You might like the poem the boss wrote


If not, then what?

I wish there was another word,
a word not so much
devalued. A word to escape the
tarnish of celebrity, the
stain of idolatry, the
banality of Saturday sport.

If I could only find a better word, more
able to embrace the
stubborn resolution,
a word to enshrine the valour.

A word to harness the
fathomless grit
of the few.

The few who care, who dare, who
embrace the fear of the many.

Those few, who nurse, who diagnose, who
stop what they are doing to
tenderly
hold a hand.

Those who deliver, who collect, who
serve, distribute, drive, make, invent,
smile and wave, whose names
we’ll never know, who hold
at bay the virus, this
plague of our time.

Hero, tired, timeworn,
both word and worker
but they do not deserve each other.

Hero does not speak to
the majesty
of their gift.

Thanks Pete

I'm biased of course, thought it was good

Shocking how young some of them are.

Not bad singers either



is it cos they is Welsh ?

They had two policemen with them, so how much more could have been done? They were checking to see if the guy was ill, as he'd not been answering his door. Would anyone have thought "we'd best send a couple of cops and send them in first, tasers at the ready," when, basically, they were just checking to see if the bloke was dead or alive?

I don't know what the setup is in that area, but in a lot of places, it would actually have been the police performing the check and calling paramedics if they were required. In other cases, the paramedics would only have called the police in if they had assessed a risk after the initial entry, or attempted entry. In those cases they use the mnemonic, RAVE, to assess the danger: Resistance - Aggression - Violence - Escape.

Sadly, this was a mental health issue, seemingly not flagged up prior to their entry, or I would hope that the police would be first in to assess the risks rather than the paramedics. Looks like a balls-up all round at first sight.

Damn right.  Who needs due process, lock him up and throw away the key! We all know that nobody is actually mentally ill, it's just an excuse used by clever lawyers so that their clients get an easy ride in hotels like Rampton, and Broadmoor.

It's your use of the phrase "Put him behind bars and keep him there." I object to, Martin.  You've already tried and convicted him without knowing the facts, other than "he stabbed people."

What caused him to do that should also be a part of the solution.  If he's mentally ill you don't "Put him behind bars and keep him there," you remand him to a secure hospital wing for starters, where he can be assessed by professionals.  i.e. people who are not you or I and who know what they're doing.  Not everything is black and white. 

How about if he's suffering from the onset of dementia, and thought people were breaking into his house and he believed he was defending himself?  Previously undiagnosed schizophrenia?  Mental health issues caused by the lockdown are widespread...

I'm in no way saying any of those are what actually happened, but they're a few possible scenarios out of hundreds.  Life is not solvable by making a choice based on reading a brief newspaper article bereft of 90% of the facts about an incident.

We could bat this about for ages, and I think both want the same thing ultimately.  All I'm doing is trying to differentiate between "revenge" and "justice".  One correction, which may (or may not) change your view slightly.  He didn't come to the door with a knife, he was inside his home.  The police effected entry by by borrowing a screwdriver from a neighbour and removing a door panel so they could reach in and open the front door. 

The guy wouldn't answer the door, which is what triggered the visit in the first place.  The major question for me at the moment is why did the police break in and then let the paramedics go in first?