And about time too……………:)

[JayCeeDee]

MS scam calls – arrests made.

[Alan Wood]

Some good news at last.\shame most originate in India.

[The Duke]

Tip of the iceberg. I’m amazed so few complaints about this. I guess most don’t report it.

This won’t stop the scam, it’s too lucrative. And we can’t touch anyone in India, or rather it would be extremely difficult.

They probably all do the ms scam as a side job. Probably work for BA, sky  (or name your favourite company), and on their brakes or stay late do the ‘ms’ thing.

The software is all simple enough, the hardest part is getting numbers, which is also simple enough, as is finding gullible peeps to scare. Once you have you skip learnt, it’s an easy way to earn some good money. Even a couple of hundred pounds a week, is a good boost to an Indians life.

Nothing against Indians. I just plucked them out to symbolise the situation.

I had one call me once I acted like a total dimwit and had him on the phone for an hour. He wasnt happy when I got bored and told him I knew. His grasp of English foul language was quite impressive.

[Bob Williams]

I get regular alerts from Lincolnshire Alert, a Lincolnshire Police website which warns members like me online about everything criminal, including these Scams. I asked them once, what about people using the net for the first time, who have not been informed about LincsAlert? Their answer: they depend upon people like me to spread the news. Fine, I said, but it’s actually the 2nd largest county and population density is low. How do you expect us to cover the whole county? Silence.

Why not organise meetings at local venues, I said. Pass out leaflets and crime prevention stuff, with LincsAlert featured. No answer until it reached the CC, now it has begun to happen.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[dwynnehugh]

Years ago when I was in the police I suggested this re cowboy builders in this area – another very lucrative sideline. The tragedy is that it doesn’t work – people are not really interested in it until they get scammed and then the remembered something they read in the local rag / library etc. etc.

The Lincs CC and Co. are probably doing it to ‘show they are trying to do something about it’ – knowing full well that 99.9% of their population will not bother with it until ……!!

The moral is – You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

Perhaps I should add that when I was on CID my favourite crime was fraud – mental chess with the perpetrator but I always kept a sign about my desk with read:-

Doing a good job around here is like wetting yourself in a dark suit, it gives you a warm feeling but no one else notices.

You can tell, inform the public in so many ways, even more so nowadays than in my time, but unfortuntely whilst technology has moved on, you still  have to deal with the Mk1 Human.

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Bob Williams]

” Doing a good job around here is like wetting yourself in a dark suit, it gives you a warm feeling but no one else notices. ”

I love that one Dwynne, it has so many applications.

I was really too hard on the LincsAlert people, they have so much county to cover and so few bodies to cover it with, thanks to the cuts. The information they provide is quite good actually: atm they are concerned with what is called “The A16 corridor” which runs approximately north to south from Grimsby to Boston. Distance is almost 50 miles of single carriageway, mostly rural villages and farms, along or adjoining the road at various distances. Thefts of agricultural machinery, which in Lincs means massive and expensive machines to work large farms, are rife. Isolated villages in beautiful countryside often have expensive houses, with saleable stuff such as top-end quad bikes, motorbikes and garden machinery. People are warned to secure this stuff, but they still leave keys on a hook by the door and are outraged when a fine car or other items are taken. Our village is on the main A157 coast road: we get thieves nicking cars in the East Midlands, South Yorkshire etc and driving them to our resorts. They dump and fire them in the country, then steal another to get home. A lot of local cars and other items have been recovered by Lincs Police, after putting details on the site, with photos if available. I print off anything I think might be seen on my travels and have passed on details: I was able to spot a stolen Golf GTI on my way back from a show late at night. I passed it on with my mobile from a layby down the road and there was a car there within 15 minutes. They recovered the Golf and I received an official Thank You. On this occasion, the offenders were local.

The system does work, but would work much better as you say, if more of the population showed concern and didn’t think “It won’t happen to me.” All our bungalows in the Close have property marked and signs to say that, thanks to materials provided by Lincs Police and distributed by Muggins here.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[dwynnehugh]

Bob,

I do sympathise with the problem – on my patch it was caravans – we have 100s of them. At the end of the season I was amazed how many quality o/b motors were still attached to powerboats and simply left by the caravan over winter despite the caravan site having secure facilities.  Come spring we’d have a glut of stolen items reported from various caravan sites – strange thing was we never ever recovered any of them. They’d report stolen things like 22-26″ B&O TVs (in those days!!), quality radios/CD players, carbon fibre fishing rods and reels and God knows what else – on a personal basis – I still think they were never there to steal in the first place. It was an insurance scam.

