grant is used on its lobbying activities.

Yeah because money isn't fungible or anything.

I'm a bit late in linking to the Fake Charities website, although I did coin the term "psuedo charities" a couple of years ago to describe the same thing, so it is something which has bothered me for a while.

What Credit Crunch?

Noted idiot Naomi Klein has been awarded £50000 of Warwick University's money for her book the Shock Doctrine. Klein's idea (if a brain fart like that can be characterised as such) is that evil neofree marketeteers have exploited catastrophes to advance their evil ideas:

The complexity of Naomi Klein's portrayal of the rise of disaster capitalism, The Shock Doctrine, has won its author the inaugural £50,000 Warwick prize for writing.

....

Chair of judges and author of "weird fiction" China Miéville praised The Shock Doctrine as a "brilliant, provocative, outstandingly written investigation into some of the great outrages of our time"

China Mieville is a former parliamentary candidate for the totalitarian Socialist Workers Party an explicitly Leninist organisation. What was Lenin's famous phrase for the conditions the communists needed to implement change? Oh yeah- "The worse, the better". Sounds a lot like an actual shock doctrine. Is Mieville projecting his views onto the capitalist running dogs?

RIP.

I've not got much to say about the death of Ivan Cameron other than the obvious statement that it is desperately sad.

It's strange coincidence that both the leaders of the main parties have lost a child and I suppose it is a reminder if one is needed that even front line politicians are human beings with real lives beyond climbing the greasy pole.

Viva Castro

The Independent's Tom Sutcliffe writes:

Last year Viviane Castro, a model and Carnival queen, managed to out-do fellow revellers by appearing on the streets wearing nothing but a one-and-a-half-inch strip of sticky tape and a large pair of feathered wings. She was fined for breaching the Carnival’s nudity rules (who knew, frankly?), and her samba group were docked points.

This year she has sensibly added a political twist to guarantee continued coverage – painting Obama’s face on her left thigh, and President Lula da Silva’s face on the right, with the legend “Vendese” (For Sale) printed across her stomach, apparently to protest against increasing US influence in the Amazon.

And in between this unusual Heads of State face-to-face was that tiny piece of sticky tape again – just failing to conceal Castro’s mute but attention-grabbing commentary on Brazilian deforestation.

Political engagement is always to be encouraged and so to raise awareness of deforestation it is only responsible to show a video of her protest:



Hmmm, really makes you think.

Frying Pan >>> Fire.

“Bringing the Government in to run Wall Street is like saying ‘Dad burnt dinner, let’s get the dog to cook’.” - P.J. O'Rourke.

The EU has decided that it should oversee the financial services sector after all the various scandals have emerged. Not surprising really, they are hardly likely to conclude that they are unnecessary are they?

This is the same EU that hasn't had the auditors sign off on their accounts for close to two decades but their judgment on the financial management of other organisations is supposed to be taken seriously. There isn't any obvious reason to believe that a cross border body would be more likely to behave like the best of the current national regulators rather than like the worst.

There is an upside for governments in that they will no longer have to beheld accountable for any financial disasters that occur so it will probably be welcomed with open arms but it won't make those disasters any more or less likely.

Poll Result: No One Cares.

The "best Rocky song" poll is now closed with Eye of the Tiger winning by 5 votes to 2, a total of 7 votes which means that no one really cares one way or the other.

Quote Of The Day.

ITV aired "Law & Order: UK" last night. I didn't watch it because the original Law & Order isn't my cup of tea* (it really is very politically correct) but I did like this comment about the show on the Guardian's culture blog by "Readie":

As a big "Battlestar Galactica" fan, ridiculous levels of loyalty to BSG cast members meant I taped (but have not yet watched) last night's episode. I fear, however, that I'll spend the entire hour distracted by the latest turn in Jamie Bamber's career path - from acting opposite Oscar-nominees Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell... to acting opposite former "Wheel of Fortune" host Bradley Walsh. I can't help but feel depressed on his behalf.

Yes that's a big comedown.

* The best US crime shows are 'The Wire' and 'The Shield' but they would really suck if subjected to a British spin off, because they aren't formulaic enough to simply be transferred into several dozen settings. Not that formulaic crime shows are necessarily bad, some like the original CSI or Without a Trace are quite good but they always say more about television than about the real world.

Remembering The MacPherson Witch Hunt.

It's ten years since the publication of the MacPherson report about the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence, and the police force's response to it. This is what I wrote about the report two years ago:

In February 1999 Lord MacPherson's inquiry into the murder investigation into Stephen Lawrence was published. It's conclusion that the Metropolitan Police was 'institutionally racist' ( despite the fact that the report had to acknowledge that 'In this Inquiry we have not heard evidence of overt racism or discrimination'), was eagerly seized upon by the Blair government and many of the recommendations were implemented, including those which lead to a curtailment of police use of stop and search. It might seem strange that an investigation into the stabbing of a teenager would lead any sensible person to conclude that we should restrict the power of the police to search young people for things like knives, but Lord MacPherson thought it was good idea.

The report didn't actually compare the treatment of Stephen Lawrence's murder with how other murder investigations were conducted, to see if any consistent difference in the approaches taken to black and white victims. Instead it highlighted the failings of one murder investigation and arbitarily assigned the cause to racism. This approach has all the intellectual rigour of blaming it on the alignment of the stars. This isn't to say that serious mistakes were not made by the police for example, the first officer who arrived at the scene called an ambulance and sat in his car instead of attempting first aid, but the witch hunt at the inquiry made all sorts of wild accusations many of which were demonstrably false.

This remains my view. MacPherson not only did not provide any evidence to support the assertion of racism in the Met he didn't even look for it. Many of the policies adopted as a result of this, like cutting back on stop and search, have ensured that many other teenagers have been murdered since then.

The charge on institutional racism not only smears tens of thousands of decent police officers but it lets police officers who are guilty of racist behaviour to shift the blame onto the force as a whole.

Complainers Find Something New To Complain About.

I don't know why parents are complaining about this CBBC presenter, she seems 'armless enough to me.

I do remember once hearing an outraged woman on Points of View or something similar angrily demanding that the "Why Bird", be banned because she was voiced in a Welsh accent.

They Were Going To Send Then To Luton.

India to send astronauts to space

Where else would you send astronauts?

Start Smoking & Contract Herpes.

Unlike many bloggers I have a social conscience and like to provide health advice to my readers. Two of the medical conditions that I am keen to avoid like the plague are the er bubonic plague and Parkinson's. So how do you avoid these debilitating conditions?

• Parkinsons- The key to avoiding this tragic degenerative illness is to take up smoking. I'm not sure how much you need to smoke in order to prevent the condition arising but I'd start with 40 a day to be on the safe side. As a bonus it will also make you less susceptible to Alzheimer's (or possibly more susceptible).
  

• Plague- the best way of avoiding plague is to contract the protective Herpes virus.or nature's penicillin as I like to think of it. All that Herpy goodness appears to prevent plague in mice.

Chutzpah.

No comment:

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has called for bank executives to be brought before the courts if they are found to have broken the law.

Mr Adams told delegates at his party's Ard Fheis that "all categories of gangsters or banksters must face the full rigours of the law".

Quote Of The Day.

John Bilger has an article in the Guardian calling for those Westerners who sided with Pol Pot to face justice. My reply in full:

Isn't Noam Chomsky a bit too old to stand trial now though?

Strangely enough they've deleted me.

New Poll.

As I don't really want to end the week on eugenics how about a poll? What is the best song from the "Rocky" series? Is it:

Eye of the Tiger by Survivor:


Or Gonna Fly Now by Bill Conti: