Believe it or not, most of my interactions with the police during my life have been fairly positive.

That’s possibly because the police were more proactive and visible when I was younger and I was never more relieved in my life when two huge coppers stopped me and my friends from becoming statistics behind a Chinese restaurant in London.

I’ve been arrested once, when I was still in my early twenties on a case of mistaken identity.

It was quite amusing as there were cars, dogs and a load of coppers for me and a couple of mates who were on our way home from a night out.

I was arrested by a WDC and read my rights.

A tiny uniformed sergeant then decided that HE would take me in.

I was wedged between two monsters in the back seat and was then questioned.

After a minute or two, I said that I’d been told my rights and that I would now exercise my right to be silent.

This seemed to be a personal affront for him because he promised me a hard time in the cells.

Me being me, I couldn’t let that one go and I told him that I knew I was going to get a kicking but as long as he had the bottle to come into the cell alone, I’d take whatever was given when I finished with him.

I can still feel the shoulders twitching against mine as the two beasts in the back suppressed their giggles.

Nothing happened.

No charge, just very late home and straight into work.

That’s by the by.

The case of my Uncle, which went on for so many years and is all here –

In the end

Showed me the very best of the police, I can never thank them enough for the care and dedication that they showed.

The fact that Susan Auckland never went to prison wasn’t their fault, it was inter-force failings and it led to me writing my first ever letter to the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire saying that his force had failed my uncle.

At some point I’ll be writing another letter to a CC, but for a different reason.

And I can’t say anything at all about the case, apart from the fact that it involves poor old Arthur again.

But, first a genuine question for you.

What’s worse:

Casual robbery – phone snatching, car theft, shoplifting etc.

Or deliberately defrauding the vulnerable?

For me, it’s the latter. Most small-time criminals are as thick as whale shit and once they’ve started down that path, I’d imagine that it’s hard to change.

White Collar fraudsters have had all the advantages that the phone thief never will and their crimes show a mindset that is beyond redemption.

Last week, I received a letter from another Police Force.

I wondered if I’d managed to speed in their patch before I opened it and was confused as I haven’t been through that county for years.

It turns out that before Susan got her hooks in, Arthur’s Financial Adviser had fleeced him and a large number of people for a LOT of money.

I rang the WDC who’d sent the letter and we had a good chat.

She had discovered Arthur’s part in the fraud by being diligent and good at her job, he fell below the threshold that the investigation was set at.

The fraudster has already been arrested and is likely to plead guilty at court, the CPS has the trial ready to go – more or less.

I’ll be there at the sentencing and I plan to make him far more famous than a simple court report ever could.

Properly famous.

The WDC gave me the details of the person at the company that this cunt worked for and they were fantastic.

At some point, they’ll pay the estate back what was stolen plus any dividends and interest that would be due.

Then the kicker.

The fraudster may have been doing this for THIRTY YEARS.

Like I said. He’ll he famous.

If you have vulnerable relatives, it may be worth checking in with them to make sure that they’re not being abused by somebody like this.

At some point, I’ll be giving more details and I’ll be writing to a Chief Constable to suggest that his officer gets an award.

Watch this space.

I’m sat in the garden as I write this, it’s Sunday afternoon, the sun is actually shining and one of the dogs is sat at my feet. The other is indoors, asleep in his little bed, content with his safe and warm little world.

Well….

When I say garden, I mean a space of half an acre or so in front of me with a view that is unbroken until the Shropshire hills get in the way.

It’s beautiful, it’s peaceful and it’s mine because I worked for my whole life, paid my mortgages and my dues and tried to live a life more or less within society’s rules.

I’ve never taken a penny from the state and have paid a LOT of tax for an ordinary boy from a council estate in Hackney.

I’ve not posted much recently. The twin horrors of Irina Zarutska and Charlie Kirk showed a face of humanity that is more than depressing, vapid evil, gleeful celebration and chilling indifference to the public murders of innocents.

The Unite The Kingdom protest was reported exactly as could be predicted, everyone is either far right or too stupid to know that they’re being turned into Nazis – or whatever.

The Southport inquiry is shaping up to be incredibly grim.

And our retarded government just rewarded Hamas for a mass murder event by unilateral recognition of Palestine.

If we’re not careful, we can get into the mindset that all is lost.

And it isn’t.

The vast majority of people are still good, honest and friendly, particularly out here in the Shire, I’d be shocked these days if I met somebody out walking that didn’t say hello and stop for a chat.

Communities still exist, we look out for each other, donate surplus fruit and veg ( for free obviously) and watch each other’s houses when neighbours are away.

For something more concrete – I’ll give you this.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a councillor and I see that as a privilege rather than a perk, if you’re not helping, don’t bother.

A car stopped on the road last week and a lady leaned out for a chat to say thanks for helping with some speed issues through her hamlet.

But that’s not what I’m going to write about.

We see the planning applications as soon as they come in and I’m proud that we’ve never played the NIMBY game, each application is looked at on its own merits.

And so one came in from a company wanting to change a residential address to a shared children’s home.

Me being me, I looked the company up and the alarm bells started ringing.

It’s a company owned by a Zimbabwean who has a string of failed companies and some complicated relationships with interrelated companies and some very dodgy looking accounts.

The application was absolutely full of holes too.

So I flagged this up and found that the house is one of only three that were built in 2017 on a rural road – and that a previous councillor lives next door and is trying to sell up.

They were unaware of the application as the Zims hadn’t posted it in public, but the Zims are awful neighbours and there have been a number of rat infestations along with a number of ‘incidents’.

I wrote to the chair of the council asking for details of all and any contracts held by these people and enclosing details and photos of a previous place that they’d flipped like this in Dudley – this is the house as of a few weeks ago and that’s a year after planning was granted.

I worked quite closely with the neighbour on the other side of the current house that they wanted planning for and we found a huge number of issues with the company, the person owning it and some potential fraud on a large scale – all passed to the relevant authorities for further investigation.

My theory for what it’s worth is this.

The Zims didn’t and don’t have a contract, but the change of property designation makes the house fit for HMO use, so they’d flip it, fuck off and leave the neighbours to deal with whatever horrors came next.

I also think that they assumed that a load of rural fuckwits wouldn’t know what was going on and they’d get this waved through.

But.

This isn’t a big town.

The neighbours mobilised, objection after objection, the county council took a side before the outcome was officially decided.

And it’s a big fat fucking NO.

But it’s worse than that, a number of councils are now investigating, the police may be along with the QCQ and the Charities Commission.

I did that.

I could have ignored it and let it pass, if I had, I doubt anyone would have known.

If we don’t stand up for ourselves, who will?

By the way, when I saw the company name in the application, it wasn’t apparent that they were Zimbabweans.

I couldn’t give a fuck about that, you’re either ‘us’ or you’re not. Anybody scamming people aren’t ‘us’.

The end of this week brought forward some good news.

One of my feral ponies is a dad again, he’s currently being fucked over by the company for something that they’ve got completely wrong – at some point they’re going to have to pay him a lot of money and I’ve made sure that he’s fully supported by experts still in the company and by solicitors.

He’s a fantastic man to know, hard working, intelligent, funny and very, very personable.

And he’s invited me to his house on Friday to take part in a Naming Ceremony- he’s of Nigerian descent and I’m incredibly honoured to be invited.

So, with all the awful news, the certainty that our government would rather rape us financially than actually fix anything, we have to take each small victory as it comes.

I’ll leave the ending of this to Churchill

‘This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.’