This has not been a particularly scintillating week after the events of Monday.
Thursday evening saw us at The Reaside Centre for a meeting of Frankley Police Liaison. This was dominated by events at and near the Lickey Banker pub on new years eve where an innocent young man lost his life to a savage attack. He had attended a family party and decided to walk home rather than use his car. How terrible that it seems to be the good guys, those that do everything society asks of them, that suffer the consequences of mindless violence. We saw earlier this week that a respectable family man was murdered by three young thugs, one of which should have been on remand, but was bailed hours before the attack. How is it that young men think they can do whatever they like to whoever they like and get away with it? Is it because they have faced no punishment for their previous offences they think they can go on to bigger crimes with no consequences for themselves? We remember the failed "short, sharp shock" experiments years ago but surely we must start to inflict harder punishments earlier in a criminal career. We are convinced this would deter a lot of young men from persistent offending and cut the number of people in jail further down the line.
Has anyone noticed how Russia is acting up again these days. I suppose some would have a bit of a laugh at the thought of Neil Kinnock's son being hauled in by the Moscow police just because he works for the British Council, of which his dad is the head, just a coincidence of course. But it shows that in modern day Russia the police and other statutory bodies, are regarded as instruments of government policy. It looks as if we can trust this load of KGB heavies no more now than we could during the Cold War. One more reason for going ahead with nuclear power if it lessens our dependence on Russian energy supplies.
The reason for the "Getting wet for a cause" heading concerned our helping out other candidates in other wards. This seems an endless series of wet weather exercises these days but a good crack is always enjoyed afterwards in a local pub.
One item cropped up this weekend, one of our candidates is fighting a seat which Labour has held for some time and which they regard as "their" territory. We have not been overly active there for some time but our candidate is working very hard. At a recent Ward Committee one of the Labour Councillors said that she was going to make him regret standing as she was going to be writing some nasty letters about him. He could not understand why the rest of us were so pleased about this until we explained that Labour always gets nasty when they are worried. It means that he is getting to them and is making a real impression. He will carry on and ignore her empty threats. Labour is a disparate group which always include the Windbag Wing. Full of hot air and bluster but easily punctured.
