Dr Anyetei Murder

Police investigating the horrific murder of paediatrician Dr Victoria Anyetei have issued a statement in connection with their inquiries, which, if the BBC has reported it accurately, absolutely boggles the mind.

Firstly, witnesses apparently recall hearing a car horn sounding at about 7:30AM on the day Dr Anyetei was murdered. Det Ch Insp Anne Brittain said: "We have witnesses who say they remember a car horn sounding at around 0730 BST. It is possible this is linked to the murder of Dr Anyetei. The horn may have been sounded during a struggle with her killer, or she tried to raise the alarm."

That certainly sounds plausible on the face of it, and, in this day and age, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if everyone else in the neighbourhood completely ignored this poor woman's desperate honks for help.

Oddly, though, the same article goes on to say: "Dr Anyetei left home for work at 0800 BST and was found by her 19-year-old son at 1020 BST. "

Honks at 0730 BST, but Dr Anyetei didn't leave for work until 0800 BST? Seems unlikely that she'd be struggling, or honking for help half an hour before she left the house, but I can't imagine that DCI Brittain has missed that fact. With incredible insight, and demonstrating a phenomenal grasp of the case, she went on to say: "Either the attack was targeted or it was a random attack and Dr Anyetei was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Well, that narrows it down, doesn't it? With deductive reasoning of that calibre, I should imagine that an arrest is anticipated shortly after Satan is seen skiing down the snowy slopes of Hell - doubtless honking a horn as he goes.

According to the BBC's article - and, in fact, every other article on this case that I've read - it is believed the killer may have lain in wait in her car, a silver Toyota Avensis. Hmmm, here's a random thought that may, or may not, be of use to DCI Brittain - did that Avensis have an alarm system fitted? And if it did, would it, by any chance, be attached to the vehicle's horn? If so, the honking may have been caused, not by the victim, but by the culprit as they gained entry to the car. As I say, just a thought, and probably way off base. But, based on her statement above, it seems that the bobbies need all the suggestions that can get right now.

It may well be that the honking horn has nothing whatsoever to do with this tragedy. But, if it did, it's a sad and depressingly accurate snapshot of the times we live in. Burglar alarms, car alarms, personal attack alarms, gunshots and final gurgling screams are almost always seen as somebody else's problem; the motto is Don't Get Involved, right? Well, maybe, if you're a lame-brained, irresponsible wimp, you might think it's right to go on your way and never pause to investigate.

I don't, and never have. Despite being cynical and bad-tempered, I've always been willing to help someone in real trouble - if more people thought that way, instead of burying their heads in the sand, maybe Dr Anyetei would still be alive.

Most of the papers are also suggesting that the perpetrator of this vicious attack may have been one of Dr Anyetei's patients, or an aggrieved parent of one of her patients. Yesterday's Times went a little further, pointing out that, as a paediatrician, Dr Anyetei was likely to have been involved in child protection cases and could have been used as an expert witness.

Whether or not she was an expert witness - and, after a brief search, I have found no information to confirm or refute that theory - child protection is a dangerous business, as anyone who has followed the decade-long witch-hunt against Professor David Southall will know.

And, although the campaign against Southall - orchestrated, in large part, by a small group of medically untrained oddballs who hang out on the Mothers Against Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy website - is probably the most famous case of persecution, it is far from unique. The Times reports that, according to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, one in seven paediatricians has been the subject of a formal complaint, whilst, last year, 75,000 health workers were attacked by relatives, patients or carers.

So, on top of a heavy workload and the difficulties of a National Health Service that's collapsing around them, paediatricians also have to put up with an endless stream of meaningless complaints dreamt up by a clueless pressure group and constant threats of physical violence - which may, or may not, be encouraged, perhaps even inadvertantly, by the barrage of misinformed propaganda put forth by the said pressure group.

Yet, so dedicated are these men and women that they still go to work every morning. To my mind, they deserve a bloody big medal just for getting out of bed!

Billy Seggars.

