One of the finest one liners I have read in years

via Sadly No

Texan complaining about New Yorker Magazine;

"Those of us outside of that self-involved hemorrhage of land between the Hudson and East Rivers are simply part of a bitter and clingy “not us” to the magazine’s erudite familiars."

In reply;

Indeed, they should change the name of the magazine to something which reflects its urban parochialism.

Hell is other people

I was reading a post by Flying Rodent today, taking as his starting point an admittedly barking mad article by some right wing loony in America, claiming the ever disintegrating and redundant American left were engineering some sort of communist conspiracy to take over American life. I would find any suggestion that there is life in the very dead duck of socialism in the pond of American politics as to be little more than laughable; this article suggest not only is the duck breathing, but it's snapping the bread out of your hand, before going off to jack a Warburton's delivery van. It makes you wonder how someone like that can misread the world so badly, and how they manage to do simple every day tasks like order a beer.

But the point RD reaches is that writers, articles and websites full of this material pop up all the time - screeds and screeds of mindless, uninformed rubbish. Many had hopes that the internet would help bring into being a better system of news. Instead what we have is idiots cordoning themselves off into little online ghettos, and throwing bricks at anyone they disagree with. The problem of course is that if you do this, you just get dumber by the second.

That said, I'm not too bothered about it. Why? Because people have always been mad. In my line of work I have to talk to people who share a very different world view from my own. Think of the all the concious and unconscious decisions they would have to have made to get where they are, across that desk fro me. What are the chances I will be able to convince them that what they did was wrong, and that their reasoning behind their actions was wrong? Oh, I can get them to admit they are dishonest in a legal sense, but for most of the people I deal with, the law is pretty arbitrary. It's one thing to change someone's mind on one small instance of technicality - it's another to persuade someone their view of the world is skew-wiff. You are arguing against someone's learned life experience.

But you know what - many of the people I get in into that interview room I can get on with. Why? Because sometimes we both realize that it's just a human being sat across from us - flawed, sure - but human nonetheless. We talk football, weather, kids - you know, normal boring stuff. Not because we are interested, but because we don't want to be thought of as a total arsehole, we want to be liked, even in a small way. Little civilities like this are very important in our day to day life. If a boring old man starts havering away to us at a bus stop, we laugh and smile politely and look hopefully down the road. But we don't tell him to piss off.

Online, we flame each other without giving it second thought. We find people with similar opinions to our own with ease. There is no social barriers holding our behaviour back. All of which leads me to the following conclusion; the internet allows us to speak and behave as we wish to each other, but this is behavior most would not dare act out in public. Even those who quake in fear of the communist uprising in America can still politely order a beer without worrying if the barman is a closet red. Pre-internet we could live in ignorant bliss of these people's ignorance, now we can't. But it was probably always there.

Fraud: Part 2

If we were to grade the recent rash of controversies over MP's expenses, Derek Conway's effort was probably the most memorable. Just to remind us; Derek Conway paid his son, who was a student at the University of Newcastle, £40,000 as his researcher over 3 years. No records of the work his son did were kept, giving rise to the allegation that he did no work at all as a researcher. The Standards and Privileges Committee in Westminster judged that this was "at least an improper use of parliamentary allowances" or "at worst, a serious diversion of public funds".

What I would like to do here is to imagine that that there is to be a police investigation. This is not to say I believe Derek Conway is guilty of any misconduct. What I am interested as an excercise is seeing problems they would the police face - the sorts of evidence they would require, the processes they would need to go through. Remember what the definition of fraud is? By way of deception to dishonestly appropriate property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. If this was a straight theft case, you would first get the evidence that showed property was permanently deprived - e.g. your TV was stolen. But in fraud cases it isn't so simple. You have to demonstrate not only that property was taken which shouldn't have been, but that is was done 'knowingly'.

It's that 'knowingly' part that is the hardest, and it can only be proven with good, hard evidence. In Conway's case he could claim that his son did do the work, but that he hadn't thought to do any records of what his son did for him, essentially copping for the charge of negligence in following procedure. But let's say you want to prove the 'knowingly', and go for a higher charge, what would you need?

