The Daily Mail has this piece today about how Marie Wastlund, 27, risked her life to stop a street robbery – while two police officers sat in their patrol car a few yards away. She was walking home from a night out when she saw three hooded thugs throttling and kicking a woman in view of the police vehicle. The student waved and shouted to get the attention of the officers – parked only 25 yards away – but they did nothing.

The Mail is good at this sort of story, but it is very bad at drawing together the threads ... and threads there are. It will come as little surprise to learn that we are dealing with our old friends the Avon and Somerset Constabulary.

Responding to this incident, we have the egregious Superintendent Ian Wylie – he of Stokes Croft riot fame – who tells us, with the classic wooden vocabulary of the bureaucrat: "I am grateful to the witness for reporting the incident and bringing to our attention her concerns about a police car nearby.

View full article here

If not wanting to go as far as witholding council tax just yet, the TV license is always a good place to begin. That said, I'd be surprised if anyone here was paying the damn thing any more...

Here's a good post about the scandalous action of the unelected barons to vote down legislation for elected police commissioners.
Looks like a good blog as well.

I'd disagree with you, there's a handful of us, but I get the impression that most are still paying it.

Wylie you're at it...



Whoops! I meant "Wylie you're a tit..."

No TV since 2006 -- you know it makes sense.

Opting out of PC policing does not seem to be as simple.

This, this morning, from the cretins at Capita Business Services:

'Dear Sir/Madam

You have not responded to our previous letters. We want to ensure you have the information you may need before a hearing is set at your local court.

Please read the information below carefully and keep for your records. You will be allowed to take it into court with you.

Yours faithfully

John Robinson
Liverpool and Cumbria Enforcement Division'

Clearly threatening, and therefore to be construed as harassment, and also bullshit. I don't own a television set, and nor does my wife. There is no television set, nor any other apparatus adapted for viewing television programmes as they are broadcast, in our home. No offence as defined by Section 1a of, what I think is rightly known as, The Broadcasting and Telecommunications Act, 1949 is being or has been committed at our address, as I informed the impertinent woman who called at our door a few months ago. Further I am not required to respond to any communication from The BBC or Capita Business Services, or their representatives falsely claiming to be from TV Licensing, which is merely a trade mark owned by the BBC, nor do they enjoy more than an implied right of access, which I can withdraw at will, and will.

I'm going to write to my MP (which I realise is about as much use as reporting a burglary to 'The Police') and investigate the possibility of an action for harassment.

Fear ... the bastards trade on fear. But the people who set this up are hidden behind layers of their own bureaucracies and remain anonymous. It would be so nice to root these people out and give them a taste of their own medicine.

And ignorance. Trying to find out what I need to know and can do is not at all easy.

Re 'bastards': Most appropriate. Regarding one's enemies as bastards is essential as one looks at them across a rifle sight.


Yes, the worms have well and truly slithered into the woodwork and are rotting the timbers but we can winkle them out.

One of the things a Referist (Referalist?) society must ensure is the easy accountability of those working in the interests of the state and speedy redress for the citizen, a word I've never been comfortable with as it has far too many totalitarian connotations. With what could we replace it?

Referism is a bloody ugly word, and not immediately clear in meaning. There must be an easier sell.

Elected chief constables is the answer .

The latter is presumably a feature, not a bug. I'm just about going along with the idea of an annual referendum on the budget, not that I think it'll do any good (the people will still be educated through the media and the private banks will still control the money supply). AFAIA of any meaning beyond the annual referendum, I'm implacably opposed to Referism, and I think most people would be.

Williamgruff said:-

Wow, I got the same letter last week, from John Robinson, Solent Enforcement Division.
He gets about a bit he does...

The letter was addressed to "Legal Occupier"..
can I claim to be just visiting when they arrive and claim to not know when Mr Occupier will be home..?

I Do have a tv, but watch it about an hour a fortnight...

How could elected chief constables improve things? We have elected representatives who lie, cheat, steal, make promises they have no intention of keeping, blame others when things go wrong, as they always do, and ignore us when we demand answers or action. Why do think that the sort of candidates for chief constable who might be attracted by the election process, given the appallingly low calibre and lack of integrity of those qualified for the job at present, are going to be better than their appointed forerunners?

What is so appealing about elected functionaries?

Did you actually read my piece? No it isn't. That is the Carswell-Hannan solution - they want to have the control of budgets given to Sheriffs, elected on a county or city basis. And there we have the typical window dressing solution, interposing yet another highly-paid official between the people and the "service" that spends their money. The people should have control of the budget.