Bronson Battersby: A case of unneighbourly indifference

You live in a neighbourhood

Think about where you live and the people who live in proximity to you whether in passing or in full acknowledgement you know who they are.

Beyond those you can interact with in terms of communication, they might have children that you have noticed but are too young for your typical conversation, they might also have pets, a cat or a dog, but how would you know if you are not observant and probably curious?

Then, what constitutes your neighbourhood that you notice is out-of-place, unusual, or unexpected? A stranger you have never seen before prowling your street, a usually occupied house that seems deserted or new people have just moved in. Strange happenings that elicit that double-take and enough of that innate inquisitiveness just to assure yourself that things are the way they should be.

Beware of indifferent neighbours

That constitutes a sense of neighbourliness, a general awareness of your surroundings that is both for your safety and convenience as much as it is for your neighbours, an unwritten code of coexistence of everyone inadvertently watching out for everyone else.

What you cannot afford to be is self-centred indifferent that the inclination to be the brother’s keeper or the Good Samaritan is lost to not being bothered or concerned even when some gut feeling suggests you should exercise yourself to the stimuli of events that are not commonplace.

This is what hurts me most about the case of Bronson Battersby, a two-year-old toddler who was found beside his dead father having died of dehydration and starvation within earshot of at least someone for whom I cannot yet find the words to describe as they would be unprintable and still be an understatement. [ITV: Bronson Battersby: Neighbour 'pretty sure' she heard toddler crying days before death]

It just beggars belief

However, that is not the only failing, Bronson was under the care of social services but a lethargic lackadaisical attitude to his plight meant he was not discovered for another 7 days when a little more persistence and concern might have possibly discovered the child barely alive but with the prospect of survival.

Yet, it is the neighbour that attracts the greater wrath, in my view. The news story suggests this neighbour was ‘pretty sure’ she heard a toddler crying. Whether the quotes belong with the phrase is beside the point. If you heard a toddler crying and no doubt one in distress because there was no care for it, it had to have been for a prolonged period, perhaps a day or two, and not just in the daytime but in the nighttime too.

This indifference is evil

Nothing, it seems persuaded this neighbour to investigate and determine the source of this crying. She could not be bothered, it would soon stop, she must have thought, and it did eventually stop at the point where Bronson was totally exhausted, dehydrated, starved, weak, and unable to do anything more, he lay down beside his father who apparently had suffered a massive heart attack days before, and died.

In my heart of hearts, I pray we never have so totally indifferent people as neighbours because they are evil and lacking in any humanity. I have always made it a point of duty to be acquainted with my neighbours and to have at least one neighbour with whom I can share much more in neighbourliness, a set of keys, the occasional visit for tea or a meal and someone to just have general life conversations with. They matter.

Cultivate neighbourliness for your own safety

Neighbourliness is more than just living next door; it is knowing who is there and caring enough to check on them and know that they are okay. Especially as I live alone, the issue of neighbourliness is more acute, my neighbour would knock on my door if she has not seen me for days. When I had chest pains, the ambulance crew met me at my neighbour’s and from there I was taken to hospital, my neighbour sitting with me through the night in A&E for over 10 hours.

Elsewhere, when I was gravely ill in hospital, my neighbours attended to all issues and on returning home, did my shopping, some cooking, my laundry and every other thing I had no strength to do. When I was going away for weeks, my neighbour ensured my place was secure and looked after.

I have a relationship with my neighbour, you are brought together by circumstances you usually would not have predetermined, but you see the humanity in each other to build trust enough to know that you have their back as much as they have yours.

He need not have died

Bronson Battersby need not have died if he had good neighbours, he was crying and he was most definitely heard, it was his only means of communication, his desperate call for help, but he was ignored. However, I say, cultivate good neighbourliness and know that the people who live around you matter for both your safety and security.

Rest in peace, dear Bronson Battersby, you deserved better, much, much better.

