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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Guess Who They Are
They are all first names. They appeared this morning for a particular purpose--which you have to guess--but to help you along I can say they are all male and college graduates.
Fernando
Arvell
David
Sonny
Jerimiyah
Spencer
Mansoor
Carnell
Reuben
Caleb
* They are all recognisable apart from Arvell and Carnell, which seem 'coined'
* Only one, David, would be considered 'normal'
* Four are Jewish/Biblical--David, Jeremiyah, Reuben, Caleb
* Mansoor is Muslim
* Fernando is Latino
* Sonny is more commonly a nickname than a given name
* Spencer more commonly a surname
I suppose it is easy enough to say we are dealing here with Americans though it is odd there is only one WASP name, David. The oddity means these people are young since Americans over, say, forty would not have such names, not anyway in such abundance.
It is also easy to say they must be black though in fact I don't know what colour any of them are. I do know they are drawn from a pool that is majority-black and it would not surprise me if they were all, in fact, black.
Their having been selected--and there being ten of them--points to them being meritorious in some way. (Or notorious, though I can't see them as the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.)
Anyone who says who they are--it's not difficult--should also say why the matter is of AE significance. Otherwise I shall say why myself in due course.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Is the AE answer
There are as yet none of the following.......
Chris
Brandon
Josh
Ryan
Mike
Matt
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Well... yes... sort of. Your names would not be a representative sample of all Americans, but it could be representative of All-Americans. They are, I think, quarterbacks (who are mostly white). My list was The Athletic's mock draft of the Top Ten in the forthcoming NFL draft (who are mostly black).
Now you have to get down to why it is AE-ly significant.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It's Annual Review Time!
The Secretary of Labour, Mr President.
Hello, Lori, take a pew. Just one or two points.
Certainly, Mr President, fire away.
I understand your husband has been barred from the department because he keeps sexually assaulting the staff.
You know what men are like.
Your father texted a female staffer about escorting her around town.
I've had a word.
Two of your aides are being investigated for misconduct.
They've been fired. Case closed.
You're having it off with one of your security detail.
It isn't serious.
You're always sending civil servants off to buy your alcohol.
They keep bringing me rosé when I asked for chablis.
You are constantly claiming personal jaunts are business trips.
I need a break. Give me a break.
Not this time, I'm afraid, pet. Bring in Pete Hegseth!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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"We must do something about shoplifting, our town centres are dying."
"True, but the police have more pressing priorities." |
It doesn't seem to occur to people that, despite everyone agreeing wholeheartedly with both statements, they are incompatible. If it has to be done, it must be a police priority. This is where AE (and Matthew Syed on Newsnight) steps in.
| You have to divorce police from shoplifting. |
In other words, giving shops police powers. As a practical matter this involves little more than allowing the high street to club together and hire a few dudes from some organisation that's been given a few basic police powers.
But it won't happen because it would require a fundamental rethink about who the police are. At the moment they are expensively trained as generalist crime-fighters and minutely controlled because they hold monopoly powers of arrest, investigation, prosecution and so forth, over everyone and everything.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The difficulty of advocating selective muscularity is that it puts you in with the fascists. Or anyway out of the woolly-minded (and hatted) brigade, which is just as bad.
That does not bother AE-ists who are prepared to hop around hither-and-yon along (and outside if you're any good) the political spectrum. But here's something that occurred last week that will make you salivate.
1. Seven pm: driver of an East Coast Mainline train spots a trespasser on the line
2. He's not sure, he might even have hit him
3. He contacts controller who stops this and other trains while the police investigate
4. The dude was not hit but he's climbed on top of a parapet and is threatening to jump
5. Three am: dude comes down and is arrested
6. A hundred and fifty trains cancelled
7. Four hundred trains stretching into the following day delayed
8. Ten thousand passengers stuck for hours on trains
9. Various individuals on trains needing various amounts of medical attention
10 Everybody carried out their duties by the book.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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"We must do something about shoplifting, our town centres are dying."
"True, but the police have more pressing priorities." |
The so called shoplifting spree, occurred after we re-opened after covid.
Put simply when town centres are living and thriving, shop lifting will rise. (how would it not?) When town centres die shoplifting falls.
No shoplifters equals a failed store.
Its always going to be a sort of truce between host and parasite relationship. Shops must recognise this to survive. Shops that bang on blaming both feral teenage shop lifting gangs (of which their is little evidence) and the police for not catching them, or even those that get over heavy with in store security, (bonkers again) will not survive.
You have to embrace your shop lifter. It shows you are alive and healthy.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The last time we visited this problem it was Romanian gangs. It is, I agree, always correct to minimise social panics but there is one long term problem that has to be addressed.
* If we accept online shopping is going to increase
* we have to accept high street shopping is going to decrease.
* If HS shopping is decreasing so are HS profit margins.
* If profit margins are decreasing, shoplifting costs become more critical
* leading to a greater decline in the high street than we (apparently) desire.
None of this is likely to shift police priorities so we have to address the problem in a different way.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Thinking about it, the principle of policing needs a good punch up the bracket. Our current model was designed for the nineteenth century. A single force--administered in local units--designed for both combating crime and the preservation of social order.
To this, has been added over time larger and larger dollops of social work (which the police hate, for which they are not suited and which takes up an inordinate amount of their time).
Apart from stewarding at large events and private security companies statically guarding commercial property, there are neither specialist police for, say, dealing with non-local organised crime nor trained police for, for example, computer crime. The only specialism within the police is the British Transport Police and my post above says something about their shortcomings.
