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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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Hats off (well, just slightly tilted, anyway) to Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Cheshire, for putting his head above the parapet on violent crime. "We cannot have a society where adults feel scared to go out and challenge youngsters up to no good," he said. "Every night of the week Cheshire officers are engaged in a constant battle against anti-social behaviour and alcohol-induced violence ... it breeds fear and isolation."
 
He proposed that drink prices should be increased, the legal age for drinking should be raised from 18 to 21 and drinking in the street be banned. He said "We are doing everything we can, within our resources and powers".
 
This comes after a 47-year-old father of three, Gary Newlove, was kicked to death by a group of young drunks. The company director from Warrington had tried to remonstrate with the group when he saw them damaging a vehicle outside his home.
 
In another incident on Monday, a 23-year-old Turkish immigrant died after being attacked by two hooded boys he argued with when they threw a half-eaten chocolate bar through the window of his sister's car.
 
Peter Fahy's comments were widely applauded in the media, and certainly struck a chord in the hearts of ordinary people if the response on radio call-in shows was anything to go by. The Government did not immediately respond to his suggestion that the drinking age be raised, and to be honest The GOS doesn't blame them. They can't stop 13-year-olds from drinking on a regular basis, so why should they think they'll do any better with 18-year-olds?
 
Tony Blair pledged a decade ago to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", and later pioneered the introduction of so-called ASBOs - anti-social behaviour orders - to try to control unruly youths. These have been an abject failure.
 
"Our young people drink more and take more drugs than others partly because they can," a researcher at the IPPR think tank said. "Young people need to interact with adults to socially develop, and those that spend time away from adults will more rapidly fall into bad behaviour, or very bad behaviour." There's some truth in this: in other countries, especially those with the strong family traditions common in Catholic societies, young people do seem to spend more of their leisure time involved with their older relatives and friends and consequently are better behaved. Gangs of young people roaming the streets until the small hours is a peculiarly British phenomenon. The Sun newspaper has suggested that parents should be forced to take more responsibility for their children's behaviour, even being arrested if their sons or daughters are involved in crime.
 
But there is a serious flaw in Mr.Fahy's outburst. The police are not doing everything they can. The unfortunate Gary Newlove's neighbours have been seen on television saying that there had been a problem with gangs in the area for some time.
 
It's not unreasonable to expect that a well-run police force should do something about this. An obvious remedy is to maintain a permanent police presence on the streets, not an occasional drive-through by a police car but regular foot patrols by officers whose job is to get to know the gang members. Effective policing could break the power of gang leaders who often commit crimes every day of the week, providing ample grounds for arrest and conviction.
 
And is fear of retaliation by unruly youths the only thing that holds people back from tackling them when they see a crime being committed? No, it's not. In recent years, the police have increasingly arrested and charged victims of crime for "taking the law into their own hands".
 
In Penzance in June the owner of a hardware shop tried to stop three youths from stealing cans of spray paint. One kicked him in the groin, which provoked him to punch and kick the youth in self-defence. The police arrived, gave the youths fixed penalty notices for shoplifting, then charged the shopkeeper with assault. He was advised to plead guilty by police officers who told him he could face six months in jail if he didn't.
 
In February, a Bridlington chip-shop owner had a similar experience, but luckily for him the crown court judge had more sense than the police. When a youth smashed his shop window, the owner and his son, a former Royal Marine, chased the boy, caught him and flagged down a police car. The boy lied to the police, who then arrested both men and charged them with kidnap, when all they had done was to detain the youth in their car until the police arrived. The judge threw the case out because he said a lawful citizen's arrest had been made.
 
In both instances the police were willing accomplices in the criminals' triumph.
 
In 1829 Sir Robert Peel laid down the "nine principles of policing". One says that the police should "maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen".
 
In other words, the police should remember whose side they are on.
 

 

 

 
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