Watching The Bill, Live

It's been all go here this evening, outside at least. I believe that all new property developments in the UK (or possibly some parts of it) are now obliged to designate some of it for Social Housing. This is a relatively sensible policy designed to prevent the formation of sink estates. The majority of people living in such housing are nice enough but it is hard to deny that they include a much higher proportion of drunks, druggies and dreadfuls than would be found elsewhere.

I live quite close to the Social Housing in my development and it's not unusual for the police to be called for one reason or another. I like to think that we just have friendly police round here who like to drop in for a cup of tea every now and then. Or maybe it's where they get their drugs.

Today there's been a lot of noise throughout the day. Mostly shouting and whatnot. Then around seven o'clock three lads were out in the car park shouting and swearing at each other. It was actually getting to the point where I was considering calling the cops myself. But I didn't need to because one of my neighbours had clearly got there first and a police car pulled in. The police got up and had heated discussions with the lads (we were watching through the curtains). The discussions got very heated and ended up with the police using a stun-gun on one of them, at which point the shot man fell to the ground (and was at least a bit quieter). The police then called for back-up.

Within a few minutes, two more cars and three vans had arrived. This made the car park very full and I was glad that I hadn't left the supermarket shopping until then (also it's Sunday so they'd be shut but you get the idea). I couldn't tell how many actual police there were but it must have been at least 12, probably more.

Sadly, I don't think anyone else got shot. I couldn't really tell what was going on as there was a lot of shouting, swearing and overlapping noise. Also I was trying to watch The 4400 on DVD and it was a good one.

After a while everyone left. Some in the front seats of the vans, some probably in the locked up sections of the backs of the vans. Some in cars.

So not a great anecdote, in that I don't have any detail or understanding of what was going on. But I did see a c**k get shot with a stun-gun and that was entertaining.

How to spot a stupid person

It's always entertaining to find particularly stupid people. For example a guy was prosecuted today because he did 130mph and filmed himself doing it. Then he posted the video on YouTube.

The police are apparently pushing for this practice (the posting, not the speeding - thats' already bad!) to be banned - they don't want this sort of thing posted online. But I don't understand why.

I would have thought that the first thing police would want would be for them to post a video of the crime being committed in a public place like the internet. Imagine if Jack the Ripper had filmed himself killing Victorian "Gentleman's Ladies" and then mugged to camera afterwards. it would have been an open and shut case.

Every person who posts a video of them doing something stupidly stupid on the internet is stupendously stupidly stupid and should be locked up as soon as possible. They are lighting a big neon sign above their heads saying "arrest me now" and we should help this process along, not hinder it.