And another thing, Ma'am ...

A further thought on the previous post:

Here are four alleged offenders, and four responses by the police. See if you can match them up, using your skill and judgement.

Offences first:

1. Man, 47. Alleged offence: none. Walking away from officer at the time.
   
2. Man, 70. Alleged offence: failing to wear a seat belt and having number plates that did not conform to the regulations.
3. Woman, 59. Alleged offence: failing to give a breath sample (later dropped).
4. Man, 24. Alleged offence: stealing motorcycle from dealership in full view of police officers and riding away at high speed without crash helmet.

And the responses:

1. Struck from behind with baton and pushed to ground. Died a few minutes later.
2. Stopped on country lane by two police cars, car windows smashed with batons and bodywork kicked by officer climbing on car bonnet, while alleged offender still inside the car.
3. Dragged across floor and thrown violently into cell, causing severe facial bruising and bleeding.
4. Allowed to escape, out of concern for alleged offender's own safety.

Well, how did you do?

Is it me ...

... or are policemen getting more violent these days?

About a month ago I wrote a post on what can only be described and a nasty, unprovoked and unbelievably disproportionate attack by members of the constabulary on an old guy driving his Range Rover home along a country lane. Now we have this:



It is worth remembering that the slight female figure who is the subject of this appalling treatment is 59 years old, and was arrested for failing to supply a sample for a breath test (a charge which was later dropped and I am not surprised, seeing as she was asleep in a parked car on a country lane when apprehended). Was she lippy or awkward? We don't know, but even if she was there was no justification for the violence of her treatment.

I have some sympathy with Inspector Gadget, who posts in support of the officer in question. No doubt the man had had his fill of gobby chavs who 'know their rights, innit' spitting in his face and getting let off with a slapped wrist by some indulgent judge. No doubt the role of Custody Sergeant is a difficult and wearing one, and a long way from the Dixon of Dock Green image that many people still carry around. Perhaps the guy just reached the end of his tether and lost it. But, while that might be an explanation, it isn't an excuse.

If the victim had been a Burberry-clad teenager, full of smug arrogance and spitting at authority, I doubt if there would have been much of an outcry beyond the usual Left Liberal circles. Most people would probably have given a silent cheer. But this was a slim and (can I say this?) rather frail-looking woman, one year away from her old-age pension, whose crime (if such it was) was in failing to follow a routine procedure rather than one of lavish violence.

Are the police getting out of control? It's not as if this kind of thing is an isolated incident, or just a 'bad apple' any more. There's Robert Whatley, having his car smashed up before his eyes (indeed, with him in it) for failing to wear a seat belt. There's poor old Ian Tomlinson, no threat to anyone, who was walking away from a demonstration that he had no part in, was smacked from behind by a burly officer and died a few minutes later - an officer who, in spite of clear video footage, has walked free due to 'lack of evidence'.

It's getting frightening. It's not the violence. I'm not squeamish; I understand very well that "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."* It's the fact that these things have all happened, not in some dark alleyway or behind a closed door in a police station - they have been carried out in full view of cameras that the police knew were there. They knew their actions were being recorded, and they went ahead and did it anyway. That's scary.

And, of course, the victims were all harmless people who were not showing any aggression or resisting arrest. Soft targets.

* Orwell or Churchill: take your pick. Wiki.

Pictures of Old Russia

Via The Boston Globe, I saw this collection of photographs, which I thought were worthy of a post.

Working for Tsar Nicholas II, the photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii did a photographic survey of the Russian Empire between 1909 and 1912. The American Library of Congress purchased the plates in 1948. He was clearly a talented photographer, but what makes the images astonishing is that they are in full colour, at a time when the First World War had not even begun and the Soviet Revolution was several years in the future. He used a specialised camera which took three images in quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, and the images were later combined in a projector to produce the full-colour shots that we can see today.

There is one image (27) where the three constituent images have failed to register correctly and you see the cheap-binoculars effect, but otherwise the colours and the resolution are stunning. We are used to seeing old photographs, but the usual images from that period are sepia or crude monochrome, with poor resolution and often evidence of damage or poor storage. These shots could have been taken yesterday. Image 28, of the Emir of Bukhara, would not look out of place in a modern National Geographic magazine.