The fact that his son is at university in far off location helps. Derek Conway claimed that his son would go up and down from Newcaste "like a fiddlers elbow". The first thing you do is to interview Conway under caution (IUC)to get him to tell us more details about this. If he co-operates at the IUC, the questions you ask are how often does your son come down? How does he travel? Dose he always use the same form of transport? How often do you visit? Ultimately, it wouldn't matter what Conway said, the important thing is that the police asked it. If Conway turns round and tells you that his son always travels by train, ask how the tickets are booked - it's likely to be by card. If he says car, then check the mileage against what it showed on its last service - it's a long way from Newcastle to Conway's home constituency, and there will be debits at petrol stations to match that mileage, possibly even some on the journey home. If he goes No Comment, then it doesn't really matter. Anything Conway comes up with afterwards by way of an explanation holds little credibility. And even if Conway said that the way his son visited varied it should be okay - you have three years to look back through, there should be an obvious pattern.

If the police weren't satisfied with what they heard, then they could IUC the son, and see if the stories match. If they agree on a fabricated story together, when you conduct an IUC there will be cracks in the story miles wide. All it takes is a few questions, because the agreed story between two people is usually very simple, and lacking details. The story usually falls apart after a few minutes, and charges of conspiracy usually follow.

The police could also look at some of the research Conway's son was supposed to have done. First, you ask him to give examples of work his son has done. The fact he kept no record doesn't matter - this is where you are looking to catch him out. If he gives you some examples, then all you need to do is look into those. If he can't remember, then unfortunately, you will probably have to consider looking at every piece of research done in his office in the past 3 years, in order to rule out what the son couldn't have done. If Conway has any other researchers, firstly you pin down exactly what they did. You would look at linking certain queries to phonecalls made - a phonecall from a researcher matching to that of a correspondent's MP's letter, for example. And then once you have accounted for everything linked to those researchers, what is left could be that done by Conway's son. You would also want to spend some time with the researchers - get to know them one-on-one, chat with them, charm them. See what happens when you mention the son's name when everyone is out of earshot. What you want ideally is witnesses, but what would be equally useful is if one of them gives you an indication where to look. Or you could go in heavy handed and scare the willies out of them to get them to talk - whichever works. I tend to prefer the former myself.

As in all cases, it largely depends on what the suspect wants to do. Admission usually means lesser charges when you go to court (usually up to 30% off a charge if someone pleads guilty). Sometimes a chat between the defense and prosecution solicitors can agree a lesser charge in return for full co-operation - because it saves valuable police and CPS time. But if the police didn't get an admission and had to go out and get some hard evidence, they are far less likely to compromise at court. But I hope this post has given you some insight into the complications of an investigation - sometimes it's not just proving what they have done as what they couldn't have done. And it all relates back to what the defendant first told you - if you can disprove anything they said, then you have them.

Feeling the love...

...wih George Carlin.

I got the idea of posting this one when I was over at The Existential Cowboy today. He's got some clips of George back-to-back.

This was always my favorite of his, and as always with George, he uses lots of highly amusing to gags to make very important, subtle points. When it comes to discussion current affairs and politics, I always try to have this one at the back of my mind;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgps85scy1g&feature=related

Representations of Crime: Part 3

Crime, specifically violent crime, is back the media spotlight with Channel 4's slightly misjudged Disarming Britain Season (a little bit OTT on the moral urgency). A few high profile killings (here and here) have added to the current media focus. It's an emotive issue. For example, in an otherwise reasonably informative article, the BBC News Home affairs editor makes light of the statistics involved with reported stabbings and shootings. In short, shootings are down by 28%, whilst stabbings are up by 88%, from 95 cases to 179 reported annually. There are also regional variations - more being shot in Manchester, more being stabbed in London. But as it's also a Have Your Say column, have a look at what people are saying. As ever, it ranges from the interesting to the genuinly insane. Clearly the statistics showing complex patterns and no general rise of crime is not something that many people have much faith in.

