Sunday, October 22, 2006

Half Term

I'd like to wish all those readers who are teachers an enjoyable Half Term, as I won't be posting until Monday 30th October. If you've not got a tonne of marking to do, then why not relax with a copy of my book (or work yourself up into a fit of righteous indignation)

If you are one of the Conspiracy Theorists who believe that David Copperfield and I are the same person, then I'd advise you to buy both my books just to make sure.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

you are Lobby Ludd and I claim my £5...

Anonymous said...

just read philip johnston's piece in today's daily telegraph, all about copperfield. in which he says he can vouch for his bona fuides as a police officer. so unless johnston is lying, i think that clears this one up.

now. has anyone seen shergar? last thing i saw, elvis was riding him away from the grassy knoll.

Anonymous said...

Amazon is already doing a good job at promoting you both together - after teaching zapped all the life out of my I am now more susceptible to advertising and having heard of none of you beforehand, I came away from my Amazon window shopping with your book, PC Copperfields book, and also the Ambulance guy Tom Reynolds' book.

I read them all one after the other - while I thought of us as separate before, I now feel a strong affinity with my fellow public sector workers, with all of us seeming to be putting up with the same shite in different locations. Will members of the public puh-leeze stop drinking their own body weight in beer???? And if someone could just interupt the government dept. which produces forms for us all to fill, in then that would be much appreciated too :-)

Our combined health/police/education numbers would make us a formidable force, if we had the energy to mobilise. Which forms do we need to complete to do that?

Anonymous said...

We havn't got to fill in any forms to mobilise. I just make a point of mentioning both books when I visit people during the course of my duties. If everyone does the same during their contacts with people then the message will get out.

It's really easy to slip into the conversation because it all rings true with the poor victims I am usually sitting with.

These books, more than anything else because they are written by practitioners go a very long way to actually showing where the fault lies. The lack of discipline at home, school, and then in the streets. This will be the legacy of this cowardly government! They have been in power for 9 years or so (too long) and in that time have achieved more destruction of the social fabric of this country than most people could imagine.

Anonymous said...

But where does responsibility lie? How does the government improve the discipline in the home? They have some respoinsibility for social policies, but there are plenty of causal factors.

Anonymous said...

The government needs to realise it cannot do everything and it must stop trying. It is not the governments place to enforce what children eat for example.

You are absolutely right about the many factors contributing to this issue. Some are borne out of the ease for people to not want to do anything about it. People can earn more on benefits than actually working and contributing.

The result is we are now into second and third generation of disorderly individuals and no end in sight. They have too much time on their hands and no incentive to work.

Stronger and sensible punishment is a start for criminal behaviour, it sends a clear message. Proper deterrants to the bahaviour that I witness on a daily basis and to a certain extent that which I am powerless to deal with effectively long term. ASBOS are not an answer but they are a nice little soundbite. It gets a bit of a joke when you see the same person breach an ASBO four or five times before the magistrates will do anything about it. I am sure the public are not fooled.

People in society have choices, they can choose to fall in line, or they get locked up. Until we move back to this nothing will change. It started going wrong in the late 50's and early 60's with community sentences. More prisons is an expensive option (save a few quid by not providing TV and other 'luxuries'). If we did it sooner we would not be suffering now. Shave a few million pounds off the legal aid bill to pay for it by refusing to fund aid for those that utilise the resource over and over. Oh hang on, that probably won't happen because many MP's are barristers and solicitors and that may curb their income.

Sorry for being cynical but it is borne of a frustration of politicians poking their noses into matters which they know nothing about. Let the police, doctors & nurses and teachers do the job they are qualified to do in the way they need to do it and stop interfering just to win a few votes and stay in power.

Anonymous said...

Wow it's rare for me to agree with a plod but justacop has actually made points I agree with.

The trouble with this Government is they interfere with things that don't need changing because it sounds good (take banning firearms for example, at the time they said it would make the streets safer.....hmm gun crime in the UK has risen every year since then, the only people who lost out were the legitimate owners who were members of gun clubs), trouble is there isn't a better alternative to the shower of idiots that are in power right now.

Anonymous said...

Yes, the gun situation. I am not convinced that banning guns was a great move. Most gun crime was comitted by criminals and they were hardly going to worry and heed a ban were they.

Same as knife amnestys it doesn't really get down to the illegally held weapons that are being used by criminals. It looks good in the paper though.

Anonymous said...

Careful justacop, you could be in danger of changing my attitude towards the police

Anonymous said...

Sorry anonymous I would not want to do that. People can form their own opinions of my colleagues and I but they need to be their own opinions.

The opinions people form of me I like to think are based based on how I deal with them and how I treat them. I would expect that to be the case for all persons who have contact with the police.

Sadly it is only the negative (therefore newsworthy) contacts with the police that public find out about in the mass media that form most peoples opinions of the police.

If people actually talk to police officers they realise that they are human, have opinions and these quite often are the same as most sane persons (depending how far up the management tree you speak to someone of course). It should not come as a surprise.

The great thing about blogs is that in this modern age that voice has a wider audience. In time I hope the message comes across that much of what we strive for (at the front line) is actually what society in general wants also. Once this message does reach the masses then it will be far more difficult for the spineless politicians and senior managers in organisations to hide behind statistics and meaningless nosense.