My city living as it happens as nothing happens

Me, myself, and I here

Sometimes, I wonder what separates me from Miss Havisham apart from the promise of a wedding that still endures to be fulfilled in due time and having not stopped any of the clocks in my apartment. Much as I would not leave anything to decay in here, my window blinds are rarely pulled up to let in natural light, there has been a fire, but not here, I quite well can exist in the isolated calm of a hermit, not interacting with the outside world for as long as I want.

None of that should read as being an antisocial being, I love the company of people to converse with, probably enjoy dinner or going out, indeed, I do chat to strangers, yet I am anything but an extrovert, I do not have the mental energy for crowds or big parties, I would soon be sat in a corner alone than be found chatting away network and glad-handing.

Ashes and debris

This morning, as I stepped out for my walking exercise, I saw some debris outside one of the blocks in our village, it is a good three blocks away with a cul-de-sac separating us, but we share the same vast subterranean carpark and the communal gym accessed with registered secure processes. It all looked charred as if consumed with fire and I wondered why anyone would set their rubbish on fire outside the block.

Later, some workmen had arrived to shovel away the debris and I was tempted to ask questions, I did not. It wasn’t till later as I stepped out for some shopping that I met my neighbour in the foyer, and she asked if I knew about the fire in that block. Fire? Yes, there was a fire, a huge one at that with flames shooting out of the roof of the block on the top floor of a 6-storey apartment block, with the main roads in the area cordoned off.

Stranger lights in the nights

It so happens, I never stepped out yesterday, at least not from the afternoon of two days before, there was commotion, and 5 fire engines I was told, and no one even reported the incident on our village Facebook page. This was the same block in which just about a year ago, a human and sex trafficking ring was busted. I cannot find any information about the fire in our city newspaper, like it has been hushed up.

Then I was told there was another fire across the street a few weeks ago that I should have been able to observe from the windows of my side of the apartment complex. There was? I did not ask when exactly, as it might have coincided with when I was away, but I knew nothing of it. It would suggest I am probably not the best candidate for curtain twitching or the Neighbourhood Watch. Much as some might attest to be powers of observation, I have not applied them with any distinction to my immediate environment.

As it happens as nothing happens

Once again, I have been lulled into the apparently deceptive uneventfulness of genteel city living where nothing of note happens and that gives cover to many things you would never imagine happening around here. For a serial sex offender lived nearby, as was the sex trafficking ring, and the Manchester bomber of May 2017 was on the outer side of our village apartment block complex.

Blog - City living in the deception of the genteel

Do I need to get on a nosey parker introductory course or is my penchant for presumably minding my own business in a very English way getting in the way of basic curiosity and awareness? That is something to think about. I might need to start with pulling up my Venetian blinds and I doubt I am ready for that radical change in living arrangements.

City living in the deception of the genteel

Things I should have noticed

A few weeks ago, I missed a Zoom conference that was convened by the local police to chat to occupants of my village complex, I did not at that time consider the importance of it. Then, I could not help but notice the big red notices about Modern Slavery, one in English and the other in Chinese, I just thought it was a general notice.

Then on our village Facebook page, there was a picture of police vans as if they were there to conduct a raid, but there was no update to what it might be. I and maybe a lot of residents of my village complex might have been lured into a sense of genteel out of exclusivity of this neighbourhood to think it is devoid of the vagaries of reprehensible conduct.

Respectable is good cover

Then I am reminded of the fact that just beside our village, something I learnt a few days ago was where the Manchester bomber of May 2017 lived and built his bomb, a few hundred yards away was the home of the serial homosexual sex abuser that could have abused 200 victims, within my village complex in another apartment block was a sex and human trafficking ring exploiting early teenaged girls, one of whom had escaped, and which led to the police raid.

It all begins to make sense, how we need to be observant and sometimes suspicious, quick to notice the strange and make further inquiries of the unusual. Everyone minding their own business to the point of snootiness and snobbery might well leave the innocent open to incomprehensible exploitation.

