Italia Post

[Greg.]

Hi Richard,

Yes, I hate it. What happens today and how it is contolled, investigated and resolved is a long way away from my own conviction when I joined up 28 years ago. Over time since then, there has been a continuous devolvemnt of the police service offered to the British public both under the Conservatives and laterly Labour. By way of example, today at work, the local response team paraded an acting sergeant (not qualified) and six other response officers. Two of those were immediately taken up to deal with people already detained in our cells. That left four to try and keep the peace across a wide portion of the city.

In the mid eighty's this same area was covered by 36 constables (four in two cars) and the rest on foot. Not one seargent, but three. How times have changed. It is so easy to critisize the police for poor performance but it is helpful to recognise how, over the years, government interference, regardless of party has erroded the service in our country to the point that it is almost impossible to cope. Yet still we go out there and try to make a difference.

Best wishes,

Greg

[Ianm2]

hi Greg, said in kindness, but I do find 2 posts ago to be slightly unkind, you seem to be saying that £35, 000 of criminal fraud committed by this man, and its not the polices duty to bother, complain to the govt, that leaves me rather aghast, and sounds suspiciously like what everyone is saying, that the police don't give a toss, and its nothing to do with us. you may not be aware of the extent tho'.

this man in fact has done £35,000 of fraud which was part and parcel of mine, not simply a civil rip off, but concerted organised fraud, so it is a criminal matter indeed. the fact they can't seem to locate one simple man is rather concerning. bet if he owed it to the taxman they would have got him years ago

If someone came in your home, and robbed you, it would be theft, but not it seems if they take it from your card.

the police have a duty of care to investigate reported crime, and do seem overly preoccupied with meeting govt. targets about moral panic things at the expense. I have tried to have been fobbed off on a few occasions when reporting things.

They do seem to find the time to charge what they want to tho', like the broadcasting of the police footage.

I feel quite strongly about this, and it is widely acknowledged in the community that the police don't care as much about people as businesses, I worked in a shop, where a woman got prosecuted for simply changing a price tag, the security guard actually waited for her to walk out the door, instead of stopping her inside.

the police arrived within 2 mins after, and spent 2 hrs, 2 of them, collecting details, where a simple securtity challenge inside the shop would've stopped her. 2 hrs of police time wasted, but around here, the police don't seem to want to goto local residents burglaries, and it SEEMS the same everywhere, from stories you hear.

I also see abominable atrocious dangerous driving, and there are no police anymore on the roads, where there used to be. you really do have to ask what is happening. sorry to seem like challenging, but local people are pretty disgruntled, perhaps if they spent less time and money translating things into minority languages and informing on those raids and sitting in P.C. classes they would have more time.

They were polite and informative in defence on my case, seems like they have forgotten me tho.

imo, drugs ought to be legalized totally, so you can have clean ones, controlled, and the dirty cutting won't do people damage in that way, it releases the police to crack down on other real crime, and also takes away the crime committed from desparate people out to get the substance they need but can't afford, and kills stone dead the criminal gangs. tobacco and alcohol are somtimes a lot more harmful than some drugs, and people who have nothing to look to in life do need some respite. I have seen and worked with these people and they are pretty downtrodden. with capitalism and survival, some inevitably simply are not selected for in the darwinian sense and have nothing at all, and never will have.

There is also a religious element argument for freedom in taking certain types, shamanism. natural plant products, rather infrigning on religous freedom to ban people taking natures products

indeed, the biggest drug, and arguable most damaging of all is simply money. marriges wrecked, environment wrecked, debts, suicide...ad inf.

[Black Stuart]

Ian,
you'd be quite wrong on that score. My sister had no work record for 20 years, her tax file was closed (I'm not prepared to say how I know that for a fact) and yet she was able to obtain a fraudulent mortgage on a large house, divided into flats and has profited hugely from this over the last 15 years. At the time I tried to get her investigated by the Inland revenue, I was informed then in 1992 that the IR would only investigate tax fraud if it was in excess of £100,000.

My niece forged the signature of my then very sick father so that my sister could empty his bank account before he died - the police did not want to know even though I showed them my father's signature before he became ill and the actual cheques which Nat West returned to me, there was no comparison when they were looked at side by side.

Do I blame the police no, because in many instances it becomes impossible for them to obtain convictions. I know I would become very dispirited if I had to work under those conditions.

The policing levels that Greg has quoted are the norm. Two years before we left for Spain, my seriously mentally ill nephew, well over 6ft in height and very strong physically, tried to punch his way through our front door. Luckily I was in at the time, I was not particularly perturbed because I have handled far worse incidents in my life but it was very traumatic for Angela. Had he in fact broken in, I would have terminated him efficiently which under the sick joke called law in the UK would have put me in the wrong. Angela phoned the police and informed them in a coherent voice of the situation and of my nephews mental state - it was 3 hours before they turned up.

