To see how far the British justice system has gone down the pan, one just needs to look at this (above). Stephens stole jogging bottoms, T-shirts and shorts of an unknown monetary value from the Adidas store on New Street on August 8. Judge Inman told Stephens he had reduced his sentence because he handed himself in and also because he entered an early guilty plea.
Now compare and contrast that with the fate of filth like Andrew Laycock, at 58 a retired former council head of legal services (who will have sought the imprisonment of many Council Tax defaulters in his him). He walks free with a suspended sentence, having been given "credit for his plea" of guilty to possessing more than 5,700 indecent images and 17 counts of making indecent images of children.
And then, of course, there is this excrement, the former Liberal Democrat councillor Christopher John Basson, who walks free from Westminster Magistrates' Court, despite stealing £12,000 from the State in fraudulently obtained incapacity benefits, while receiving nearly £26,000 in member's allowances from Camden Council.
If there is a logic here, it is difficult to see it ... other than it paying to wear a suit and have council connections. But, if kids on the streets don't take the system seriously, or give it any respect, you can hardly blame them. This is "The Man's justice" and it stinks.
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Wholesale looting by the thieves in suits is not confined to the public sector. In fact, the looting disease was caught from the private or – to be more precise – from the corporate sector. Here, wages – or "compensation" as they quaintly call it – has soared to stratospheric heights, reaching the obscene levels typified by the grotesque payments made to BT chief executive, Ian Livingston.
Last year, this looter saw his bonus more than triple, taking his total pay package, including shares, to more than £3m. It thus can hardly be unrelated to see today the beguilingly simple headline "BT customers face higher bills".
Monthly line rental for customers are to rise from £13.90m to £14.60, having already increased from £12.79 in April. Other rising charges include the cost of daytime calls, the cost of the popular "Anytime" call package, and the call connection fee.
In fact, the rise in charges is directly connected to Livingston's fortunes, as he was drafted in salvage the company from its disastrous ventures, in particular the losses from its Global Services wing. His predecessor in the role, Hanif Lalani, left BT the year before, having presided over £1.6bn of "write downs" on these ventures, taking a £780,000 "golden goodbye" as his reward for failure.
Livingston has since turned the company round , mainly by the expedient of increasing prices while holding down the pay of his field workers. He has, nevertheless, retained his company's enviable reputation for inefficiency, poor consumer service and indifference to customer needs.
Apologists for this type of corporate looting will, of course, point to the effect one man can have on the balance sheet, stressing that getting the right man for the job requires an internationally competitive payment package.
On the other hand, one has to note that corporate decisions are not taken by one man alone – that is what boards of directors are for. And here the looting spreads across the table. Last year, the head of BT's retail business, Gavin Patterson, saw a salary increase of five percent and finance director Tony Chanmugam got a rise worth more than seven percent.
Yet these officials had been in post during the height of the Global Services debacles, each trousering £1.1m in salary and bonuses during the period. Chanmugam salary was then lifted from £475,000 to £510,000, while Patterson's £500,000 was increased by £25,000. In 2009, Chanmugam had also received a £315,000 "retention cash award".
The message sent is obvious – and it is one that has doubtless been absorbed by the youths of Tottenham and elsewhere. And if the men in suits can so freely indulge, they should hardly complain when the scrotes at the bottom of the heap follow their example.
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I had a look at this story yesterday, and wondered what to make of it. The idea of a plod being dobbed in for failing to arrest a scrote in the act of thieving – and then being banged up – sounds so implausible that one feels there has to be more to it.
However, Raedwald thinks he might have an explanation. "When officers start shooting their men to encourage obedience, you know they're in desperate trouble", he writes:
When rank and file police officers see their endemically corrupt seniors get away with gross peculation of public funds, taking lavish bungs from dodgy enterprises, rewarding themselves with bonuses that equal a constable's annual salary, consorting openly with known criminals and stumbling from one silver-braided circle jerk to another, what do you imagine happens to their commitment to risk themselves to protect the public? Senior officers are aware that they've alienated themselves from ordinary plods. So they're seeking to secure by fear the obedience they can't achieve by leadership.I wouldn't entirely disagree with that, and we have observed before that the establishment seems to be running scared. Certainly, the extraordinary effort being devoted to tracking down the street rioters and looters, and the stiffer than normal sentences being handed down, can be interpreted in a similar vein. These are signs of weakness – fear – rather than strength.
