@ricedg
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The problem is knifes, like cars, are every day objects. In theory they are already restricted. My fishing (filleting) knife could do some serious damage being sturdy but thin, pointy and sharp as hell. I believe the 9 / 11 hijackers used sharpened plastic knifes, so how far do you go?
The current laws certainly need enforcing more tightly and this can be done by local authorities, who are also cash strapped like the Police. IMO it’s the causes that need addressing as all the deterrents clearly aren’t working. The kids are more frightened of the street than the punishment. Upping the punishment doesn’t take the fear of the street away.
With regards drugs like Mary J you could get skunk largely out of the picture, that’s the real psychotic stuff (but like moonshine it’ll always be there). Plus you’d be getting taxes. I don’t know why they don’t just get on with it.
Harder recreational stuff like cocaine I just can’t see any argument for legitimising it, but E? Maybe. E is mostly harmless and like skunk if controlled the nastier stuff can be taken out of circulation.
Ketamine and Crack Cocaine. FFS if you’re going to misuse Horse tranquillisers you’ll do almost anything at least once. But Crack? The Crack users I knew were all highly addictive types who’d worked their way up, but I don’t believe in the “gateway” drugs theory to get them there. They were going somewhere similar from day one on alcohol. All were very functional holding down good jobs and you would probably never guess from looking at them what they got up to.
Heroin. Everyone who starts down the smack road knows exactly where it’s going to end. Smack isn’t a recreational drug and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that high alcoholism is present in the same areas you find it, not the posh areas of town.
Prescribed Opiods. I have had no experience of anyone misusing them and taking them myself I can’t see they do anything spectacular, but then I’ve not taken them in dangerous quantities. It seems to be more of an American problem, maybe because they are easier to get hold of?
“the hard work of tracking things down”. I know what you mean. At least PVRs have a consolidated search function across channels.
The LNB on my dish is been playing up so we’ve been using the Fire TV more and more as a substitute for live TV. The one thing I do like on the iPlayer is watch from start if you turn up a bit late.
Lidl malt whisky is excellent. The German stuff can be hit and miss, but then it is in Germany, but when they get it right ? The “Alpine” week was more Austrian orientated but there were some things I’ve not seen for years, like rosti in a foil pack.
I agree about the ketchup Bob and of course the senf. I think some of both may find it’s way into my case. Not sure what the local pilsner beer will be like. From my limited research the big name brands we can get here so I’ll be looking for something else. Berliner Weisse I’m not fond of, it’s a sour beer and low in alcohol but if it’s hot and the beer is cold that may change ?
The white wine will be good I know and there’s a German variant of Pinot Grigio, Grauburgunder, I want to try. There’s plenty of Biergarten and the ones in the Tiergarten look good, especially the Café am Neuen See on the lake.
But it’s all about the Curry Wurst TBH and that will be from a street stall or takeaway.
Usually separate, but I’d have a look on E-Bay and see what’s selling.
Shame about Vienna, I thought they were just about finished around the cathedral, sounds like they’ve extended it to the surroundings. Must admit I’ve never found it to be dirty but the tourists can get numerous in the centre when there’s a lot of cruisers docked ?Always fancied Linz, it’s on the list now. Daughter will be going to Salzburg for her German degree year abroad and we intend using that as an excuse / base for further adventures in the region. That’ll be 2021 though.
Berlin on Monday for me. A Curry Wurst by 5pm is my target (we land at 3pm). I’ve found a few promising Biergarten on Google. Prost!
Richard, all over Europe – including here – I’ve seen help available for people with mobility issues in action at major stations. It is possible to pre book this at most places (probably a good idea) and I’m sure Railbookers etc. would be only to happy to help.
The major routes are much more disabled friendly these days and even double decker trains have seats at platform level. I think if you planned carefully with the help of a rail specialist who knows their stuff and has the contacts you would find it viable. It may limit you to the major cities (forget Venice ? ) but for instance you can now get the Eurostar straight into Amsterdam Centraal.
Paris is a major hub for the high speed trains southern France and east (Black Forest, Switzerland) and Brussels for Northern Germany. Changing at Brussels is a doddle, same station. Paris may be better with an overnight rather than rush across town, but that’s what taxis are for!
Looks like you had a good time Bob.
With regards train travel we used Railbookers for our Geneva / Venice holiday. They know they’re stuff with regards rail travel and will sort you out. They also do specific pre / post cruise trips so have hotels in strategic places. Can’t fault the hotels they found us.