In a study by Barclay, Tavares and Sidique in 2001 International Comparsons of Criminal Justice showed that, in fact, that London as a capital between 1990-99 had a fairly average homicide rate of between 2.2-2.5 per 100,000 (Belfast ranged between 5.23-18.5; Amsterdam 3.7-8.4l; Rome 1.22-2.9). In those years there was no discernable rise in the murder rate. In Micheal Levi and Mike Maguire's contribution to The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd edition, they list the following statistics;

• From 1981-1995, domestic violence more than trebled, mugging rose by half;
• For the period 1995-2000, the rate of recorded violence fell by more than a third
• Between the years 1998/9 and 2000/01, recorde violence has risen by 500,000 reports per year to 600,000 per year. Of this increase, 70,000 are offences of 'common assault', 'assault on a constable' and 'harrassment'. (page 810, Oxford Handbook of Criminology)
  

So here we have conflicting information, showing violence both increasing and decreasing for the same period. Here is evidence if ever you needed it not to place too much faith in statistics!

That said, if you abandon statistics, you are leaving yourself wide open to believe any old rubbish. One of my favourite anecodotes in relation to the fear of crime and the popular response to it comes from the end of the C18th. A Middlesex magistrate called Patrick Colquhoun, who in fact created a forerunner of the Met Police, decided at one point in his career that crime and degenerating morals were rising amongst the lower and working classes. He stated the cause of this was 'bawdy' ballad singers in pubs. He urged the government to suppress these singers, and promote more 'wholesome' ones in their place - essentially, replace Peter Docherty with Cliff Richard, and expect to see crime disappear overnight.

Gin Lane by William Hogarth

Today we would view the idea that 'bawdy' singers being responsible for the increase in later C18th crime as ridiculous. But are we not making similar judgments ourselves all the time? Read through the comments of the HYS column above, and you can see that we still seem still very much in love with the idea of a simple, intuitively reached solution to a highly complex problem.

As for me, the more I read, the more experienced I become, the more I understand - the less I seem to know! Statistics are only as good as the questions asked and the terms defined in each survey. But I'd probably trust some statistics over my own intuition. All of which leads me to the following conclusion: I won't be out of a job any time soon! ;-)

Representations of Crime: Part 2

I had been sketching out a few ideas for what to write about crime in literature, but hearing Open Book on Radio 4 today and some of the observations in particular from the two guests, writer John Banville and critic Marcel Berlins, I thought they were too good not to share with you all.

Speaking for myself, I find the current form and popularity of crime fiction very interesting indeed. Sure, there are good books and bad books, but it's interesting the way that there are many of them, and all so similar. Banville explained that when he writes crime fiction, it flows so much more easily than when he writes more conventional, more literary fiction. It's more or less plain English - always a popular one with the reader.

The observation, I think made by Marcel Berlins, was that the crime novel in its form is a popular tool to explore particular issues in society. This seems fairly logical - we want to investigate an issue in society, so why not make your main character an investigator? But the more profound point was this; in this country we live increasingly secure lives, free of much violence. And yet we turn on our TV and see images of violence all the time. This leads us to be fearful but also curious of it and the context the violence is in. So we want to read something that draws us into that alien, violent world and helps us to make sense of it.

Fraud: Part 1

It's a slippery issue to define, Fraud. I remember early on in my training having to remember a definition along these line; by way of deception to dishonestly appropriate property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? A little bit easier to remember is that it's just theft with deception thrown into the mix.

I thought I would talk a little about this offence, particularly given the increasing problems with MP's expenses which is causing so much public interest. But fraud is pretty much part of public life - and probably always has been. I remember some years ago visiting Lancaster Castle. I was surprised to learn that it is still a working prison and crown court today. It was a very interesting tour, and one the the things that struck me was a book they had on display in the drop room (where they hung prisoners). This book was a ledger of various crimes heard at the court sometimes in the early C19th. I was quite surprised to see that the majority of crimes were actually fraud. Offences ranged from coin trimming to insurance frauds.



Look at the above image of an old Roman Coin. See how rough it is round the edges. Well a 'trimmer' would take the excess off. Trim enough coins and you soon have enough metal to make your own, and without the original coins losing any value (I've struggled to find any sources on the net about this, so if anyone knows any links, please let me know and I'll add them in). Insurance fraud became particularly commonplace in towns like Manchester during the economic slumps - - unproductive mills and warehouses had an unnerving habit of suddenly going up in flames. So it's nothing particularly new, then.

