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Local NewsWhat happened to the Soccer Team This Year Death of Councillor William Turnbull On The Forthcoming Royal Visit (July 2002) Events at the Council Table On the Murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman Law and Order (Mathew Cunningham, Robert Wilby) The future of Broom Hill Swimming Pool On the Subject of Recent Road Deaths The Julie Ward Enquiry
01/11/02
HMS Grafton
Death of Councillor William Turnbull (March 2002) I am personally very saddened by the death of Councillor William Turnbull from a heart attack this month. He was a thoroughly respectable public servant in every way, a local man who worked hard for the community and actually cared about it, rather than viewing it as a means to achieve fame and fortune. At a time when the only apparent qualification for Public Office seems to have become the capacity to tell glib and fantastic lies to the people and sober responsible stories to the press, his efficient and well groomed presence will be sadly missed by his colleagues on the Borough Council in the coming months and years. On The Forthcoming Royal Visit (July 2002) My impulse is to say, despite the charade of the nauseating flattery evidenced by so many schoolchildren upon the death of the Queen Mother, who'd, quite likely never heard of her until last week, for which there must be good reason: that I personally have not met any member of the Royal Family and can conceive of little reason offhand why so many civic dignitaries who usually curse such preeminent members of society quite fully when representatives of the media are not present, should be falling over themselves in an effort to entertain someone who could hardly be in less need of hospitality of any sort. No Royalist or monarchist has done anything for me and to be honest I can see little reason for any kind of smug complacency about the realities of the inherent dangers of indulging in hero worship of individuals as responsible for the parlous state of the world today as the British Royal Family is especially in view of the predominance enjoyed by parasites and flatterers in our society today. If you ask me the late Queen Mother had following the death of her daughter Margaret, expired from sheer boredom at the thought of much further existence with her elder sibling's sycophantic voice droning away completely unmindful of the circumstances of her fun loving Uncle's abdication. It is impossible to post a letter or even buy a penny chew without encountering this woman's visage and I cannot understand why so many people will endure discomfort to sit outside just to see her drive past. I'm also rather puzzled by the interest shown in someone who has in the final analysis little real awareness of what it is like to live in this country and is hardly likely to be a source of useful advice to any but property owners or those with fortunes to spend. I find it bordering on the outrageous that the death of the fun loving Princess Margaret can have occasioned so little healthy debate about the role of the institution of monarchy and so much blandly insincere fawning on those who like the Queen Mother were keen enough to see their in laws deposed or abdicating for contemplating marriage to a divorcee whilst overlooking it in her Nieces and Nephews. Neither have we had any input into the question of how this led to the fifty year reign of a Queen whose undeserving has arguably fostered an almost unnatural conservatism in many aspects of our nation's life which in a society racked by so much distrust and too many evident and evidently worsening shortcomings is not the way to provide realistic solutions to short and medium term problems: I refer to such things as for example the routine faking of NHS statistics, the widespread untrammeled activity of loan sharks and various questionable business practices which all appear to be reigning unchecked along with a corrupt and worthless legal system that is of no use to anyone except the bloodsuckers feeding from it. I see that a great fuss has been made over one maverick Labour member's recent little gag about how disabled members have been subject to extermination under certain types of regime . It hardly needs to be said that the jest was utterly innocent of intentional impropriety if hardly betokening the greatest of wit, and that the petty furore was rather a useful red herring intended to distract innocent public from the truth about our representatives and so called democracy; it being the case that the Members preferred variety of everyday humour.including comments about assassination are known to arouse a certain amount of interest. On the Murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman This gruesome business will have done nothing to enhance the reputation of the Boys in blue hereabouts, the local force being it might be a modest exaggeration or so to say, riven with treason, nepotism and paedophilia; nor will it have done much for those County Council bigwigs in charge of vetting applications for appointments and so on. Even if it wasn't the case that the local Constabulary are far to busy, indulging in ignorances for friends, paying lip service to authority figures, simply thieving, keeping treasonously fictitious records about their having been taken to the cleaners by 'terrorists,' watching child pornography and overeating, to pose the slightest threat to organised crime of any sort, which it all tooevidently is, the simple fact of the matter is that the appalling rumours about the investigation into this abduction is in the first instance all too arguably a striking example of what 50 years of apologism for a conservative monarch has done to the nation's ability to function. I don't suppose it's the sort of thing that gets noticed 10 or maybe twenty years into a reign but after fifty it is daily becoming more glaringly