One wonders if they are thinking what we're thinking, that we are on the cusp of a low-grade civil war, the nature of which seems to be continuing in Berlin, where the continuing car burning is now being treated as "politically motivated".
Our own establishment have gone out of their way to brand our troubles as "criminality", which is what they originally tried to do in Berlin. But it hasn't washed there, and it doesn't really wash here. They next time, though, the violence will be harder to dismiss, and our establishment too may well have to admit to political motivation.
But, if Raedwald is right and the senior plod and the politicals are losing touch with the rank and files, then we are in for a torrid time. The distance does beget fear and a frightened plod is a violent plod. But if they give vent to violence, they will be sowing the seeds of their own demise. We are the ones with the power.
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I don't have much time for Pat Condell. He strikes me as the classic "man-in-pub", reinforcing prejudices which make him almost a parody of himself. This clip is typical of the genre, even if the underlying theme is sound. We do need a revolution – more a counter-revolution, as the "colleagues" got there first to steal our rights.
But Condell, like so many, confuses elections with democracy. We need to understand here that electing officials does not a democracy make, and nor is the election of our officials a necessary condition for democracy - as Klein Verzet also notes. Until it was so perverted, there was more democracy in the unelected House of Lords than there was in the Commons.
Democracy, therefore, is not about choosing officials, but of controlling them once they are in office. With election comes the threat that, should they not behave, we will remove them ... but since those officials all work to the same agenda now, that threat has lost its force.
Nor can we really talk about restoring democracy. In this country, we have never really had it, except around the margins. The history of the British people has been the journey towards a destination, at which we have never arrived. We need, actually, to create a democracy, to which effect we need to give the means some considerable thought.
For the moment, though, Condell will have to suffice, with his call for a revolution – not an uprising. His is not a call to violence, and neither will you get one here. But to fight the current order and to seek its overthrow by peaceful means are legitimate aspirations of the British people.
And, as I keep saying, there are more of us than there are of them. We just need to realise our own power.
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Brazen in its contempt for public sentiment, the Local Government Group (formerly the Local Government Association) is seeking to appoint a new chief executive, and is ready to pay £190,000 a year. Funded from subscriptions from local government, which it represents, the LG Group is thus far from setting a good example in moderating its salary offers. Instead, it is joining the ranks of the looters with great gusto.
Officially the group, which changed its name from the Local Government Association this summer, has advertised the job for £150,000, with more available for an "exceptional candidate". However its choice, which is likely to be announced in the next few weeks, is certain to be judged exceptional and its salary will be set to come just beneath the £200,000 mark.
Outgoing chief executive John Ransford was paid at the rate of under £100,000 a year in his final months in the job, which means that the new chief executive will be enjoying what amounts to a doubling in salary for a job that has remained unchanged.
And, to add insult to injury, the LG Group brought in a recruitment consultancy to help with the appointment and has put the cost of this at £16,000 – more than many local authority employees earn in a year.
The contempt of the Group, however, is hardly surprising. Its political leader is Tory Sir Merrick Cockell, former leader of Kensington and Chelsea council. Cockell is one of the local councillors estimated to have made more than £100,000 in a single year in allowances paid by various local government bodies of which he has been a member.
But we must not talk of killing these people ... to do so could be construed as an arrestable offence - and it upsets some of our more sensitive readers. We, the little people, should instead smile and be grateful that we have such towering figures looking after our interests, for such a pittance. You know it makes sense.
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Do you remember when the mantra of "Tory splits" seemed to be the most dominant force in politics, with Labour in full cry at the very hint of them, and the Tory grandees pulling out all the stops to maintain a façade of unity?
And now we have the "coalition", with the Cleggerons totally at odds over a supposedly flagship policy. They are split right down the middle, yet somehow this is not supposed to matter.
Actually, this makes a total nonsense of any idea of coherent government, when the man pretending to be prime minister is being held to ransom by his own deputy who is actively briefing against him.
Meanwhile, while the idiot Boy prattled about clawing back powers from Brussels, he is being undermined by his Business Secretary, Vince Cable, who has "agreed" to a controversial EU directive on agency workers, a measure which is set to cost employers more than £1.8 billion a year.
With that, the very concept of a unified government descends into low farce – a hollow joke. But the tragedy is that the joke is on us, the British people, forced as we are to suffer these posturing buffoons.
