Essential Snobbery 101: Look back in anger

All the loo roles

I know I like to play with alliterations, and a visit to a place downstairs just had me wondering how beneath the veneer of faux-respectability of people milling around, as co-workers are habits that leave much to be desired.

The loo, lavatory, latrine, ladies, toilet, gents, bog, urinal, cottage, water closet (WC) or convenience is a somewhat private place for movements and activity nature intended.

That we have found systems to manage and handle the different deposits is credit to creativity and ingenuity of man to bring elements of sophisticated, yet understated finesse to the handling of foul substances.

Noticing notices of note

Once upon a time, to evacuate really did mean to let things go from the bowels, but now, it is mostly used to mean getting people out of a building, especially out of dangerous buildings or vehicles.

There are things that are expected in these places that people do not feel disposed to do, and you end up reading notices like, “Please leave this place as you will like to find it” or “Please wash your hands”.

I would like to see in the men’s urinals notices that say, “Please do not spit your chewing gum into the urinal, ureic acid does not dissolve chewing gum, and furthermore, chewing gum is not biodegradable.” Men reading this will fully understand what I mean. I don’t chew gum.

Just clean up after you

Now, I cannot say why toilet bowls are white in most cases, but white is an implicit revelation of otherness when some things are not done. Especially when there is the option to flush the toilet and a toilet brush to help, “Please leave this place as you will like to find it” – I guess this notice implicitly suggests anyone visiting a toilet expects to find it clean, no matter how many other visitors have been before, if they all clean up after use.

I swore under my breath when the revelation on white was so unmissable, the earlier user could only have been so uncultured to have taken his anti-social skills back to the day of the Palaeolithic man. Whilst someone is paid to clean up after our mess, I do not think this was the kind of mess they were engaged to clean up.

That I can promptly lose respect for those who cannot look back in anger and ensure the next person looks in with a smile is my way of putting a four-letter word into a blog.

Please, always look back in anger when you have done your thing and “Please leave this place as you will like to find it. Thank you.”

Using the law for silent sex

Regulating behaviour

In another case of unintended consequences this news story makes really interesting reading.

Since 1998, the Great Britain which consists of England, Scotland and Wales has instituted the Anti-Social Behaviour Order [1], otherwise known as ASBO to deal with people shown to have engaged in anti-social behaviour.

For basic instruction, the United Kingdom is Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

These orders came about to deal with the nuisance and problems with noisy neighbours, abandoned cars, vandalism, intimidating groups and goes on to include dog fouling, litter, graffiti and night-time noise.

Basically, the ambit of the ASBO is almost untrammelled if a community can show just cause for engaging the authorities to investigate, determine and consequently sanction infringements.

She is just having fun

However, nothing could have prepared this latest recipient of an ASBO [2] for her ordeal; apparently, a 48-year old lady had in the act of supposed copulation in the early hours of the morning been making “atrociously loud” noises.

Shouting and groaning with the bed banging against the wall at her home, she must have forgotten she was in Britain, as in the comedic send-up play imitating real life called – No sex please, we’re British [3]. Though could be further from the truth else we would not have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.

However, the bed banging sounds very much like a number of scenes in the film My Super Ex-Girlfriend [4] (2006) that starred Uma Thurman.

Sour neighbour, dour neighbour

Anyway, the neighbours probably do have a serious grievance and hence need a sympathetic ear that might be deafened with decibels of groans of libidinous excess or are just frigid and prude that the thought of a seemingly middle-aged lady enjoying the pleasures of coital excitation as if she were 30 years younger is literally abhorrent.

In some cases, it can be thought that she was growing up disgracefully.

Stop it or zip it

She received an ASBO banning her from making excessive noise anywhere in England – now, that is an ambit that is scary – so, she could have gone to Scotland or Wales with her beau and brought the house down.

However, having been served the ASBO, in the space of 10 days she had breached her ASBO thrice and is now remanded in custody for the simple pursuit of her happiness, albeit with the possibly irritating side of letting people know she is enjoying it without inviting them to share in the fun.

A commonsense jury

She would be tried by jury as she has elected to have that privilege and I am hopeful that she would find a more sympathetic ear to an amazing situation where married people appear to be having an vibrant sex life and where the shouting, the banging and the noise is not a domestic but a consummation of holy matrimony.

The man with whom she has been having this great fun is her husband and like every case of sexual sanction, the woman takes the punishment for what it took 2 to create, he could be an accessory, accomplice or criminal, but this case has reached too far into the bedroom.

Not what ASBOs were intended for

No greater sanction should be incurred than for a simple commonsense judgement, they should invest in a sturdier bed or if they have concrete floors, do it on the floor and basically, they should soundproof the room in which they meet.

