The real looters - by Richard... Sunday, August 28, 2011

The real looters - by Richard... Sunday, August 28, 2011

Booker has done me proud in his column, putting the "real looters" on the map. Our prisons may be bulging with teenagers who walked off with trainers and TV sets which didn't belong to them, he writes.

But, while our Government is still having to borrow £3 billion every week to cover the shortfall in paying for our bloated public sector, the most blatant "looting" epidemic of all appears to rage on wholly unchecked.

The comments on the column seem largely supportive, but some – as always – miss the point. When it comes to local authority CEOs, these are paid out of council tax. And unlike even central government taxation, if you refuse to pay, you go to jail.

This is really the point. Loot a shop, and you go to jail. Loot council tax payers and, if they don't pay up, they go to jail. There is something particularly evil in that system ... and that makes the real looters particularly evil.

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Justice for all - by Richard... Saturday, August 27, 2011

To see how far the British justice system has gone down the pan, one just needs to look at this(above). Stephens stole jogging bottoms, T-shirts and shorts of an unknown monetary value from the Adidas store on New Street on August 8. Judge Inman told Stephens he had reduced his sentence because he handed himself in and also because he entered an early guilty plea.

Now compare and contrast that with the fate of filth like Andrew Laycock, at 58 a retired former council head of legal services (who will have sought the imprisonment of many Council Tax defaulters in his time). He walks free with a suspended sentence, having been given "credit for his plea" of guilty to possessing more than 5,700 indecent images and 17 counts of making indecent images of children.

Not that Birmingham is any stranger to such cases, having allowed this slime to go free. In total police discovered Grewal had downloaded 4,521 indecent pictures and 12 videos. About four percent of the images, involving children aged between seven and 13, were of the most serious kind

He was sentenced to a three-year community order and ordered to go on the sex offender's register for five years. Judge Michael Cullum told Grewal: "You have been involved in the receipt of images of the most vile and depraved nature". He said that the photos and movies, some of very young children, had been stored on two computers and that Grewal had also transferred some of them on to CD.

However he said what had saved him from going to prison was the fact that the offences had happened such a long time ago and the fact that he had pleaded guilty.

Being a judge also seems to help (above), who escapes with a 12-month community rehabilitation order after admitting twelve counts related to 75 pictures of naked and semi-clad boys aged between eight and 14 that he had downloaded from the internet.

It is interesting to see that so many judges quite clearly believe that child pornography is of considerably less importance than ripping off the odd corporate, especially when councillors are involved, hence former Lambeth councillor Toren Smith (above) getting a suspended sentence despite being found with 93,549 still images, and 777 videos – eleven of which were level five, the most serious and degrading kind.

Ex-mayors also get a break when it comes to downloading pornographic images of girls, as in Stewart Brown (above), who had indulged himself in this vice, being caught in possession of pictures, with some of the girls as young as three.

Brown had been a town councillor for more than twelve years and had represented the Calder Valley on Calderdale Council between 1996 and 2000. He had been Mayor of Hebden Royd in 2006. A retired senior environmental health officer, he had been standing for the Elland ward of Calderdale Council on the Labour ticket and, as part of his current election manifesto, has pledged to restore pride in Hebden Bridge.

In fact, the judges seem so keen to let council child pornographers off the hook that they let them go even when they plead not guilty, as here with Mabon Dane, charged with 16 counts of making indecent images of children. Said Judge David Goodin giving the ex-councillor a three-year supervision order: "There is no doubt that you have an unhealthy interest in young children."

The court heard that during an interview for his pre-sentence report Dane had continued to deny he had committed the offences and refused to answer a number of questions put to him by the probation officer, most of them about his childhood. "That is a concern as is your arrogance, there is no other word for it, with the preparing of the pre-sentence report," added Goodin.

Another one who walks free is a former council officer, admits how he would look at adult porn and "possibly also children". Michael Wallbank, prosecuting, told how when experts examined his equipment they found 13 indecent child pornography videos, each about five minutes long.

Yet Judge Brown sentences Carter to a three-year community order with supervision and orders him to attend the Sex Offenders' Programme run from Northumbria.

As the evidence builds, one can easily aver, the justice system takes looting far more seriously than child pornography. Thus, even as Manchester looters were being banged up, Judge Jonathan Geake was falling over himself to release primary school teacher, 39-year-old Matthew Scott Catherall (above).

Even (or perhaps especially) when the pornographer is found in the heart of the establishment, the judges rush to let them off, giving Eaton classics teacher Ian McAuslan, 58, nine months' imprisonment, suspended for two years.

Ordering him to be placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years, Judge Christopher Critchlow said: "You have a fine record as a teacher and were clearly devoted to your profession. I give you the full credit for that long service and all that you have done in that career. It's a tragedy for you and all who know you that your career should end this way."

Certainly, and unlike looters, it seems that teachers have little to fear from the justice system. When Philip Scott admitted 10 counts of making and possessing indecent images of children, as well as two counts of possessing extreme pornographic images involving adult women, Judge Gareth Hawkesworth stopped short of sending him to jail. Instead, he handed him an eight-month suspended sentence and ordered him to sign the sex offenders register for 10 years.

Judges, it seems, simply cannot go too far in extending their sympathy and understanding to child pornographers. Even when ex-head Hugh Simon Evers is caught after downloading nearly 400 pictures and videos of underage girls – including children as young as three being sexually abused and images of girls as young as seven being raped, Judge William Wood gives him a break and suspends his sentence.

