The Way We Were - Scally Edition

Panorama investigates the Anfield Kop in 1964. Check out the number of ties (many), and the number of women (few). A different world.

Post In Haste ...

Bloggers4Labour is an excellent blog, bringing together the posts of a load of lefty bloggers who I might not bother reading individually (there being only 24 hrs in the day). Alex Hilton is to be congratulated on it - not a sentence you'll see very often here. Would that there were a rightish equivalent.

Seems to be a pretty broad church, too - quite a few "bloggers 4 labour" don't seem to be big Labour fans. I digress. Browsing the bloglines feed today, I raised my eyebrows at this piece by Labour councillor (in Scallyland) Louise Baldock, on the BNP crisis. My thoughts on the subject are still in gestation, as I don't know much about the internal dynamics of the dispute - whereas as a reformed far-lefty, I have no trouble working out where most of the actors in the Respect disaster stand.

It's changed a bit from the piece I read though. Ms Baldock has obviously had second thoughts. It now reads :

I wont be taking sides when one facist criticises another, but I will be jubilant to learn that the BNP is falling apart at the seams.

And when you represent a seat like mine with new immigration and lots of uncertainty about the pace of change then you have to be very sensitive and thoughtful to how this is managed. And believe me, it is not managed through fascism.

I sincerely hope it is years if not decades before the bastards can regroup.

A truly great day for community relations.

Whereas the original post (atom feed on bloglines) read :

I wont be taking sides when one facist criticises another, but I will be jubilant to learn that the BNP is falling apart at the seams. I am NOT on the side of the enemy's enemy, I KNOW they are not my friends. I hope you all die a long and slow and horrible death.

And when you represent a seat like mine with new immigration and lots of uncertainty about the pace of change then you have to be very sensitive and thoughtful to how this is managed. And believe me, it is not managed through fascism.

However what none of us need is for the BNP to stir things up even worse

I sincerely hope it is years if not decades before the bastards can regroup.

A truly great day for community relations.

I love that bit about being very sensitive and thoughtful. "She is also a member of the Christian Socialist Movement." You'd never guess.


(one other B4L post that raised my blood pressure - this review of the Pogues - of all people.

Overall, an excellent gig, only spoiled by the incompetent security failing to stop people smoking.

I'm not sure the Pogues are really the band for this blogger - unless they've changed a lot)

Boom Bang A Bang II

In my post on the Great BNP Bomb Horror I wondered why anyone would try to make gunpowder, given the availability of cheap multishot "cake" fireworks.

Would you believe it ? Scallyland has been at the forefront of UK improvised explosive device technology for at least four years.

Industrial fireworks are meant to be used to wow the public during professional displays, run by professional handlers. But on Merseyside, criminal gangs have been turning them into bombs, with devastating results. In the six months leading up to October 2004, devices attached to cars detonated outside three police stations in Liverpool. Debris from one of the blasts flung over 100 metres, and it's the power of the explosives that is causing concern with police and residents.

By "industrial fireworks" they mean the large display-type devices, ususlly only available from specialist shops . But cheaper cakes have their uses in the growing "informal vandalism" sector of the Scally criminal economy.

The availability of the fireworks has lead to attacks being spread beyond organised crime and onto the streets. Chief Superintendent Paul Forrester admits the use of firework bombs is becoming almost a regular occurrence around Liverpool. "You'd be a lucky resident living in this area not to have seen some of the damage caused to street furniture such as phone boxes and post boxes".

A New Age of Voyeurism Opens

A day after a senior police officer warned of an ''Orwellian situation'' with cameras on every street corner, Merseyside constabulary launched a remote-control helicopter to track criminals and record antisocial behaviour.

The micro-drone is only 3ft wide, weighs less than a bag of sugar and can record images from a height of 1,600ft.

I look forward to the forthcoming court cases just as soon as they've worked out how to point the camera through bedroom windows.

Underclass News

From Scallyland.

