We are too soft on crime, and we are too soft on the causes of crime. Sorry Blair, but you took Brown’s pithy catchphrase and ruined it.
I know that chopping off hands for theft sounds barbaric to some. I am a firm advocate of the use of this punishment for the hardened thief.
I was already fairly skint and deeply in debt. I had few possessions of value left after the last burglary, but this time they took my XBox and my Playstation 2. The former had a copy of Halo in it.
Do you know what really hurt though? They took my younger daughter’s pocket money. Again. I had replaced it after it had been stolen the last time and doubled it. They not only took the money, but they trashed the origami box which my older daughter had created as a receptacle. I taught her how to make the origami box a few years back. After I forgot how to make one, my daughter re-taught me. That was a beautiful moment. They also took sweets from my daughters’ sweetie jar and left the empty wrappers in there as a taunt.
Recently, my younger daughter and I had found a common interest - multi-player Halo. She was getting very good at it and almost beat me in the last game which I shaded 15-14. Recall, she is only 9.
So when I told her today that they had taken the Xbox with Halo, she instantly burst into tears. I see my daughters rarely, and this game was a unique bond that we had preciously forged in the last three weeks. They took this from me and my daughters. They also stole the only pictures I had of my daughters playing on the Xbox together, and now, not only will I not be able to recreate that moment, I won’t be able to recreate that scene either.
For making my precious, fragile daughter cry, my daughter whose confidence I am trying to rebuild day by day remotely and week by week in company, may you suffer unbearably. And for taunting my children by stealing their sweets and pocket money, may you lose the use of your stealing hands and may you suffer eternal guilt.
Damn those thieves to hell.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Anonymous 10.20.05 at 10:51 pm
Is your name Mo Nazam?
Tauqeer 10.23.05 at 10:13 pm
lolz, very true indeed!
Shahid 10.24.05 at 7:57 pm
Eh? What’s ‘very true indeed’???
Garry Clarkson 10.30.05 at 5:15 am
maybe a bit strong, after all they would only steal with their feet or teeth even! These scum have no respect for working people (and fathers!). A similar thing happened to me. The worse thing in 2001 of being robbed of EVERYTHING I OWN was that I had only two days previously left my violent partner and was sleeping on an atic floor with my daughter. Living in my car until they stole it.
Chopping hands off…I don’t know but certainly ‘name and shame’L my robber was caught but - like th efamily law industr - it wasn’t thought important enough to charge her so they let her go. her name: Kelly Ellis, 52 Cottingly Towers beeston Leeds.
Maybe a superhero on top of her house?
Keep up the good work Shahid and I will eventualy see you.
Matt 10.31.05 at 12:16 pm
I have no doubt that the person/people responsible, like most petty criminals, is not detered from such activities because the law is too soft…the risks are too small. The fact exists that if you were to catch the individual(s) in the act and give them the a damn good beating before throwing them out, you are as likely as they are to get prosecuted! Is this country insane?! What if your children are around when the scum are in your house? - maybe up getting a drink in the middle of the night! No family should fear walking around in their own house, nor dread returning home (our safe place in the world) in the expectation that they may have been robbed AGAIN! I’m no thief, nor would I invade another persons home, but I think I can safely predict that a fine and community service (or at most a v-short prison stay) would be far more agreeable than losing a hand! I think I would think twice…but maybe that’s just me. The issue with these individuals isn’t that they commit massive ‘front-page’ crime and run the risk of losing 10+ years of their lives, it is that they commit repetative crime, crime which causes 10’s of families stress and fear and even if the haul is small and the damage light, why should descent people all over the country be targets for these bas****s.
These guys better avoid my house….My solution would involve piano wire, an electrified whip, a taser-gun, a sex-swing and an absolute beast of a sex starved bull…but that’s just me (and probably why I could never run for PM!!!)
Shahid 10.31.05 at 1:27 pm
Garry and Matt, excellent comments. Thank you!