obvious that the nation is languishing under an anomic culture of deference which we ought to be examining more carefully in light of the fact or at least of my opinion that there are far too many charlatans in positions of influence because they have paid lip service to the monarchy. It might be an exaggeration to say a half wit should have instantly spotted the fact that the Chief suspect's "Mediterranean complection" was indicative of him having a history of exposure to Hepatitis C or other viral hepatides which should have immediately rung alarm bells in the mind of anyone having the nerve to call him or herself a Detective, to the effect that this person (the accused) was likely to have a 'low life' background of sorts rather than being any sort of suitable child minder. After having had the displeasure to have had no choice but to describe the doings of the local force as treasonable, thievish, incompetent and deceitful etcetara, I really didn't think there was any possible means by which the locals could have sullied their ragged reputation any further and I say that without reservation or qualification. Like everyone else without exception who has heard of the this fiendish business I am shocked to learn that it is not so and that our boys in blue, the very icon of British respectability are in fact often fairly routinely paedophilic and that the nature of their viewing tastes often makes them rather more suitable subjects for blackmail than for careers as public servants. My heart goes out to the families involved and I can only seek to express my deepest condolences at their most grievous loss. I recognise my namesake the Father of the blond girl Jessica? as a man who comes into Ipswich to shop occasionally with his wife. It is unfortunately the case that I would depict this botched investigation as further evidence of nepotism and organised paedophilia among the local establishment (see my CV life history) and it makes me feel fortunate in that I have merely been regularly beaten, suffered loss of meaningful legal rights and endured a life of squalor and deprivation for refusing sexual favours to people with official connections as a minor whereas these poor mites have actually lost their lives. Their home village may have been just over the County border but I believe that they come from the same Church diocese as Ipswich and it is an interesting comment that camp Gentlemen at the local Church in central Ipswich had apparently misreported complaints I had sought to make about my having suffered from unwanted sexual advances from my Father and his third wife who was known as Patricia Cormack nee Nightingale (though I had not phrased my complaints quite so specifically at the time I was patronising the Church in the late nineties) what I had said was that I could not fathom why Ihad been treated tosuch a shameful display of reactionary hamfistedness at the hands of the local Constabulary and judicial system and had to all intents and purposes forgotten that I had ever been the subject of little less than a violent rape whilst being the step grandson of a female ex Magistrate whose daughter had boasted of her ability to influence local legal proceedings. The fact of the matter for those who might seek to say that allegations that such events are unrelated to the fact of People seeking to propagandise for liberalisation of the Local Government Acts insofar as my Father and had only just sprung a revenge plan which left me homeless and destroyed most of my life's work only weeks before the abduction took place which obviously was an act of vengeance for my refusing sexual favours as a minor to people he wanted to get in with and it did make a significant contribution toward encouraging sex offenders insofar as his real motivation was to pay for child prostitutes in the far east where he poses as a respectable Teacher whilst stealing and lying to pay for his trips out of the country and the blackmail of his Thai relatives who don't really get much attention from him except in so far as he has to be officially married to someone of Thai origin in order to travel between the two countries in quite the manner he has. The Policemen involved were obviously lying through their back teeth: if you read my article about the Chinook crash of June 93 you will understand why they have other reasons for depicting me as an unreliable source of information. These events remind me of an incident only one or two years ago: there was a murder of an allegedly camp Gentleman whose name I can only remember as Simon from you guessed it, the very same parish in central Ipswich, he had followed a group of youths into a working class district after drinking one night in the Greyhound public house (St Margarets parish) where Ms Cormack nee Nightingale was at the last of my intelligence scheming to inherit her Mother's desirable property. The local Rag portrayed the incident as a case of him being a bisexual who had wandered into a working class district and sexually importuned a group of youths who set on him, he then died of his injuries. The appeal of the youths convicted was curtly refused late last year I think and their had been several pictures of an ordinary looking sixteen year old and his distraught Father along with articles which tended to complain about the judicial process, insofar there was a fair bit of local controversy about the case. It is probably of interest to them that camp gentlemen from said parish and Church figures had sought to ignore complaints I had phrased about people sticking their ultraliberal views where they are not wanted. Whilst saying that the Father of the sixteen year old looked like a respectable working man it is probably worth adding that he must be bitterly ashamed that his Son could have been anything to do with the killing of an unarmed man in any circumstances let alone of having been part of a