It was two experienced front line officers who came and informed me that there were at that moment only 4 of them on duty to police the whole of Brighton & Hove, population 250,000.

In Spain, bus stations have armed guards as do Social Security offices. In my small market town pop. 20,000, we have 20 Policia Local (armed) their job is solely confined to Guadix. 30 Guardia Civil (armed) whose work is the surrounding countryside, which has a very small population and traffic duties (on the motorway). There are 30,000 gun licences in Granada province alone, each hunter normally has at least 3 guns, so we are talking a minimum of 90,000 seriously lethal weapons.

I have never heard of a fight in any bar here, with or without weapons, nor have I ever heard of any of the hunters guns being used in any crime of violence.

There is a problem which is not confined to the UK but is endemic across the whole of the EEC - it is the cancer of lawyers. Lawyers are not concerned with justice, the Law is their gravy train.

I know the do'gooders will probably reply with a stupid rant but as punishment has gone down, so crime has grown hugely.

When in another thread Greg described me as 'not being liberal in my views' he was correct. I have personally witnessed friends destroy themselves firstly with alcohol and then with heroin. There is only one solution to the hard drugs problem as there is only one solution to white collar fraud - the problem is you have to get your hands bloody but standing in the way are the lawyers who know if these two serious problems are resolved permanently their gravy train dissappears down the toilet.

There are an awful lot of parasites making very good money from hard drugs and I don't mean the dealers.

anyone who says that a junkie can be cured or fraudsters can change their ways is either lying or stupid or is part of the gravy train.

[Ianm2]

agreed about lawyers, they are the ones who benefit win or lose.

Originally Posted by Black Stuart

Ian,
know if these two serious problems are resolved permanently their gravy train dissappears down the toilet.
.

ha, that would be rather nice, what is the proposed solution??

I certainly ain't a do gooder, but I am not sure punishment...prison....simply is the answer, I neither believe that satellite tv in cells and holidays for them are, either. there did seem to be a link tho between punishment and crime years ago.

did you know that the average house in the USA has 17 guns?? I think, it was a large number.

I was in spain and didn't notice the armed police really, I did in cairo tho'

strange, when I went, I thougt most of the spanish would be slightly dark, with brown eyes and black hair, and be outgoing, where i was, barcelona, apparently, they want separatism, they were quite pale, and introverted on the whole, a little like the english, but not as fat

[NickG]

did you know that the average house in the USA has 17 guns?? I think, it was a large number.

That seems a little high, Just a quick look on wiki

"There is no national gun register in the USA, so it is impossible to know exactly how many guns are in circulation or who has them, but the FBI estimates there are more than 200 million guns in civilian hands.".

Population of the US 302 million, so that would require the average house to have 25 people living in it.

I also remember Stuart commenting in the past about the endemic levels of corruption in Spain, so maybe its not that great that there are so many armed guards about.

[Ianm2]

it was an article in the paper after cho's shooting spree in the college. I recall it was a high number, may've been in the 20s, but 17ish rings a bell, adding that up makes well over 2 billion which does sound a bit too high.

if you assume 4 people per house, that makes, what around 75 million residences, 17 guns in each, 1.2 billion guns? I suppose its poss...

[NickG]

17 guns in each, 1.2 billion guns? I suppose its poss...

Yes, possible, just 8 times more than the FBI's estimate.

[david counter]

according to my mate in California there are 260 million guns in the US,
that's one for every person over 10,

[LSfarzo]

Hi all,

I'm from Italy.. and I have to say that I usually buy a lot of items by Paypal and that many of those come from foreign states like germany, england, usa, hong kong and so on.
I have always received everything without some kind of losses but once; that time I did non receive a package from the U.K. containing a lot of items for a SME 3009 restoration.
I used Paypal and I was fully payed back opening a contestation using the Paypal contestaion system and agreeing with the seller to friendly close the matter.
Then we agreed that he would put to auction the same items and that I would have nothing to say about it. I had never known about the true story.. did he not send the package because he thought he would have sold it for more money or the package was truly lost ... who knows..
anyway I bought the same items at a little higher price than I originally payed but I did need those items in order to complete my restoration...

Anyway I can say that, from my point of view, some package may get lost but I am a little bewildered that "usually" the packages are mysteriously missed by italian Postal system and due to that many sellers do not want to sell to italy

Bye
Luca

Hi Luca,
I went to my Post Office to check if my missing parcel was
lost in the post sorting office and the man on the desk said
its a common problem with Italian Post.
The only other problem I have had was a no payment and
that was Italy and his name was Luca, common name in Italy?