When did ello, ello, ello become Taser, Taser, Taser?

Fast Food Workers? No, modern British Police

A suspect is tasered three times by police before being punched? New York? No, the streets of Nottingham | Mail Online

There was fresh controversy over police methods last night after officers shot a man three times with a Taser gun and punched him repeatedly as he writhed on the ground.

The headline makes a good point, I did indeed believe this to be some US city, such incidents are in the papers on a regular basis (such as the recent tasing of a 72 year old woman), instead it turned out to be my home town.

I am not sure what shocked me more; that my local police have tasers or that those gentleman in navy T-Shirts and body warmers were police officers.

Only in America

It seems that the use of tasers has somewhat passed me by, I knew that some forces were trialling them, but in my naivety I thought that they would never be rolled out across the board and certainly rarely used, after all, this isn’t America. Criminals here rarely carry guns, or even knives, so the need for such a weapon is debatable.

The good old fashioned police truncheon

We have pepper spray (also from the US), expandable batons (again from the US) and now tasers? What are next, guns? I remember when the simple wooden truncheon was enough.

Back then the mere threat of getting brained by a police officer was enough for most people to do as they were told and submit. Those that didn’t were soon coshed into submission.

Sure, they were deadly but then police officers only used them when they had to and when they whipped them out, you knew that they meant business.

Lazy policing

Today police officers wear Batman style utility belts containing everything that they could possibly need – for a riot. This, in my view, has made them lazy. Why bother trying to calm a suspect down when a spray in the face with the pepper spray will incapacitate him? Or a quick blast on the taser?

Neither leave any lasting harm or marks so can be pretty much used with impunity, and apparently they are. It is so much easier for police to shoot first and ask questions later that many of them are doing precisely that, albeit without guns.

The man in the video was already on the ground, already subdued, he just wasn’t doing as he was told, and so he was punished, physically. If two police officers do not know how to cuff a prone man, then what good are they?

At one point there were six police officer holding the suspect down, now, unless he had the strength of ten men, this seems to me to be a tad bit of an overkill, particularly as he had been tasered a couple of times already. The man was rolling around on the floor, drunk by the looks of him, yet still a couple of the officers stood on him and punched him, just to be sure.

About 50 onlookers saw the whole thing and needless to say, whatever respect they still had for the police was washed away watching that performance.

Respect

This isn’t helped one bit by the ridiculous outfits that our police now wear. Once the police uniform was unmistakable, now all the police officers seem to think that they are part of a SWAT unit. I’m not even sure I can tell a traffic warden or even a park warden from a police officer anymore.

Casual uniforms for casual police

We seem to have this problem with uniforms in Britain at present, as if uniforms are somehow bad and create a barrier between ordinary people and those that wear them (and tasers and batons don’t), they are all being slowly changed. Nurses no longer look like nurses, the police look like fast food workers and doctors no longer wear white coats; even soldiers are discouraged from wearing their uniforms.

Constable Marlow: Still patrolling in his original uniform

Uniforms command respect, they are an instant visual identity. Had I witnessed those two men in casual dress attacking a poor drunken man in the street, I would never have realised that they were police officers. They are not even smartly dressed. What happened to hats? To ties? White shirts?

There is nothing old fashioned about looking smart and the old uniform commanded respect, whilst projecting an image of honesty, integrity and trustworthiness, whether justified or not.

I am also sure that pulling on such a well regarded and esteemed uniform meant something to the officers too, and made them try to live up to it and be more cautious in their actions.

It certainly made an impression on Constable Marlow, who still patrols the streets in his home town in his old uniform. A casual modern uniform just nurtures a casual and lazy culture amongst our tin pot police. They are now more interested in just being obeyed than doing the right thing.

Such casual use of what is in effect a torture device (imagine if they used it whilst interviewing suspects, makes waterboarding seem light hearted by comparision), is most worrying. A police officer should never inflict pain on someone merely for non compliance.

Now it seems whilst walking around in crime ridden Nottingham, I am going to have to keep one eye on the ne’er do wells and another eye on the police, lest I get caught up in one of their urban pacifications.

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Remote psychiatrist keeps job

Lunatic running the asylum

Doctor who freed mental patient who stabbed cyclist to death wins fight for job | Mail Online

Dr Gillian Mezey, a consultant psychiatrist, decided to let paranoid schizophrenic John Barrett out of hospital for an hour’s unsupervised leave without even seeing him in September 2004.