Since taxpayers’ money is being unnecessarily used to pursue the damnably incomprehensible, maybe we should really be contributing to this venture, but the jail is definitely not the solution to this challenge, the use of ASBOs to resolve this matter is deplorable in the least and beneath contempt drawing derision rather than accolades.

In my mind, that is definitely not what ASBOs were intended for, but if you only have a hammer, every problem might well be a nail.

Sources

[1] Anti-Social Behaviour Order - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] BBC NEWS | UK | England | Wear | Woman held for noisy sex 'breach'

[3] No Sex Please, We're British - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] My Super Ex-Girlfriend - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

London police in an institutionally culpable homicide

Crime headlines as I left

I leave London saddened and hardly elated by news that arrived on the Evening Standard paper.

You will recall that last week I noticed within a 5-minute walk, signs seeking information about grievous crimes that created a sense of insecurity about the city from the first night.

So, I left, I got a copy of the Evening Standard and the front page read, “Father is killed by teenage gun gang”. One could almost dismiss this as a typical drug dispute situation, but the detail reveals a deeper malaise in society that I am not sure is easy to address.

Standing up to be killed?

The father killed was a 22-year-old young man father of a 3-year old son and he got killed doing what we as a society has lost sight of and stopped doing – standing up to anti-social miscreants who menace our peace, property and lives.

Hardly 7 months before, a group of kids were throwing stones at his car, he came of his house and confronted the gang; he got stabbed in the neck that the stabbing just missed his jugular vein.

A rotten police for a rotting society

The police took calls from his fiancée every day for 5 weeks and still did not end up taking a statement from her, and after the police were supplied with the details of the perpetrators and so on, but no one got prosecuted for the crime that the kids deemed themselves untouchable.

The question is how kids end up with knives that they can be such a danger to society having had parents whose dereliction of parental responsibility has lead to the creation of these treacherous monsters who because they are under 18 never see enough of the toughness of the law when they offend.

The news we now have is, this very young family was terrorised since then to the most recent situation where the young father who had returned home after a confrontation with that self-same gang stepped out and got shot by a member of that gang.

The next obvious question as we learn that a 14-year old who cannot be named is arrested is how did a kid end up with a loaded gun with which he has wasted away a life?

A rotten police and a rotten job

Now we hear that the police are sorry for the way the initial investigation was conducted, well, they cannot be half sorry; the life of a young family has been ruined because the terminal point where the crime-investigation-prosecution-punishment chain should have kicked in at the first crime was left unaddressed because of police inaction.

One cannot begin to imagine what might have been going through the minds of the police when the young lady tried to report the first crime – could Canning Town in East London have been such a hopeless crime-ridden place that no crime was worthy of police attention?

Have we become so obsessed with prospective terrorist attacks that more intimate crimes no more attract interest and service?

Could, as in the case of Steven Lawrence a policeman detective have been manipulating and thwarting the investigation in favour of the suspects such that they can get away scot-free?

Taking back our society

We cannot begin to talk of the kind of people who brought forth this brood of vipers who have become a scourge on our society, who from youth have no concept of the value of life or property and have become a law unto themselves.

Sorry, is just not enough, relieving some senior policemen of their duties cannot begin to assuage the pain of that loss, in fact, apart from the prosecution of those youths; there should after a review of all the investigations of the police into the first crime charges of negligence, dereliction of duty and probably culpable homicide in seeking to address this murder should ensue.

We need to win our society back from the situation where it has become the playground of reckless criminal abuse and non-consideration for others.

Once kids get onto the first rung of a seemingly criminal existence they should be brought under strict supervision which in some cases should include confinement as well as monitoring, mentoring and vocational training – there is no scope for a politically correct assessment of this problem – society cannot afford to paper over deep seated social problems.

The parents should not only be named and shamed for allowed discipline and control to fail in the upbringing of their wards; whilst no one goes to parental school for childrearing; it is no excuse for unleashing devils unto our streets.

Institutionally incapable police

The police having been labelled institutionally racist are also becoming institutionally lazy in dealing with serious crime, it is unlikely that one can retain confident in a leadership that allows such serious issues to become headlines because requisite action has not been taken as needed to resolve crimes.

Just as I read on African Shirts a few days ago, I do not think London with all its culture, attractions and beauty is not close by far to the safest city in Europe

The heightened perception of vulnerability to crime needs to be addressed better as the deluded Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police suggests we can leave our front doors unlocked because of lessened crime, we find that we can still get shot at our doorsteps which it could have been prevented if the earlier stabbing had been given full police attention.

References

Telegraph | News | Young father shot dead as he challenges teenage yobs

Teen questioned over gun killing

Police sorry for inquiry 'hurt'