Dirty looks & hate crimes.
I suppose this is true for anyone whose work brings them into front line opposition with the general dyslexic for very long. I think you know what I mean, the meaningful and quite spiteful looks you get just for being in the same twenty metre space as some people. Almost as if they resent being on the same planet as you.
In my particular case I’m not too bothered as I knew it was going to be part of the job when I started, but some of the newer guys are having problems. Most of which I also experienced and have recorded in my regular brain dumps and rants on this blog. The threats and gestures at your back when people don’t think you can see their reflection in a shop window. The revved engines, sudden accelerations and shouted insults from moving vehicles, I’ve written about it ad nauseum. You just take the car number and pass it on.
Over a year and a half on in this job, you get to the point where the bait is no longer fresh. Someone tries to go nose to nose with you and shout in your face, trying to intimidate you to give way, and they find it no longer works. The personal attacks upon parentage are often deflected with a darkly delivered “You’d have to ask my Mother that one.” Or a world weary “Yes sir.” Against direct physical threats you learn the subtle art of physically positioning yourself so that any threat is likely to end up rebounding on the threat making party in pretty short order.
There is a saying; ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ which seems to have some resonance for me. I’ve stuck the job against all the general dyslexic can throw against me so far. I’ve had people threaten to run me over or punch my lights out if I tried to give them a ticket for parking illegally. I’ve learned to treat their threats with the scorn and derision they deserve. The only threat that would have me doffing cap and uniform for a brakes off bare knuckle punch up would be one like the animal rights movement used recently against children’s nurseries providing crèche facilities for certain lab companies. Implied and actual threats against myself on duty are for me all part of the game and no longer impress, but one against ones family – let’s just not go there eh?
On the subject of the recent Crèche threat, my personal view is that threatening children is an act which should invoke the full disgust and approbation of the whole sane population. It is worse than the worst acts of paedophiles. It is also a real shot in the foot if ever I saw one for the whole Animal Welfare movement. Obviously the militants feel that hurting kids is okay because of the job their daddy or mummy does. What they do not see is by making such threats the animal rights movement have demonstrated a warped sense of values which make them appear clinically insane by any meaningful measure of sanity, and for what? For animals bred for testing that would have no existence otherwise? That’s like bombing a dairy because cows milk is processed there and calves can’t drink it all for themselves.
I like animals myself, I grew up in farming country with dogs, cats, livestock, ferrets; the occasional pet rat or mouse and for two weeks one adolescent summer I took care of a mates pet Boa Constrictor. Not that Mum or Dad were that keen I might add, but as an animal lover (Purely in a platonic sense) I don’t get where these crazy people are coming from.
My response last year was to stop my regular small donations to any charity likely to have any connections with IFAW and other such organisations. After the hunting bill went through I even pulled my contribution to the RSPCA and transferred the money to the far more worthy RNLI and Cancer Research. I know I’m not the only one to have stopped supporting animal welfare groups, so ultimately these groups will lose power as their donation base shrinks and they can no longer afford million pound bungs to the parliamentary Labour party. The hate crimes these people commit only alienate the public opinion they need to engage with to achieve their ends. So ultimately they have now lost.
Along the same line of observation I’ve not noticed the animal rights petition collectors in town since that grave robbing business of the Guinea Pig farm owners Grandmother. They used to be a regular feature on one particular corner until people started telling them that they weren’t having anything to do with grave robbers and terrorist sympathisers.
By way of a contrasting example; in our little corner of Chavland the residents are beginning to see the benefits of the Parking Enforcement Officers continued persistence in the face of regular threats. There are fewer people committing contraventions of the parking regulations, so we give out fewer parking tickets, the residents get their streets back, traffic flows more freely and the sound of car horns is far less prevalent than it was; which just goes to show, hatred always defeats itself. All you need to do is not back away in the face of it.
In my particular case I’m not too bothered as I knew it was going to be part of the job when I started, but some of the newer guys are having problems. Most of which I also experienced and have recorded in my regular brain dumps and rants on this blog. The threats and gestures at your back when people don’t think you can see their reflection in a shop window. The revved engines, sudden accelerations and shouted insults from moving vehicles, I’ve written about it ad nauseum. You just take the car number and pass it on.
Over a year and a half on in this job, you get to the point where the bait is no longer fresh. Someone tries to go nose to nose with you and shout in your face, trying to intimidate you to give way, and they find it no longer works. The personal attacks upon parentage are often deflected with a darkly delivered “You’d have to ask my Mother that one.” Or a world weary “Yes sir.” Against direct physical threats you learn the subtle art of physically positioning yourself so that any threat is likely to end up rebounding on the threat making party in pretty short order.
There is a saying; ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ which seems to have some resonance for me. I’ve stuck the job against all the general dyslexic can throw against me so far. I’ve had people threaten to run me over or punch my lights out if I tried to give them a ticket for parking illegally. I’ve learned to treat their threats with the scorn and derision they deserve. The only threat that would have me doffing cap and uniform for a brakes off bare knuckle punch up would be one like the animal rights movement used recently against children’s nurseries providing crèche facilities for certain lab companies. Implied and actual threats against myself on duty are for me all part of the game and no longer impress, but one against ones family – let’s just not go there eh?
On the subject of the recent Crèche threat, my personal view is that threatening children is an act which should invoke the full disgust and approbation of the whole sane population. It is worse than the worst acts of paedophiles. It is also a real shot in the foot if ever I saw one for the whole Animal Welfare movement. Obviously the militants feel that hurting kids is okay because of the job their daddy or mummy does. What they do not see is by making such threats the animal rights movement have demonstrated a warped sense of values which make them appear clinically insane by any meaningful measure of sanity, and for what? For animals bred for testing that would have no existence otherwise? That’s like bombing a dairy because cows milk is processed there and calves can’t drink it all for themselves.
I like animals myself, I grew up in farming country with dogs, cats, livestock, ferrets; the occasional pet rat or mouse and for two weeks one adolescent summer I took care of a mates pet Boa Constrictor. Not that Mum or Dad were that keen I might add, but as an animal lover (Purely in a platonic sense) I don’t get where these crazy people are coming from.
My response last year was to stop my regular small donations to any charity likely to have any connections with IFAW and other such organisations. After the hunting bill went through I even pulled my contribution to the RSPCA and transferred the money to the far more worthy RNLI and Cancer Research. I know I’m not the only one to have stopped supporting animal welfare groups, so ultimately these groups will lose power as their donation base shrinks and they can no longer afford million pound bungs to the parliamentary Labour party. The hate crimes these people commit only alienate the public opinion they need to engage with to achieve their ends. So ultimately they have now lost.
Along the same line of observation I’ve not noticed the animal rights petition collectors in town since that grave robbing business of the Guinea Pig farm owners Grandmother. They used to be a regular feature on one particular corner until people started telling them that they weren’t having anything to do with grave robbers and terrorist sympathisers.
By way of a contrasting example; in our little corner of Chavland the residents are beginning to see the benefits of the Parking Enforcement Officers continued persistence in the face of regular threats. There are fewer people committing contraventions of the parking regulations, so we give out fewer parking tickets, the residents get their streets back, traffic flows more freely and the sound of car horns is far less prevalent than it was; which just goes to show, hatred always defeats itself. All you need to do is not back away in the face of it.
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