I mentioned this Doctor recently, she was the supposed psychiatrist that allowed mentalist John Barrett to have ‘ground leave’, which he took to mean leave the grounds, whereupon he stabbed to death poor Denis Finnegan. So I was quite astonished to find out that she has been allowed to keep her job!

Work from home

Apparently she decided that John Barrett was really a good sort, and wouldn’t hurt a fly, despite not having ever met him and being too busy on ‘other duties’ to assess him.

Barrett repaid her faith in him by not only being late back, but by purchasing a stack of knives (not sure we he got the cash for that, did she give him pocket money too?) and then stabbing the unfortunate Mr Finnegan who happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Still, it was apparently completely not her fault.

Mr Justice Underhill upheld her challenge, agreeing with an investigating panel that it was ‘a case of a pure one-off misjudgment’.

What rubbish. Perhaps I could give the local health trust my telephone number and dispense equally pointless, hit and miss advice. Chances are I too will only make one misjudgement and I’ve had no psychiatric training whatsoever.

You’d expect an expert to be able to tell a dangerous mentalist from a normal, functioning member of society, but if she’s just blindly accessing the patients then she isn’t doing her job and therefore should not be looking after such dangerous patients.

Compensation

As far as I know the family of Denis Finnegan have not received any compensation for his tragic death. Yet the person most responsible for that day’s events, is after some for herself!

She is suing her employers for damages to her career for breach of contract. She claims the disciplinary action against her was unlawful and ‘humiliated’ her.

She humiliated herself by conducting assessments over the phone, and not even with the patient. I am no expert but that seems to me to be a sign of incompetence and incompetence should never be rewarded.

Of course all that is irrelevant, no doubt she’ll get hundreds of thousands for her ‘misjudgement.’

I only hope that the family of Mr Finnegan sue her, it is probably the only way that they will see any form of justice, however unlikely.

Mentalist on the loose

Escaped Lunatic

Convicted murderer on run after fleeing mental hospital – Telegraph

Convicted murderer Paul Caesar is on the run after fleeing a secure mental hospital with a record of high-profile escapes, police have warned.

Fantastic news. Not only is the Government failing to lock up mentalists who may be a danger to the public, they are also allowing those already convicted of murder and supposedly safely locked away, to roam free.

missed breakfast

The press release doesn’t give any details of his crime, so we can assume that it was particularly brutal. I am also going to assume that he is no criminal mastermind who has spent the best of the past 13 years planning this escape.

“A spokesman for Springfield Hospital said Caesar failed to return after spending time unescorted in the hospital grounds on Tuesday morning.”

And the above seems to confirm that. The people in charge of that hospital really are idiots, ‘failed to return after spending time unescorted in the hospital grounds on Tuesday morning,’ – I am sure they were very put out, and probably went looking for him to let him know that his breakfast was getting cold.

It is meant to be a secure hospital, not a hotel, what an earth are they doing letting mentalists walk the grounds unescorted in the first place? What kind of a prison allows the inmates to walk around unguarded? Well ones with 100ft high walls topped with barbed wire, not hospitals with only a wire fence to keep the nutter’s in. At least your common or garden prisoner, upon escaping,  isn’t likely to head to the nearest DIY store and purchase an array of knifes before looking for someone to sheath them in.

After 13 years of mid morning constitutionals, I am sure that he had dug a pretty good tunnel. He probably went all the way to France. 

I suppose we just wait now for the inevitable headline of some poor innocent brutally murdered by Paul Caesar, followed by the rounds of inquiries and much talk of lessons being learnt.

déjà vu

The same thing happened four years ago when John Barrett brutally stabbed to death Denis Finnegan. At the time a report into the murder stated:

Barrett had been granted an hour’s “ground leave” from the Shaftesbury Clinic, a secure unit within the hospital, but failed to return. The decision to give him that freedom by consultant psychiatrist Dr Gill Mezey was described by the inquiry as “seriously flawed”.

Denis Finnegan

Yet five years on, the staff at the same hospital, under the same trust are making the very same mistakes, all over again.

As Marjorie Wallace, Chief Executive of SANE a mental health charity said at the time:

 

“This is not just a question of changes to the law or of inadequate resources, it is a question of changing a culture which puts patient’s rights ahead of those of their families and the community.”

The problem is that the people in charge of caring for these people think that they know better, as Mr Finnegan’s sister said: “They think they are untouchable – but we’ll make sure they won’t be.”