When looking at a deception or fraud offence, the first thing you do is find out if a party was 'permanently deprived' of their property. If you at satisfied that they were, then you have to look at whether the deprivation was conducted 'dishonestly'. It is not just the act of deprivation that is important as much as the state of mind of the offending party - could it be judged that they were dishonest?

The test for dishonesty is Mens Rea (a very good explanation here) . At the top end of the scale you have direct intention - the deliberate planning and intention to deprive a person of their property. One down from this is oblique intention - no specific plan, but the offender was fairly certain of the consequences of their actions would result in deprivation. Next down is recklessness - the offender foresees what the consequences of their actions could be but doesn't take any measures to prevent it happening. The last one is that of carelessness or criminal negligence - they didn't forsee the consequences of their actions, but a reasonable person in their position would have.

Do you think that Mens Rea applies in the cases of the MP's and their expenses difficulties? Let me know! I'll post more on this later.

Representation of Crime: Part 1

I talked in a previous post about the difficulty many police and others involved with the criminal justice system have in relating their thoughts, expectations and feelings to those outside of it. It certainly is difficult, but by no means impossible. What I would like to talk about in this, and hopefully following posts, is about the representation in literature, TV and film of the police, the criminal justice system, and environment they work in.

Firstly I thought I’d like to talk a little bit about TV – crime and police dramas are huge entertainment. Crime drama, law drama, police procedural, posh country murders – there must be a dozen of these shows on TV in any one day. Of course, the quality varies hugely. Most British dramas with the odd exception (The Long Firm, Low Winter Sun) are, well, a bit light. At best we can say we have cornered the nostalgia market in posh country murders. Our police procedural dramas are little short of a well-known joke. Our shows often neither entertain nor come across as authentic.

It’s really the US that we look to for the best dramas on TV, best for entertainment, best for authenticity.If you want pop-corn for the eyes you don’t need to look further than the CSI franchise. It’s fast moving, flashy, exciting. I live for the droll pre-credit line; something along the lines of “the witness can’t talk, but unfortunately for them, the evidence can”. I could kiss the person who comes up with these.

The issue of authenticity is a tricky one because you don’t obtain it by direct replication - it's not as simple as that. No-one wants to watch an actual investigation - as per my previous post, most of it is boring. What you can do though is get the settings right, the characters right, their motivations right, and most of all, get the feelings right. When American dramas get it right as in Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire, you feel as if you are there, right there with them – there is no disbelief to suspend. It is hugely ambitious, aiming as high as it can artistically. The settings look real, the actors look and behave like the people who live there – the characters are often unlikeable and unsympathetic, you know, kind of like real people. Moral dilemmas are aired, ambiguity embraced. The Wire has been compared almost to a sociology lesson - a peon to a dying former working-class city. This is TV at its best - period - let alone the best crime drama on TV. But I'll come back in future posts to talk about The Wire, which more or less deserves it's own posting.

Homicide often achieves something similar with its interrogation scenes - you feel not just the realism of the crimes committed, the reaction of the criminal and the cops, but you also get to the root of the matter. Real interviews are considerably more boring, but in Homicide when Frank Pembleton rages at the suspect with raw angst - it is our angst, our disbelief, our anger at the injustice that people do this to each other, and often for the stupidest, most mundane reasons. It's almost got the raw intensity of theatre to it

This is why I think most British crime drama is a complete waste of time. We take most of our inspiration from Agatha Christie and produce tricky murder mysteries, though oddly enough, we often manage to distil out Christie’s acutely observant eye. It’s something to watch with family on a Sunday evening with the family, shortly after a re-run of Lovejoy. If The Wire is a challenging piece of art then British posh country murders are the intellectual equivalent of a sudoku puzzle – not wholly without merit, but a very momentary pleasure at best.

I'll come back to talk about this issue in further posts.

Wendy finally goes

So the inevitable has finally happened.

Even if she had somehow been cleared by the committee, she was a dead duck leader. Not once in her entire time as the leader of Scottish Labour has she shown much signs of even bare competence, let alone the sort of leadership you would expect. It was true that there were unrealistic expectations on her from the off, but there was not even the bare flicker of optimism that it would get any better.

