What a doughnut

The first of the looters in Manchester are being hauled before the beak this week. Now down in the smoke it was kids kicking in the windows of Currys and strolling off with a Sony Bravia. Not in Manchester:

A man who helped himself to doughnuts from a Krispy Kreme shop during riots in Manchester city centre has been jailed for 16 months.

Apparently his excuse was he was hungry:

He was not involved in rioting but took the doughnuts because he was hungry, having spent his money on tobacco

oh and before he bought his tabs:

Thomas Downey, 48, was released from HMP Manchester at 19:30 BST on 9 August when he became caught up in the riots. The serial offender went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous before downing a bottle of sherry.

That 12 step programme is working a treat I see.

According to the article on the Beeb's website this bloke has over 100 convictions for 233 offences.

You know I try to feel sorry for people like this, I really do (deep down I am actually quite a caring dragon) but I have to ask myself wouldn't it be better if people like Thomas and the few thousand other Thomases out there, you know the 0.1% of the population that cause 95% of the trouble, could just be put somewhere away from the rest of us? Hell give them access to booze, drugs and 24/7 porn or something but isolate the infection so the rest of us can just get on with doing our everyday stuff without Mr Sherry and Doughnuts wandering into view and kicking off on a booze and sugar rush.

Mind you the one man I do not have any sympathy for is this loser:

Father-of-four Anthony Winder, 38, looted the Swarovski Crystal store and smashed a display cabinet to get an ornamental dog, the court heard.

You actually wanted a Swarovski crystal dog? You deserve to be executed for crimes against taste.

Showers, moderate becoming cabbages later

... Channel Light Vessel Automatic: south west variable 3 or 4, 1012 falling slowly, showers, good...

You know you are up far, far too early when the comforting ritual words of the Shipping Forecast are on Radio 4 as you drive to the station. So why am I up at crack of sparrow-fart today. Well for a start it's August and that means everyone on the team who has rugrats absolutely must have a couple of weeks off with their spawn. Consequently those that don't like me end up holding the fort whilst the Project Manager, Team Lead and one of the senior developers bugger off en famille to Lanzagrotty, Disney World in an American Swamp or Bournemouth respectively. Even the intern has buggered off for the week as he needs to resit a couple of exams he cocked up. So its down to me to be the "senior manager" (hah!) on the ground to mop the fevered brows of our traders should they take a dislike to the particular shading of an "OK" button on any of our applications this morning.

So there I am on the train, another wage slave, with a few other bleary-eyed companions trundling through Cambridgeshire in some clapped-out carriage we'll all have to pay 13% more for next year.

Now I don't know if you know the area between Ely and Cambridge, it's called "The Fens" and up until the 1800's it was just marsh, bog and shifting rivers. Then the happy collision of a clever Cloggie called Vermuiden and a load of free labour in the shape of prisoners of war from the little spat we were having with Napoleon came together to construct drainage channels (and these are no mere ditches, one is called "The Hundred Foot River" because that's how wide it is, it's 18 miles long and straight as a die, you can see it from space) and turned the area into fertile, productive land to feed the growing cities of the 19th century.

It was this I was bimbling through now. Flat as a pancake and acre upon acre of every kind of salad crop you can think of. It was before 6am and already there is plenty of activity; these big rectangular tents on wheels moving back and forth which house the pickers and packers working the rows of lettuce.

And I can tell you now every single of those will be from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, anywhere but here.

I don't begrudge them the work, they work bloody hard; the ones I've met in the market towns around here, Wisbech, Downham Market, Ely, are all polite and don't cause any bother.

But why the hell am I paying for a whole fecking underclass of zero-achievement ferals who have a sense of entitlement but no sense of responsibility who right now are tucked up in bed sleeping off the booze, dope and a hard night's looting of the local branch of JD Sports whilst I'm hauling my green scaly tail into London at 5 in the bleeding morning? There's work out there, tons of it, but it's been done by the aforementioned Eastern Europeans. Take a look at this from the Telegraph today

This is just not bloody on. If the state is to have a role here it is as a facilitator and broker. You have no job but you are fit and healthy, well here's a job, 50 hours a week picking cabbages. Here's your bus fare, your new employer will sort out some temporary housing.