Put 'em to the sword!

Here's a great story from the Daily Express. It seems that a bunch of teenage muggers took it upon themselves to steal from a group of fringe theatre performers who were heading home to their lodgings.

Nothing unusual about that, you might think - happens all the time, everywhere. Yes, but it's not often that one of the victims is dressed in character as the Greek hero Odysseus, complete with a damn great broadsword. Needless to say, Odysseus, AKA Oxford student and martial arts expert Tom Clews, was less than happy to have the £20 earmarked for the cast's supper snatched from his hand, and set off in pursuit.

The Express article doesn't describe what the villains must have thought when they spotted an enraged, sword-wielding lad hurtling after them, but I, for one, hope they have nightmares about it for a very long time to come. I don't suppose it will deter them from a life of crime - anyone who chooses a victim armed with a bloody big sword isn't really a contender in the high-IQ stakes - but, thanks to Clews, this group of thugs' crimewave is over for now.

Despite being belted on the bonse with a bottle, he was able to trip the villains up with his sword and detain them until the police arrived. Good going, Mr Clews!

Billy Seggars.

The Prescott Memoirs

Former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, is said to be in discussions with a publisher on a book about his life story.

I can't imagine that very many people would be all that interested - certainly not enough to make the rumoured £500,00 fee worthwhile. Prescott was famed for making utterly incomprehensible speeches in the Commons, and there is nothing to indicate that his outpourings would be any more intelligible in written form.

It seems to me that, if such a book deal were to go ahead, the services of a very talented ghost writer and a whole bunch of interpreters would be called for. Or, alternatively, the publishers could save themselves an awful lot of money by sitting a trained chimp at a keyboard, letting it bang away at the keys for an hour or two and printing the result unedited - chances are, nobody would notice the difference.

Billy Seggars.

Police Have It Taped

Everyone likes to see the forces of oppression getting a taste of their own medicine, and the Daily Mail's article, "Foul-mouthed traffic police caught on their own speed camera" seemed to offer plenty of scope for some Keystone Cops style mirth.

And, indeed, the article left me frothing with indignant rage - but, I suspect, not quite as the journalist intended. The gist of this piece is that a couple of bobbies were dumb enough to record themselves making "inappropriate" comments about members of the public as they drove around looking for traffic offenders.

It seems that, prior to feeling motorist James Chinn's collar for speeding, PCs Robert Topliss and Adrian Wootton had been engaged in putting the world to rights in a more prosaic manner. Their idle chitchat about their "lazy" bosses, their desire for promotion and what they'd like to get up to with the pretty girl they'd just driven passed was interrupted when Mr Chinn allegedly overtook their unmarked police car at some speed, which led to his arrest.

At his appeal hearing, the officers' conversation formed part of the tape recording presented in evidence. Mr Chinn's appeal was successful, and the bobbies in question now face disciplinary action.

WHY? What, exactly, have they done that warrants even a stern talking to, let alone an inquiry? As far as I can tell from the Mail's article, their discussions happened before they encountered Mr Chinn, and I can't see how it could have had any impact upon his arrest whatsoever.

At that time, the officers' job was to drive around in an unmarked police car, looking for speeding motorists. Now, I'd be the first to suggest that that's underhand behaviour, typical of modern policing, and it's a shame they don't put so much effort into catching proper criminals. But that's not the point. They were doing the job they'd been assigned to - i.e. driving around - and, until they located some poor sod in a hurry, they had nothing else to do.

Are they supposed to drive around in silence, fingers on lips (except for the driver, of course!). Perhaps they're expected to recite the Road Traffic Act over and over until they're word perfect? Polish their truncheons?

Come on, get real. This is two blokes, who just happen to be bobbies, doing what blokes everywhere do when they're driving around. And it's not just the blokes, either. I challenge you to sit by a road and watch the behaviour of drivers for half an hour. Specifically, target vehicles with a driver and one passenger in the front. You will notice that, where you have two guys in the car, they're both talking, but both looking forward at the road. Where you have two birds in the car, they still talking, but in most cases they're looking at each other, with the driver's head ratcheting back and forth between her passenger and the road.

