Love, love, love your writing. The state of our country is so horrendous but your descriptions have me choking with laughter - they're so laser precise. "The thin rainbow line" 😂 Concrete with the "shelf-life of milk" 😂
I hope you are going to collect these pieces into a book - it would be my Christmas present to everyone I know.
One more time I am utterly delighted by a column (Are these called columns that you write?) under the title "Low Status Opinions." And once again I am asking for the liberty of sharing this piece, in part or in whole, with my 1.8k FaceBook readership. Your stance — so elegantly stated and logically presented — is a refreshing break from the diatribes carried by the legacy media in the USA. I have been a professional writer for 45 years (corporate and political public relations) and have discovered the cleansing effect of your writing style. All that's to the good. On the negative end, the below average American has been led to believe that the British are intrinsically smarter than we are largely because of their collective accents (excluding Scotland). I am sorry to read that key agencies in your country are off arresting butterflies on charges of racism and transphobia, while other offenses are treated like mild virtues. How will this end? With London becoming the San Francisco of the Old World. You can look forward to that. Sincerely, Jack...
Hello Jack, of course, please share far and wide. I’m always looking for new subscribers. I don’t think London is quite San Francisco yet. I’ve read Michael Shellenberger’s San Fransicko, so I do have a sense of what has actually gone on there. We do however have the worrying first signs, homelessness and drug taking are tolerated, intervention is seen as ‘unkind’. Shoplifting gangs, no doubt inspired by scenes from America-Philly (?) this week, are popping up occasionally. Not on the USA scale at all. But it’s not heading in the right direction. Good to hear from you.
Glad you posted this about the abysmal performance of the UK police. It gets way too little attention from our politician class due to a fear, no doubt, of rocking the boat. Rant to follow.....The British are a sentimental lot and this has given long-failing institutions like the police (along with the NHS and the BBC) a free pass for way too long. The thing that riles me most though is that huge of amount of time - time that should be spent on putting police to work on the hard business of catching criminals - is instead dissipated on the cushy business of 'counselling' its victims. Also the pointless but cushy and mega time-consuming form-filling lark. (I used to be a teacher and I know from that occupation that, however much teachers say they hate the paperwork, when it comes to an actual choice between more paperwork or more class contact, most will choose the former whatever they claim to the contrary). Crime detection rate in the UK?...something like 5% isn't it? https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
Yes Graham. Without checking I think the detection rate is about 5%. I genuinely feel for the members of the police force who really just want to get on with the job. I’m sure there are many, many of them. I have heard many officers complaining that they are now see as glorified social workers. The form filling and literal box ticking can’t help with efficiency or morale.
Yes I too feel for the members of the police force who really just want to get on with the job. But...and it's just an instinct...and one can't prove this,.... I do suspect that three decades of a top-down police culture trying to be all nice and rainbow flaggy will have inevitably attracted the wrong kind of recruits into the service. I remember years ago reading an article where the journalist said something like this: "the police used to get criticised for being hard cases.....I wish!" I knew what they meant.
My father was a bobby on the beat in the 50's, 60's and 70's and that is exactly what he said when he left - 40 years ago now! That it was social work + paperwork.
Outstanding! I have read this piece numerous times. Your satirical style is exemplary, amusing and frightening at once. You were able to encapsulate so much of what is going wrong in our western society in one article!
And, identify much of the causes, bizzies doing nothing!
We have been invaded - a Trojan horse, body snatchers, marxists or middle easterners or those creepy WEF cultists- who knows for certain but they frogged us into changing the fabric of our lives.
I have been watching the censorship regime creep larger and larger into Britain. I worry for you all. For all of us. We still have the first amendment here but I must say it is being eroded slowly but surely.
We feel a great affinity with the British. I will tell you a rumor that could have truth.
America gets a lot of bad press for running around the world flexing our muscles and meddling where we don’t belong. Fair enough.
We can’t afford it anymore. Our government has taken our tax dollars and spread it all over the world like a big shot. They have ignored their own citizens, demeaned large factions who just want to be left alone.
We are being invaded by millions at the borders and will be bankrupt sooner than later by our government paying for their care rather than lifelong citizens who indeed pay the taxes for that care.
Another trenchant and entertaining article, Dominic - I always enjoy your writing.
Regarding the police's ability to solve crimes: several years ago I had a bike stolen from outside the Wetherspoon's at Tooting Broadway. (It was secured to railings with the kind of lock requiring bolt-cutters to circumvent, and, given the general footfall and the constant presence of smokers outside the pub doors ten feet away, it never occurred to me anyone would be so brazen; but you live and learn.)
I duly filled out the Met's online crime report form, including the exact post code of the location, only for it to ask me if there were any CCTV cameras in the vicinity. "Remind me again", I mused, "which one of us is THE POLICE? Y'know, the guys who know where all the CCTV cameras are? Perhaps you could...like...I dunno, find the location on a map and cross-reference it with the list of cameras? Just a thought."
