IT'S A CRIME! (OR A MYSTERY...)

"...tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime..."

Do you remember that little nugget of an electoral campaigning quote from just over a decade ago?  I'm sure you do.  People don't trust government statistics; they didn't before Labour got in.  But these days, the nanny establishment uses crime stats to try and persuade us that crime is in fact coming down overall.  But we know what we read in the papers and we know how we feel walking on our streets, driving in our cars, travelling on public transport, shopping.  We feel safer indoors in our homes, especially after dark - a thought can be a false sense of security in itself.

Anyway, I joined the legions of those who reported a crime last week and became a recorded victim of crime as my car had been vandalised.  I won't elaborate as the need for confidentiality really does count, sometimes.

And to nicely top that off, today I opened an envelope containing two letters informing me that a data tape had been stolen and that it contained details of my account with the supplier company concerned, including my date of birth and bank account details.  (There are 34,000 of us, appparently.)

As they said "details of my account", I am not sure if that list includes my name and address.  If it does, they have the full package for an identity theft opportunity.  Needless to say, I will be writing to find out, tomorrow, when I've calmed down.

Risks have been assessed and assurances are provided, but they don't provide enough detail for me.  I am currently analysing the content of the two letters that came in the envelope - one from the named brand of the product, the other from the outsourced administrator of the product.  I want to know more and I want the assurances to have real value.  The tape's data may be "... accessed by highly specialist IT equipment" only, but first up, I wonder why an inactive account would need all those details for a back up tape?  The unique identifier in such an ongoing case is simply the account number, surely?  The first of many questions in that letter tomorrow...

I missed this one in the news, I have to admit.  But a Google search indicates that I didn't have a chance, anyway.  Interestingly, the theft of the tape(s) took place on 3 April 2008.  On 22 April a local rag reported that an official had said "As soon as we were made aware of this issue ... our first priority was to write to our ... customers straight away".  The letters from both companies are dated 19 April, almost two weeks after the theft.  But then, I expect legal bods had to be consulted and consistent wording agreed, with the knowledge of whose insurance might pick up any claims confirmed.  It was also on the BBC's site on the same day - 22/4 - but for a certain county's set of web news pages.  (Never mind that the customers were all over the UK for them to consider it "main stream" news...)

The letters arrived in an innocuous plain white envelope, not even the company logo seen anywhere, nothing to alert me to the importance of the contents.  I'd assumed it was more marketing literature from God knows who.  So, it's taken me about a week to open it.  Stupid me!  We live and learn.

As for crime, I have a catalogue of experience during the last three years that makes a previous four years in Bucks look like an easy life with a prior, almost ten years in London look like a dream:

• April 2008 car vandalism, reported.
• April 2008 ID theft, a work in progress but not for me to report.
• 2007 card details theft (those wonderful financial services company systems for fraud were on to that in a flash).  I had the card in my purse.  They had my details and tried for a fiver.  No need to report, but here's the interesting fact: financial services companies can do a lot for themselves and not report the attempted crime.  There are so many and of little individual value that it's not worth police time.  But trends are monitored and recorded, because they may lead to a bigger crime operation.
• A few other intervening things, I choose not to document here, but they'd fall into ASBO category.
• Late 2004, I saw a "hoodie" punch my wing mirror, not reported.

In Bucks I'd had two instances of my mis-represented address being used for "can't pay for petrol on site at the time" by some shites who took advantage; one incidence of the brand logo being scraped off my car hatch (nice scratches, thanks); and one attack on a wing mirror.

In London (1990-1999), I experienced the start of development of anti-social behaviour, but put it down to teenage years and those with significant mental health problems, at the time.  I can't remember calling the police once, but I'm also sure I'm wrong here.

The current issue, as notified by letter, is the probable cause of me having to look into my subscription to Six Apart last weekend, after my direct debit failed.  When I spoke to my bank last Saturday, they said they were on the alert to unusual transactions, especially those involving foreign currency.  Good on them, even if at small inconvenience to me.  Following the data theft, the banks have been alerted and are monitoring accounts for unusual activity.