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Confronted with evidence of their peculation, you would think that local authority chief executives would be hanging their heads in shame. That, though, would be to misunderstand the beast. Lining your pockets with public funds means never having to say you're sorry. Thus, we get "much anger amongst many in local government" at the inclusion of "all payments to chief executives covering items such as expenses, pension payments and returning officer fees".
In particular, the officials are very cross about this story, identifying one of their number, Phil Dolan, as a council fat cat, "earning" £570,000. We've got him all wrong, it seems. When he left his lucrative post, his authority, South Somerset, was "obliged" to pay Mr Dolan his £133,878 salary and £6,000 benefits in kind for the year, £23,122 for his notice period, £239,000 to the Local Government Pension Scheme under rules set by DCLG and £10,700 in statutory redundancy compensation. The only part decided by the council was a £156,676 discretionary redundancy payment.
Therefore, ministers – to say nothing of the rest of us – are making "malicious and vindictive" personal attacks on these innocent local government officials. And as people lap these stories up, we are told, "they come to view local government officers as 'fat cat bureaucrats' intent on bleeding the state dry for their own advantage when, really, they'd be far better off if they left the sector".
Well, there is a real easy answer to that. If these poor, misunderstood little darlinks think they would be better off elsewhere ... please leave the sector. We won't mind at all.
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Less than two weeks ago we saw this after judge Farook Ahmed had cut the sentence of Vincent Miller, illegal immigrant and drug dealer, to help him escape deportation (above). He deliberately shortened the sentence Miller would have received from a year to eleven months. Criminals given twelve months face automatic deportation proceedings.
And now, we see this: a looter who took just one lick of an ice cream he stole during rioting before he gave it away has been jailed for sixteen months. Anderson Fernandes, 21, wandered into an upmarket store in central Manchester after the door was left open and helped himself to a cone and two scoops.
But despite giving it to a passer-by because he didn't like the coffee flavour he was still given a lengthy prison term.
And this occurs on the day we see reported that net immigration soared by 20 percent last year. This, says the Daily Mail "is making a mockery of Government pledge to bring it down".
One could venture that what is really behind this is the weak attitiude of government to immigration. When The Man feels threatened, as with the riots and looting, no sentence is too draconian. What a contrast this makes with the laid-back attitude to people who should not even be here.
Sometimes, you know, actions speak louder than words.
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After a flat summer, Dellers has delivered a stonker, effectively calling for The Boy to go for an immediate general election. He (The Boy) won't, of course - he's far too wedded to the fruits of office to put those at risk.
With reference to this blog, some of our readers have taken exception to the belicose tone, only just stopping short of promoting physical violence against our rulers. But here, we have Dellers in a spoof letter from Cameron to Britain, telling us that, "if you realised just how totally stuffed we are you wouldn’t waste time getting to the end of this letter. You’d already be outside Number 10 with pitchforks demanding my head on a spike ... ".
We are where we are, writes "Cameron", through the pen of Dellers – and where we are is about as dire a place as Britain has ever found itself in in its entire existence. That includes ... even the darkest days of the Second World War.
Back then says Delleron, "however bad things might get, we were cushioned by an empire, by America, by a sense of unity and purpose, by a national character defined by resilience, self-reliance, patriotism, decency and an absolute determination – even unto death – never to surrender to tyranny in any form".
I think Dellers overstates that "sense of unity and purpose", but there was at least a common external enemy. Now, the enemy is within, the parasite classes indulging in the systematic looting of the public purse, while handing the legislative and governing powers of Parliament to the EU, unelected quagoes and a corrupt, dysfunctional local government.
And while that is all going on, we have a media besotted with the "bread and circuses" soap opera of Libya, one of those foreign adventures in which we should never have got involved and which now serves to divert attention from the real and pressing crises at home.
Thus, despite the fond wish of the Dellers, the general election – even if it was to happen – is not going to be the solution. Things have gone to far. We are on the edge of the precipice, but there does not seem to be anything capable of dragging us back.
Undesirable though it might be, it looks very much as if those "pitchforks" will have to be used ... it is just a matter of time. And getting po-faced and "precious" about this blog's strident tone isn't going to make it any different. As for me, I'd sooner be down to one reader and right, rather than play to the masses and join the ranks of the deluded and the ostriches.