group that had pounded one with implements and makeshift weapons but I do sympathise with him in that I would say his Son has been made an example of at the insistence of a well organised pink lobby who really don't give two hoots about rights for ordinary people and haven't for example made any great noises about eg the controversial acquittal of two accused in the extremely brutal murder of Perry Mason and his Dog in central Ipswich (St Lawrence's Churchyard) some ten years ago. It is very much worth saying that the authorities shouldn't allow themselves to be as clearly influenced by this very small but very vocal pink lobby to do more than eg imprison identifiable ringleaders for example which most I believe felt was more appropriate than those who did want an example made: loitering in working class districts with the obvious intention of behaving like a camp, bourgeois bisexual and apparently soliciting is a particularly stupid thing to do under any circumstances and I do have a lot of sympathy in principle, especially given the evident increasing inability of the Constabulary to do anything except fiddle for their mates and watch blue movies in the name of law and order, with the idea that the community should be allowed to remove loitering suspect perverts from the local parks in a very direct way with a minimum amount of provocation. I hope informed persons on local affairs won't think it carrying conclusions too far in stating that this murder was very much something to do with Mrs Cormack's backache but the reasons for such a surmisal are more obvious than One might think: Mrs Cormack lives only a few hundred yards from the Greyhound or his planniing to if her Mother hasn't kicked the bucket and is fond of trying to take an interest in young men encouraging them to be 'liberal,' and generally sticking her snout where it isn't wanted. Simon appeared to have been emboldened by the drinks he had that night and perhaps the company he had been, keeping. He followed a group of youths who pounded him on the basis that he was a loitering pervert which is of course not grounds for quashing a conviction but is very interesting in terms of questions of motivation and mitigation; finally I think that the photos of all the involved parties in this incident very much bear out the allegation that Simon had been emboldened by the ultraliberal propaganda which is being surreptitiously circulated in north Ipswich as some kind of fad the young people are supposed to think is trendy, went out to look for a boy, probably had a flea in his ear from the Landlord Nigel who doesn't want his pub turning into a Gay Bar, was broadcasting his ultraliberal views and ended up dying at the hands of a gang of youths who were probably not looking for trouble but were probably bored and drunk. As it so happens where I am particularly well known or used to be at any rate using the Park in question as a jogging route, which as it happens is a tough working class district which no Churchmen of any sort care to frequent. I haven't been able to pay as much attention to such local matters as I would like but I would blame to a certain extent blame the failings of local Councillors who are more keen on intriguing to preserve and augment their own positions that they are on identifying and solving problems in their Wards; in this particular case it is true that they have been trying to wrangle some benefit for themselves from what I have told them about assaults caried out on me for amost 25 years and it is an irresistable observation that local youths in this case, might have been very likely to have behaved less heatedly if such complaints had been dealt with properly in the past: I am willing to stand corrected on any of the points I have raised if I am not exact in my diagnosis but I somehow have an unpleasant eery feeling that I am bang on the mark in this particualr matter. Why there is even another Kevin from my year at School whose family might like to prosecute certain individuals from the School for allowing pink propaganda to be circulated there in defiance of the local government acts. For what it is worth, my view is that Simon and his attackers are all victims of pink propaganda: Simon because he listened to voices that were telling him to do stupid things and the youths because they overeacted to the suggestions these voices were making and I really don't think that it is worth making a terrible example of very involved individual in the way that some have said we should. I know it is fashionable in many places to have liberal views about gay sex and many things which are typically viewed as prurient or depraved and so on but my own view is that it leads to mental illness in most cases: at least that is overwhelmingly the evidence I have seen including the egregious case of my own Father whose scheming, deceitful and depraved mind is arguably responsible for the whole business insofar as he is involved in attempts to have various, including sexually motivated, assaults swept under the carpet. The malicious prosecution of myself undertaken last year was never anything more than a favour that the establishment have done for a nuisance sex offender and the act sent out a big green light to any such potential malefactor. It may or may not be an exaggeration to say that roughly the same 'authorities' in the area have all but given the accused in the Soham murders a community trust award for his inspired manner of dealing with rotten ungrateful children but it has been publicised that at least one Officer involved had committed some infractions regarding laws on paedophile material. That Officers who had nothing to hide might have done better is an irresistable observation but whatever the truth about that One ought to be able to expect that individuals earning their sort of money should be above general reproach never mind this particular one.