You can understand her anger, especially as Nigel Fisher, the idiot in charge when Barrett escaped, didn’t even bother to turn up for the report into his cock up; apparently he was busy that day – in his new job.

Yes, amazingly in Britain if you let a homicidal maniac loose, you get moved higher up the healthcare ladder. Nigel Fisher moved onto a position within the Department of Health as an NHS advisor on foundation trust implementation. Quite why anyone would value this moron’s opinion is beyond me, but clearly the present idiot in charge has decided to follow the same career path.

Despite the Finnegan family’s best efforts to bring it someone to task over what happened, nothing has changed, Just like Barrett, Caesar was probably allowed to roam the grounds because staff thought that underneath he was really a nice person and just needed to be shown a little goodwill and trust. Sadly it won’t be one of the staff that gets brutally murdered, but some poor, unsuspecting member of the public who has never heard of Paul Caesar and is simply going about their daily routine. 

Paul_Caesar,Nigel_Fisher,NHS,Britain,Healthcare,England,SANE,Springfield

Scots prescriptions go down, English go up!

Another example of how great devolution is, for everyone but the English who are paying through the nose for it.

Today in Scotland the prescription charges, which ironically is for the NHS (National Health Service), which is anything but ‘national’ anymore, went down by 25%. At the same time, the English have seen theirs rise by 25p. I can only assume that as there are 5 time more people in England than Scotland, this is to pay for the Scottish decrease?

This of course comes after the Welsh have already abolished their prescription charges. After a decade of devolution it has become clear that the only ones benefiting from this system are the ‘devolved states’, moreover it is now abundantly clear this is a one way process, England will never have its own parliament.

Apparently the amount of tax paid by the English, Scots and Northern Irish is roughly the same, even though the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish have two layers of government and the MPs serving in their devolved parliaments can earn more than the Prime Minister of the UK!

English taxpayers are facing more and more hardships, with the rising price of fuel and rising taxation, yet have to continue to stand by and watch concessions being handed out to everyone but them, all whilst paying for them!

All four parliaments are a drain on the English taxpayers, but only one actually answers to and benefits the English tax payer.

This step is just the latest in the Scottish governments long term plan to abolish prescription charges altogether. But as an English taxpayer I can’t help but wonder if the prescriptions charges for me have increased, so that the MSPs can make the decreases that they have promised the Scots.

“Mr Salmond knows he can’t get Scottish independence from the Scots alone. He needs equally short-sighted and disaffected English voters to go along with his plans. Crafty fellow.”
Michael White – Guardian.

If that is his plan, well I can only say from my point of view, that it is working. The sooner the Scots get their independence, the sooner English taxes will go down and the English standard of living will go up. Moreover we’ll be able to start using words like English, England and Englishness again, and be proud to be English, rather than British. Of course that will mean off loading another one of Europe’s poorest states, Wales.

Scotland, Wales, Britain, England, English, NHS, Prescriptions, Brown, Labour, Government, Devolution, Northern Ireland, Alex Salmond, Independence

Steph continues her mad campaign

I see that my favourite blogger has been hard at it in my absence, quote:

I’m often asked which candidate I support in the American presidential elections, as a European, I feel that is like being asked, which would I prefer, to be raped vaginally or anally.

Who says that women of the 21^st Century aren’t classy, eh? Still there are some good points in that post and I don’t say that very often.

However she has also been spreading her vicious opinions once again regarding the McCann’s. This time though she is turning her attention to Gordon Brown:

Gordon Brown is professionally acquainted with many of the McCanns supporters and financial backers, including Richard Branson, Sir Tom Hunter and Bill Kenwright.

Which is absurd. Of course Gordon Brown is aware of, and has probably met some of Britain’s top entrepreneurs, how else does she think he gets his funding? That doesn’t mean that Richard Branson, Sir Tom Hunter and Bill Kenwright are personal friends of the McCann’s. I certainly don’t think that Richard Branson, Sir Tom Hunter and Bill Kenwright hang out in Leicester much and if they did they certainly wouldn’t be plotting to take over the world and then kill all the children as Steph seems to imply.

She makes it seem as if the McCann’s were let off by the help of some secret society that only doctors and politicians and of course the rich are a part of. The reality is that the Portuguese have nothing to charge them with, they have no evidence. Steph also misses an important point, the McCann’s haven’t been let off or saved by Gordon Brown or anyone else, the Portuguese still haven’t ruled out charging them.

