Well, I feel slightly guilty about tossing his Sky TV package out even though he sent me a satellite dish and a do-flicker-recording-thingie 'free of charge'. However, his monthly charges went up, up and away and the content was, by and large, dismal so he had to go, I'm afraid. Also, I took umbrage when he hid The Times behind a pay-wall and I refused to pay for it. But, dammit, it's New Year and the time for resolutions. As always, I have around 978 New Year resolutions. I list that many because then I don't feel so bad about failing to complete any of them - well, if you have just one there's no escaping the guilt, is there? So one of my resolutions this year was to be nice to my ex-best friend, Rupe, because he now has, not one, not two, but three ex-wives to support. So, in a spirit of Christian charity, yesterday I bought a copy of The Times from my newsagent. I know, I know, I'm all heart, really.
Anyway, I was glad that I did so because there were two good articles in it - which was two more than I usually find in the Memsahib's Daily Mail! I will deal with one of them now, the other later on. It was written by Ross Clark who pointed out the rather startling fact that the murder rate in Britain is going down not up!
Nationally, the number of murders fell from more than 800 a year at the turn of the century to 537 in the year to last march.
I treat all crime 'statistics' from whatever source with a great deal of suspicion so I am not sure exactly which figures Mr. Clark is using. With all the different classifications of what I would call 'murder' but the 'Cocklecarrots' call 2nd degree, manslaughter and the like, it is necessary to be careful. Even so, according to Mr. Clark, this drop in the murder rate is proving an embarrassment to sundry left-wing bien pensants who had forecast with confidence that as western societies cast off their 'brotherhood of man' socialist principles and fell for the gross iniquities of capitalism red in tooth and claw the murder rate would shoot up.
But embarrassment over hopelessly incorrect forecasts never bothers the Left. As Mr. Clark points out:
New Scientist last year carried a story claiming that climate change will lead to 22,000 extra murders this century, the reasoning [?!] being that crime rates seem to rise during warm weather.
To which, given the nature of their Summers, one can only wonder that there are any Australians left alive to murder each other!
I will deal with my ex-mate Rupe's other interesting article later on. In the meantime, go buy a copy of The Times, he needs the money!