Basic stuff

Ok, I said I'd pop back, and here I am. Well, actually here I am- within a mighty stone's throw anyway. Quite wintry, which I gather the UK is beginning to feel as well (Christmas passed with the usual lack of whiteness, apparently, as indeed it did here by and large).

But while surfing, I found an item which has been buzzing in certain Brit-blogs for a day or two now. PC Coetzee (not to be confused with JM, who 'constructs representations of people slipping their chains') has been doing too much pesky arresting. What struck me about it was the comment from Coetzee's Chief Inspector that gave as an example of this fault 'arresting people who have failed to appear in court'

That's why I so admire PC Coetzee- he enforces the law. He forces people to face the courts which their alleged crimes are said by British Parliament-passed laws to merit. Last year (04) I faced a court on about three occasions over one motoring case(when postponements are considered I actually readied myself to face it about five times- and part of this time while not even UK resident). I won my case, which was a minor one, without a lawyer. I don't think it should have taken that long; it certainly shouldn't have been postponed at all (due to lack of court time). The reason probably lies partly in the fact that many cases have to be scheduled but the defendants fail to show, thus creating chaos and an atmosphere of disorder throughout the system.

It's all about enforcement really. If they enforced the law they wouldn't need, and wouldn't be able, to have catch-all police policies that rely on convicting those who allow themselves to be convicted. They would then have the respect of all: the real offenders, who would understand that to offend is to be forced to face the law, and the generally law-abiding person, who would be less likely to be targeted just because of a mild temporary lapse (not my case, actually; I was innocent altogether, and proved to the court's satisfaction that the prosecution- shifty coves the lot- had no case) and would then consider a general policy of good-citizenship more rewarding.

Failure to appear in court is a crime fundamental to all others. It's basic stuff and the stuff of a basic law-abiding society. And the idea that a Chief Inspector can just dismiss it with a curt criticism of one of his best officers (from a community- the white South African immigrants- to whom we already seem to owe a debt for their expertise and uprightness) is just fairly sickening and equally predictable. The sickening part is that it's something that could so easily be addressed had not the liberloids their heads up their backsides. You know where people live (and soon you'll know it even better); they can't get away; yet you let them, to the detriment of the entire system.

Anyway, on the theme of the basics, Mark Steyn is remembering the Tsunami relief effort, and there seems to be this same lack of sense which has infected many aspects of the British establishment (see this sickeningly shallow nonsense masquerading as common sense as St Jack tells us Christmas cards are ok. Thanks Jack). It makes me ask whether this Christmastide we should not be asking whether liberalism (in the sense of treating certain majorities as though they were the real sponsors of iniquity, on racial or historical grounds, in defiance of actual racial or historically based data- with the corollary that certain minorities are either on historical or racial grounds to have a false reality cocooned about them) isn't actually a kind of virus which impairs the life-support system of a decent society and a sensible mind.