Anyway, I revisited the spot, found a camera pointed slap bang at the railings, and supplied the info (as well as the two-hour timeframe during which the theft occurred). Within 24 hours this prompted a "sorry, there's nothing more we can do - case closed" response.
Thanks patrocles. Thats very kind of you. Yes they really don’t seem bothered do they? I have always been slightly sceptical of the whole ‘Broken Windows’ idea. That leaving low level crime unattended leads to bigger crime. But now I’m not so sure. We really do seem to have created an urban landscape where as Sadiq Khan- I think-said it’s just part of life in the big city. Just a couple of hours ago in Bloomsbury I saw two masked youths running out of a park and smashing up an obviously stolen phone, maybe they took it off someone filming them I dont know. No one did anything. Including me. They seemed to be carrying on with impunity. It was violent and shocking.
I'm in the US, and I'm sure you're exaggerating slightly for comic effect, but... sounds awful! Especially the surveillance state apparatus and the police enforcing the Rainbow Truth. Is it just primarily around London that is so hopeless, or the entire country?
Hello VeryVer. Thanks for taking an interest. It’s a tricky one. As I say to Jack above, London is nowhere near as bad as the worst of the American cities. But it does exhibit some troubling similarities. Especially under the woeful leadership of Mayor Sadiq Khan. As ever it’s an obsession with nonsense (air quality for instance which is better in London than it was before the invention of the motor car!) at the expense of the urgent-knife crime being the obvious problem. London is very much a mini country. But the rot is evident all over. The police examples I mention are mainly from the North of England. Scotland under the nationalist SNP government (think of it as federalised I guess) is a basket case. As is Wales. There are still plenty of very decent places to live. And as I say in the piece, most people are pretty OK if you take the time to talk to them, even in London.
Yes it does feel very 1978. I listened to a podcast featuring Frank Luntz doing a straw poll at the Tory party conference yesterday. Kemi Badenoch is a clear front runner among the Tory faithful. (They are SO racist right?) I wonder if she might be a Thatcher figure. And her election to leader while in opposition could be a 1975 moment? Britain remains a great country. If only our leaders weren’t so ashamed to be (supposedly) running it.
Love, love, love your writing. The state of our country is so horrendous but your descriptions have me choking with laughter - they're so laser precise. "The thin rainbow line" 😂 Concrete with the "shelf-life of milk" 😂
I hope you are going to collect these pieces into a book - it would be my Christmas present to everyone I know.
Ha Ha thanks Bettina. That’s something for me to aim for. Having said that, I do have a novel which I might publish via Substack at some point.
One more time I am utterly delighted by a column (Are these called columns that you write?) under the title "Low Status Opinions." And once again I am asking for the liberty of sharing this piece, in part or in whole, with my 1.8k FaceBook readership. Your stance — so elegantly stated and logically presented — is a refreshing break from the diatribes carried by the legacy media in the USA. I have been a professional writer for 45 years (corporate and political public relations) and have discovered the cleansing effect of your writing style. All that's to the good. On the negative end, the below average American has been led to believe that the British are intrinsically smarter than we are largely because of their collective accents (excluding Scotland). I am sorry to read that key agencies in your country are off arresting butterflies on charges of racism and transphobia, while other offenses are treated like mild virtues. How will this end? With London becoming the San Francisco of the Old World. You can look forward to that. Sincerely, Jack...
Hello Jack, of course, please share far and wide. I’m always looking for new subscribers. I don’t think London is quite San Francisco yet. I’ve read Michael Shellenberger’s San Fransicko, so I do have a sense of what has actually gone on there. We do however have the worrying first signs, homelessness and drug taking are tolerated, intervention is seen as ‘unkind’. Shoplifting gangs, no doubt inspired by scenes from America-Philly (?) this week, are popping up occasionally. Not on the USA scale at all. But it’s not heading in the right direction. Good to hear from you.
Superb summary of the state of our nation.
Thanks Ian.
Glad you posted this about the abysmal performance of the UK police. It gets way too little attention from our politician class due to a fear, no doubt, of rocking the boat. Rant to follow.....The British are a sentimental lot and this has given long-failing institutions like the police (along with the NHS and the BBC) a free pass for way too long. The thing that riles me most though is that huge of amount of time - time that should be spent on putting police to work on the hard business of catching criminals - is instead dissipated on the cushy business of 'counselling' its victims. Also the pointless but cushy and mega time-consuming form-filling lark. (I used to be a teacher and I know from that occupation that, however much teachers say they hate the paperwork, when it comes to an actual choice between more paperwork or more class contact, most will choose the former whatever they claim to the contrary). Crime detection rate in the UK?...something like 5% isn't it? https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
Yes Graham. Without checking I think the detection rate is about 5%. I genuinely feel for the members of the police force who really just want to get on with the job. I’m sure there are many, many of them. I have heard many officers complaining that they are now see as glorified social workers. The form filling and literal box ticking can’t help with efficiency or morale.