What's that? It's demeaning? How are you supposed to use your DJing and Hip Hop dance skills in a cabbage field? Well fucking boo-hoo, let me call the whaaaaaambulance for you. Walk off the job and no money for you matey.

But you're unemployable because you perpetually skipped school and the only way you know how to talk is in a language that is a cross between pseudo Jamaican patois and the sounds a rutting pig makes? Just how much do you need to communicate to be able to pick a lettuce?


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PS: Welcome to everyone who's arriving here from Old Holborn's blog and a big thanks to the masked maker of mischief and all-round thorn in the side of government for the link.

Haunted by the ghost of Macpherson

So now we cower in fear of a bunch of 100 or so teenage hoodies smashing up the place and nicking phones and tellies.

Well we let it happen, you and I. Sure some black kid got stabbed by a bunch of white thugs and plod make a horlicks of the investigation and so along comes the Macpherson report and lo and behold the police are "institutionally racist" and for years afterwards it's diversity this and kid-gloves that, maybe it needed to happen but it went way, way too far. Then along comes NuLabour with a new law every 32 nanoseconds and anyone who so much as raises his voice at anyone doing wrong or breaching the peace is descended on like the proverbial ton of bricks and hauled away as the miscreant.

"The police will protect you," we were told, "do not get involved, call the police, that is what they are there for, they're trained you see and have been on the relevant diversity and health and safety courses and wear florescent jackets. You, citizen, are not qualified. And don't you even dare think of arming yourself to protect your life, family and property. Trust in us, the police will be there."

Only now we see that Faustian bargain was just that. The police aren't there, they're not going to help, they will not stand there and protect your property or your life. Sure they might trawl facebook when this is over and nick the few mouthbreathers who were stupid enough to put "this is me an' me mates looting PC World innit" photos online but that's scant comfort to the asian corner shop keeper who's seem his livelyhood taken from him by the feral youth that decades of softly-softly policing, lefty pandering to the feckless, celebrity above talent and hard work culture and, quite frankly, not one us feeling we are able to stand up to insolent and loutish behaviour has created.

The scumbags perpetrating these mass lootings don't just think they are immune, they know they are untouchable. There are no consequences, even if caught they'll jet some token community sentence and an ASBO badge of honour.

This has, I would posit, gone too far for any remedial tinkering by our spineless politicians. If we want our communities back we will have to fight for them. What you won't see in the mainstream media today is the reports of mainly Turkish shopkeepers arming themselves with baseball bats and banding together to protect their businesses. Of 400 mainly asian young men fighting off 100 or so mainly afro-carribean youths in East London who were set on looting and causing mayhem. You need the very tools the rioters themselves use to get these stories.

We do have an answer. It's quite an old one, dates back to 1791 and it goes like this:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

I predict a riot

Well we have riots, recession and a Tory lead government so I guess all we need now is for OMD and Duran Duran to be back in the charts and it'll be just like that '80s

I find it rather telling that the good citizens (ha!) of Tottenham can get all antsy and smashing up the place when The Babylon put a cap in one of their local criminal entrepreneurs but when said criminals are shooting each other up then you don't hear a bloody peep from them. And what is it with rioters and looters, I mean you live there so why do you trash your own streets and shops? I mean I've been to Tottenham and it is a complete shithole so I'd be surprised that this morning apart from a few shoe boxes formerly containing trainers scattered around the high street anyone would notice a difference but why not nip down the road and smash up somewhere else?

And why on earth of all places did you want to loot a branch of discount carpet retailer Carpet Right? What the feck got into your head that said "I want justice, I want an end to police brutality, and I want a free roll of axminster for my granny's flat"

Apparently they queued up to loot JD Sports. Well we may be having a riot but we never forget we are English and queueing up is what we do.