Battling On

Interesting idea in a story in the Guardian today. Apparently Peterborough council has had a problem with fights between “goths” and “chavs” in the city centre, and has tried to defuse it by sending them off to shoot at each other in local woodland.

In a lot of ways I hope it works – if a scheme like this can release some of the inter-clique tensions, and also take that tension out of the town centre where apparently it’s also been affecting other members of the public, then it may even be a good thing. Of course there’ll also be the lobby bleating on about how it promotes guns and blah blah blah, but if it’s done as an obvious game along with adequate safety information etc., I still think it’s probably going to be beneficial.

Posting the Changes

So, Royal mail are planning on changing the way posted items are charged for in one years time, and basing it on size and weight. This could be quite interesting – a small heavy parcel will cost more to send than a large light one, for example.

Of course, it’ll also be a thousand times more confusing. If there’s no simple rule ( i.e. First Class items under 60g cost 28p, or whatever ) then most people simply won’t know what to pay for postage. I suspect Royal Mail are hoping that either they’ll just pay over the odds “to make sure it gets there”, or that they’ll use Post Offices more.

The second option is more likely to be the one that people go for, but there’s a problem with it – Post Offices are fucked up, with normally huge queues already. So how will this scheme make them any better?

Whoops

So, it’s slowly emerging that the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was even worse than had previously been speculated. I’ve suspected that this story was going to be a nightmare (and have said so previously) and now it looks like going roughly the way I thought.

So now the media are already asking “what went wrong?”. I’d be more tempted to ask “what went right?” – because the answer to the former is “everything” and to the latter is “nothing”. Let’s look at the list…

• Menezes wasn’t positively identified as the suspect when he left the building, because the relevant officer was having a piss. Good start
• Menezes wasn’t wearing a heavy coat, and was actually wearing a denim shirt/jacket
• Menezes perhaps ran to catch a train that was already at the platform
• Menezes wasn’t warned he was being followed, or given a warning before being shot
• Menezes wasn’t positively identified as the suspect, although it seems that assumptions were made that “someone else” had identified him

Is there even that much of a resemblance between the two men?

Suspect :  Target :

The entire thing is a catalogue of screw-ups, errors, and mis-communication. With no warning being given, 8 shots to the head, and that (according to the leaked documents) he was being held down by a community police officer before being shot, surely this just looks more and more like an execution?