A woman was treated for multiple stab wounds today after she was attacked by a seven-year-old boy. Sara Corran was in a female neighbour's home in Norris Green, Liverpool, when they began to argue. The neighbour's son is understood to have grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed Ms Corran in the buttock, leg and arm. She was taken to hospital by ambulance, where she remained today. Her injuries were described by police as "serious but not life-threatening".

The two women, both single mothers, live in opposite terrace houses in Norris Green.

Neighbour Maureen McGee said she believed the boy acted to protect his mother. She said: "[He] is a mischievous little boy, like all young lads ..." Another neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: "[The women] are good friends but they argue and fight a fair bit when they have a drink together."

Benefit culture - you get what you pay for. Norris Green is of course the home of the late lamented Smigger.

Killing Wales

One of my hobbyhorses is the way the M40 and A55 are helping to destroy Welsh culture - as hippies in the South, scallies in the North, and retiring English everywhere take advantage of the improved communications to move in and price out the locals.

And here are the hippies - Steiner school types to a man or woman, I'll be bound, planning a new settlement in the occupied West Bank (of the Severn).

While in the North, the great Dalrymple writes of the A55 and mourns the death of innocence.


UPDATE - Welsh Labour and Plaid debate the really important issues.

UPDATE II - I've added a sidebar link to Cymuned (English language version), who are campaigning against the slow-mo ethnic cleansing of Welsh Wales.

Best

We were at a non-league match this afternoon, and there was a minute's silence before kick-off.

You might not have heard a pin drop, but you could hear the nearby traffic. Someone coughed about fifty yards away. Otherwise, not a sound from 800 people. Everyone in the stands was on their feet.

The silence seemed to go on for more than a minute. A church clock a quarter of a mile away struck three. Still silence.

Then the referee blew and the whole ground burst into applause.



Meanwhile, at Maine Road, those lovable scallies ...

Only In Scallyland ...

Four council workers from Merseyside who allegedly used CCTV cameras as a "peeping tom" tool have been charged with voyeurism.

It is claimed the men, who worked for Sefton Council, pointed a street safety camera into a woman's flat.

As we know, banning hoodies is a ridiculous knee-jerk reaction to a perceived rise in anti-social behaviour, driven by a Daily Mail agenda and a longing for a lost golden age of low crime, which never of course existed.

Whereas wearing a fez is an affront to Turkish democracy which no sensitive and civilised traveller should consider.

I'm not sure how many sensitive and civilised people are travelling to Istanbul. A better way to discourage the fez might be to say "remember what happened to those Leeds fans".

Talking of which ....

"A Turkish court has ordered the release of the main suspect in the fatal stabbings of two Leeds United fans in Istanbul five years ago.
The court agreed to release Ali Umit Demir pending his retrial because of recent changes in Turkish law passed as part of Turkey's bid to join the EU.

Demir was due to have left the prison on Monday, his lawyer Ozkan Ozmen said.

His conviction for stabbing Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight in April 2000 was overturned on appeal in 2003."

His conviction was overturned because it could only be proved that the blood of one of the deceased, not two, was on his knife.

Good to see that Turkish justice is fast becoming as effective as our own.

Sentimental Scally-Slapping Scandal

The good hearted folk of Liverpool are up in arms. Again. Because of this.

I particularly like the comment of Adam Barber from Islington.

"I expect the same will happen to The Spectator as it did to The Sun after their Hillsborough coverage, Liverpudlians boycotting the title."

They'll no longer be queuing up in Skelmersdale and Croxteth on a Thursday morning then. Hackett and Thomas Pink are bracing themselves for the fall in sales.

Only In Scallyland ....

Stolen bike collides with car, which then crashes. The car driver runs off. Car's been stolen too.

Elsewhere ...

what's worse behaviour in a police officer - this or this ?

Greater Manchester Police are checking for racist text messages.

"They are alleged to have used the word n****r on their mobile phones."

Probably just swapping the lyrics of Mobo winner Kanye West, who also has an interesting take on implied consent.

Why them girls figure no means no ?
No means no just as sure as green means go