Outrageous

A 10 year old boy drowned in water 6 feet deep while two uniformed officers watched and radioed for help.

Jordon was playing at the edge of the pond, known locally as John Pit, off Wigan Lower Road, in Standish Lower Ground, with his two brothers, stepbrother and stepsister on 3 May.

He was trying to support Bethany as she struggled in the six-feet-deep water before slipping from view.

Anglers managed to pull Bethany out but Jordon was out of sight before they could get to him.

The alarm was raised and the PCSOs arrived on the scene. Police said they could see no sign of Jordon in the water, so they radioed trained officers for help.

Just to clarify, a PCSO is a Community Support officer (I'm assuming the P is for Public). So they weren't really policemen, they were just adults with a job. Yet any adult should have been able to at least pull a kid from 6 feet of water.

So why didn't they? They must have been afraid of something. Maybe they were afraid of losing their job. Or maybe they were afraid of taking any action and being sued if the kid died because they weren't trained in that area. Who knows why, all that matters to me is that they just stood there and let a child die and now their govenrment is refusing to reprimand them, virtually assuring that other PCSOs might choose the same inaction in the future.

A touching tribute

Yesterday I had a few chores to do which included going to my bookstore to pick up a couple orders I made. As always, I started chatting with the manager about various books and authors. Inevitably, this lead to the discussion of Mr. Rigney's (see below) passing.

We started remembering when we first started reading his books (the manager had met Mr. Rigney during a book signing). During this conversation, I realized that I have been reading this series for 17 years, half of my life. I know that I've read them at least once each year since 1990.

When I returned home I was feeling a little melancholy and (as is usual) I turned to books for solace. I started reading the series again, starting with the story's chronological order. By the time I stopped reading, I had finished New Spring and The Eye of the World.

This morning, I needed to take a break from books and spotted this lovely tribute on YouTube that I thought I would share.

"The Wheel of Time turns...

...and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend."

I remember reading my first Robert Jordan book, in the summer of 1990. I was a teenager living overseas, and I was going through a particularly tough time in my life. Most of my friends were on vacations with their families, and I had to spend weeks essentially alone in a land with a language I couldn't speak to any useful degree.

I made frequent trips to the American embassy in Cairo at that time, visiting the fairly pathetic book store they had there. That was when I found "The Eye of the World" the first book in the Wheel of Time series. I spent that night submerged in the book, a truly enjoying read to escape the world I was in at that time.

I cannot possibly recall how many times I've read that particular book. I know for certain that it has been more than 12 times, because I would re-read the entire series everytime a new book came out, including the prequel "New Spring."

I have known that Mr. Rigney (Robert Jordan was his pen name) has been ill for quite some time, I even blogged about it on my now untouched Myspace blog when I first discovered this fact. I have now just seen the news that Mr. Rigney has passed on.

To those that knew him personally: I share your grief, although I cannot appreciate the extent that you must feel.

To Mr. Rigney: Thank you. I have thoroughly enjoyed your work, and I will remember you with fondness until I pass on as well.

Fool me once…

What kind of morons do we have in our justice system? Norman Hsu, a man that skipped out on a court hearing in 1992, then skipped out on another hearing a few days ago is still being offered a chance to post bail?

If $2,000,000 isn’t enough to keep him from fleeing, what makes you think that $5,000,000 or even $50,000,000 will keep him from fleeing again? Especially since it would appear that the money isn’t even his to begin with.

I have three words for Judge Bruce Raaum, “Remand without bail.”

This is why Political Correctness fails.

Children were left vulnerable because social workers were afraid of being labeled as discriminatory.

A homosexual foster couple were left free to sexually abuse vulnerable boys in their care because social workers feared being accused of discrimination if they investigated complaints, an inquiry concluded yesterday.

That is pretty damning in and of itself, but it is actually worse. After questions were raised to social workers about the couple, they continued sending new children to the predators.

Their victims included a 14-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, who had a mental age of seven and was forced by Wathey to watch gay pornography.

Another youngster with a "very troubled background" was only in their care for a few weeks before being abused by Faunch.

But social workers had been aware of "inappropriate" behaviour long before then.

Just eight months after they started as professional foster carers a mother of eight-year-old twins, who couldn't cope with raising them on her own, voiced concerns about them with social services.

While visiting the twins, the 34-yearold single mother was shown a picture taken by Faunch showing one of the boys going to the lavatory during a visit to Butlin's holiday camp in Skegness and discovered a similar snap had been taken of the other twin.

A social worker took the photograph and promised a full investigation.

But the court heard that not only did social services staff lose the photo, they decided against contacting police after accepting Faunch's explanation that he was trying to embarrass the boys into shutting the lavatory door.

Police later discovered that, days after the photos were taken, Faunch recorded an indecent video of the twins taking a shower. They began abusing the boys three months later.

If it was up to me, I would classify the social workers in this case as accomplices.