UK: Gypsies smash £5m police helicopter w/ axes in revenge for 'spy' flights

DailyMail.uk ^ | 14th May 2009 | Daily Mail Reporter

[the scotsman]

Nothing to do with a ‘need’.

You are spectulating. I am stating that there is no evidence at all for your assertion. In fact, your historical and archeological evidence is completely the opposite. The idea that the Picts were wiped out by some 6th century plague is simply nonsense. Or any kingdom in what is now Scotland. Or the rest of Britain.

The Picts existed as an entity until the mid 9th century. FACT.

As a BA Hons in History from Glasgow University, I think I have some confidence in stating this.

[the scotsman]

edit: The line ‘your historical’ should of course read ‘the historical’.

[muawiyah]

You guys have even been messing with Wikipedia ~ amazing that you now claim Picts renamed Alba as Scota, which is the name of the great mother goddess worshipped by the Celtic people who traded up and down the Mediterranean in ancient times and finally settled NW Spain, and moved on to Ireland.

The Milesian people named Scotland "Scotland", not the Picts.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Answer my question you silly nit.

Patience, patience. Some of us have real work to do.

> Why is it okay for you to run around the streets stopping violent crime on your own and yet you dislike the police for stopping crime?

I don’t dislike police stopping crime. I wish they would do it more often, rather than working toward swelling HM Treasury with petty speeding tickets.

But in general it would be true that Police do not often stop crime at all: they can merely investigate crime once it has happened and once a complaint has been filed, and then go try to catch the perpetrators. The deterrent effect of a couple of police in a squad car is about zero.

Unfortunately, in this particular case of the Gypsies it is quite unclear that they were doing anything like “stopping crime”. At best they appear to have been causing a criminal nuisance — flying their helicopter low over a residential neighborhood. And doing it over and over again: in at least one case, at 10PM when kids are likely to be asleep.

I’m assuming as a “profiler” you went thru Police College. Can you think of any other plausible explanations to to facts as presented by this story? I sure can.

> Did they turn you down?

I have always been a lifelong civilian, with no aspirations toward being a police. I took up my voluntary role when it became plain that the police were under-resourced and incapable of preventing crime in my town.

Every good citizen has a responsibility to deliver some of the outcomes he expects from the community in which he lives. In my case, one of those outcomes is living in a community safe from crime. That, to me, was the price to be paid for living in a good community. It is Good Citizenship.

There was a clear and present need to establish regular foot patrols — something the police do not do — and that is precisely what I did.

> Did they laugh at you and hurt your little feelings?

We enjoy an excellent working relationship with our police, and with the public in general. And we have much more fun and achieve much more useful outcomes on Patrol than you’ll ever achieve profiling.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Interesting that you’ve convicted the police of abuse of their power without giving them anything close to the same benefit of the doubt.

It is. But I did so based on the information presented by the story. In much the same way that you have convicted the Gypsies of theft without giving them anything close to the benefit of the doubt.

That two intelligent FReepers can read the same story and arrive at two completely different conclusions demonstrates to me that there is possibly more to this story than the British MSM have let out.

“Blame-the-Gypsies” is an age-old strategy in Britain, so old it’s nearly fossilized. Can you think of any other plausible reasons why people might want to move-along-or-arrest a group of Gypsies? I sure can. At least a half-dozen reasons off the top of my head, and none of them involving the Gypsies perpetrating any crimes at all.

[Kickass Conservative]

Nowadays we call them Democrats. Like the Travelers, they think somebody else owes them a living.

[SIDENET]

Tramps and Thieves.

Thieves, thieves, tramps and thieves...

[DieHard the Hunter]

> What's a noddy?

The suspect in the blue hat is Noddy. The one in the red hat stealing the bike is Big Ears. Mr Plod, the portly neighborhood cop, is in the train, second-from-the-rear, sitting in front of Golliwog.

Most kids in the Commonwealth (except in Canada) learn all about Noddy and get thoroughly sick of him and his antics by time they reach age five.

So what is a POME? Google doesn't enlighten at all.

Do you mean instead to call me a Pom or Pommy -- the quaint derogatory term infrequently used DownUnder to insult Englishmen just off the boat? That's truly funny!

I am certainly a Kiwi, and by accident of birth I am also British and Canadian; however, my British passport notwithstanding I have never set foot on Britannia's distant shores, instead arriving DownUnder on an aeroplane from Canada via Honolulu. So I'm thus thoroughly immune to insult by being called a Pom -- actually, it's kind of funny!.

DownUnder most people mistake me for an American.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Really enjoyed reading this discussion.

I enjoyed the discussion, too.

Cheers, mate!

[the scotsman]

Not me mate...lol

Like you, I know enough not to edit that mistake in.

[the scotsman]

In retrospect, I think my old teacher may have meant four language GROUPS. Still, as you pointed out, wrong, but slightly less wrong than four languages...lol