I arrived for a family Sunday lunch to see Uncle Audley deep in the newspaper. He had just been reading about a horrific racial attack on an Arab student in Hastings. Before I could read the report, Uncle Audley was off. “It seems this happened outside a kebab house. The owner had called the Police an hour before because some youths had congregated outside, clearly intent on mischief. Apparently there had been trouble on other occasions. The Police did not intervene and an hour or so later the incident took place. There was a subsequent Police announcement that they had been unable to take action because no crime had been committed. So there you have it. Someone has to be killed before the Police will do something. So much for crime prevention!”
“There seems to me to be another issue here. The Police are like many State sponsored organisations these days. They find it impossible to admit that they may have failed. I imagine it is an inevitable consequence of this ridiculous compensation culture we have these days. Consequently, we have these ludicrous statements issued whenever there is an incident like this one. The first casualty is confidence and credibility. Apologies and compensation come later, sometimes much later. I know that there are only a minuscule proportion of cases like this and the national newspapers gorge themselves in such cases. In most cases, Police do take the appropriate preventative action. But they should put their hands up if they do fall short of their own high standards”.
“The Revenue have the same mentality save that they are rather more prone to error. But just try getting them to admit it. Good heavens, it is likely pulling teeth. What they do now is a sophisticated game of pass the parcel. The poor, unfortunate taxpayer – sorry, customer (we must use the correct terminology) has his complaint passed from one department to another department to another. It recalls Kafka’s description of the labyrinthine legal processes at work in the old Austro-Hungarian empire. The Revenue are playing the percentages that busy taxpayers will eventually give up and get on with their lives, however just their cause might be. My advice is “Don’t succumb. Never give in, never give up, never despair”.
On this Churchillian note, Uncle Audley fell back into his chair and succumbed, himself, to sleep!
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