please empty your brain below

Yes but look how low he has got your cholesterol level, never mind the crime level!

Dear Mr D. Geezer,

Please take the following prescription to ensure that your sight (of insidious criminality all around) is restored.

Evening Standard (BoJo's "The Londoner") x3, daily, forever

Your sense of fear and hatred of your fellow Londoners (except they're not really like us, are they, we drive everywhere and live in west london or barnet or somewhere green and leafy) will increase manifestly.

Oh behalf of
Dr Bozza Enterprises

Oh God, bring back Ken. Please.

==The Mayor has correctly recognised that Londoners are a bunch of screaming wusses==

....clearly, as they voted for him.

But the underlying message is clear - the presence of officials (polis or otherwise) tends not so much as to reduce crime but to increase the 'feel safe' factor. Like DG, I do think twice about catching the bus; for me its Underground/Overground or walk. After the Kings Cross Underground fire there was a noticable increase in uniform presence all over the underground. Yes it tends to come and go but over the last 3 or 4 years its very rare to travel on the underground and not see a uniform. Mind you its always a good sport to watch the rail cops pulling some smart suited city type when the drug dogs have picked up a scent of some illegal!

Excellent. Well put DG.

I dunno - I think that addressing fear is, politically, just as important as dealing with the issue that is feared. Boris and his advisers are an astute bunch and recognised this.

Oh, and look out for the barrage of mail from the disgruntled Specials that you've offended - they are real police officers and have the same powers are normal constables, even if they aren't paid (or only paid a pittance). Unlike the PCSOs, who are paid but don't have any powers. See http://www.policespecials.com/wh...com/
whatisa.htm


Good piece. I see you are daring us without irony flags these days

Whenever I see police officers stationed somwhere where they wouldn't already normally be a part of the scenery, I think "oh oh, what's so scary about this place then?". If anything, sometimes the mere presence of uniforms *creates* a climate of fear.

I wonder whether these will just be nine-to-five police officers or whether they will stagger their hours so that there's always a presence?

Around here there's plenty of police/PCSOs during the morning and evening rush, where there's no trouble other than a few screaming schoolkids or someone who forgot to touch out, but come dusk when youths are more likely to spend the evening on the bus all the safer transport teams are at home watching Eastenders (or at least that's what it appears).

I'd expect that most of the trouble on buses occurs far away from the major bus stations so it will be interesting to see whether this actually makes any difference.

I know the Met Police keep a monthly check on crime stats relating to transport hubs - perhaps it is about time they started doing something about it? Have they been asking for the resources to do so and been refused? Or is the problem more insidious than that? Who knows....please tell.

Can I just take this opportunity - as someone who grew up under Ken's monstrous regime of yoof terror - to apologise for all the times I personally contributed to the atmosphere of shadowy fear which DG correctly portrays on the buses.

Looking back, I actually feel pretty ashamed at the way I behaved, particularly as part of a group. We used to stand at the side of the street menacingly, raising our arms as a bus came by as an insidious threat of violence if it did not stop. Boarding the bus, we even felt so impervious to the law that we would expect to be carried for free, even though as unemployed students we clearly had access to the same... nay, probably even *greater* financial resources as other passengers, or 'adults' as we derisively called them.

Oh and the shame of it - the way we'd sit at the top of the bus talking in rather louder tones than a hushed whisper. And sometimes, at our most deviant, we'd play a game whereby we singled out an elderly or frail person and jump up intimidatingly next to them, practically forcing them to sit down in the vacant seat as a pure symbol of our domination.

But that was then and this is now. Perhaps it would go some way towards making up for my crimes if I was to leave the buses altogether: the whole concept is pretty flawed anyway. If everyone just purchased and drove their own vehicle along our roads we could be rid of this problem in an instant, and it would be a safer, more wondrous world for all.

There's only one thing to do to keep these boisterous, aggressive thugs off our buses. Forget extra policing - they will just ignore it.

Take away their bus passes! Make them use their zimmer frames instead to get where they want to go.

And the best of Boris luck!

Strangely, I feel a whole lot safer when there is a visible police presence around. Small Local Town now has 6 CSOs and 4 council-paid wardens, working shifts.

They're always around, and are for the most part (since I complained about two of them especially )polite, friendly, and have made a real effort to get to know the locals, without being officious. It feels like the Good Old Days again.

But then I suppose Small Local Town was a very Boris-Type area, until the London overspill arrived with all the new housing forced upon the area by Golden Brown and his cronies.

The new official presence is keeping them in order here, so maybe it will keep them in order in their own city...

oh dg....

whence the sarcasm flag?

I do find your BoJoWatch amusing, except for the fact that this one really hits a nerve.

When I shared the Metropolis with you, I didn't live in the most salubrious of areas. I was wary, but never afraid. Until the night I returned late on a busy bus from a friend south of the river.

I was witness to a kerfufle between some rowdy teenagers and a middle-aged man, which resulted in the man pulling a knife on startled passengers. As he waived said blade randomly I weighed my options up. Leg it past the flashing metal to the dubious safety of Brixton streets or risk being party to carnage on a double-decker.

I took my chance and lived to tell the tale, but coming within inches of a nasty stabbing certainly changed my view of bus travel. I am not ashamed to say I became very afraid of traveling alone. Especially on buses.

So I do understand the reason why people might feel reassured by extra staff on buses and at interchanges. If it makes people feel safer and increases bus use, the all well and good. If it fuels the ES right-wing fire, then not so. But on the whole, there's a definite balance to be found.

Your prospective next Labour MP (Rushanara Ali: female, Bangladeshi, very well spoken) was on Woman's Hour this afternoon.

In case you want to listen again and do some advance research... Sounded more like a Conservative to me mind.

>>Sounded more like a Conservative to me mind.

As many have already intimated (including yourself DG), its perception of crime rather than the reality.

True there are a mindless few (I will refer to them as "chav's") who will behave threateningly, often violently, carrying knives etc. etc., but the vast majority of those on public transport (& I include younger members of society in this sweeping statement) are law abiding and decent. The real crime often is one of terrorism, committed often by sub-standard (pun intended) reporting of some elements in the press. It sells more newspapers and satisfys the editor/owener/shareholders to tell London commuters that every young person getting in a bus/tube wants to stab/rob everyone in sight.

Violence does happen against decent people (the events of the last Saturday proves this), however this is in the vast, vast minority of cases and far more often bad things happen to bad people (drugs being the common motivator here).

BJ wants to promote himself as London's saviour - don't measure him now.... do that in 3 years time before his campaign for re-election in 2012!!!

The thing I can't understand is...the powers are already in place to deal with anti-social scum, whether on public transport or not. So why haven't the old bill been dealing with it already, regardless of the buffoon that's just been elected into City Hall. Or is it just that one good turn deserves another? You ever seen a copper actually live in the inner-city beat it patrols? And it was the doughnuts from the borsi loving outer doughnut that elected the dooghnut...

Specials are real police, and you can't tell them apart from the paid ones. They get full powers, and the same uniform as full-time Police Officers.

DG - perhaps you should read this news article. http:/
ews.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/engla...don/
7408998.stm


Locking a bunch of thugs on a bus with the passengers? Yeah, great.

Indeed - the tactics are possibly dubious - but it does show that it's more than a fear.











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