Eideard

Inspector Lestrade gets it wrong, again!

Scotland Yard has inadvertently shared the email addresses of around 1,000 victims of crime with each other, in a mistake that has been referred to the information commissioner.

The Metropolitan police said emails were sent out to 1,136 victims, mostly of car theft or pickpockets, as part of a survey… But the addresses were put in the wrong section of the email, which meant they were shared with other victims.

A Met spokesman said: “No other personal details were revealed and we are contacting everyone affected to explain what happened and to apologise…”

The emails were sent as part of the survey into whether victims felt they were receiving a better service following the introduction of a single telephone number for the investigation unit in London. They were sent in seven batches of between 119 and 198 recipients…

A spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner’s Office said it had received the referral and it was being examined.

She said the highest fine the office could issue was £500,000 but that was for breaches of data of an extremely sensitive nature, for example the sharing of details about child sexual assault victims.

This only qualifies as clumsy, incompetent and maybe stupid.

 
Two short videos of a person dressed as a chicken chasing a lookalike of Boris Johnson, the incumbent Mayor, have been released on YouTube by the London Labour Party.

One shows the Mayor, sporting a blonde wig, on a Barclays hire bike in front of City Hall, the seat of local Government in London, while the other sees him being pursued down a street. The stunt, dubbed Boris Johns-hen, seeks to highlight how Mr Johnson “has chickened out of debating his opponents and defending his policies”.

The campaign to elect Ken Livingstone says Mr Johnson has in recent months declined to attend hustings with the candidates for the mayoralty hosted by UK Feminista, a womens equality campaign, and the Federation of Small Business.Mr Livingstone has asked Mr Johnson to take part in a televised debate on his proposals to cut Tube fares. A spokesman for the Mayor said he saw “no merit” in the event because Mr Livingstones figures were not credible.

Har.

The first international drug treaty was signed a century ago this week. So what was the war on drugs like in 1912?

Today it is taken for granted that governments will co-operate in the fight against the heroin and cocaine trade. But 100 years ago, narcotics passed from country to country with minimal interference from the authorities. That all changed with the 1912 International Opium Convention, which committed countries to stopping the trade in opium, morphine and cocaine.

Then, as now, the US stood in the vanguard against narcotics. While the UK’s position is unequivocal today, a century ago it was an unenthusiastic signatory, says Mike Jay, author of Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century.

The real concern a century ago was over alcohol, he argues. “There was a big debate over intoxication as there was concern about the heavy, heavy drinking culture of the 19th Century…”

And opium use was viewed in the mid-19th Century in a very different way from modern beliefs about drug use. It was possible to walk into a chemist and buy not only opium and cocaine, but even arsenic…

“There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new,” wrote Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

But the fashion in drugs was changing from the “downer” of opium to the “upper” of cocaine – hence Arthur Conan Doyle making Sherlock Holmes a cocaine injector…

But in the US, cocaine came to be associated with street gangs, alongside racist propaganda that the drug sent black men insane and put white women at risk…So these domestic concerns helped drive the international agreement in the form of the 1912 treaty. But while it tackled the trade, in the UK at least, the authorities were slow to crack down on individual users…

In reality, there was no “drug scene” in Britain back then, says Jay. What existed was confined to a few streets in Soho and a handful of dealers in Limehouse. And once the drug laws came in banning cocaine and opium, the problem was easily contained by the police…

“The baby boomers were the first generation in history to become real global consumers. People were suddenly going to Morocco to smoke hash, or hitching with lorry drivers who were using amphetamines.”

So the floodgates opened. Where once the authorities were fighting relatively small groups of offenders in a tiny drugs subculture, now they must fight millions of users and powerful international cartels.

RTFA for an understanding of laws and “wars” on drugs in the time when the community of users was small, coppers ruled the streets – instead of gangbangers – and profit hadn’t yet driven drugs into a global economy.

Not that today’s governments seem to be any more capable of understanding changing circumstances.

A senior intelligence chief was branded a “sex pest” by a former spy who claims he persistently begged her to start an affair with him.

The “stocky” intelligence boss sent the woman text lurid messages and emails including joking about having a sexually transmitted disease.

At one point, he told her he was “pulling a sickie” only to send her text messages from home asking her whether she had been wearing anything in bed the previous night, she claimed.

The man, a married father, also allegedly touched the woman’s hair suggestively and pulled his chair uncomfortably close to hers, as well as offering to give her special one-on-one IT coaching at her flat.

At other times, he would seek her advice on his clothes, asking her “do I look fat in this?” and regularly invited her to join him for coffee or lunch, she said.

The woman, who can be named only as Miss D for security reasons, told an employment tribunal that the he told her that he was dissatisfied in his marriage. He appeared so “determined to stray” that she even tried to point him in the direction of another member of staff to “get him off my back”, she claimed…

Miss D, who held a mid-management rank within the agency, accuses the man, her former boss – known only as Mr F – of sexual harassment.

Both he and the agency where they both worked, which can also not be named, deny her allegations of sexual discrimination.

The hearing at the Central London Employment Tribunals is being held amid elaborate security measures to protect the identities of the witnesses…

RTFA for all the boring ego-smitten details. Without knowing whom you’re reading about.

Now that it’s hot in the newspapers, I’ll bet there’s a waiting line at the court each morning!

