I'd write something about security but...

....I'm busy getting ready for good old Mischief Night, AKA a wonderful excuse for tracksuit wearing scumbags to hurl bricks, rocks, stones and eggs at cars, houses, people and pretty much anything else they feel like. If you live in Liverpool, you're actually treated to Mischief Fortnight - let the good times roll! People frequently (and seemingly incorrectly) blame the Americans for "importing" mischief night to the UK, but every single American I've ever asked about this has always replied with "WTF is a mischief night". Plus, I have the general impression that if I so much as sneezed on someone's yard in the States (let alone pelt their house with eggs and bricks) I'd be sucking on the wrong end of a boomstick in five seconds or less.

Oh well.

Give it an hour or two, and the streets of Liverpool will shortly resemble something approaching Hanoi, 1968. Whether it's the homemade rocket launchers they fire at passing cars or the pushbike airgun driveby, you're guaranteed a night of excitement! The city of Liverpool has been promised an "extra 1,000 police" to deal with the problem tonight and tomorrow - it'll be interesting to see if what the local law enforcers are promising (some kind of Earthbound paradise) will match up to the reality (Mad Max and the Thunderdome).

Already, there's some guy down the road whose house is already so smashed up with eggs and bricks he's stopped cleaning it up - because they'll just come back and smash it up some more. One of those "quit while you're behind" things. Another family had their windows smashed by airgun fire and a brick through the frontdoor - not to mention the woman across the street who had about six hundred SWAT vans turn up outside because a local scally had phoned the police and said she was "holding one of them hostage". A shame none of them turned up when they were busy putting half bricks into her living room, but them's the (window) breaks.

City of Culture?

Culture of unrestrained violence, more like.

There's a lot of good things about this city, but sadly the bad outweighs the good by an overwhelming majority now. What irks me the most is the illogical, unflappable defence of the place - for example, I was in a taxi the other week (in an unrelated area of town) that had a brick at the window and when I got talking to the guy about what was going on round my way, he looked at me like I was scum and went into his "professional scouser" rant, accusing me of making it sound "worse than it was", that it was a "great city, lad" and that I was "stereotyping the people".

At that point, a second brick smashed his side passenger window.

Now, I can think of better ways to win a debate than by brushing bits of broken glass off my coat but it got the job done, I guess.

Actually, while we're on the subject of total stupidity, check out the Merseyside Police website. Yep, there's a big heap of tough talk about "flooding the streets" with police and all that jazz. But riddle me this - can you see a phone number on the site? Like, anywhere? Anywhere at all? Colour me stupid and paint me insane, but wouldn't something as basic as a contact number in big writing on the frontpage be a useful thing to have on your local copper website? Or is the idea that you might want to, you know, contact them for something too far out to contemplate? I think they must have had complaints about this and done something about it, because previously you had to click into about five hundred different pages to get a number. Now you just click the AMAZINGLY TINY "contact us" link, assuming you don't go blind in the process of looking for it.

From the website:

Across Merseyside, historically, there has been an increase in the levels of youth disorder at this time of year and the message from Merseyside Police could not be clearer - youth disorder, anti social behaviour and the misuse of fireworks will not be tolerated. The Force will issue fixed penalty notices, arrest and prosecute the offenders.

Yeah, wow! That makes the population at large feel a lot better! Watch out for those fixed penalty fines of sixty quid, kids! It'll be even more hilarious when they realise frogmarching ten year olds to cashpoints won't work because

a) they don't tend to have bankcards on them (unless they're stolen) and
b) they'll probably do the police for molestation - thank God for Little Jimmy's human rights!

For anyone who forgot to jump on the cluetrain, the reason for the "historical rise in youth disorder in Liverpool" (which the Police website tries to make sound more complicated than it is) is because

1) The parents are drunk, obnoxious baby factories who vehemently disagree with the suggestion that their little darlings are plagues on the good name of society, their vehement disagreeing usually taking the form of trying to bite your ears off and

2) The offspring are drunk, obnoxious rat-faced scumbags who should be rounded up, punched in the face till they cry like little sissy girls and then hurled off a bridge onto a pit of spikes.

Then spat on.

The Police are seemingly powerless to stop either of the above, and that's the not so complicated reason as to why they can get away with (almost literal) murder every single year.

What use is an extra 1,000 police on the streets when their phone system is so overloaded that tonight (according to one guy from the other side of the City) it's taking an hour and a half to actually get hold of someone?

And where the Hell did they suddenly find 1,000 policemen to dish out, anyway? Were they all locked in a cupboard? What menial pen-pushing idiocy will they go back to next week?

I realise I sound like some kind of Right-Wing, Travis Bickle-style Accident waiting to happen but seriously - kid gloves against kid psychopaths does not work. The time for ruthless enforcement of street cleanuppage is upon us. Let me get a crew together, tool us up with some sticks and swords and in ten minutes or less I will paint you the very picture of OMFG RUN AWAY NOW.

Failing that, let all the UK Police be allowed to do this, instead of sending them out to be facespanked like this. Anyway, I just heard what sounds like someone screaming in the distance so the Witching Hour has arrived. if anyone wants me, I'll be sitting over there tooled up with a baseball bat and an angry grimace.