Law and Order Sat 08/02/03 I see that Robert Wilby a longstanding acquainatance of mine has been up in court accused of badmouthing a Policeman; I can only say that this demonstrates clearly that despite his longstanding bouts of minor mental illness that he retains a fine moral sense for no-one with the least scrap of conscience or moral scruple could possibly avoid experiencing great moral outrage as the result of the most modest acquaintanceship with the boys in blue here in Cowpatland. Mr Wilby was given a harsh prison sentence back in the early eighties after a moderately serious scuffle with a girlfriend. I did know them both at the time as they were involved in the singles club where my Father met his third wife and have always felt that the authorites might have been a bit more understanding with him as he seemed quite respectable, was certainly more so than my Father; especially in view of the fact that I was seriously beaten during the course of what witnesses will be likely to have described as attempted rape on several occasions by him and said Wife. The fact that Mrs Cormack as my Father's 3rd wife was when he met her have never been charged with flagrant offences I have put down to the fact that Mrs Cormack's Mother had been a Magistrate and had considerable informal influence over the doings of the local Police. These matters are worth commenting on in that Mr Wilby's life was ruined by the prison sentence that he acquired as the result of his altercation, he hasn't worked or been the same since and to the best of my knowledge he was a reasonably respectable employed person beforehand. Robert has, for what it is worth, my wholehearted thanks and appreciation for having the courage to comment on the fact that collectively it would be little or no exaggeration to say that as far as I am concerned the Suffolk Police are more famous for the perpetration of Treason, Paedophilia and Fraud (see my CV life history) than they are for any form of commendable behaviour despite the fact that they are paid in my estimation at least 30k a year and that any good man or woman would be moved to utter profound condemnation of them and theirs as a matter of necessity: to say that they have behaved detestably only demonstrates that the English Language has obvious shortcomings in that there are no words of sufficient gravitas to describe the various infamies for which they are responsible and the execration they deserve.
The Future of Broom Hill Swimming Pool The Town was unfortunate enough, from the point of view of people such as myself who like to go swimming in the Pool in summer, to have acquired a new Swimming Centres Manager some few years ago. Three summers ago he decided that swimming in it was too dangerous and put ropes across the width of the pool in order to prevent this. Despite repeated attempts to get the matter properly discussed I have not had a proper response to any of my entreaties to this effect which have been addressed to local Councillors, Mr Grogans' political masters and himself, the matter has not been properly discussed and I have been fobbed off with various cheap pretences of such a discussion. I gather that I'm not the only one who finds that the once exemplary management standards of the local swimming pools have deteriorated: I gather that the Channel swimmer Mike Read who used to enjoy free access to the Pool has also complained that the attitude of staff is no longer what One ought to be able to expect. To return to the beginning of the story of these recent managerial difficulties I have to go back three years or two summers to the point where I went for my first visit of the season and found one of the young staff at the place screeching that no smoking was allowed in the establishment and never had been, this, despite the fact that the young man in question had worked all the previous season knew perfectly well the allegation was false and that there were less than a half dozen people in the place it being early in summer. This was a most uncharacteristic outburst from someone whom I had seen work at the place regularly and had a fairly high opinion of and so, I spoke to and subsequently emailed the management at Crown Pools that same day having discovered to my profound disbelief that it was also someone's intention to have the pool roped off into unusable sections on the pretext that it would make using the diving pit safer. I really am at a loss to explain this nonsense perhaps one of the Lady attendants felt that I should have spent more time admiring her, or less, it being the case that I have been the most regular summer visitor over the last two decades and that all the regular employees there knew that this would elicit immeasurable hatred and anguish. It is true that I did have some real difficulty in keeping my eyes off one who bears a strong resemblance to my Mother in younger years the summer before this blew up and she has not been seen (by me anyway) since, though I had originally put this down to the