A few thoughts though:

I think that both the local papers have been remarkably unsensational in their coverage.  That might sound wrong, given that it was splashed a bit last March, and has been on the front pages quite a bit, but if anything the details have been witheld or underplayed.  Imagine how the NotW would have treated it.

Talking of which, it is a bit of a surprise that the nationals haven’t picked up on it.  A pleasant surprise though.  I just hope it doesn’t mean this sort of thing is so common it doesn’t warrant a mention on the news!

Finally, there is one thing that worries me.  The News mentions in passing:

She also encouraged a 13-year-old to stamp on the victim’s head, something seen on the mobile phone video which was played in court.

What happened to that 13-year-old?   It seems strange he was not among the accused if there is video footage of him committing assault.  I think I would be reassured to know he was not still at large, whether he was a willing participant or was coerced – either way its a worry.

The BNP denies that increases in hate crime are related to its activities and blames the rises on increased immigration. Bob Bailey, the party’s London organiser said: “This is due to an increase in the ethnic [sic] population. There are more people who are prepared to go to the police complaining they are victims.”

He stops short of saying “if only they would all bugger off back to where they came from there would be nobody to hate any more” which is just as well because

1. Most of ‘them’ come from here anyway
2. The BNP will always find someone to hate.  It is part of their nature to always find a scapegoat.  If the non-whites magically disappeared it would be gays in the firing line, and then trade unions, then the disabled, and so on.

Basically, a bloke got a speeding ticket and was fined £182,000 for doing 55mph in a 55mph zone.  It might seem a bit harsh, but the amount was decided based on the man’s ability to pay and not the scale of the offence.

Some might think this is a dangerously Marxist policy from those notorious revolutionary lefties in Switzerland, but I think it makes perfect practical sense for two quite connected reasons.

Firstly there is fairness.  I know that if I got a fixed penalty of, say, £100 for something I could shrug it off but I know plenty of people who would struggle to pay that, so if they committed the same offence the effect on us would not be equal at all – they would suffer real hardship and I would not.  Likewise I would feel the pain with a fine of £1000 but I know plenty of people who would have no trouble with that.

Is it fair that a punishment should be different for two individuals commiting the same offence?   Equal fines do not necessarily mean equal punishment if the ability to pay is not taken into account.   Somebody living hand-to-mouth could be totally ruined by what many of us would consider a small amount and so effectively the penalty for even dropping a crisp packet could mean going without food for some people, while a hefty fine for a serious offence can have no impact on others.

The other side of that coin is very practical – incentives.  One purpose of fines is to punish, but another is to act as a deterrent.  If the fine for parking on double yellow lines was 20p would you feel deterred from doing that?  Well for some people a fine of £60 would have as much financial significance for them.

If you are a millionaire faced with a choice of spending time hunting for a legal parking spot or parking in a very convenient disabled bay with a very high chance of a fine it must be tempting to take the hit – time is money after all.

All the examples are motoring-related but could, of course, apply to any sort of offence.

The Swiss system seems to take this into account using judiciary discretion, but maybe more fixed systems would be possible, even if just as guidelines.  Perhaps a fine would not be x number of pounds but x number of points with points getting converted into percentage of income or wealth or something like an index of ability to pay?

Take the supposed £1000 fine for not having a TV licence.  For one person it could represent the value of their TV, car and bank balance combined, while for another it would represent petty cash and would not hurt at all.  If the fine represented the value of their car, TV and bank balance combined then it would have the same effect as both a punishment and a deterrent wouldn’t it?

The obvious flaw is the loophole, especially in many traffic offences, of getting somebody else ( who has less ability to pay) taking the fall for you.  Of course this already happens when people get caught by a speeding camera and get a husband or wife to say they were driving because they can ‘afford’ the points on their licence… but that is an offence already and imagine what the fine would be for that if caught out!

You know what?  I reckon even I could get a job as a police artist in Bolivia.  Love the way they keep zooming in on the picture to try and make it scary…

I remain in awe of Polanski for Two Men and a Wardrobe, but making some brilliant films (and a few downright average films) does not excuse him.