Curiosity is necessary

You wonder how neighbouring apartments to the sex-ring apartment could not have noticed the comings and goings, the strange faces, and much else. How is it that as we move into the city, we lose that sense of neighbourliness and the neighbourhood, the knowing and conversing with neighbours, not so much to intrude but to create community and some safety in looking out for each other?

It has made us aware that exclusivity and quite sometimes provides a veneer for respectability under which nefarious, notorious, or criminal activity might thrive with everyone none the wiser that like me, we were quite surprised that anything like that could be happening here. The fact is a lot is happening and because we are not curious or just indifferent, heinous crimes take root and thrive. If anything, always strive to know your neighbours and keep an eye out for each other.

Rewarding Malevolence

The Top 40

I had just about had it this afternoon when channel hopping I inadvertently switched to "The Music Factory" a music channel subsidiary of MTV to find out that De Tokkies [1] were at number 11 of the Top 40 charts with their tuneless and toneless contribution to the Christmas chart melee.

You may ask who the Tokkies are. [2] But before we get to that, it appears there is a degenerative development in society that I might have missed and when I found out, I was already a beaten up victim experiencing the norms of our times.

Wherefore Society?

My concern is the tolerance of everything to the exclusion of nothing, the inertia of law enforcement and the indifference leading on to the numbness of society to act where hardly decades ago this would not have been the case.

The Dutch as a people are globally viewed as tolerant friendly people; that, one cannot dispute, but the acceptance of the freedoms that allow for the tolerance of every expression even where it encroaches or obliterates another person's freedom is becoming a cause for serious concern.

I have already highlighted a number of those situations in earlier blogs about queues and queue-jumping, customer service, the electorate's enlightenment, the victim status of proponents of intolerance and the choosing of national figures.

The Tokkies

The Tokkies, yes, back to these chart-toppers, this is a family of at least 3 generations who had by the beginning of 2004 become the most anti-social family in the Netherlands. Their infamy was publicised on our screens a number of times, having been evicted from so many neighbourhoods for every unspeakable asocial activity imaginable. At one time they were hopeless, homeless and hapless and some motivational speaker of allegedly dubious means did at one time attempt to purchase a home for them.

However, a number of bright sparks have tapped on the enterprising and entrepreneurial flair of the Dutch {Remember they first started slavery, made their money and moved on before others caught on}[3] to promote this unwanted societal black spot as celebrity and before we knew it they were raking in money for all sorts of contracts, deals and now the Christmas song. They also have an Internet search page. [4]

Really, wherefore society?

Anyway, the issue here is how society is more accepting of asocial and anti-social behaviour to the extent that the more extreme this behaviour is, it begins to confer notoriety and celebrity, by the time we know what is going on, the self-same people who have refused to be positive contributory members of our civil existence are then rewarded handsomely because notoriety and popularity have become so synonymous they have both lost the measurable parameter of values and morals.

For now, I would reserve invective towards the people who have engineered the transformation of these misfits into rich but unrepentant people; it is both shameful and shameless taken in context.

However, the bigger picture is that society accepts its members; which it should, but it is failing in defining the norms of civility and the taking of liberties. It is promulgating flimsy laws that attempt to address lawlessness but failing to enforce those laws. The presence of laws, rules and regulations not enforced allow for the fabric of stable and normal society to be shredded with impunity. Even now, not many believe the police would rise to the job of crime fighting until it becomes public property seized on by vested interests with nefarious agendas.

Where is the lid?

I will still maintain that the Dutch are a friendly, interesting, tolerant people, however, what is happening as the evolution of society here and elsewhere needs to be arrested well before it gets out of hand. Unfortunately, the lid to this Pandora's Box is lost.

[1] The family no one wanted - Expatica.com
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=10384&name=The+family+no+one+wanted

For translations, you might find The Altavista Babel Fish Translator useful
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

[2] De Tokkies - Wikipedia NL - In Dutch
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Tokkies

[3] Chronology on the History of Slavery 1619 to 1789
http://www.innercity.org/holt/slavechron.html

[4] Tokkies Pagina - In Dutch
http://tokkies.pagina.nl/