Still any kind of argument is like water of a duck’s back to her, without any real knowledge of the case, or to be frank anything else, she has already tried and convicted the McCann’s.

Stefania Harris, Madelaine McCann, McCanns, Gordon Brown, Steph’s Blog

Doctors drain the NHS

Imagine this, you’re hard at work one day when in walks your boss. He gives you the worrying news that your employer is cutting back the number of hours that you work by 15%, but then smiles and tells you not to worry as you are getting a 25% pay increase! Complete fantasy? Well not quite, this is what happened to Doctors 3 years ago.

Admittedly they weren’t told to cut their hours by 15%, but they did anyway according to a new report.

Official: doctors do less work for lots more pay – Times Online

“The GPs’ Workload Survey, the first such study for 15 years, has found that after the introduction of a new contract three years ago, doctors are working on average about 15% fewer hours. During the same period pay has risen by nearly a quarter.”

More annoying is that we are constantly hearing about how tough nurses have it, how they are cutting back on midwives and nurses and making them work longer hours, now we know the reason why, they are doing the work that the Doctors are actually being paid for.

It’s not all bad though, there are some doctors with a conscience:

“Some doctors have argued that the pay rises are to the detriment of patient care because they permit GPs to work fewer hours.”

Of course if you give a section of society who already believe that they are under paid, undervalued and have a very high opinion of their own self worth, a big pay rise and the option to reduce their own hours if they need to, they are going to take it, just look at MPs.

Anyone who has tried to get an appointment to see their GP already knows that patient care is affected, you cannot book in advance, which means that you have to call in that day and won’t know whether you are going in to work or not until you’ve spent half an hour trying to get through. If you don’t get in, you have to go to work as normal and then call again in the afternoon and possibly after spending 15-20mins hitting redial get an appointment meaning you have to leave work as soon as you replace the receiver. There was a time when you could plan your life around visits to your doctor. No longer, now it is made abundantly clear that you are at their convenience not the other way about.

Doctors are meant to be paid a good wage in relation to the rest of society, but more than five times more than the average wage? Something isn’t right, particularly when doctors in Germany, a much richer country than the UK, come to Britain because they can earn up to five time more here as they can in Germany, up to £250,000.

Spending on the NHS has trebled since Labour came to power, coincidentally doctors salaries have increased by almost the same amount. No wonder the NHS is in such dire straits. Doctors should realise that they get paid what society can afford, or thinks they deserve, not what they think they deserve. If they want to decide their own salaries then they should have become MPs.

Scotland has a bottomless pit, of English money

This blog has descended into posts about genitals, and male genitals at that, so time I think for more serious stuff.

A draft decision not to make drugs for a leading cause of blindness widely available on the NHS will cost many people their sight, campaigners say.

BBC NEWS | Health | Anger over blindness drugs ruling

This is shocking but not completely unexpected, I have mentioned this before here. But I did think (stupidly) that perhaps public opinion would sway things. That of course would imply that I live in some kind of democracy. No, the idiots at the NHS believe it is cheaper to let someone go blind, or at least half blind, rather than cure them. I am sure though if you take into account disability, guide dogs, council housing etc, it works out much cheaper to just give the patient the drug, but of course those are part of the budget of another department and not a concern for the NHS.

The thing that stung me the most about this is not that they won’t be making the drug widely available, but the fact that it already is widely available, in Scotland. The same Scotland that seems to be becoming something of a Utopia for the average person. It was announced today that students wouldn’t have to pay back their tuitions fees. Students in Wales (as in born in Wales, it doesn’t matter where they study) already have their fees paid for them. Prescriptions are also free in Wales and I believe Scotland (almost £7 in England) and the elderly are to receive free personal care in Scotland.

Wow, just who exactly conquered who again? I am all for equality and not suggesting that Wales or Scotland should be treated as second class members of Britain, but I also don’t understand why the English are. Afterall 80% of the taxes in the UK come from the English yet the Scots are living like Kings, free this and free that – public money seems to grow on trees north of the border.

A recent report stated that Scotland is the worst performing small country in Western Europe, well it’s not surprising, the Scots are getting pretty used to someone else doing all the hard work and paying for everything. I hope that the SNP follow through and make sure that Scotland become independent and self sufficient, perhaps then the English will get better health care, free education and pay less tax.