Yes I too feel for the members of the police force who really just want to get on with the job. But...and it's just an instinct...and one can't prove this,.... I do suspect that three decades of a top-down police culture trying to be all nice and rainbow flaggy will have inevitably attracted the wrong kind of recruits into the service. I remember years ago reading an article where the journalist said something like this: "the police used to get criticised for being hard cases.....I wish!" I knew what they meant.
My father was a bobby on the beat in the 50's, 60's and 70's and that is exactly what he said when he left - 40 years ago now! That it was social work + paperwork.
Outstanding! I have read this piece numerous times. Your satirical style is exemplary, amusing and frightening at once. You were able to encapsulate so much of what is going wrong in our western society in one article!
And, identify much of the causes, bizzies doing nothing!
We have been invaded - a Trojan horse, body snatchers, marxists or middle easterners or those creepy WEF cultists- who knows for certain but they frogged us into changing the fabric of our lives.
I have been watching the censorship regime creep larger and larger into Britain. I worry for you all. For all of us. We still have the first amendment here but I must say it is being eroded slowly but surely.
We feel a great affinity with the British. I will tell you a rumor that could have truth.
America gets a lot of bad press for running around the world flexing our muscles and meddling where we don’t belong. Fair enough.
We can’t afford it anymore. Our government has taken our tax dollars and spread it all over the world like a big shot. They have ignored their own citizens, demeaned large factions who just want to be left alone.
We are being invaded by millions at the borders and will be bankrupt sooner than later by our government paying for their care rather than lifelong citizens who indeed pay the taxes for that care.
It is all unsustainable. As in Britain.
Many thanks Deidre. Yes. As you say. Unsustainable, but I fear we will be bankrupted before that fact is acknowledged.
Another trenchant and entertaining article, Dominic - I always enjoy your writing.
Regarding the police's ability to solve crimes: several years ago I had a bike stolen from outside the Wetherspoon's at Tooting Broadway. (It was secured to railings with the kind of lock requiring bolt-cutters to circumvent, and, given the general footfall and the constant presence of smokers outside the pub doors ten feet away, it never occurred to me anyone would be so brazen; but you live and learn.)
I duly filled out the Met's online crime report form, including the exact post code of the location, only for it to ask me if there were any CCTV cameras in the vicinity. "Remind me again", I mused, "which one of us is THE POLICE? Y'know, the guys who know where all the CCTV cameras are? Perhaps you could...like...I dunno, find the location on a map and cross-reference it with the list of cameras? Just a thought."
Anyway, I revisited the spot, found a camera pointed slap bang at the railings, and supplied the info (as well as the two-hour timeframe during which the theft occurred). Within 24 hours this prompted a "sorry, there's nothing more we can do - case closed" response.
Thanks patrocles. Thats very kind of you. Yes they really don’t seem bothered do they? I have always been slightly sceptical of the whole ‘Broken Windows’ idea. That leaving low level crime unattended leads to bigger crime. But now I’m not so sure. We really do seem to have created an urban landscape where as Sadiq Khan- I think-said it’s just part of life in the big city. Just a couple of hours ago in Bloomsbury I saw two masked youths running out of a park and smashing up an obviously stolen phone, maybe they took it off someone filming them I dont know. No one did anything. Including me. They seemed to be carrying on with impunity. It was violent and shocking.
I'm in the US, and I'm sure you're exaggerating slightly for comic effect, but... sounds awful! Especially the surveillance state apparatus and the police enforcing the Rainbow Truth. Is it just primarily around London that is so hopeless, or the entire country?
Hello VeryVer. Thanks for taking an interest. It’s a tricky one. As I say to Jack above, London is nowhere near as bad as the worst of the American cities. But it does exhibit some troubling similarities. Especially under the woeful leadership of Mayor Sadiq Khan. As ever it’s an obsession with nonsense (air quality for instance which is better in London than it was before the invention of the motor car!) at the expense of the urgent-knife crime being the obvious problem. London is very much a mini country. But the rot is evident all over. The police examples I mention are mainly from the North of England. Scotland under the nationalist SNP government (think of it as federalised I guess) is a basket case. As is Wales. There are still plenty of very decent places to live. And as I say in the piece, most people are pretty OK if you take the time to talk to them, even in London.
Unfortunately can only say spot on
Just laughed out loud!
Thanks Maddalene. Good to hear!
A delightful summation of the current state of events. I have forwarded this to others. Thanks.
On form again.i laughed so hard, and for so long that I feel slightly injured. But in a very good way.
Sorry Lee!
Yes it does feel very 1978. I listened to a podcast featuring Frank Luntz doing a straw poll at the Tory party conference yesterday. Kemi Badenoch is a clear front runner among the Tory faithful. (They are SO racist right?) I wonder if she might be a Thatcher figure. And her election to leader while in opposition could be a 1975 moment? Britain remains a great country. If only our leaders weren’t so ashamed to be (supposedly) running it.