[LA-F] Richard Littlejohn: Crims ain't what they used to be

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From: Mario LAF
Date: Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Subject: [LA-F] Richard Littlejohn: Crims ain't what they used to be
To: libertarian Alliance Forum <libertarian-alliance-forum@yahoogroups.com>


Crims ain't what they used to be

By Richard Littlejohn <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Richard+Littlejohn>

Last updated at 10:08 AM on 13th September 2011

There was a real whiff of nostalgia about the funeral of Tottenham 'gangsta' Mark Duggan.

The chorus-line plumage; the white, horse-drawn Victorian hearse; the top-hatted undertaker; the dark-suited cortege; the fleet of black limos; the lavish floral tributes; the locals lining the route to pay their last respects.

Squint beyond the bling and it could have been the East End saying farewell to one of the Kray twins. When it comes to maudlin sentimentality, no one does it quite like the criminal underworld.

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Nostalgia: The funeral of Tottenham 'gangsta' Mark Duggan saw chorus-line plumage, a horse-drawn Victorian hearse and a dark-suited cortege

Although most of the mourners were from an Afro-Caribbean background, this was a very British occasion, in the finest gangster tradition.

The facts surrounding the shooting of Duggan by police, which sparked the recent riots, are still being investigated.

We must await the outcome of that independent inquiry, although we have it from no less an authority than Ken Hinds, of the Haringey Stop and Search Monitoring Group, that Scotland Yard’s version of events ‘doesn’t fit in with everything we know on the street’.

Depending on who you believe, Duggan was either a much-loved family man, a pillar of the community and an ‘elder’ on the Broadwater Farm estate — or a major player in gangland violence, intimidation and the drugs trade.

He may well have been all of the above. Ron and Reg were loved and feared in equal measure and renowned for being good to their old mum, Violet. They did a bit of community work, too, when they weren’t nailing people’s heads to coffee tables.

The scale of Duggan’s send-off was certainly in keeping with his reputation as a crime boss. It was almost as elaborate and reverential as a full state funeral. All that was missing was a marching New Orleans jazz band.

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Funeral: The scale of Mark Duggan's send-off was in keeping with his reputation as a crime boss

Crime has moved on since the heyday of the Krays in the 1960s. Guns are now two-a-penny and as drugs have become rife, old-fashioned villainy has gone out of fashion.

You can tell a great deal about a nation from the quality of its crime. Britain used to boast some of the finest armed robbers in the world.

It took a lot more bottle to go across the cobbles with a sawn-off Purdey than it does to sell crack cocaine outside the school gates.

Hijacking Securicor vans demands more courage and meticulous planning than kicking in the front of Currys and legging it with a flat‑screen TV.

This isn’t in any way to attempt to justify the activities of the old‑school crooks. But there was undeniably more romance about blagging and bank raids.

The Great Train Robbery was like a military operation, carried out with immense precision and chutzpah. The robbers may have been violent criminals but they captured the imagination.

Buster Edwards became a minor celebrity. I can’t imagine anyone making a movie about the exploits of Mark Duggan.

When Britain was economically confident, the chaps were turning over silver vaults and safety deposit boxes. The epic Brink’s-Mat job at Heathrow was the biggest bullion theft in history.

Now we are in dire financial straits, organised crime is feeding on scraps.

Once, the remote barns and lock-ups of Essex and Kent groaned with high-end swag.

Yet when police swooped on a warehouse linked to a gang in Rainham, East London, at the weekend, all they recovered was a few bags of second-hand clothes. Apparently, stealing clothes left out in the street in charity bags is big business these days. There are millions of pounds to be made selling the stuff in Eastern Europe.

Some gangs are even setting up their own fake charities to con people into handing over their unwanted clobber.

It’s a sure-fire scheme to turn rags to riches, but — be honest — it’s not proper crime, is it? Where’s the flair, the derring-do? It doesn’t get much lower than this.

Breaking into a clothes bank isn’t exactly holding up the NatWest with a shooter.

Nicking clothes from charity bags is right up there with stealing the whisky bottle filled with pennies from the bar of the local boozer.