I took it up with a few ins cos. suggesting that their cover should specify what valuable items were in the vans and what had been left over winter with a rider that they would not cover what we were told was being stolen – answer – Yes it would be great if they could do that, but the ins bus was so cut throat that it would only take one company not to do it, that the others would lose business. In other words – pay out and increase the premiums for ALL  annually.

It would be interesting to see if the Lincs Police and others who run these schemes ever had feedback from the public to say how effective their leaflets had been.

The biggest problem in the UK is the  “IT WON’T HAPPEN TO ME – ism”

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Bob Williams]

Caravans, Dwynne? We have them everywhere along the coast of Lincolnshire, I call them “Tin Cities”. Have to say that we need them, really adds to the local economy and keeps our Council Tax down, etc. The static parks are fine, (says Nimby Bob), as long as there are none in my village! It’s the ones towed in and out of the area that can drive local motorists and farmers mad.. We can get the Perfect Storm along our single carriageways: Road Race cyclists in bunches, caravans, mobile homes and a huge lump of agricultural machinery, often overfilled with the brown and smelly. All on the same stretch of road. I just dive down one of our narrow lanes and take the Back Country roads, a longer distance but gets me there quicker. It’s always best to have a few nibbles and a bottle of water in the car.

Last summer I was coming home from Mablethorpe one Saturday evening, when I came across a huge queue behind a multiple accident scene. The road was blocked and I walked up to a local bobby at the scene. He told me it was very bad, the Air Ambulance had been called and it was going to be hours before traffic could proceed. I turned the car around and headed off into the back roads. In my mirror, I saw half a dozen cars following me, two with vans on tow. I stopped, they all had to (no room to overtake) and walked back. They all wanted to get home via the Louth bypass and the A16, and more were appearing behind them. Eventually I convoyed a total of 17 assorted vehicles and vans, up to the bypass and out of the village, did a 180 around a roundabout and felt like the Pied Piper as I went past all these drivers and passengers, honking horns and waving thanks. I don’t think SWMBO believed me, until a neighbour called and said he had been coming down the hill and saw it all.

The incident, according to local bobby I know, was caused by a motorbike rider losing patience and overtaking on a series of blind bends. It cost him his life and injured two more people, one severely. You have probably heard of or witnessed similar incidents in your time.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The Duke]

Your place sounds a lot like North Wales. We all know you can’t drive into north Wales after 4pm on a Friday, untill about 9pm, the single carriageway is just at a standstill, and the same in reverse on a Sunday from about 4pm onwards.

Luckily living here, for our weekends away, we are leaving on a Friday and retuning on a Sunday, doing the oppersite to all the tourists.

For a short time I lived in a place called Kinmel Bay, if anyone ever visited Rhyl, it’s the small estates after the blue bridge in Rhyl on the road to the Asda.

I worked away then wand did 1000s of miles a week. Then last thing was getting back to Wales on a Friday (see above) and leaving again on Sunday (again, see above) but the worst part was, you literally  can’t leave the estate with out getting in tourist traffic, from 10am – 7pm right through the summer. So we just didn’t go out at weekends,as dad was sick of driving, and couldn’t do with the tourists.

So we left there to a less imprisoned place down the coast. Then about 4 years later they open a frigging shopping estate down the road from me! So now it quite busy all year round, then very busy ones the sun arrives.

[dwynnehugh]

The A55 Expressway has helped a lot – gets you into the jam faster!!

In the old days when I was a young copper, access to Anglesey was via the A5 – passing the Crem at Bangor, through the city and along Upper Bangor and the old C&A Hospital to the Menai Suspension Bridge.

I remember one hot Saturday when traffic was queuing back miles and  miles some wag stuck a note up on the A5 by the crematorium, it read:

“Anglesey Full“.

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Author]

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