"Like anyone who has climbed high in a well-respected profession", said the honourable judge, "you have many good qualities which stand you in good stead, and result in my having to read the good reports from what people think of the way you have conducted your life, the benefit you have given to your society in various ways as a parent, and husband, and in the course of your profession".

Having worked for the BBC is not a handicap either, hence the fate of Martyn Smith, 44. Handing down an eight-month suspended prison sentence, Judge Andrew Goymer said some of the material was "quite unspeakable... and repulsive in the extreme. It involves serious sexual activity by adults with very young children indeed and any decent person would be appalled by it".

He added: "Whenever these indecent images are downloaded... somewhere in the world a child is being violated and abused in sometimes the most horrific ways in order to produce these images to satisfy the market there is in them. And that market is generated by people like you".

And, if the BBC gives you a free pass, so does being a vicar (above). Stone was found guilty of 16 specimen charges of making indecent photographs after his computer had been found to contain around 600 illegal pictures of children. Yet he walks free.

And then, of course, there is this excrement, the former Liberal Democrat councillor Christopher John Basson, who walks free from Westminster Magistrates' Court, despite stealing £12,000 from the State in fraudulently obtained incapacity benefits, while receiving nearly £26,000 in member's allowances from Camden Council. But, at least, he's only after the money.

If there is a logic here, it is difficult to see it ... other than it paying to wear a suit and have council connections, or a white-collar job. But, if kids on the streets don't take the system seriously, or give it any respect, you can hardly blame them. This is "The Man's justice", where kiddie-fiddlers roam the streets and looters go to jail. It stinks.

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Corporate looting - by Richard...

Wholesale looting by the thieves in suits is not confined to the public sector. In fact, the looting disease was caught from the private or – to be more precise – from the corporate sector. Here, wages – or "compensation" as they quaintly call it – has soared to stratospheric heights, reaching the obscene levels typified by the grotesque payments made to BT chief executive, Ian Livingston.

Last year, this looter saw his bonus more than triple, taking his total pay package, including shares, to more than £3m. It thus can hardly be unrelated to see today the beguilingly simple headline "BT customers face higher bills".

Monthly line rental for customers are to rise from £13.90m to £14.60, having already increased from £12.79 in April. Other rising charges include the cost of daytime calls, the cost of the popular "Anytime" call package, and the call connection fee.

In fact, the rise in charges is directly connected to Livingston's fortunes, as he was drafted in salvage the company from its disastrous ventures, in particular the losses from its Global Services wing. His predecessor in the role, Hanif Lalani, left BT the year before, having presided over £1.6bn of "write downs" on these ventures, taking a £780,000 "golden goodbye" as his reward for failure.

Livingston has since turned the company round , mainly by the expedient of increasing prices while holding down the pay of his field workers. He has, nevertheless, retained his company's enviable reputation for inefficiency, poor consumer service and indifference to customer needs.

Apologists for this type of corporate looting will, of course, point to the effect one man can have on the balance sheet, stressing that getting the right man for the job requires an internationally competitive payment package.

On the other hand, one has to note that corporate decisions are not taken by one man alone – that is what boards of directors are for. And here the looting spreads across the table. Last year, the head of BT's retail business, Gavin Patterson, saw a salary increase of five percent and finance director Tony Chanmugam got a rise worth more than seven percent.

Yet these officials had been in post during the height of the Global Services debacles, each trousering £1.1m in salary and bonuses during the period. Chanmugam salary was then lifted from £475,000 to £510,000, while Patterson's £500,000 was increased by £25,000. In 2009, Chanmugam had also received a £315,000 "retention cash award".

The message sent is obvious – and it is one that has doubtless been absorbed by the youths of Tottenham and elsewhere. And if the men in suits can so freely indulge, they should hardly complain when the scrotes at the bottom of the heap follow their example.

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Are they afraid? - by Richard...

I had a look at this story yesterday, and wondered what to make of it. The idea of a plod being dobbed in for failing to nick a scrote in the act of thieving – and then being banged up – sounds so implausible that one feels there has to be more to it.

However, Raedwald thinks he might have an explanation. "When officers start shooting their men to encourage obedience, you know they're in desperate trouble", he writes:

When rank and file police officers see their endemically corrupt seniors get away with gross peculation of public funds, taking lavish bungs from dodgy enterprises, rewarding themselves with bonuses that equal a constable's annual salary, consorting openly with known criminals and stumbling from one silver-braided circle jerk to another, what do you imagine happens to their commitment to risk themselves to protect the public? Senior officers are aware that they've alienated themselves from ordinary plods. So they're seeking to secure by fear the obedience they can't achieve by leadership.

I wouldn't entirely disagree with that, and we have observed before that the establishment seems to be running scared. Certainly, the extraordinary effort being devoted to tracking down the street rioters and looters, and the stiffer than normal sentences being handed down, can be interpreted in a similar vein. These are signs of weakness – fear – rather than strength.

One wonders if they are thinking what we're thinking, that we are on the cusp of a low-grade civil war, the nature of which seems to be continuing in Berlin, where the continuing car burning is now being treated as "politically motivated".

Our own establishment have gone out of their way to brand our troubles as "criminality", which is what they originally tried to do in Berlin. But it hasn't washed there, and it doesn't really wash here. They next time, though, the violence will be harder to dismiss, and our establishment too may well have to admit to political motivation.

But, if Raedwald is right and the senior plod and the politicals are losing touch with the rank and files, then we are in for a torrid time. The distance does beget fear and a frightened plod is a violent plod. But if they give vent to violence, they will be sowing the seeds of their own demise. We are the ones with the power.

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