We tend to hate banks, but having worked in the financial servies sector for best part of a decade and a half, I know that banks have learned some lessons and that they do take crime seriously, installing systems (yes, it's more than one, you know) to counteract crime.  Some of the "marketing bumph" you receive is not solely or only about marketing per se, but about protecting real, valid, valued customers.

"...tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime..."?  Give me another country as an example here. WE, IN THE UK, ARE CRAP at this, why did we ever pretend otherwise?

Can the UK make it up?  Can we ever meet the standards and values of our EU counterparts and be an example for the western world.

I sincerely hope so.  But right now we fall very short of the mark.

Hay Festival Wales 2008

The Hay Festival is now booking...

The 50/50 Killer - Steve Mosby

The 50/50 Killer from Steve Mosby (Orion).

Although I did not fully embrace the subject matter in Mosby's first novel The Third Person - just a matter of taste, I assure you - I did notice and appreciate, and indeed, would draw attention to this author's wonderfully mature writing which displays great emotional intelligence.  It belies the years suggested on his birth certificate.

I was late in reading my trusty HB of this novel last year; the PB was out before I managed to read it and now Mosby's next crime fiction tome - Cry for Help - is out in a few weeks.  I am also late in posting about this novel because it's one of the little darlings I typed onto my laptop over Christmas and New Year, which had to be re-typed due to technological difficulties.   So, what do we get with The 50/50 Killer?

I believe that Mosby married around the time of publication of this novel and I wonder if the impending recognition of commitment was the source of inspiration for this novel, for here, the story revolves around a killer who likes to test a couple's love for each other.  The killer in question is known as "The Devil" and he likes to play "games" with couples, testing their resolve and their love for one another in a way that only nightmares would normally intrude.  The key question posed to each member of each couple is this: "Are you prepared to die to save the one you love?"  The story matter is not for the faint-hearted as the killer tests with torture and luckily, Mosby strikes it right here, we have just enough detail, but not too much.

Wales Book of the Year 2008

The long list for a book written in English was announced on 12 March, but this long list is noticeable for one particular reason: is it only the Welsh who are not sniffy about genre?  There are 10 books and their writers on the list, 2 are crime novels with crime authors (in blue below) and with Kitty Harri listed for Hector's Talent for Miracles whose previous novel was the psychological crime novel Ice Trap carrying the author name Kitty Sewell.  So, you don't get downgraded in Wales because you write crime fiction...

Here's the long list:

Trezza Azzopardi, Winterton Blue (Picador)
Kitty Harri, Hector’s Talent for Miracles (Honno)
Malcolm Pryce, Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth (Bloomsbury)
Tom Bullough, The Claude Glass (Sort Of Books)
Robert Lewis, Swansea Terminal (Serpent’s Tail)
Nia Wyn, Blue Sky July (Seren)
John Barnie, Trouble in Heaven (Gomer)
Carys Davies, Some New Ambush (Salt Publishing)
Dannie Abse, The Presence (Hutchinson)
Tessa Hadley, The Master Bedroom (Jonathan Cape)

The long list will be reduced to a short list of 3 at the Hay Festival on Monday 26/5 (free but ticketed).  On Tuesday 1 July, the winner will be announced at the Hilton Hotel in Cardiff.  Good luck to all, but especially our crime writing friends.

Says Academi:

"The English-language list consists of a diverse collection of voices, techniques and genre. These ten books represent the work of some our best known authors as well as major new talents."

There you go.  Wales doesn't indulge in "lit squad" vs "other", it just aims to recognise the best, established or new.

If I were a betting girl, my money would be on Nia Wyn for Blue Sky July.  It's a memoir that has struck hearts and following original publication by Seren, was  re-released by Penguin in February of this year.

BAFTAs Wales

Wales has its own set of BAFTA awards courtesy of BAFTA Cymru.