If you sign up you’ll be invited to a monthly online presentation (which you can view independently if you miss it live) that concentrates on a geographic area. This months was Scandanavia, last month Switzerland. No hard sell and you can ask questions.
You’ll find their packages are in fact suggestions, it’s all up for customisation. There are no specific start days, go whenever suits you. Do the route in reverse, stay an extra day somewhere, they can sort it out. Will be using them next year the question is where to go? Might have to get the Bernese Oberland out of my system and go back to Basel as well (last time there 1973).
IMHO I can’t see the point in Store MI these days. Now we have large cheap SSDs you can easily put what needs to be on the SSD on there. Speeding up a spinner that is now basically a multimedia store makes no difference.
Can System Backup apps cope with a hybrid drive of this sort?
Apart from my own 365, which is a business version, I stick to single licences from EB. For me, having MS host my email has been a winner, but my customers have their own solutions or I tend to favour Ionons (1 & 1).
The last gaming machines I built had the SSD under the graphics card, no ill effects.
Many times, but try resetting the BIOS before giving up.
It will be the motherboard, I’ve never known a CPU to fail in normal use. As the mobo heats up and cools down micro cracks can be formed and as your average mobo has 7 layers they can be deep inside. Also the power regulation circuitry is a favourite for failure.
I totally agree with you, the solution cannot be 3 squares, a bed and an XBox. It’s also not how prisons generally are, but how they’re presented in certain parts of the press; glorified hotels.
I’ve been in most prisons in this area and I can honestly say I’ve never noticed an Xbox. They are absolutely appalling places, Bristol (Horfield) has been described as “high violence, squalid living conditions and poor training and education”. That is all down to lack of money and especially staff.
Why anyone would want to re-offend and be sent back there is beyond me. So the question is why do they? Of course there is an element of fecklessness, there always has been and always will be, but that doesn’t account for the majority. Drugs don’t help, but the same was said of gin back in the day.
Do I know the answer? I wish I did. I know from my family’s own history that breaking the cycle isn’t easy. Having people with time on their hands and nothing to do – because there is nothing to do – certainly doesn’t help. Neither does not having a roof over your head.
If locking them up and throwing away the key was the answer it would have worked by now. It has been shown that short term sentences actually increase the likelihood of re-offending.
The Dutch are doing some interesting work but when I’ve mentioned this before I’ve been told it wouldn’t work here because our criminals are “different”. But he was of the hang ’em high brigade and didn’t like “being soft” on prisoners.
“A life of crime wasn’t a lifestyle choice for the lazy b*stards like it is today.”
From Crime and the Victorians At the beginning of Victoria’s reign key commentators like Edwin Chadwick tended to equate the criminal offender with individuals in the lower reaches of the working class who they considered were reluctant to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage, and who preferred idleness, drink, ‘luxury’ and an easy life; in their eyes the problem was a moral one. There were also concerns about ‘the dangerous classes’ who were thought to lurk in the slums waiting for the opportunity for disorder and plunder.
Sound familiar?
These same arguments have been going on for a long time. The favoured solution swings between the hang ’em high and a societal one depending on the public mood at the time and how much the press whip things up.
“While the general pattern of crime was one of decline, there were occasional panics and scares generated by particularly appalling offences. In the 1850s and early 1860s there were panics about street robbery, known then as ‘garrotting’. A virulent press campaign against garrotters in 1862 developed following the robbery of an MP on his way home from a late-night sitting of parliament; and while the number of ‘garrotte’ robberies was tiny, the press created sensations out of minor incidents. Parliament responded with ferocious legislation providing for offenders to be flogged as well as imprisoned.
The murders of Jack the Ripper in the autumn of 1888 were confined to a small area of London’s East End, but similarly provoked a nation-wide panic whipped up by press sensationalism. Violence, especially violence with a sexual frisson, sold newspapers. But violent crime in the form of murder and street robbery never figured significantly in the statistics or in the courts.”
Just change some of the words and you can see not much has changed there either.
Drezha, whilst not exactly the same as Zim, have you looked at Synology’s Note Station?
I’ve never heard of anything like Hazel, interesting. Organize My Files looks like it does similar on Windows and Linux too. Not free but a one off £19.95 https://qiplex.com/software/organize-my-files/#1
Richard, if I thought that rounding up the top 1,000 miscreants and topping them would work by serving as a deterrent then I’d probably be behind it, but it doesn’t.
The countries with high crime rates also have the hell hole prisons and death penalty, beatings etc. Look at what we used to hang or transport people for, it didn’t stop the crimes happening did it? These people used to be killed in public so there was no doubt how nasty your end would be. They still went ahead.