Her resignation speech is a perfect example of how small-time this leader really was. Full of self-pity and aspiring to little more of an excuse than "it wisnae me, miss", she again demonstrates her perfect inability to get any political capital out of any given situation. A bit of grace in defeat often goes a long way to soften people's hearts - after all, there but for the grace of God go I - but to then turn round and claim that her predicament was somehow entirely the fault of the SNP pursuing her does tend to conveniently ignore that fact that she broke the law, plain and simple. The SNP were just playing politics - Labour would have done the same in their position, no question. However unpleasant it may have been for Wendy, it's the nature of the game she is in. And yes, as crimes go, it was hardly a biggie. But if you were caught for a minor infraction in day to day life and have to appear before the local Magistrates it always makes sense to be open, honest and unreservedly apologetic. Standing in the dock whinging about being caught just earns you everyone's contempt. And contempt is a hard thing to bounce back from.

But there's a much larger issue at play than Wendy's problems - what to do with Scottish Labour. They haven't enjoyed a decent leader since Donald Dewar. McLeish was a short-lived joke. McConnell's activity in office made glaciation look positively pro-active. Wendy's performance was part Greek tragedy, part The Office - dismally mundane failure. But it's not just the leadership. Scottish Labour's time in opposition has seen them grow a ferocious appetite for cannibalism. They do seem a lot more concerned in fighting themselves than the SNP. To become leader of Scottish Labour must now be a little like taking charge of Newcastle Utd - unrealistic expectations, no support from the people below you, a poor selection of players, and no ideas.

The mindless boredom of criminal investigations.

Zodiak, 2007, David Fincher

Hey, did you remember that part in the film where the SFPD were tying to obtain some evidence from a Sheriff's office in another jurisdiction, and it went back and forward between the police, the Sherriff's office, the attorneys, and so on and so on - you remember, the point in the film your eyelids started to close, and you began to wonder exactly which one of your friends suggested that you all see this film, and quite how this could be the same director who did Fight Club and Seven? And then the film ended with no-one being caught, and you still not knowing who did the murders? Yep - that's virtually every single criminal investigation ever, right there. Zodiac has been referred to as the most accurate representation of a police procedure on film, and not without reason. Investigations are BORING.

I'm a criminal investigator with a govt dept and have been for 6 1/2 years, so I am well versed in the frustration of investigating and prosecuting a case. To say it is challenging puts it mildly. Breaks in cases often happen suddenly - you spend the next two days chasing a lead. And then sometimes you go weeks without anything. You have to learn a huge amount of patience, and come to expect frustration and disappointment. Sometimes you just can't get the quality of evidence you need. Sometimes the suspects give you a hard time. Often, the witnesses you reply on to give you your primary evidence don't want to do it. Oh sure, there's the odd occasion that something genuinely exciting happens (interviewing suspects, surveillance). But do something exciting, and expect to be writing it up for hours afterwards, and then face the possibility of being questioned about it in court by a defense barrister. In this job, being too dedicated can sometimes come back and bite you in the bum. Thinking of a new way to deal with something is usually just finding a new way of getting into trouble. You are better to be cautious and patient, and work with what you have. And learn to start swearing creatively;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsnSVM1zM&feature=related

Show Zodiak to new police recruits before they sign the bottom of their application forms and we'd lose the entire force within a year or two - most people join the police for the action.


Hot Fuzz, 2007, Edgar Wright

If you look at police advertising campaigns like Could You? (http://www.policecouldyou.co.uk/index.php), it stresses the importance of making the right judgments at the right time - snap decisions that can make a difference. What it doesn't explain is the hours of paperwork, mindless procedures, having to see some of your cases fail either in or on their way to court, and ultimately, how you accommodate the criminals you deal with into your view of the world. Have a look for example at this well-known website;

http://www.coppersblog.blogspot.com/

Most of it is just the dull opinions of PC's whinging about 'bloody paperwork'. It's because it's not what they signed up for. But look closer, and you will see some worryingly reactionary articles.