The issue is with media interest that amounts to an onslaught of interview requests.  Perhaps instead of stopping their pursuit of Polanski the courts should pursue the media instead – but of course, in America the freedom of the press is paramount: above such things as the freedom of an individual victim, and they seem to have no concept of sub judice over there.  Letting a (probably) guilty man walk free can’t be the answer.

Does a dustcart need that sort of range?  If I had been asked to guess how much fuel a refuse lorry could carry I would have guessed about 200 litres.

The other thing that is niggling me is that the thft is said to have taken place overnight between 8pm and 7am.  Assuming that thieves started at 8pm on the dot and carried on until 7am they would have had to siphon fuel at the rate of 3 litres a minute for every single minute – a litre every 20 seconds.  And that is not allowing time to wait until the coast is clear, break in, transfer fuel to whatever is being used to carry it away, and clear off before the depot staff arrive.

Maybe we really do have council lorries with a range well over 1000 miles, and maybe we do have thieves capable of stealing that much in that time.  Stranger things have happened, but it still doesn’t add up.

Any truck-spotters and/or experienced fuel-stealers who can add anything to help me?

Damaged Virgin Media distribution box in the Guinness Trust estate, January 2006

Several times in the past I have banged on about damaged cable TV/telephone distribution boxes.  I used to call Virgin Media to report them but gave up after being faced with a distinct lack of interest from them. The only time I would persevere now is if the one that feeds my house is open.

There is a story in our local paper this week that explains better than I have been able to so far why anybody who sees their local box damaged should be reporting it – and why Virgin should show more interest.

I can’t link to the story in the Crawley Observer because it doesn’t seem to be on their website, but here is the gist of it:

• Woman gets enormous telephone bill, including single call to a premium rate number costing £167.29
• Woman calls to complain, insisting she did call a gambling line for four hours
• Virgin don’t believe her and suggest that maybe her two-year-old sone made teh call
• A Virgin engineer remembers that the box in her street has been reported as insecure/open often in the past.
• Virgin Media refund the call cost

I think that covers the basics. The suggestion is that somebody who knows what they are doing can wire a handset into one of these open cabinets and make calls on somebody else’s line.  I don’t know if it is likely, and it sounds impractical (wouldn’t you notice somebody sitting out in the street with a phone plugged into the cabinet?) but I guess it is a possibility.

Previously I have reported these cabinets because they just look untidy, because according to the broken windows theory they would attract crime and vandalism, and because anyone could rip out cables and deprive households of telephones, Internet or TV – or the weather could do that over the longer term.  I had really not thought of the possibility of anybody stealing phone services.  Even so I could not, and still can’t, understand why people who lived near such boxes are not reporting them and phoning up Virgin several times a day until they are fixed: I know I would.

There is a box near me that was open for a while even after I reported it.  When it was fixed it was secured with gaffer tape…  it might make the box weather proof but its hardly secure.  The unbelievable thing is that a Virgin engineer lives in that street – I see his van there in the evenings. If I was in that position I would make sure it got on the job sheets or even just fix the thing myself.

Anyway, there are now extra motivations to fix such eyesores.  For the public there is the outside chance they could end up with huge phone bills, and Virgin might not be so quick to refund charges in the future.  For Virgin there is the possibility of lost revenue if they do refund charges.  There is even the possibility of fraud; if you had a damaged box outside your houseyou could call up all sorts of premium rate lines or phone relatives in New Zealand and then refuse to pay the bill, using the damaged box as a defence.

Virgin Media, do yourselves a favour and find a type of distribution cabinet that doesn’t get damaged so easily and in the meantime give a bit of priority to fixing them up.

Murders are often described as grisly, gruesome, or other word starting with g with the language escalating so that when something like this happens you find that language itself has been devalued and words do not exist to really express the horror of it properly so that all the victom’s cousin can come up with to describe the murder is “unfathomable”.  I admire her restraint.

When watching gory (mostly) American films like Saw or Hostel the thing that makes them acceptable is that its all too bad to be real, making the violence cartoonish – but now reality turns out to be even nastier. But why do I have a sinking feeling and sneaking suspicion that somewhere in Hollywoodland there are producers rushing to snap up the fim rights to this atrocity.