fact of her having a boyfriend of some seven feet in height, and a huge belly (oops ehehe finger slipped again). On the one occasion that Mr Grogan did waste perhaps as much as some ten or fifteen minutes feigning to interview me about the matter and indulging in some congenial conversation with a voice I would guess was that of his Wife which there was no need for as I had made my views plain in my email, he showed no inclination whatever to consider that the course of action he had undertaken was ludicrous and offensive and was all too obviously the product of pressure on him from his employees who obviously don't like having too keep watch on a diving pit through which swimmers using the length of the Pool have access on one side, and have had little to do except ogle young lovelies in their summer finery ever since. I have had no luck whatever with seeking to persuade the powers that be that it is a far more likely eventuality that those unable any longer to swim in the town's open air swimming pool, will suffer misfortune swimming in rivers and the local tidal estuaries in hot weather than it is that someone will injure themselves in the facilities at Broom Hill which as far as I am aware has never happened as the result of swimming lengths. As far as I have an opinion, the Staff who have worked at Broom Hill over the years have made a grand performance out of what can be an obviously very difficult and demanding Job; the staff and management has always been, as far as I could tell simply exemplary, until the time of Mr Grogan's arrival or soon after. The only criticism or advice for the future I can proffer is to come down harder on misbehaviour and to make it plain that Loutishness and assaults on staff will be prosecuted seriously and energetically: I refer to the fact of staff sometimes even being pushed into the Pool and routinely having to endure various forms of coarse and undesirable behaviour. Given the uncharacteristic nature of the outburst to which I was treated and the fact that on every subsequent occasion that I have attempted to use the pool an employee has smirkingly rushed out to place these rope obstructions in the pool, even when there have been a literal mere handful of other visitors I have to put down it's effective closure to a managerial ineptitude which does not augur well for those who have fond memories of their having once been an open air swimming pool in the Town and are likely to have hopes of securing investment and expenditure on such facilities. Other Managers in the past have not seemed quite so young and keen to be one of the lads as the present Manager and I cannot help but feel that he has surrendered too easily to the pestering of his staff for an easier life and is perhaps also overreacting to the modest renaissance which I gather from the local Rag has ben experienced by the local swimming club in the wake of the decision of one or two nationally and internationally known swimmers including Karen Pickering and Zone Kray to make use of local facilities. One of the most difficult tasks of leadership I feel sure that many will readily agree is having to make unpopular decisions and stand up as an authority figure rather than as a friend. One can appreciate that it is easier to manage and obviously less likely for an accident to occur if the diving pit is sealed off but I'm afraid as the most regular adult user of the facility for some two decades and more that the standpoint taken by the management is deliberately offensive and insulting as Mr Grogan has shown no inclination to discuss other options in a climate in which he opines "it is increasingly necessary to make safety considerations paramount." Options such as removing some of the rusting high boards or allowing swimming in the Pool at certain times of day have all been cast aside and ignored so the staff can sit around sunbathing. I was made homeless last year and was unable to do anything for much of the Summer as I was waiting for a Landlord who was either too crooked or breathtakingly inept to carry out essential tasks to a bedsit in which I had temporarily sought refuge. These were never undertaken and I spent a positively ghastly Summer last year sweating in local cafes and bars losing brain cells from staring at walls and chain smoking involuntarily whilst these chums of the Manager were sunbathing on the poolside and have little or no hesitation in repeating that the first essential step toward getting facilities and service back on track is to override Mr Grogan's highly destructive decision making or to put him in another Job and replacing him with someone who is willing to manage a Swimming Pool. I had spent many marvelous Summer days in the place since before some employees there were even born and have no doubt that many in the Town have similar memories from before the time of my own birth. It isn't easy to put into words the anger and upset occasioned by the decision of Mr Grogan to replace a swimming pool with a bathing plot. I cannot