I understand where they come from. Most people who join the police come from well-adjusted law-abiding backgrounds. For the first few years in my job, encountering endemic social problems and some entirely unsympathetic people committing crimes - and who sometimes get away with it - was a real shock to the system. A lot of it was naivety on my part - I grew up in a very nice middle-class town in the Scottish countryside. But there was certainly more to it - how to come to terms with seeing justice fail, and to see the work that I do make little or no difference whatsoever to huge social problems. And to compound the matter further, often the only people who understand the world you live in are other police or investigators. This daily brush with harsh reality turns most onto just another become PC Plodd, because it's the easiest option available - do as little as possible, and despise most of the people you deal with.

As for me well, I'm still liberal sort of chap. And I still like the job. There's a part of me which still wants to go out doing the crime fighting, but when I come up against a procedural wall or evidencial desert, I have to switch it off, and just not feel guilty. Mark Rufallo's character in Zodiac is in many ways the personification of every effective investigator or officer I have met. He takes a case as far as he is allowed to, and then goes home and switches off. The other alternative is vigilantism, which of course makes for great films. Though Zodiak does allow Mark Rufallo's cop the dignity of walking out of Dirty Harry in disgust.

Greetings

Thankyou for visiting! So what is this blog about? Well, it's basically just a collection of ideas and opinions on various topics I have an interest in. I like to write a little bit about politics, history, music, books, what ever takes my fancy.

I've been swithering a while over writing a blog or not. There is some excellent writing out there on the blogs I regularly visit, and I sincerely doubt that I can come up with anything quite as witty, interesting or informative on these just for example;

http://flyingrodent.blogspot.com/
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/ (http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/dotclear/
(http://gracchii.blogspot.com/) (http://www.exile.ru/articles/list.php?IBLOCK_ID=35&SECTION_ID=156).

For a while, the quality of writing I came across intimidated me away from even trying. I eventually came to the conclusion that I shouldn't really worry. If I write a load of crap, people will either tell me or stop visiting. Nothing lost, nothing gained. And if they don't like me, screw em' (latter insight aided by a few beers).

Anyway, a little about myself. I'm a criminal investigator with a govt dept, have been for 6 1/2 years. I'm Scottish, but have lived in the North of England for over 10 years now. I'm very happy down south in The North.

Politically I've always been somewhere on the left. I always remember my grandfather telling me the reason he voted Labour after coming home from the war. "It was simple - I could vote for the haves of the have-nots". This principle remained with me when I went to Salford Uni in 1997 to study history and politics. There as students we talked in pubs and clubs about social-democracy and how to roll back the tide of Thatcherite reforms from 1979. People still talked about marxism. I remember I had voted barely weeks before starting uni in Scotland for devolution; many of us were worried that it wouldn't happen, that the people of Scotland just would grasp the nettle (or thistle, more appropriately). Ask us politics students in 1997 what the struggles of the next decade would be, and just about the last thing anyone would have thought of would be the War on Terror and the erosion of our civil liberties. When we thought of terrorism in 1997, it was the IRA that came to mind.

How times have changed. The main items for discussion on the left today have moved away from this. Today on the left we are more concerned with an increasingly authoritarian govt, the divisive legacy of our involvement in Iraq, the struggle with anti-Americanism, some surprusing vitriol towards religion, the occasion public confessions of former lefties 'mugged by reality'. It's all rather strange. The differences between socialists, socialist-democrats, marxists, liberals and everyone else left of centre seems little more than academic quibbling today. It's just not on the radar of public discussion.

And yet my memory probably fails me. There was to be no rolling back of Thatcherite reforms in 1997, it was simply never on the cards. The 9/11 attack was probably an very unfortunate fluke, but the Middle East was still a powder keg, just waiting for someone to strike the match. Divisions and sub-divisions of lefty groups were probably doomed to irrelevance once the Soviet Union disintegrated as British conservative and American republican leadership claimed victory - an event long before 1997. It's so tempting to say 'I was there' about certain events, whilst probably missing the fact the the real turning point was many years earlier, when you hadn't been looking, or probably born.

Though I have an interest in politics, in my heart of hearts, history is my true passion. I'll be writing quite a bit about this over time. I'll finish this post by quoting one of my favorite historians, Marc Bloch. He was a leading French historian between the wars, and took up arms as a resistance fighter in WW2. He was shot by the Nazis in 1944. Anyway - this quote is what this blog is aspiring to.

"The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand."