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Bruv;1370355 wrote: [QUOTE=spot;1370341][QUOTE=Bruv;1370340]Have any of you had your opinions changed by discussion on this or any other forum ?Just about all of them, invariably on this one. There's not much that I thought in 2004 that I still think now, as a result of discussing it on fg. I've been doubted when I've said that but it appears true to me.[/QUOTE]I cannot dispute what you are saying without knowing what opinion has changed so drastically.




I'd have to think, there's so many. I could try listing some I suppose. Before I arrived here I was of the opinion that

• Patriotism is a positive quality: wrong. FG has taught me it's a moral failing
  
  America should restrict the domestic availability of handguns: wrong. FG has taught me every unconvicted citizen of the US over the age of twelve should be obliged to carry a concealed weapon at all times unless they're abroad or asleep
  
  There are circumstances when deploying armed troops outside the Homeland is acceptable: wrong. FG has taught me no foreign deployment is acceptable, since none has ever been made to stop ongoing genocide or torture and no other reason is adequate.
  
  That governments should protect state secrets: wrong. FG has taught me immediate and complete transparency at every level of government is essential if they're to be fully accountable to their electorate.
  
  That imprisonment doesn't work: wrong. FG has taught me every criminal court sentence should be an indefinite term of imprisonment, that no crime has been committed if it can be shown the crime category is significantly disproportionately identified, investigated, prosecuted or sentenced against any social grouping the defendant matches, and that no parole should be granted until the risk of the convict re-offending in that category matches the risk of the average person at liberty offending that way, with an effective financial bond enforced against the prison releasing him
  
  That means-tested benefits are fair: wrong. FG has taught me every citizen should have a basic income above which taxation confiscates a progressively larger proportion for the benefit of all citizens. I probably arrived thinking the inheritance of wealth was a good thing too. Sod that for a game of soldiers, it's 100% death duty once you've taken the cost of the coffin and a wake into account from now on.

spot;1370378 wrote: I'd have to think, there's so many. I could try listing some I suppose. Before I arrived here I was of the opinion that

• Patriotism is a positive quality: wrong. FG has taught me it's a moral failing
  
  America should restrict the domestic availability of handguns: wrong. FG has taught me every unconvicted citizen of the US over the age of twelve should be obliged to carry a concealed weapon at all times unless they're abroad or asleep
  
  There are circumstances when deploying armed troops outside the Homeland is acceptable: wrong. FG has taught me no foreign deployment is acceptable, since none has ever been made to stop ongoing genocide or torture and no other reason is adequate.
  
  That governments should protect state secrets: wrong. FG has taught me immediate and complete transparency at every level of government is essential if they're to be fully accountable to their electorate.
  
  That imprisonment doesn't work: wrong. FG has taught me every criminal court sentence should be an indefinite term of imprisonment, that no crime has been committed if it can be shown the crime category is significantly disproportionately identified, investigated, prosecuted or sentenced against any social grouping the defendant matches, and that no parole should be granted until the risk of the convict re-offending in that category matches the risk of the average person at liberty offending that way, with an effective financial bond enforced against the prison releasing him
  
  That means-tested benefits are fair: wrong. FG has taught me every citizen should have a basic income above which taxation confiscates a progressively larger proportion for the benefit of all citizens. I probably arrived thinking the inheritance of wealth was a good thing too. Sod that for a game of soldiers, it's 100% death duty once you've taken the cost of the coffin and a wake into account from now on.
  
  
  
  
  Oi - I want to be able to give my kids a helping hand when I go!
  
  I fully intend that it should be too late in their lives to be of much use to them but I'm damn'd if I'll have them saying I didn't provide for them :wah:
  
  eta - and on a more serious note, I'm even more damn'd if I'll leave and of my hard earned to keep the government in the style to which it wants to become accustomed.

spot;1370378 wrote: That imprisonment doesn't work: wrong. FG has taught me every criminal court sentence should be an indefinite term of imprisonment, that no crime has been committed if it can be shown the crime category is significantly disproportionately identified, investigated, prosecuted or sentenced against any social grouping the defendant matches, and that no parole should be granted until the risk of the convict re-offending in that category matches the risk of the average person at liberty offending that way, with an effective financial bond enforced against the prison releasing him




You might have to run that past me again........and again.....and again

Bryn Mawr;1370390 wrote: and on a more serious note, I'm even more damn'd if I'll leave and of my hard earned to keep the government in the style to which it wants to become accustomed.History doesn't travel backwards. Your reactionary doctrine is mere Capito-Economolatry and when the glorious socialist revolution dawns you'll discover why English lamp-posts are shaped the way they are.

spot;1370378 wrote: I'd have to think, there's so many. I could try listing some I suppose. Before I arrived here I was of the opinion that

• Patriotism is a positive quality: wrong. FG has taught me it's a moral failing
  
  America should restrict the domestic availability of handguns: wrong. FG has taught me every unconvicted citizen of the US over the age of twelve should be obliged to carry a concealed weapon at all times unless they're abroad or asleep
  
  There are circumstances when deploying armed troops outside the Homeland is acceptable: wrong. FG has taught me no foreign deployment is acceptable, since none has ever been made to stop ongoing genocide or torture and no other reason is adequate.
  
  That governments should protect state secrets: wrong. FG has taught me immediate and complete transparency at every level of government is essential if they're to be fully accountable to their electorate.
  
  That imprisonment doesn't work: wrong. FG has taught me every criminal court sentence should be an indefinite term of imprisonment, that no crime has been committed if it can be shown the crime category is significantly disproportionately identified, investigated, prosecuted or sentenced against any social grouping the defendant matches, and that no parole should be granted until the risk of the convict re-offending in that category matches the risk of the average person at liberty offending that way, with an effective financial bond enforced against the prison releasing him
  
  That means-tested benefits are fair: wrong. FG has taught me every citizen should have a basic income above which taxation confiscates a progressively larger proportion for the benefit of all citizens. I probably arrived thinking the inheritance of wealth was a good thing too. Sod that for a game of soldiers, it's 100% death duty once you've taken the cost of the coffin and a wake into account from now on.
  
  
  
  
  You are just using this thread as a vehicle for your left wing propaganda.....aren't you ?

Bruv;1370395 wrote: You might have to run that past me again........and again.....and again


And I thought it was just me :wah:

spot;1370397 wrote: History doesn't travel backwards. Your reactionary doctrine is mere Capito-Ecclesiolatry and when the glorious socialist revolution dawns you'll discover why English lamp-posts are shaped the way they are.


Come the revolution, who needs money?

Bruv;1370395 wrote: You might have to run that past me again........and again.....and again


Mea culpa. For "enforced" please reed "enforceable". I was typing too fast at that point.

spot;1370402 wrote: Mea culpa. For "enforced" please reed "enforceable". I was typing too fast at that point.


Still doesn't help.

I plead in my defence that I've never considered myself left-wing and nether would most socialists.

theia;1370399 wrote: And I thought it was just me :wah:


No, think we both should have attended the Kevin/Spot school of phraseology

Bruv;1370405 wrote: No, think we both should have attended the Kevin/Spot school of phraseology


And me, lost... maybe Spot could re word it for us.



On second thoughts that will just cause more confusion :wah:

Bruv;1370405 wrote: No, think we both should have attended the Kevin/Spot school of phraseology


Ouch. That stung.

My sentence parses perfectly well, it's utterly coherent from start to end and what's more it reflects the sort of opinion any sensible person would come to after a period of reflection. If you ask me again then even at the risk of going off topic a bit I'll stretch the words into a few paragraphs with parenthetic notes.

spot;1370404 wrote: I plead in my defence that I've never considered myself left-wing and nether would most socialists.


Interesting Freudian slip there.

................it reflects the sort of opinion any sensible person would come to after a period of reflection.


A classic argument, if you don't agree with me your bonkers !!!!

I have read and think I might have some understanding of the sequence of words, but basically it's tosh.

Bruv;1370410 wrote: A classic argument, if you don't agree with me your bonkers !!!!

I have read and think I might have some understanding of the sequence of words, but basically it's tosh.


This is the original:That imprisonment doesn't work: wrong. FG has taught me every criminal court sentence should be an indefinite term of imprisonment, that no crime has been committed if it can be shown the crime category is significantly disproportionately identified, investigated, prosecuted or sentenced against any social grouping the defendant matches, and that no parole should be granted until the risk of the convict re-offending in that category matches the risk of the average person at liberty offending that way, with an effective financial bond enforced against the prison releasing himwhich I expand thus:



every criminal court sentence...: the topic of the paragraph is criminal court sentences. Only criminal court, not civil court. And only successful prosecutions.

In the middle is an exclusion: that no crime has been committed if it can be shown the crime category is significantly disproportionately identified, investigated, prosecuted or sentenced against any social grouping the defendant matches. The phases of criminal law enforcement is that a crime has to be identified before it can result in a conviction, an identified crime has to be investigated before it can result in a conviction, an investigated crime has to be prosecuted before it can result in a conviction and only a successful prosecution results in a sentence. I'm suggesting that if the defence team in court can show that the defendant belongs to a group which is more frequently identified, more frequently investigated, more frequently prosecuted or more frequently sentenced for that class of crime, then the legal process has a discrimination problem to sort out and it can't prosecute the case until the discrimination has been cleaned up. I'd go further and say it should also result in a successful appeal for everyone currently in jail who can show the same evidence.

That leaves just people who are, in my opinion, legitimately sentenced. What I say of them is that the court should invariably and without discretion hand down an indefinite term of imprisonment. The reason is nobody should ever be released from jail, and then only ever on parole, until the risk of the convict re-offending in that category matches the risk of the average person at liberty offending that way. If they remain a higher risk of doing it again than the public at large then they should remain in jail.

Who decides if they're fit for release, in this system. The prison holding the convict. I suggest they get little money for just housing him but a plonking big sum if they release him. To stop the prison just cashing in they have to give an effective financial bond - a promise to pay more than they've earned just from housing him, by a big factor - which they forfeit if he re-offends before he dies. And that's my system of creating effective rehabilitation schemes. Jails which succeed in rehabilitation pay dividends, those which don't succeed in rehabilitation will go bankrupt and their shareholders will pay back every penny they were handed. We need a new form of private prison with full liability for debts to make it work.

•There are circumstances when deploying armed troops outside the Homeland is acceptable: wrong. FG has taught me no foreign deployment is acceptable, since none has ever been made to stop ongoing genocide or torture and no other reason is adequate.


Hang on...Does that mean we should not have invaded France in 1944? Or is that covered by the genocide and torture bit? If so, then foreign deployments have been made to stop ongoing torture and genocide.

... just read your last post. Don't think anyone would ever get out of gaol.

I actually thought that myself Clod

Clodhopper;1370418 wrote: Hang on...Does that mean we should not have invaded France in 1944? Or is that covered by the genocide and torture bit? If so, then foreign deployments have been made to stop ongoing torture and genocide.Ah - you're quite right, there's a third class of international crime against which the use of armed force was considered lawful at Nuremberg and thereafter by the UN. As a response to the "waging of aggressive war": "to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".



eta: I've always felt that anyone who has to go back as far as World War Two or Korea has already lost, whatever the argument was about. Unless, of course, it was about World War Two or Korea.

As I think I said I understood most of it third or fourth time of reading.

Sounds brilliant..............on paper.

Did I ever show you my sketches for a perpetual motion machine ?

If you describe any scheme on paper and how it should work, it will work.

Unless you factor in the human element you are doomed, and the human element (excuse the English) is unfactorable.



The problem you describe is the disproportionate criminalisation of blacks due to street and drug crime.

And peculiarly enough blacks actually are disproportionately involved in certain areas with such crimes.

It is no use tinkering with the after affects, it is like treating the affects of plague after it's taken hold.

You are looking from the wrong end of the microscope again.

Clodhopper;1370418 wrote: ... just read your last post. Don't think anyone would ever get out of gaol.Does that seem either disproportionate or unjust? Because in the long term there's never going to be a better incentive to create effective rehabilitation courses. It has to be money in exchange for success. Without the lure we get what we've got, stifling lawlessness and bullying during which time subsequent criminal behaviour is increased. The only way off the turntable at the moment is the individual choosing to do something else, by which time he's likely done a lot of crimes.

eta: I've always felt that anyone who has to go back as far as World War Two or Korea has already lost, whatever the argument was about.


I wasn't arguing. I am just trying to establish premises at present.

But your comment does imply you think history can tell us nothing...

Clodhopper;1370427 wrote: I wasn't arguing. I am just trying to establish premises at present.

But your comment does imply you think history can tell us nothing...


Not at all, just that the world today isn't one in which massed millions of armed forces will ever go head to head again. That's a part of history we'll never repeat. And we'll never repeat it a lot sooner if we commit some significant unilateral arms reductions, too. We need a beefier coastguard, for example, not a surface navy or armed air squadrons, because today's physical threat is civilian.

spot;1370416 wrote: This is the original:That imprisonment doesn't work: wrong. FG has taught me every criminal court sentence should be an indefinite term of imprisonment, that no crime has been committed if it can be shown the crime category is significantly disproportionately identified, investigated, prosecuted or sentenced against any social grouping the defendant matches, and that no parole should be granted until the risk of the convict re-offending in that category matches the risk of the average person at liberty offending that way, with an effective financial bond enforced against the prison releasing himwhich I expand thus:



every criminal court sentence...: the topic of the paragraph is criminal court sentences. Only criminal court, not civil court. And only successful prosecutions.

In the middle is an exclusion: that no crime has been committed if it can be shown the crime category is significantly disproportionately identified, investigated, prosecuted or sentenced against any social grouping the defendant matches. The phases of criminal law enforcement is that a crime has to be identified before it can result in a conviction, an identified crime has to be investigated before it can result in a conviction, an investigated crime has to be prosecuted before it can result in a conviction and only a successful prosecution results in a sentence. I'm suggesting that if the defence team in court can show that the defendant belongs to a group which is more frequently identified, more frequently investigated, more frequently prosecuted or more frequently sentenced for that class of crime, then the legal process has a discrimination problem to sort out and it can't prosecute the case until the discrimination has been cleaned up. I'd go further and say it should also result in a successful appeal for everyone currently in jail who can show the same evidence.

That leaves just people who are, in my opinion, legitimately sentenced. What I say of them is that the court should invariably and without discretion hand down an indefinite term of imprisonment. The reason is nobody should ever be released from jail, and then only ever on parole, until the risk of the convict re-offending in that category matches the risk of the average person at liberty offending that way. If they remain a higher risk of doing it again than the public at large then they should remain in jail.

Who decides if they're fit for release, in this system. The prison holding the convict. I suggest they get little money for just housing him but a plonking big sum if they release him. To stop the prison just cashing in they have to give an effective financial bond - a promise to pay more than they've earned just from housing him, by a big factor - which they forfeit if he re-offends before he dies. And that's my system of creating effective rehabilitation schemes. Jails which succeed in rehabilitation pay dividends, those which don't succeed in rehabilitation will go bankrupt and their shareholders will pay back every penny they were handed. We need a new form of private prison with full liability for debts to make it work.


A social grouping can be several people, thousands of people or millions of people. What if a defence team claimed that, for example, more men were being identified with burglary, this could cause endless difficulties.

Bruv;1370424 wrote: The problem you describe is the disproportionate criminalisation of blacks due to street and drug crime.

And peculiarly enough blacks actually are disproportionately involved in certain areas with such crimes.

It is no use tinkering with the after affects, it is like treating the affects of plaque after it's taken hold.

You are looking from the wrong end of the microscope again.
You've a simplistic notion of what disproportionate means when discussing sentences.

It's not disproportionate if the proportion of blacks sentenced matches the proportion of blacks engaged out in the wild in that field of crime.

There are two alarm bells labelled discrimination. If more effort goes into detecting one category of crime over another and the first has a higher proportion of blacks engaged out in the wild than the other, that's discriminatory. Selectivity in what crime to chase and what crime to leave uninvestigated should never be a policing option. The second form of discrimination is if the proportion of blacks sentenced exceeds the proportion of blacks engaged out in the wild in that field of crime. If they're investigated or prosecuted out of proportion to their presence in that field of crime then that's discrimination.

I've suggested that the single most effective spur to eliminating discrimination in law enforcement is to nullify the sentence whenever discrimination on these lines can be demonstrated. And it needs ending, I think. It's a significant aspect of the generational hand-down of group criminalization based on ethnicity.

theia;1370429 wrote: A social grouping can be several people, thousands of people or millions of people. What if a defence team claimed that, for example, more men were being identified with burglary, this could cause endless difficulties.It's if a higher ratio of men are being identified with burglary than are engaged in burglary. Which, given how very few women burglars there are, would be tough to demonstrate. Proving a case needs significant numbers both doing and not doing, sentenced and not sentenced. Scarce events make poor subjects for statistics unless you can afford to gather a lot of them.

I dunno.. didn't Iran/Iraq involve massed millions? Hundreds of thousands, anyway...

I'd be inclined to argue that we don't need the same sot of navy we did - aircraft are better at patrolling off our coasts/ North Atlantic. Chuckle. Heresy for a Brit!

I think we need a stronger coastguard, but my reasons are mainly speculatively apocalyptic and related to climate change. And if I am right about climate change then we will see massed millions, though they won't be strictly military.

Iran/Iraq did, yes. The last of the huge proxy wars fought with armies, after which the US invented asymmetric "freedom fighters" as a weapon of mass civilian destruction. The Contras, the Mujahideen, mercenary killers with - for their theatres - unlimited budgets.

Your patrolling planes are a different matter to the armed air squadrons and I suspect satellites do it better. The Naval Air squadrons as an adjunct to the Coastguard are a different fish.

Perhaps the biggest change of mind I had since arriving here was finally rejecting "the politicians go to war, the troops don't have a choice". Hence the plucky brave squaddy everyone has to cheer until that particular fracas is over. The troops are all volunteers and without their mercenary abdication of choice in exchange for pay the politicians couldn't go to war at all since conscription isn't an option now. The sole reason we can initiate foreign wars of aggression, called "liberation", is that the contemporary members of the armed forces volunteered. That's the single cause, all the rest is effect.

I'm entirely indebted to anastrophe for pushing me to recognize it - he was another who constantly brought up World War Two as the reason "we" - though why he included the USA I'm not sure - need to remain vigilant and armed and gung-ho and ready to kick. Keep divvying up for the hardware, big boy, national bankruptcy followed by diplomatic impotence looms ever closer.

Bruv;1370424 wrote:

Unless you factor in the human element you are doomed, and the human element (excuse the English) is unfactorable.

It is no use tinkering with the after affects, it is like treating the affects of plaque after it's taken hold.

You are looking from the wrong end of the microscope again.


spot;1370433 wrote:

If more effort goes into detecting one category of crime over another and the first has a higher proportion of blacks engaged out in the wild than the other, that's discriminatory. Selectivity in what crime to chase and what crime to leave uninvestigated should never be a policing option. The second form of discrimination is if the proportion of blacks sentenced exceeds the proportion of blacks engaged out in the wild in that field of crime. If they're investigated or prosecuted out of proportion to their presence in that field of crime then that's discrimination.


You have a simplistic notion of inherent societal cultural and racial relationships.

It may be obvious but I am a simple soul with simple solutions, better not to bend the nail than try to straighten it later.

The way the system works right now is NOT entirely down to the way the police work.

It's a human thing, people doing what people do, on both sides of the problem.

It may take another hundred years to solve, but tinkering with sentencing will not solve a thing, only alter the flavour of discrimination.

It's a hearts and mind solution that will fix it, nothing else will do.

Bruv;1370424 wrote: It is no use tinkering with the after affects, it is like treating the affects of plaque after it's taken hold.I've been puzzling over that ever since I first saw it. Colgate followed by Lysterine, three times daily for a month, then a course of proprietary whitener and a barrier application.

spot;1370441 wrote:

The troops are all volunteers and without their mercenary abdication of choice in exchange for pay the politicians couldn't go to war at all since conscription isn't an option now. The sole reason we can initiate foreign wars of aggression, called "liberation", is that the contemporary members of the armed forces volunteered. That's the single cause, all the rest is effect.


If the politicians hadn't made the economy so dire, forcing the youth into the only option to earn a crust.

I cannot see how you can believe cutting benefits is keeping the working class poor, and not work out the connection with the economy and recruitment.

Surprise me - what does "conscription" mean in that sentence?

Iran/Iraq did, yes. The last of the huge proxy wars fought with armies


So far...

and a good 40/50 years after WW2.

And I'm not sure about the proxy. They wanted to kill eachother for Sunni/Shia reasons as much as Cold War. People have killed eachother for religious reasons since we had religion. And that's personal.

spot;1370444 wrote: I've been puzzling over that ever since I first saw it. Colgate followed by Lysterine, three times daily for a month, then a course of proprietary whitener and a barrier application.


Somebody moved the G.........................have edited it............so this post will look silly now.

Why does every new post I make include all my shared quotes from previous posts ?

spot;1370447 wrote: Surprise me - what does "conscription" mean in that sentence?


What sentence ?

Bruv;1370450 wrote: What sentence ?
Odie used to do that all the while. It just means I have to quote every time rather than carry on talking.

Very occasionally ForumGarden's system of remembering what quotes it's consumed gets screwed up. Clear recent history for the last few hours and see if it's fixed, that stands a fair chance.

Clodhopper;1370448 wrote: So far...

and a good 40/50 years after WW2.

And I'm not sure about the proxy. They wanted to kill eachother for Sunni/Shia reasons as much as Cold War. People have killed eachother for religious reasons since we had religion. And that's personal.I never took it to be cold war. I thought it was Iraq fighting Iran on behalf of the US and Iran fighting Iraq on behalf of the US, hence "proxy", the US wanting to weaken both.

I just think nations have got reasons to want to kill eachother without the US being involved. The US may or may not help with the efficiency, but worshipping God wrong has had folks killing eachother with conscience free abandon for millenia. Sunni and Shia don't need much help from the US or us or anyone else to kill eachother.

What you say is undoubtedly true but it ignores the plain fact that the US *did* provide tactical information to both sides without informing the other, as well as filling Iraq with weaponry, and that the reason for doing so only makes any sense to me if they wanted to prolong the fighting and weaken both countries as much as possible. So long as neither of us claims to be describing sole causes I can't see that we disagree much.

spot;1370435 wrote: It's if a higher ratio of men are being identified with burglary than are engaged in burglary. Which, given how very few women burglars there are, would be tough to demonstrate. Proving a case needs significant numbers both doing and not doing, sentenced and not sentenced. Scarce events make poor subjects for statistics unless you can afford to gather a lot of them.


Can you further explain what you mean by "identified with" please? Yes, I know it might seem obvious but if I can feel clear about what it means, I can move on (I've got a cold, right?)

theia;1370494 wrote: Can you further explain what you mean by "identified with" please? Yes, I know it might seem obvious but if I can feel clear about what it means, I can move on (I've got a cold, right?)That's a question I've been puzzling over all yesterday, this difference between identified and engaged in. If there's discrimination in law enforcement for a given type of crime then it affects the police statistics of the numbers of crimes reported, the number investigated, the number prosecuted and the number resulting in a sentence. If the police record crimes on a discriminatory basis, or investigate just the ones they feel inclined to investigate, then those statistics can't be used to see how many people are out there in the wild behaving that way.