seem to visit without falling foul of his employees: more recently I have had to contend with such things as similarly obviously questionably motivated difficulties, being found with my monthly subscriptions and have been refused admittance in freezing weather on the flimsiest of verifiably false pretexts at Crown Pools. Without wishing to make the substance of what I have to say a personal matter: I really don't know Mr Grogan at all and shouldn't judge his communication skills against my own acclaimed virtuosity in that sphere (my own ability is very singular) but it seems difficult to fathom his actions except for the motive of carrying out revenge for not doting on all the young ladies who work at facilities under his auspices and is quite likely to prove a suicidal career move: after all the last two occasions I was refused use of the Pool because of the possibility of an accident occurring with people diving from the high boards, there was no-one on them the Pool was also empty and there was about three people in the entire place. I cannot help but feel that his appointment may betray some less than thoroughly virtuous ambition in the minds of the politicians who employed him in that they could easily have employed one of several locals who knew the people, the place and the Job inside out, (which One has to consider a quite overwhelming advantage in seeking to manage well), and have instead placed him as a young outsider in the position of Manager at Crown Pools. The obvious inference is that Mr Grogan has been placed to take advantage of the high profile of Crown Pools and propagandise on behalf of the Labour Council rather than to simply keep local people happy with their services and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has descried a link between such ambitions, the ludicrous death of the last MP who was supposed to be conducting medical investigations when he belatedly discovered his Liver was about to fail occasioning his unpleasant death, the collapse of the Soccer team which followed and the bathetic demise of Ms Pickering's best hope for Olympic glory at Atlanta which preceded it (she was practically dragged from the pool in an obviously very sick condition) after having been 'found' by these local politicians and made into something of a local notable by them and their good friends on the local Newspaper and having had, like myself to pay heed to so called public figures whose lack of competence, ability or honesty is a startling indictment of our so called democracy and the kind of half arsed deceitful sycophants we are enduring for leaders in this country. The fact that Mr Grogan's puerile punitive actions against such an individual as myself who only wishes to use the equipment in the establishent and had been the most regular adult visitor at Broom Hill over two decades must have already had a devastating impact on eg the Borough's chances of acquiring any substantial private backing for urgently required upgrading of facilities like Broom Hill and I have no significant reservations about advocating his peremptory dismissal. Anyone who fools around with the Borough's facilities in the way he has ought to be doing something significantly less demanding by way of a career, like pricing up baked bean cans in one of the local Supermarkets for instance. I really don't think any of the young Ladies who work in the place are going to find his interest that much of a boon to their lives and I really think the money being presently spent on keeping him in large Motorbikes and flash cars, his children's education and his Wife's vanity should instead be spent on those whose contribution to the running of the place is actually necessary like the Engineers who keep the Pool open and the Staff who have to clean the Lavatories: I really dont see how something as simple as a pool of Water needs an Executive of any sort to 'manage' or look after it in any way insofar as it really is a fact that a Chimpanzee could do the Job, and probably without taxing it's IQ. Having said that, I won't be visiting again: I have tried to raise the question of his obviously poor judgement and the unpleasantnesses he has encouraged his staff to perpetrate when he thinks his employers aren't paying attention, on several occasions in the past and it has only elicited more. Their responses had been insofar as they could be at all fathomed which by and large they couldn't, were evasive and have only encouraged increasing amounts of dirty tricks and further unpleasantnesses and difficulty making on the part of his staff as I say, and it is obviously something he has asked them to do if not quite in so many words. When I tried visiting the place on Monday October 6th a particularly rude woman with specs who was obviously looking for trouble and has made difficulties whenever and whenever possible with my getting in to the place tried to charge the price for an employed non-resident knowing full well that I am an unemployed resident. The short and the tall