No self-respecting old-school villain would be seen dead making off with a bin liner full of last week’s washing. This isn’t robbery, it’s totting with intent. And they don’t even leave you a goldfish.

Whenever men called Ron gather on the Costa del Crime to swap remembrances of Biggsy and Mad Frankie, they won’t be raising a glass to the mastermind of this tawdry criminal enterprise.

And when the Mr Big behind this grubby little operation leaves this mortal coil after a shoot-out with police over a sack of second-hand smalls, there’ll be no stage-managed funeral, no plumed horses or fancy hearses.

No one will be lining the streets to pay their last respects to the architect of The Great Charity Bag Robbery.

 

What do you do if you are approached by a man in a dress, asking the way to the toilets? Apart from burst out laughing, that is.

If you are a volunteer at next year’s Olympics, you are told: ‘Do not make an assumption about their gender unless directed by their name.

‘If you are asked, provide instructions to the male/female and accessible toilets.’

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Top tips: Volunteers at next year's Olympics have been told not to make assumptions about people's gender unless directed by their name

That last bit covers all eventualities, just in case the bloke in a frock with the five o’clock shadow also happens to be in a wheelchair.

This top tip comes from a guidebook issued to everyone volunteering to help visitors to the Games. Staff are also told they must avoid ‘patronising words’ such as ‘young man’ and ‘dear’. They shouldn’t use ‘able-bodied’, either. The approved term is ‘Non-disabled person’.

This drivel has been drawn up by LOCOG, the 2012 organising committee, to make the Games ‘as diverse and inclusive as possible’.

Volunteers are also told they should wear sunglasses when it is bright, make sure their shoes are comfortable and get a good night’s sleep.

Presumably, as part of making the event ‘diverse and inclusive’, the organisers have decided to recruit volunteers only from the ranks of the educationally subnormal. The obsession with ‘diversity’ even extends to the mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, which have been designed to be ‘gender-neutral’.

So what do you do if one of them asks the way to the toilet?

I’m surprised the committee hasn’t already decided that instead of actually running races, medals should be allocated by quota, based on ethnicity, gender and sexual proclivity.

After all, if that Blade Runner chap can take part in the ‘non-disabled’ 400 metres, what’s to stop a man in a dress competing in the women’s modern pentathlon?

 

Hi-viz jacket racket

Crossing the road last week, I was almost knocked over by a learner driver hurtling round the bend.

Her instructor in the passenger seat was wearing a hi-viz jacket.

Why? Does elf’n’safety now insist all driving instructors wear hi-viz vests?

Mind you, the dangerous way this dopey bird was driving I wouldn’t have blamed him for wearing a hard hat, too.

 

Life on Benefits? Simply torture

Last week it was the former Ukrainian policeman, said to be accused back home of two murders, who was found to have been living in Britain on benefits since 1996.

He was identified after he tackled a stabbing suspect at the Notting Hill Carnival.

Now we learn that an ex-Albanian spy, wanted for torture and kidnapping, has also been living here on welfare — in a council flat — for the past 15 years.

Barely a week goes by without news of some other foreign torturer or war criminal now shacked up in Britain at taxpayers’ expense.

As the search for Colonel Gaddafi goes on, don’t be surprised to discover that he’s living in a council house in Camden and signing on at the DSS, while we pick up the legal aid bill for his extradition challenge.

 

What’s the opposite of a facelift?

Whatever it is, Sarah Ferguson appears to have had it.

When I saw the latest picture of her at her daughter’s graduation, I could have sworn it was an Ozzy Osbourne fright mask.

 

Look, I know I shouldn’t laugh and it really isn’t funny, but I couldn’t help chortling at the story about the unfortunate chap who was killed when he got tangled up in a clothes horse.

Just as I was reading this tragic tale in Saturday’s Mail, there was a ring on the doorbell.

It was a man from Lakeland delivering a new clothes horse. Do you think my wife is trying to tell me something?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2036661/Mark-Duggan-funeral-Criminals-aint-used-be.html#ixzz1XqwyeMuz

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Mario Huet
Libertarian Alliance Forum
List Administrator

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Words cannot picture her; but all men know  
That solemn sketch the pure sad artist wrought
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James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

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