Comments on: Lord Stevens Is Stark Raving Mad

By: Chris b

Chris b — Wed, 25 May 2005 05:05:00 +0000

The police obviously need guns to combat this new social menance. Look at America, the police have guns there and a great record on crime ;-)

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 24 May 2005 14:13:00 +0000

Someone got shot just round the corner from a Soho office I used to rent – she was the girl on the door of one of those clip joints which lures punters in by promising some kind of real-life Roman orgy, serves them glasses of flat lemonade which they drink while chatting to a "hostess" in the futile expectation that she might get her norks out at some point, but what invariably happens is that she disappears and is replaced by a large tattooed gentleman bearing a bill for several hundred quid.

For some inexplicable reason, one of said punters took umbrage and decided that a stiffly-worded letter to their head office might be insufficient to get his point of view across.

By: john b

john b — Tue, 24 May 2005 11:07:00 +0000

Indeed. There’ve been assorted shootings near where I lived in Manc and near where I currently live (a friend a mile up the road in Green Lanes once awoke to find a dead Turk on his doorstep), but these have all been drug-vendor on drug-vendor and therefore only of peripheral interest…

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 24 May 2005 10:59:00 +0000

There have been several shootings in my immediate area in the last couple of years, but that’s not an anti-social behaviour/youth hoodie problem. It’s a drug/gun crime problem. The solution is to legalise guns and drugs, and let battle commence. The survivors can form the crack equivalent of BAT.

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Tue, 24 May 2005 10:29:00 +0000

Last time I lived somewhere someone got shot near my road (not my actual road; but still Clapham) was when Thatcher was still in office and Michael Howard was Home Sec. Sopping liberals, the pair of ’em.

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Tue, 24 May 2005 09:44:00 +0000

Nine years since anyone waved a gun at me.

I was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land, Massachusetts, at the time, though (well, Cambridge, anyway), so perhaps it doesn't count.

(Actually, I prefer the original Greek Nephelokokkygia, though it's good in German, too: Wolkenkuckkucksheim. Almost Wagnerian, in fact. But the best use of the phrase is still Margaret Thatcher's, from 1987: ""Anyone who thinks the ANC is going to run the government of South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo-land.")

By: Lorna

Lorna — Tue, 24 May 2005 02:55:00 +0000

Where the hell do you live, John, that you seem not to be forced to notice this?

I live somewhere where I get home from work to find police everywhere and hear that four people have been shot at the end of my damn road. Maybe I'm just getting too old to understand the nefarious methods of the Youth Of Today (21 and over the hill. Woe), but I don't think the weapon in question was a frigging hoodie. I might feel a bit safer if the powers that be stopped diverting resources into moral panics about total irrelevances.

Besides anything else, wearing my hoodie = nobody can see my hair, face or figure = I don't get kerb-crawled by threatening fuckwits when I'm walking home. (Who are usually thirty- or forty-somethings in cars. They're the new teenagers in hoodies, y'know.) You'll prise it out of my cold dead hands. Also, when you've got this many bits of metal through your ears, any garment that covers them is a Good Thing in cold weather. Pink fluffy earmuffs look fabulous, but put too much pressure on my piercings.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 23 May 2005 18:14:00 +0000

You middle class liberals make me sick. Everyone knows that the true, "decent" working class want, nay demand, draconian penalties and authoritarian police powers, which is why they always vote Conservative, or something.

By: jamie

jamie — Mon, 23 May 2005 13:40:00 +0000

Hey John, whereabouts in Moss Side did you live? I lived off Moss Lane West for nine years until 1994.

Re, the subject I can confirm what Matthew said about crime from personal experience. It's been ten years since anyone pulled a gun on me. Maybe that's because I now live in cloud cuckoo land, M8.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 23 May 2005 12:04:00 +0000

Hence my belief that the whole Youth Crime Scare thing is cooked up by paranoid suburbanites who've never actually set foot anywhere inner-city and poor.

Either that or you dress like a chav (insert stereotype of your choice here) and don't look like you're worth mugging. ;)