of it is that I can't put up with any more nastiness and that will be the end of Crown Pools as far as I am concerned: I am long term unemployed and increasingly severely undernourished among other things. It's a real shame that matters have declined so badly in terms of local management, some of the individuals who have worked there in the past have quite distinguished themselves in serving the Public. I recall a girl called Heather who worked flawlessly at that main front desk for many years without a single irritable demur that I can recall; it may be the case that she performed better because she was married and had that much less of a tendency to nose into the affairs and personal comestibles of men who are trying to use the establishment. Or at least suffice it to say that she had an abundance of Gold jewellery that was fairly obviously the result of having a single long term partner who cannot have been an impotent pauper. It's a genuine shame that matter have come to this. Crown Pools was built at around the time of my 21st birthday and having had to commute past the place where it was built to get to School whilst supposedly studying for 'O' levels in the late seventies whilst suffering under the auspices of dysfunctional, dirty and abusive parents amongst other things it has often since occurred to me that I would have had a rather better chance of making something of my Education if the establishment had been built a decade before. As a general comment on the fact that it is a big success as an innovative and stylish building which has perfectly (with the exception of managerial shortcomings) integrated itself into a community which is like so many quite desperate for good facilities: I seem to recall insofar as I have collected any gossip in more recent years that it was the innovative, efficient, discreet self contained design which had persuaded Ms Pickering to use the place as a training base. It being the case for example that she has specialised in the acquisition of short course (25 metre pool) records, the fact being that the modest size of the main Pool had at first been my only reservation about what the Architects and planners had settled for. What surprises me is the amount of hype that the place has generated insofar as lots of money seems to get wasted on advertising the place and the only result of that is to underline the fact that the Town needs at least another two such establishments and that whoever has been thinking of fishing for compliments about getting these sort of civic amenities arranged must have an incredible nerve especially in respect of the staggering reputation and achievements of Ms Pickering as an athlete which has been rather understated by her lack of an Olympic medal, which of course is hardly surprising if she has had to entertain the ambitions of local politicians in Ipswich. I had often looked at the building before I had any idea that people used it for training in the small hours and thought that it should be open more and that people would benefit, especially eg the increasing numbers of other indigents being crammed into new housing developments in the area of the central business district if this were so; the place always looked as if it was underachieving by being shut up by tea time on Saturdays. I have no interest in Athletics beyond the personal level, probably because I am among those who never had any opportunity to to compete at anything and as far as I am concerned the fact that people rise to the top in the UK in any sphere has far much more to do with the fact that they have bent over for one of Mrs Windsor's hangers on than that they are good at anything. When I found some five or six years ago that the place was open to Swimming Club members and that I could still just about about make the necessary entrance requirement I rang the Club Secretary and asked if I could do that in order to be able to use the Pool during the night occasionally only to be told that it was constantly being used by Swimming Club members and was curtly told there was no chance of using the facilities thus . Besides the fact I though this was quite rude I simply don't believe it. There is a conflict of interests insofar as those presently associated with the place are more interested in acquiring elite company than they are with the needs of the Borough's citizens. I don't mean to say that I want to stand in the way of anyone who does want to compete and needs to train but consider that what they told me was a fairly obvious piece of deceit and as someone who was living quite near the Pool at the time I felt that I had as much right to healthy recreation and facilities as anyone. There were a lot of long hot summer nights in the late '90s and I doubt very much whether they were or are using the Pool for more than about three hours during the night, probably not at all at weekends and are simply too self important to consider that various congenial arrangements might be possible. Blither yawn woffle drone etc.