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As more and more detail comes pouring in, it is quite evident here that we have an epidemic of looting. By any comparison, the amount of money appropriated by the "looters in suits" far exceeds that stolen by the street amateurs. No one yet has pieced it all together, and at this stage it is probably not yet possible. But, when you take local authorities, civil servants, quango executives and the NHS, we are well into ten figures ... the billion-mark.
It may be only a few of us saying this, but that does not make us wrong. This is a crisis – more so than the street violence of a few weeks ago. Then, at least there were measures that could be taken against the perpetrators. Here, the thieves are in our midst, and walking away with their loot, unchecked.
Of course, there is also the Jacqui Smith farce, but that is small beer compared with this epidemic of official looting. It is the looting which is costing us the money, and our supine MPs seem powerless to stop it. But, reviewing this escalating situation, by what moral authority now do they claim any obligation to pay tax? And if there is no moral authority, we are not talking tax – but extortion and theft.
The really interesting thing, though, is that this seems to be an international phenomenon, with an outbreak in the Netherlands, Australia and South Africa. This institutionalised corruption is becoming the norm. We are all the poorer for it and, if it is not stopped, it has the potential to bring down civilisation as we know it.
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And so we have another one, another "looter in a suit", ripping off the public. And what must never be forgotten here is that, should you as a council tax payer decide that you want no part of this outrageous theft, and refuse to pay, you go to jail. If you resist, force will be used. You will be restrained, you will be handcuffed and you will be forcibly detained.
Slime like Kevin Lavery, therefore, line their pockets on the proceedings on extortion with menaces. But for his fine position, his title and the veneer of "democracy", this would be a criminal offence. Almost laughably, people get worked up about the tyranny in Libya. But we have our own version of tyranny, under our very noses. It is called local government.
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As has been pointed out on our forum, the parasite classes are not confined to the state sector. They can be found in the private sector as well. Actually, though, this is a state-owned bank – even if it is not under direct state control. Arguably, therefore, it is part of the state sector.
Perhaps more to the point, it is a corporate ... a status common to state and private sectors, where there is no morality or sense of right and wrong. Everything is justified if there is a "procedure" for it, and there can be no wrong as long as the rules were obeyed – never mind who made the rules, or whether they are right.
In the case of RBS, this looks to be wholesale looting before the bank (and the economy) goes belly-up. The thieves are taking what they can before the whole edifice comes crashing round our heads.
What is odd is that people seem to be more ill-disposed to the amateurs than they are to the genuine article. Perhaps, though, this is simply a reflection of the way polls are framed, allowing the "looters in suits" to get away with their thieving Scot-free – so far.
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We can do without second-rate politicians grandstanding on issues over which they have little control and of which they have little comprehension, spending money we haven't got, while neglecting domestic issues.
Whether or not the politicals and their gormless claque realise it, we have enough crises over here to be going on with, not least local authority management taking the piss.
The latest example is Hammersmith and Fulham Council's highly paid chief executive. As his council was presiding over the biggest cuts in living memory, Geoff Alltimes saw his pay rise by £11,193 to 281,667 in 2010, making him the second highest paid local authority boss in the country.
We then get Essex County Council boss Joanna Killian cutting £4,000 from her salary - only to receive a £6,900 bonus. Accounts show Killian took home £289,173 in 2010/11 - £147,000 more than the Prime Minister - despite previously agreeing to take a five percent wage cut. The pay was topped up with a £6,900 bonus and an extra £1,100 towards her pension, despite County Hall having to make £98m worth of cuts.
Then we have a ghastly situation over in Northern Ireland, where convicted murderer Mary McArdle gets a job as a SPAD on £90K – an insult to the victim's relatives and their community.
There are so many of these sort of episodes that it would be unwise of ministers to ignore them. Whether it is hospital bosses getting away with murder, obscene compensation payments, officials living high on the hog, or just wasting money, people have had enough.
Despite the determination of the politicals not to take the riots and looting as a warning sign, we are not alone in seeing them as a response to organised looting by the parasite class, which is seriously pushing its luck - witness the political cartoon in the Independent.
The Boy maybe today rejoicing in the ransacking of Gaddafi's compound, but if he lets the sores here fester, his compound will be next. It won't then be an Arab Spring he is looking at but a British fall.
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The lucky pair are Sue Primmer, former assistant chief executive, communications & consultation at Hackney Council, and Belinda Black, former corporate director (customer and corporate services), also of Hackney Council.