It is undoubtedly true that a single recognisable force has a lot of advantages in terms of public co-operation and a freedom from the turf wars of other countries' multiple-police models but ours is far too rigid for today's complexities. Especially since all the local police units operate the same nineteenth century method of recruiting people straight from education, training them the same way and promoting internally.
But the AE aspect is that there is no debate about it!
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | The last time we visited this problem it was Romanian gangs. It is, I agree, always correct to minimise social panics but there is one long term problem that has to be addressed.
* If we accept online shopping is going to increase
* we have to accept high street shopping is going to decrease.
* If HS shopping is decreasing so are HS profit margins.
* If profit margins are decreasing, shoplifting costs become more critical
* leading to a greater decline in the high street than we (apparently) desire.
None of this is likely to shift police priorities so we have to address the problem in a different way. |
Its not really anything to do with shoplifting if you look at the high street, the stuff that is going are banks, chemists and pubs, once you take out those you have as many stores opening as closing. At the same time you have a boom in retail parks.
A lot of the shoplifting myth is because during and after covid shops' installed self checkout, as this was seen as more safe and a staff member can cover up to what was previously 10 lanes.
If you install self checkout, you will find that some customers intentionally some unintentionally miss or wrongly scan items. This let to stores boosting profits (a lot less staff) whilst suffering more stock shrinkage, they dont kniow if its theft or not but heyho, some stores have have recorded all of this shrinkage as due to shoplifting rather than buyer error.
Increasing their staff to previous levels, would help cut down on this, but that means stores would make less profit, so they are basically adding an additional security guy at the front.
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | No doubt you will remember that Tom was ordered by his aunt to whitewash a fence and, to avoid such a tedious task, got others to do it by charging them for the 'privilege'. |
M'boy and I are reading this together for the first time (for both of us). We enjoyed Tom sitting down with the girl he loves and, with the first words out of his mouth, asking her "Do you like rats?" Then the boy fainted away on his beanbag chair, laughing about how Tom next asked her how much she loved tying a string to a rat's tail and swinging it around her head.
But a few pages later, the chapter title read "A Pirate Bound to Be" and the boy couldn't go on. He's scared of pirates.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | Its not really anything to do with shoplifting if you look at the high street, the stuff that is going are banks, chemists and pubs, once you take out those you have as many stores opening as closing. At the same time you have a boom in retail parks. |
As I understand it, they are encouraging boutiquey-style, self-owned, novelty shops to replace the gone (or gone bankrupt) old-time chains and franchises. Bubble tea emporia, Japanese convenience stores, breads from every country save your own (to judge from my own high street). They seem shoplifter-proof for a number of reasons.
| A lot of the shoplifting myth is because during and after covid shops' installed self checkout, as this was seen as more safe and a staff member can cover up to what was previously 10 lanes. |
Perhaps.
| If you install self checkout, you will find that some customers intentionally some unintentionally miss or wrongly scan items. This let to stores boosting profits (a lot less staff) whilst suffering more stock shrinkage, they dont kniow if its theft or not but heyho, some stores have have recorded all of this shrinkage as due to shoplifting rather than buyer error. |
It's sounds learned, m'lud.
| Increasing their staff to previous levels, would help cut down on this, but that means stores would make less profit, so they are basically adding an additional security guy at the front. |
You're saying 'nothing to see here' which is always my preferred position so I can't very well fulminate. Let's just say, 'Mmm...'
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Here is an AE explanation for the popularity in America of all manner of things, from conspiracy theories to true-crime telly programmes.
| A lot of questionable deaths are signed off as suicide because it is too expensive to investigate them. |
I read that in a book yesterday about the Manson murders. But why America, you ask? Surely they're rolling in money. True, but ask yourself what is unique about America when it comes to crime fighting?
| It has uniquely small police forces. |
We here, for instance, would not countenance a sheriff and a few deputies being 'the local police'. I can't think of any other country that would favour such an arrangement.
What's expensive for the Deven & Cornwall constabulary would be ruinous for the Boonie County, Idaho PD. And remember, under their system, the BCPD is responsible for investigating crime on their patch. They would be as loathe to turn anything over to the state authorities as the D & CC would welcome Scotland Yard or ACPO butting their noses in.
"Looks like suicide to me, Chief."
"That's good enough for me, Mr Mayor. Can you sign these holiday rosters."
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Pete Jones pointed out a contrary argument. Even the most somnolent sheriff in the most out of the way burg needs to get re-elected. And that means TV coverage.
"Looks like suicide to me, Chief."
"The more it looks like suicide the more likely it's murder dressed up as suicide. Fetch Doc Holliday and tell him to bring his forensics bag."
But when he, Pete Jones that is, instanced Fargo as a case in point I decided to ignore him. I posted a version on Medium and got this more helpful response
| Barry Robinson wrote: | | Once met the Sheriff of Kansas City. My nephew was one of his deputies. |
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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M'boy and I pushed through the pirate chapter, and he enjoyed it. I'd been asked to scout ahead, to make sure it wasn't scary.
The pirate chapter was interesting because Tom contemplates his own death, thinking his death would sure show that girl who broke his heart. But he also imagines death's downside and wishes dying temporarily were an option. M'boy enjoyed that section.
But then the next chapter came along with an actual death, when Injun Joe murders the graverobbing "Sawbones" doctor who paid Joe to help him dig up a corpse. Heavy stuff, at bedtime.
Immediately, m'boy said he was scared, and he didn't like it, and he didn't think he'd be able to sleep. I sprung into action and changed the subject to his violent video game. Which, luckily, I too am hooked on. I told him I'd go hunt down a tiger in Nepal for him so he could mount it in his trophy lodge. And he fell asleep to the sweet dreams of a dead but virtual member of an endangered species.
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