Go and have a look, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Blog hiatus

Tomorrow I will be going to Ireland for a few days, to visit Anna's younger daughter and her family. I'm looking forward to it. Last time we went, we got invited to a quiz evening at the local rugby club, and I had an excellent time. You couldn't go for a leak without perfect strangers asking you how the hell you have been this long time, and why haven't you kept in touch? I'm naturally a bit reserved and am not at my best in crowds, but Ireland seems to shake me out of that.

Blogging may be light-to-nonexistent for a few days. I am taking the netbook, but it will all depend on the flow of the Guinness and the availability of Wi-fi. And just hope the two don't coincide. Incoherence may result.

Fix My Street

There's a stretch of road near my house, about a mile and a half away towards town. There is a nasty double kink in the road, and right on the bend there is the entrance to a farm on one side and a residential home on the other. The road layout is utterly lethal, and there have been numerous minor accidents there where cars have entered the bend too fast and been caught out by either a vehicle exiting the farm or home, or another vehicle approaching but hidden by the kink in the road. No fatals as far as I know, as the road at that point doesn't encourage high speeds, but it's something you have to be wary of every time you pass that way. I tend to ride it at about 10 mph, looking everywhere.



Source: Google Street View

(Edit: the depth of view in this photo is totally wrong, I suspect because the Street View camera uses a very wide-angle lens. The distance between the camera point and the furthest bit of the road is probably no more than 50m, and it looks three times that in the photo. It's all upon you much quicker than it appears from the image.)

The farmer couldn't give a toss about anyone else, apparently, because the road for 400m either side of the farm is regularly inches deep in either cowshit or mud. His cows cross the road right on the bend, and his tractors drag mud out of the fields either side and deposit it in large quantities along the road. In dry weather such as we have at the moment, the road is just a dusty grey with dried mud. In wet weather, the road can be covered in a layer of mud and shit which poses a serious hazard. And not just stripes where the wheels go - the mud covers the full width of the road. There is no 'clean' way through it. I know the guy has to make a living, and I understand that cows will do what cows will do, but he makes no effort whatsoever to clean up what is, after all, the public highway. Farmers in Europe do it (by law) and construction firms in the UK can do it, but this guy doesn't seem to see it as an issue. I am no clean-bike obsessive, but many times I have turned round and taken the long way to town when I have seen the state of the road here. Not only is it a serious skid hazard, but within ten feet the bike would be hanging with filth. My Danish friends were horrified: "In Denmark, that farmer would have to clean it up. The road belongs to everybody." I had to point out that, in the UK, some farmers are excellent and some don't give a monkey's, and there's not a lot we can do.

This came to a head a while ago, when the road was resurfaced and we suddenly had a lovely, black, smooth tarmac surface instead of the potholed mess that was there before. And within two days, it was covered in crap, just for that stretch.

I came across an interesting website recently, www.fixmystreet.com, and I thought I would give it a go. You find a road which is in a dangerous condition, you enter the postcode and locate the exact point on a map. You provide a description of the problem, and then the site contacts the relevant local authority on your behalf. So I did all this for the road I am talking about.

Hot news: it works.

On the same day I reported the problem (in fact, within an hour or so), I had an email from Pembrokeshire County Council saying that they had noted the issue and had passed it to Dyfed-Powys police, who deal with all reports like this in the area. And the following day, I had a phone call from the police, asking for further details and assuring me that they were aware of the problem. The police person gave me some backgroud on the force's approach to the issue (they have been mounting a campaign on cleaning up roads with local construction companies and are only now turning to farmers) and said they would be having a word with the farmer concerned. They would then monitor the situation and would take legal action if things didn't improve. I wasn't made to feel I was an interfering busybody or a nuisance. In fact, when I said that the problem had been going on for years, the guy got a little stern with me and said that I should have reported it far sooner.

The road is dry and dusty right now, and I can't see any difference. Whether this approach has worked will be evident in a few weeks' time, when he's brought in the silage on a wet day. I will be watching with interest. But so far, I am impressed with the way it's been dealt with. Top marks to PCC and DPP.

Please feel free to use the site to report any issues in your own area - it covers the whole of the UK - whether it's spilt diesel, a dangerous pothole, or something else that ruins your day. The next biker to ride that bit of road might thank you for saving his skin.