On the Subject of Recent Road Deaths I have difficulty in commenting on the fact that four minors died within a single nine month period in the vicinity of the flat where I have been trying to work since November 2002 shortly after my having moved into it because the fact of my having been constrained by circumstances to move onto the busy Nacton Road, appears all too arguably linked with these accidents in some way. It being the case that such matters are really the first privilege of the family to comment on, and that the ripples from the double murder/killing of the two youths below in particular have hardly spread across the local community, I have sought to restrain myself to pointing out a number of coincedences in the evolution of such an odd traffic accident statistic as that of four children suddenly dying in a very short space of time in a very localised area: I mean why not Stoke Poark or Whitehouse why here in this small square mile of urban housing? It is surely a question that must have occurred to many Teachers at local Schools for example! Th first horrible coincedence that occurred to me insofar as I had been working at a Computer just off a busy Road nearby when I heard these two had been mown down by a very large gentleman of East Indian origin who promptly started screeching on about racism when dragged from his Car and appeared to be agitated as I believe the newspapaer article said, was that I was very familiar with the particular spot where the accident had occurred, on a long slope at the bottom of a south facing hill with a long wall the boundary of a dockside industrial unit all the way along beside the left had side of the Road as you proceed south down the hill, indeed my Father used this Road coming into Ipswich as a Boy in the forties and at least one of my friends had already lost his Father trying to turn east off the Hill, known locally as Bishops Hill, into Nacton Road way back in the eighties. They had apparently been mown down in front of an emergency exit comprising a bare pairof double dorrs setr about five feet back into the wall which I had often specifically thought would be the only place to hide if a mad motorist ever came tearing down the wide pavement off the hill and I am sure it has been the first thought of many who have looked at the left side of the slope which as I say is otherwise just a wall and a pavement for a considerable strech totalling something like a hundred metres. It was however back in the seventies that I first became accquainted with the Hill and it's lower end slope recognising instinctively that the long sweep down to a dockside roundabout was the sort of place boy racers like to accelerate through; it was the nineteen eighties before I first flew up and down it myself on a Motorcycle and well into the ninteen nineties I believe that most of it's present traffic calming measures were introduced. It is impossible to avoid observing that these two were practically personal protege's of Councillor Mowles whose contribution to the debacle (partly quoted below) I had been in the process of describing to the family of lapsed Sikhs who run the local convenience store when this occurred, it having been all to easy to describe as a careless smirk, and it obviously being interestingly the case that they had also by then at least heard of some of the gossip I had been circulating on my website(s) and it did all too arguably relate to the specific issue of Race in the community if that's not too blunt or politically incorrect a way of putting it, as you might agree if you were to make an attempt to read my CV life history with regard to some of my observations about the conduct of local Councillors and the reaction of local Courts to relevant questions and I don't mean to be unfair in this but local authorities (significantly himself) were too late by the time these accidents had occurred to have undertaken a course of action that might have obviated the fact of my having been in the position of having to raise the temperature with various complaints once eg the local Police had ingored my Father's dangerous driving and mislaid his unpaid fines and amongst other things having recently thrown me out of the Council owned address I had agreed to move to, and to say that the destruction which ensued can hardly be exaggerated in personal or comparative materialist sense. One can hardly be said to be ever overly sensitive to this sort of event! There is no question that these were blameless and fairly upstanding young men considered at least almost ultra respectable, especially by the standards of their own local community where I doubt the memory of an act of such unqualified ghoulishness will ever fail to elicit shocked gasps within living memory of family and witnesses as just an odd sample or two of dry mouthed articles reluctantly penned by some of the local Rag's fresh faced and queesy young hacks attest only too inescapably. So before I make any other specific comment about it myself I do feel it necessary to say that I have always had a spooky and distinctly uneasy feeling about that precise spot for about the last thirty years and I do mean spooky rather than simply dangerous in the sense that One might consider any potential traffic accident blackspot insofar as it certainly is possible to put some convincing argument forward that this long sloping hill with the wall sealing off escape from out of control vehicles on the north facing side was ever the sort of sight which might tempt an angry or stressed driver to do something stupid. It also seems a worthwhile to pose the question, besides the fact firstly that Mr Ali did start talking about racism once he had been seized and that it is the obvious thing to do if you are a minority among a majority in any striking sense, as to whether or not anyone might have thought eg there to be any truth in the remark that he might have acquired a nasty headache in some diagnosable or traceable form possibly malicious in nature as, presumably some extremely serious malaise of some sort (even allowing for his drug use in that he is a large and very strong man and was probably no more 'stoned' than many London taxi drivers for example) must have existed in that it is quite unheard of for people to perpetrate such acts with no obvious motive or provocation at all....................
Following are two excerpts from notes near the end of my CV life History which are among my attempts to record recent history
(Excerpt A)
(Excerpt B) This matter has been ongoing for some time now ............ |