Now we know that Gavin & Stacey had a good time at the recent BAFTA Television Awards in London, picking up two gongs.  But, following this year's Welsh awards ceremony at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Dr Who has come up trumps again as the major award winner, picking up 6 of its 8 nominations.  You can read more here from icWales, which includes a wonderful quote from actor Glyn Houston who was recognised for his outstanding career at the age of 81.  He said:

"I’ve got some good news for you all.  Growing old is really not all that bad. Sometimes you put porridge in the tea pot and you always lose your comb and then find it in your hair.  But you can always do radio."

Lastly, we might see a Christmas country music single from Ruth Jones and Rob Brydon (Nessa and Bryn who duetted in the series).

Hay Festival 2008 - Planning

Earlier this weekend I was planning my Hay festival visits.  Yes, planning is required to ensure appropriate logistics are applied and that value for money is obtained.  I put a list of desirable events on a spreadsheet and the total cost came to £130 over ten days' worth of visits.  Deselection then had to be performed and I'm now down to £81 over six days, with Monday 26/5 promising to be a jam packed day for which I have selected 5 events.  There'll be fuel and parking on top.  I'll let you know how I get on...

Booking for those of us who don't stump up the £20 to be a "friend" of the festival starts on Wednesday, apparently.

How Brown wasted £1,229,100,000,000

I have just ordered this book: Squandered by David Craig.

I read about it in one of today's papers (The Mail on Sunday) and it looks like illuminating reading, full of facts like these (as in the Mail's article):

• During the last decade the Government has increased public spending by more than a trillion, a cost of £50,000 per family.
• In health this about £269bn, where the number of managers has doubled, the number of beds has declined.  Rates of hospital acquired infections are now more than 50 times higher than some of our European counterparts.
• The budget for the police has risen by more than 40% which has fuelled a rise in officers of 11% and a rise in admin staff of 62%.  The Labour decade has seen violent crime double and the closure of 700 police stations.
• Despite a 90% increase since 1997 on education spend,  the number of Neets (people not in education, employment or training) has increased so we now have more 16-24 year olds who are unemployed and unemployable than almost any other European country.
• While vowing to reduce pensioner poverty, the number of private sector final salary pension schemes has halved, while the cost of public sector pension schemes has doubled.  This has led to 23m private sector workers paying more each month to fund the pensions of a few million retired public sector workers than into their own pension savings.

How very depressing.  But I do appreciate it when people like David Craig take the time to document our perverse development.  Lest we forget.

Some comments on the book over at the Adam Smith Institute.

Another meme, another tagging: six random facts

By way of Pauline Rowson, author queen of the UK maritime mystery, I now have to offer up six random facts about moi.  So, here we go:

1. I loved sciences at school and have 'A' levels in zoology, maths and chemistry.  Zoology was the passion, though.  A typical 'A' level question: How is the earthworm adapted for life in its environment?
2. That love of animal science never left me and my knowledge of some medical things is well above average.  I've been asked more than once by someone in the medical profession if I'm a medic of some sort.  In the past, I've also spent some time explaining a gynae/endocrine condition to a renowned breast cancer surgeon, because he wanted to learn more.  It's no surprise then, that I have loved the development of forensic detail in crime novels, although I love psychological angles as well.
3. A good friend thinks I can be "dizzy" on times and likes to wind me up.  Last night, in a conversation, he said "You should have been born blonde".  A few exchanges later, I suddenly remembered and exclaimed, "I was born blonde!"  I entered the world as a "mini-me" of my father, blonde curly hair and with a receding hairline to perfectly match his.  Over the years, I went darker and darker, until at 15 I was a fully-fledged brunette, with my mother's colouring.
4. I passed my driving test first time and from the word "go" my late mother had more confidence in my driving than her own; I became the family car driver.  When I lived in London in the 90s, I loved driving on the quiet roads at night and had a habit of driving to Victoria in the early hours of the morning to pick up the Sunday newspapers.  London at the dead of night has always been a fascination to me, since I was a child.  But having left there almost a decade ago, I think I'd be less comfortable there now.  Points raised in the news and campaigns and debates for the current mayoral elections don't help.  I moved out in 1999 because I was fed up of the noise.
5. I was knock-kneed as a child and had to wear flat lace-up Start-Rite shoes with orthopaedic insoles for a few years, trailing from clinic to clinic.    Once declared "orthopaedically perfect" circa 1970-1972, I was able to have my first pair of T-bar sandals.  I wanted the bright red ones.  My mother sanctioned the tan coloured pair.  In the summer hols I avoided using the brakes on my bike and used my heels to slow down, wearing down the crepe soles in the hope of getting the red pair before the hols were out.  It never happened.  Last year, I bought a pair of bright red, platform and wedge sandals.  Call it a mid-life moment (my "crisis" has already been running for a decade).
6. I have an aversion to filling out forms.  Less is more on that one!