Well I think there’s one thing we all agree on, TM cut things too far in so many areas.
Scotland (and other places) have had success in reducing violence by tackling the causes, but we have the narrative of an arms race which surely must increase violence not reduce it. How much of that is just throwing red meat to a certain audience?
I would much prefer a solution that makes everyone safer and if we look to America weaponisation isn’t it. Priti Patel wants criminals to feel terror, well looking at history that didn’t work either.
My original argument was the wider issuing of tasers seems to be a good idea but how many times have these sorts of decisions back fired due to unintended consequences? I aimed to show what these could be and that for the people at the wrong end of them they were not trivial events and shouldn’t just be dismissed as inevitable collateral damage. With greater power goes the responsibility to use that power appropriately and that needs discussing too.
As I said, I generally agree with you but the Police have a habit of going too far and being their own worst enemy. It’s not just a handful of incidents. In the above case you have 2 policemen attending at a known home for those with learning difficulties to talk to a single male about a cracked window! FFS, a cracked window! They then trump up assault charges to justify their actions and would have been successful were it not for CCTV on a neighbours building.
There is evidence that shows that a policeman armed with a taser is more likely to be attacked and more likely to show aggression, a vicious circle. Something to ponder on.
This all seems reasonable when chatting in the pub but if you’ve ever been the subject of a policeman trying to find something, anything, to do you for you may change your mind. Riding a large customised motorcycle for many years and being associated with “counter culture” events I can tell you it’s all too real.
I am not against the police having tasers at all, and having my grandfathers truncheon I can tell you you can do an awful lot of damage with one of those too! I’m just not sure I’m for them being general issue.
I’m sure D2 will be along with his inside view and I’ll be interested to hear it.
Richard, that is what the Police said, when the camera footage was reviewed the story was very different. And it was at a home for people with learning disabilities and mental health issues in a quiet cul-de-sac. He wasn’t drunk, he is autistic.
The action happens within just a few moments. Margaret points to the screen. “Did you see that?” She rewinds. The video appears to show a very different sequence of events from that described in the officers’ statements. Max has both arms up, hands above his head in apparent surrender. “I can’t see him push anyone,” Margaret says. “He puts his hands down to be handcuffed and then he suddenly gets scared and decides to run away.” She slows down the footage. “It happens very quickly, but can you see the police officer pushes Max in the chest?” The video shows Max losing his balance and falling to the floor. As he struggles to get up, officer A fires the Taser. One barb landed in the back of Max’s neck, the other in his upper back.
On 30 November 2015, Max, his family and legal team went to Bristol magistrates court for a hearing. Before the hearing, Max’s solicitor met the prosecution barrister and showed him the CCTV footage of the Tasering. The case was dropped.
“If Margaret hadn’t had the CCTV, Max could have gone to prison for something he hadn’t done,” says Lorne Wilkinson, a former police officer and the litigator on Max’s case. The sentence for assaulting a police officer is up to six months in prison or a £5,000 fine. “It would have been sending someone with the understanding of a seven-year-old into a man’s prison.”
On 4 December 2015, Margaret submitted a complaint to the IOPC. She received a response on 6 October 2017. The IOPC found “inaccuracies” in the officers’ accounts, but did not find evidence of any misconduct. In a statement, Avon and Somerset police said: “The IOPC found there was no case to answer for misconduct for any of the officers involved. The report stated both the arrest and use of Taser were reasonable in the circumstances”. “I was stunned,” Margaret says. “I feel really let down.”
You can make your own mind up, the site that text came from has the CCTV footage.
I generally agree, but they don’t help themselves. There have been several cases here of trigger happy and inappropriate tasering. Some were filmed by passers by and they were clearly ridiculous. In one incident they tasered their own race relations adviser! Link
But lessons have been learned – Bristol Taser incident: Force to adopt print scanners link
Then we have people with mental health issues being tasered regularly. Here’s one, again on camera so no whitewash. Except of course there was in both cases.
In August 2016, police in Telford fired a Taser at Dalian Atkinson, 48, a former Premier League footballer, outside his father’s house in the early hours of the morning. A pre-inquest hearing heard how Atkinson became “unresponsive shortly after being shot with a stun gun”. He was taken to Princess Royal hospital, in Telford, where he died. Atkinson had been suffering from depression, his brother told a newspaper at the time, and “was in a manic state, out of his mind and ranting”. After a lengthy investigation, the IOPC has referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether two police constables should face criminal charges. A pre-inquest review is due to take place in Shrewsbury this year.
As I said, they don’t help themselves.
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