Who am I? What happened? I shouldn't even be here.

.............But as for myself, I always wanted to join the Royal Navy. As a kid I'd be drawing ships, I could i/d most ships of the RN (we had more than a few in those days) and I could sketch a mean Fairey Swordfish (I'm not THAT old btw). I applied at the same time my best pal applied for the Air Force (same recruiting office) I was contacted for consideration of an officer cadetship, was interviewed, got the offer but it was conditional on me staying on at college to finish my engineering diploma (they'd have paid me!) and that's when it happened....somebody hit me on the head and 3 months later I woke up in the Metropolitan Police Cadet Corps. Hey ho, I might have gone down, badly, in the Falklands..... or anywhere. You just never know what our elected politicians might have plans for.

 We're never at the briefing when our fate is being planned. I'm lucky I'm typing this.

The application of justifiable force

During my previous life as a police officer,  I was one of a very small group of people that have the right to lay hands on a fellow citizen, under circumstances that are governed by the law. This action is in effect an assault, the application of force to the person of another without their consent. It is only particular circumstances that make this act lawful.

 As a police officer I always felt, and still believe, that if you ever got used to this and took it for granted, you had lost something. On a slightly different tack, colleagues would often say that they were never bothered by death and that they were `used` to dealing with death and its detritis. I never was. It was familiar to me, death in all its forms, be that violent or peaceful, from babies to the very old, but I never got used to it in over 30 years of service. I got used to dealing with it, but I never became indifferent to it.

The application of force is a normal part of the job. It can be exhausting. I always felt that most people never realised that. These people found out.

The Long Goodbye - Requiem

Au Revoir mon Brave, mon ami,

"Neptunus Lex" 
Gaotha Aonach agus farraigí seo a leanas, Captaen

Interment

 The next post on this Blog will appear on Tuesday, March 27th 2012 at 2100hrs BST, 1300hrs Pacific Time,  precisely.

This was not a premonition

What was it we were discussing yesterday about automatic weapons, borders and stuff? Look out, the Chechans are coming? No, they're here.

Something very suspicious

The right to self defence in the UK is very much enshrined in case law. That means there is no specific formal statute that lays down an easy to follow continuum of force so that us citizens can carry an abridged, wallet-sized aide memoire version of it in case we need to get ugly with some pain in the arse who is hassling us or wandering about the neighbourhood looking suspicious.  NB: Hard to find a legal definition of `suspicious` too. Not so in Florida, so it seems.

English law does sort of define this in respect of the offence of assault, creating a rather nebulous guideline that suggests when an assault on the person of another may be deemed justifiable ie. in self defence, defence of ones property etc. but all it says is that the force used must be reasonable and proportionate. Perhaps keeping it simple is the right way to go? The litmus test is usually left to the courts to decide but in all cases hitherto, the law Lords have always expected there to have been a degree of retreat until it is not reasonable to retreat any more, before force to defend is applied. As for defending the homestead, I always explained to my students that if the householder clobbered the burglar on the way in,(that's reasonably clobbered) there would be a far better chance of having it deemed justifiable than if the clobbering took place as said burglar was exiting the premises, as far more explanation would be required. I always had my own reasons and excuses well sorted in my mind, well in advance of any encounters.

 It is, therefore, a very bright, nay blinding spotlight that currently focusses on this.  And to cap it all, the very last thing that the community over there needs right now, in my humble opinion, is this.

I hope the Home Office's bright young reforming things take this into account when they sit down together and plan the re-structuring of the police service, especially the bit where they want to offload some of it to privateers.

I also hope old Clem, our local neighbourhood watch co-ordinator, doesn't get any ideas. The last thing the village needs is a lone wannabe avenger patrolling with his pitchfork and rabbiting lamp.

First the Euro........

Another mad murdering criminal bites the dust in Toulouse. Just heard the questions from Sky News's man near the spot posing the interesting question, `where did he get all those weapons and how was he allowed to travel so freely?`

That's a question that was often posed during the Thatcher years, and she took some stick for her views.