Now, here are the rules of this meme and list of six that I am tagging:

In the News this week...

In the news this week:

• From The Bookseller, Welsh independent publisher Accent Press is going across the pond and opening a New York office on May 1 in a deal with NBN Inc.  Accent has a great and ever-expanding crime list.  Submissions sought are essentially for commercial fiction, particularly crime and erotica.
• From Publishing News, although this article is available in print only: how Macmillan's New Writing imprint was a gamble that's now paying off.  It was launched to come controversy.  Said Will Atkins, founding Editor at MNW in Publishing News "One or two of the literary pages - and agents, would you believe! - were originally snotty about the whole enterprise, partly because the business model was misrepresented... I feel we've fought - and won - that particular skirmish!"  He also reminded readers of the original objective, "Our aim is to discover new writers who will eventually find a long-term home with Pan Macmillan's 'mainstream' imprints".  To date, and celebrating their second anniversary, MNW have assessed some 85,000 manuscripts and signed up 35.  Brian McGilloway was their major success story in their coverage in PN.  More on MNW later, because I like them; a lot.
• Compare MNW's achievement with that from The Friday Project, which sadly, recently went into liquidation.  With full losses not yet reported - accounts appear to have been made up and filed at Companies' House only to the p/e 31/12/06 -  The Bookseller recently reported that TFP owed £1.79m at the time of its liquidation.  First period losses, for the 266 days to 17/11/05 were £81.5k, as might be expected on a set up.  For the 409 days ended 31/12/06 losses were £724k.  One might suspect overtrading at this juncture, but £1.79m owing at the time of liquidation, some 14 months or so later, seems to confirm it.  A classic case you might say.  A sad set of days for all concerned.  HarperCollins is in negotiations, again according to The Bookseller.  But don't hold your breath, suppliers/creditors: your contract was with the company and that contract ends when liquidation is in place.  Consider it a death.  If you get anything paid it will be a miracle as all the government stuff comes first.

So, some good news and some bad news.

If I'd concentrated on political coverage it would have been the same, but with bad news = good news for me.  It's time to get rid of parasites who have no idea of integrity or service to those who voted them in.

Warning: nothing in this post should be construed as financial advice and is not meant to be seen as that.  For financial advice you should seek a qualified financial advisor or preferably, a qualified accountant, qualified to give advice.  I am qualified in neither categories and seek to provide facts only. 

The Fourth Man - K. O. Dahl

The Fourth Man by K.O.Dahl (Faber)

Sex can sometimes be great.  Frank Frølich, Oslo policeman finds himself in a "stick up" situation - no, no, no, not an erection courtesy of Elastoplast and/or Dyson, but a face to face, torso to living torso, legs entwined, seriously life-ticker-threatening situation with a black haired beautiful female, after they've been in a face to face, torso to living torso, legs entwined, seriously life-ticker-threatening situation avoiding bullets on the floor of a shop.  Phew!  Shortly later, Frølich is able to re-live the bedded situation again, this time in more relaxed circumstances and the black haired beauty has captured his heart, even if she prefers to remain as free as a gelatine leaf in the wind.  Got the picture?  Black haired beauty literally tumbles into Frølich's life and he unexpectedly finds passion, possibly love, but most definitely obsession.

And so begins The Fourth Man from K.O.Dahl.