Wednesday, 23 September 2009

"...I think we did a good job."

So says Ron Grantham, community safety manager at Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council.

Yes, that's right. The council where Ms Pilkington took the only way out she could after years of abuse from what the 'Indy' quaintly describes as 'a problem family'.
Yesterday, Ron Grantham, community safety manager at Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council told an inquest at Loughborough Town Hall that despite seeking an injunction against one family the culprits still caused problems on Bardon Road, where Mrs Pilkington had lived.

"Throughout this tragic case this family still continue to cause trouble to this day," he said. "It's not just one, it's members of the family."
So, what does the man from the council think of these subhuman scum?
Mr Grantham said the parents who were unable to control their children were ultimately to blame.

"It comes down to parental control," he said. "With the best will in the world, and we have done an awful lot of work, if you cannot get a level of parental control, the problems will escalate.

"I dread to think what will happen to these children, criminality wise. If they don't stop they are going to end up in prison. It is a wicked cycle unless intervention is put in to place to stop it. That's my honest opinion."
Is it just me, or does Mr Grantham sound like his concerns are with the children of this 'family', and the possible consequences (Ha! As if...!) to them of their actions, and not with the families on Bardon Road that are still being terrorised by them?
Mr Grantham admitted that had Ms Pilkington complained to the council today, her family would have received greater assistance as they would have realised they were the victims of what could be termed as hate crimes.

He added: "As a partnership between the council and police, we have introduced a way of protecting public confidence and we have introduced an awful lot of ways to stop anti-social behaviour."
I hate to point out unfortunate reality to you, Mr Grantham, but it hasn't worked.

By your own admission, these people are still causing problems.
The inquest heard Mr Grantham and two of his colleagues dealt with 2,476 incidents of anti-social behaviour between April and December 2007. Of those 313 were in Barwell.

Assistant deputy coroner for Leicestershire and Rutland, Olivia Davison, asked him whether this was "an inordinate amount of work".

Mr Grantham replied: "To a degree. Obviously anybody can say that they need more staff but with the resources we have got I think we did a good job."
Tell us, Mr Grantham, do you really consider that you and your team are doing 'a good job'? What exactly did you do?

Oh, sure, you applied for and got an exclusion zone around Ms Pilkington's house. No-one bothered to enforce it, though.

And you provided her with a diary to record the incidents (which she never used - poor woman, at that point, she must have wondered what good it would do), though a 12-gauge and your blessings to do some urban vermin control would have been more use.

And, no doubt, you held many meetings with various people in numerous other departments about the problem.

But you had no effect. So, why do you believe, in spite of the evidence staring you in the face, that you did 'a good job'? Are you a moron? Or a pathological liar?

No. It's just that, by the standards of NuLabour's Britain, you did do 'a good job'. You no doubt ticked many, many boxes. That's what 'a good job' now means...

Complacent, indifferent, caring for the wrong people and a total jobsworth. You will go far in the world of council work, Mr Grantham.

11 comments:

  1. As a quick fix, why didn't they just rehouse Mrs P?

    I'm a big fan of social housing, but it has to be run properly. They should grade all estates/blocks into 'nice' estates where there's no entitlement to HB and eviction for criminal offences, ASBOs etc; middle estates where you can claim HB but where you still get evicted if you commit any sort of offence; all the way down to something akin to open prisons built on ex-MoD land in the middle of nowhere for the likes of Mrs P's tormentors.

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  2. It would have done the trick, wouldn't it? But only for her.

    I've got a horrible feeling it wasn't put forward because the council would have felt that this was opening a door for all the other families there to put in a claim to be moved.

    Why didn't they simply move the scum? Gruinard's inhabitable now, isn't it?

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  3. "I dread to think what will happen to these children, criminality wise. If they don't stop they are going to end up in prison. It is a wicked cycle unless intervention is put in to place to stop it. That's my honest opinion."

    Well Ron, what effect do you think getting away scott free with driving two people to their deaths will have? Embolden them or will they be prostrate with grief?

    What if they turn up outside your house, Ron? Will it take years to get resolved, or will your chums in blue be around right away to protect "a vital public servant"?

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  4. The irony is that if the male residents of the village had ganged together, put on ski masks and set about these scum with righteous cricket bats the police would have been there in minutes to protect the scum.

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  5. I like the idea of the Council handing out a Purdey to families plagued by mindless cretins. Pest Control is one rationale, indeed, and so would be Conservation, Education, Social Work, etc. etc.

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  6. MPs have to live in the cheapest postcode in their constituency.

    Introduce that rule and I guarantee that all our troubles would quickly be over.

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  7. 12-bore, Julia. Only the Seppos measure shotguns in gauges.

    It is part of the social contract that, in reserving a monopoly on force, the State pledges to apply that force in an effective and even-handed manner. If it breaches that contract, it will see, and deserves to see, an upswing in vigilantism.

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  8. "12-bore, Julia. Only the Seppos measure shotguns in gauges."

    All those US hunting sim games have corrupted my vocabulary.. ;)

    But yes, if the system begins to break down even more than it has so far, people will indeed begin to look elsewhere for heir pritection.

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  9. Left barrel first to Mr Gillies for pompous pedantry.

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  10. The (real)irony is that if the male residents of the village had ganged together, put on ski masks and set about these scum with righteous cricket bats, it probably would have sorted the problem.

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