Sue is an exceptionally lucky lady. On a pay scale of £33,666 pa in 2009, she left the employ of the council, handbagging a severance package worth £106,603. Her position has since been filled, so the payoff could not have been attributable to redundancy and the lucky, independent-school-educated Primmer has gone on to work as marketing & communications director at Excelian, a company that says it "services niche vendor technologies".
Lucky looter Belinda fared even better. With her job title of corporate director (customer and corporate services), she took £45,211 from the council coffers for less than five months' work. Then, on leaving, she was paid an extra £135,462 as, says the council, "compensation for loss of office".
Belinda added to the pay dirt with another £6,438 in pension contribution to bring her total loot to £187,111. But, not content with this, she is extending her looting career as "interim director" for "customer services and transactions" at nearby Newham council.
This is the official, incidentally, who had to apologise last summer for Hackney call-centres telling enquirers that no Conservative candidate was standing in the borough's mayoral election, even though Andrew Boff, a Boris Johnson aide, was standing for the Tories. Her incompetence, though, is not reflected in her ability to feather her own nest.
And all of this goes to show that, if you want to do a really professional job of looting, don't bother breaking shop windows. That is soooooo naff. Get yourself on the council payroll and do it from inside the gaff with an ID pass hanging from your lovely neck.
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First, it was this: Hospital bosses have outlined new approaches they said are needed in the face of "enormous" and growing financial pressure. The trust had slipped almost £7million behind on the year's £27.5million savings target.
Hospital chiefs said the already-huge target needed to be increased to £40million to tackle rising costs, balance the books and prepare for future savings.
Then it was this: Paul Roberts, chief executive (salary £170,001 - 175,000) said: "There is no doubt that it will be a tough year. "For the first time in a decade the Trust will receive less money in 2011/12 than it has in the previous year. "But whilst we will have to make very significant savings this year, our priority remains to provide safe and effective care to our patients."
The salaries of senior managers, incidentally, run to £1.46 million - with pensions on top, of course.
But then this happened: Richard Thompson, 42, was due to undergo the operation at Derriford Hospital, Plymouth, but was delayed because a previous patient's treatment overran. Six days after Mr Thompson's surgery slot was cancelled for a second time due to lack of beds, he was found dead in a ward toilet after suffering a fatal heart arrhythmia.
But never mind. Paul Roberts is alright. He was already in the process of leaving for pastures greener. ABM Health Board chairman Win Griffiths, said: "I am confident Paul will provide strong leadership to our executive team and all our staff as we face the challenges of providing better healthcare and improving the health of the people we serve".
Mr Roberts will start work on Monday, September 5, and in the interim, ABM's deputy chief executive, Alex Howells, will be acting chief executive. It is not known how much Mr Roberts will be paid, but his predecessor was on between £185,000 and £200,000. Nice work if you can get it, and Mr Roberts obviously can.
So every story has a happy ending. It's a pity about Mr Thompson, but there you go.
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In virtually every economic sector and sphere of activity, we are seeing examples of wholesale looting. The rot was spreading to "charities" by 2009, although these also included some very dubious operations.
One such was the Riverside Housing Group. Chief executive Deborah Shackleton walked away with £231,000 in 2008-9. These housing association are very suspicious, basically no more than jumped-up council housing departments, ripping off their "clients".
Ironically another parasite was Gillian Guy, the group chief executive of Victim Support. This is the outfit that rings you up with platitudes when you get burgled. Yet she got to take home a cool £100,000 ... much more than most burglars net.
Generally, we have the parasite class taking the piss, as the Daily Mail is once again reporting. Yet, strangely, while this newspaper is pre-eminent in reporting the machinations of the corporate looters, it is most strident about the street amateurs. It still hasn't got the point.
And speaking of corporates, Raedwald has come up with a beauty. Writing of the quango WRAP, he notes the need of that loathsome organisation to justify CE Liz Goodwin's salary of £194,000 and the quango's cost to taxpayers of some £79m a year. Try to read the piece and not feel angry.
These fools clearly cannot realise that this is the stuff of revolution ... as the recession bites, and the lights go out, even our sheeple will be out on the streets looking for blood. The Daily Mail, the political and all the rest of them can moralise for all they are worth but, if parasite classes keep taking the piss like this, some of them are going to die.
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