Passengers on the Warsaw Underground take part in the flashmob

People take part in the 2012 No Pants Subway Ride…Started by Improv Everywhere, the goal is for riders to get on public transport dressed in normal winter clothes, but without trousers, and keep a straight face.

Looks like fun. Though it would take a warm subway to get me to take part.

A new work by British artist Banksy, in the form of a billboard, adorns a wall near the Canary Wharf financial district in London, December 22, 2011 – Reuters Editors’ Choice.

Reuters Editors’ Choice is a site I visit almost daily. The view of the world formed by photographers, journalists – my kind of artists.

Click to enlarge

Three years ago, Edge collaborated with The Serpentine Gallery in London in a program of “table-top experiments” as part of the Serpentine’s Experiment Marathon . This live event was featured along with the Edge/Serpentine collaboration: “What Is Your Formula? Your Equation? Your Algorithm? Formulae For the 21st Century.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator of the Serpentine, invited Edge to collaborate in his latest project, The Serpentine Map Marathon, produced in conjunction with DLD, Digital – Life – Design… The multi-dimensional Map Marathon featured non-stop live presentations by over 50 artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scholars, musicians, architects, designers and scientists.

Click here – to see images from that collaboration.

Thanks, Cornelia

Actors pose with gym equipment on what the Guinness World Records bills as the world’s largest 3D painting, at Canary Wharf in London November this week. British artist Joe Hill’s creation measures in excess of 1120 square meters, or 12,000 square feet. Guinness says it breaks records for the longest and largest surface area 3D painting.

I love this stuff.

Classes haven’t changed or added colors since they graduated in 1993

Children are being taught in “ghettos” as inner-city schools are increasingly divided along racial lines, a leading headmaster has warned.

David Levin said parts of London were starting to resemble apartheid-era South Africa, with black and white pupils being separated at a young age. He insisted that Britain was becoming a “silo society” as many young people never leave their own housing estate or mix with children from different racial and religious backgrounds.

The comments come amid continuing alarm over segregation in inner-city communities.

Entrenched segregation in the education system was seen as one of the fundamental causes of the race riots that rocked parts of northern England a decade ago. A recent report found that schools in Oldham – one of the worst flashpoints – are still largely split along racial lines…

Mr Levin, the head of fee-paying City of London School, said he grew up in South Africa “where apartheid was imposed and people had to live in different areas”…

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents 250 leading independent schools, Mr Levin told how his teachers and pupils were involved in partnership programmes with state schools in the capital to help raise standards. This includes the “gifted and talented” scheme designed to push the brightest children…

Some 97 per cent of pupils at one of the schools – Stepney Green Maths and Computing College – are of Bangledeshi origin, he said.

Mr Levin added: “A number of those children through no fault of their own have not been out of their council estate, never mind Tower Hamlets. This cannot be a good thing…”

“In my view, I think London is sleepwalking towards Johannesburg. The ghettoisation of the community.”

Mr Levin said that children in many of these inner-city schools were “not mixing with other people from different faiths, different races and different socio-economic backgrounds”.

There’s little or no justification for maintaining the foolishness of segregated society. Yes, everyone has great “natural” reasons about how this occurs. Everyone too lazy to be concerned.

There is never a shortage of rationales to justify bigotry and discrimination. But, when avenues from the bottom of society leading to the top are blockaded by a ittle mistake here, a little slip-up there – and children grow into disaffected youngsters, unemployed and unemployable – the result is always the same. A breeding ground for crime and violence – which officialdom hopes will always be directed into the segregated society instead of striking out at the profiteers of a divided society.

Two in three of those involved in the riots who had a criminal record had never been to jail, despite amassing an average of 15 previous offences each, figures have shown.

One in four people charged over the violence and looting that swept through English cities had committed more than 10 previous offences, with one in 20 having more than 50, the Ministry of Justice figures showed…

Four in 10 of males aged 10-17 who were brought before the courts over the riots had at least one previous conviction, compared with just one in 50 of those aged 10-17 in the general population.

But the officials said that while those involved in the violence and looting were ”much more likely than the population as a whole to have previous convictions, there is also evidence of some people being drawn into the criminal justice system for the first time…”

New figures for the crown courts showed 79 jail sentences have been handed down so far, with nine in 10 of those appearing in crown courts being sent to prison, compared with one in three for similar offences last year.

For those dealt with in magistrates courts, 97 have been sent to jail – four in 10 of those who have been sentenced – compared with one in 10 of those who appeared before magistrates for similar offences last year.

Overall, sentences were tougher too, with those involved in the riots being jailed for an average of 10.4 months for violent disorder, compared with an average of 5.3 months last year.

For burglary, the average for those involved in the riots was 14.1 months, compared with 8.8 months last year.

Mr Clarke added: “I congratulate the courts for delivering swift and firm justice, which stopped the riots spreading further.

“I am dismayed to see a hardcore of repeat offenders back in the system…

He went on: “We are making our jails places of hard work, getting criminals off drugs and alcohol, toughening community sentences and making offenders pay back to victims and communities for their crimes.”

The paying back part is praiseworthy – not often realistic though.

Sounds like the Brits have to make the same sort of decision we’re barely starting to make in the US about our own drug gangs. Make rehab and education available in the slammer — but, count on warehousing some of these miserable lowlifes often and for bigger time.