So how do you get a figure for real life behaviour? A researcher can scarcely go to the local crooks' convention and ask - what sort of crimes are you committing this year, sonny. You'd be gestured at.

I think this is why there was a tightening up, at the Met at least after the Lawrence Enquiry, of the rules for recording reported crime. If the figures for reports are honest, and the statistical details on each report relating to potential discrimination ("was the person who robbed you gay, black or skinhead?") are there for subsequent analysis, then the system should be checkable. That's why the Freedom of Information Act allows you and me to extract that level of detail from each force, too.

bugger i was realy interested in this thread until it became about a particular issue .

fuzzywuzzy;1370497 wrote: bugger i was realy interested in this thread until it became about a particular issue .


Perhaps your default thread view is linear instead of threaded? If you click on the top of the thread "Display" you'll see the options. Threaded means you can follow one chain of discussion in a thread while ignoring others.

If you want one-topic-per-thread I can split this one into two, you only need ask.

**** off spot ..don't patronise me .....just don't do that ..I have respect for you don't destroy it . don't do that ****.

fuzzywuzzy;1370503 wrote: **** off spot ..don't patronise me .....just don't do that ..I have respect for you don't destroy it . don't do that ****.


Then stop digging at me. I was asked by Bruv to do into detail, I didn't do it uninvited.

spot;1370495 wrote: That's a question I've been puzzling over all yesterday, this difference between identified and engaged in. If there's discrimination in law enforcement for a given type of crime then it affects the police statistics of the numbers of crimes reported, the number investigated, the number prosecuted and the number resulting in a sentence. If the police record crimes on a discriminatory basis, or investigate just the ones they feel inclined to investigate, then those statistics can't be used to see how many people are out there in the wild behaving that way.

So how do you get a figure for real life behaviour? A researcher can scarcely go to the local crooks' convention and ask - what sort of crimes are you committing this year, sonny. You'd be gestured at.

I think this is why there was a tightening up, at the Met at least after the Lawrence Enquiry, of the rules for recording reported crime. If the figures for reports are honest, and the statistical details on each report relating to potential discrimination ("was the person who robbed you gay, black or skinhead?") are there for subsequent analysis, then the system should be checkable. That's why the Freedom of Information Act allows you and me to extract that level of detail from each force, too.


About 30 years ago, I read a book called "How to lie with Statistics." In a way I wish I hadn't because, although I don't remember a word of it, I find myself picking away at any statistics that come my way (although I have been known to use them myself too, when convenient for me!). I accept that they are only meant to show trends, but I feel compelled to question the figures on which they are based

spot;1370506 wrote: Then stop digging at me. I was asked by Bruv to do into detail, I didn't do it uninvited.


i don't dig at you, far from it ...I'm scared of you.(unless I'm angry then I'm scared of no one.) ...i was just saying that the topic was really cool and I"d like to hear of others stuff . that's fair I think ....dont you

don't be an idiot I adore you .........was just sayin

Then try to work on the basis that my offering to split the thread was said in good faith. Sometimes it's the right answer.

theia;1370509 wrote: About 30 years ago, I read a book called "How to lie with Statistics." In a way I wish I hadn't because, although I don't remember a word of it, I find myself picking away at any statistics that come my way (although I have been known to use them myself too, when convenient for me!). I accept that they are only meant to show trends, but I feel compelled to question the figures on which they are basedEveryone should do at least as much. A statistic can be wonderfully accurate and full of insight but only if the context is clear. What it means takes a lot more untangling than just glibly quoting the figure and thinking you've got it sorted.

spot;1370513 wrote: Then try to work on the basis that my offering to split the thread was said in good faith. Sometimes it's the right answer.


oh i didn't know that, i think it would be a really good split ..cause I was interested with what was going on, but I"d really like to hear from others . tis all ....