Now, what do you think they're talking about? What do YOU talk about in the car? Life, the Universe and Everything, that's what. What they had for their tea last night, what our Shirl said about aunty Joan at Keith's wedding, what their dumb-ass boss has done now, isn't that guy / girl / other CUTE...

To expect anyone - particularly police officers - to behave differently is unfair and unrealistic. Coppers are human too (well, sometimes) and the more human they are, the better they are at their job - which, after all, requires them to deal with ordinary people all day, every day. The worst you can say about Topliss and Wootton is that they were careless in allowing their perfectly normal conversation to find its way onto an official recording.

But I bet most people have done something - and probably several somethings - at least as dumb in the past week, and they will do something equally dumb next week, and the week after. If you've ever sent a sensitive email to the wrong person, accidentally forgotten to mute a phone call while you curse the caller or even locked yourself out of your car or home you know these things happen.

It's a very depressing sign of the times that something like this can lead to an inquiry, and could potentially damage the careers of these two assiduously motorist-trapping coppers. Yes, there's a lot wrong with the way this country is policed, much of which should be the subject of detailed investigation, but two bobbies eyeing up a pretty girl is not on the list.

Billy Seggars.

Hemmed In

Mr John Hemming, Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley, has done well for himself in today's Telegraph. He's quoted in the article, Court secrecy rules hide child abuse errors, and has even managed to pen an opinion piece under the title, Bullying, secrecy and the legal baby-snatchers.

Not bad going for a relatively obscure MP more usually famed for serial bed-hopping and being the first MP to convert his car to run on vegetable oil - there's always one, isn't there? Unfortunately, the rest of the week hasn't been quite so successful for Mr Hemming.

On the 8th August, Guardian writer Johnathon Gornall wrote a thought provoking and well reasoned blog posting called Hemming's Way, in which he was critical of the MP's campaign against child protection agencies. Gornall suggested that John Hemming may be at least partially motivated by personal experiences, that he indulged in "strained logic" and "fanciful interpolation" of facts and sees his crusade as an opportunity to make tabloid headlines.

The post prompted a lengthy debate, in which Mr Hemming and several of his supporters from the Mothers Against Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy website - to which John Hemming is a regular contributor - sought to counter Mr Gornall's observations. Having read the debate - now, sadly, closed to further comment - in detail, it doesn't look like they did a very good job.

After unwisely referring to the abduction of Madeleine McCann and the actions of her parents in leaving her alone, Mr Hemming became trapped in a logical stranglehold from which he first attempted to extricate himself by casting aspersions upon his critic. Failing to do so, and digging himself into a deeper hole in the process, he was only able to disentangle himself by admitting that he felt "that an adult or responsible child should be in the same building" as opposed to leaving young children home alone.

Meanwhile, as though his blustering on this point wasn't enough to support Mr Gornall's hypothesis, Dr Rita Pal, the feisty editor of the NHS Exposed website and blog, set about challenging the embattled MP's public comments and assertions on paediatric medicine. Needless to say, the outcome was Hemming nil, Pal several dozen. As a result, the MP's populist stance against Professor David Southall - whom he has likened to Josef Mengele - began to look increasingly tenuous.

Fortunately for Mr Hemming, the Guardian automatically disables the option to post comments on blog entries after 72 hours, so he was spared the need to respond to calls for him to publicly justify the Mengele allegation. A shame really, as, by the end of the debate, I was dying to see how he would attempt to get himself out of that embarrassing predicament.

Even so, his behaviour under fire seemed to me to be close enough to Mr Gornall's descriptions to lend a ring of truth to the original blog posting, although, in fairness, it may be that he was more hindered than helped by his supporters from the Mothers Against Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy website.

As anyone who has had the misfortune to visit this site (I don't intend to dignify it with a link) will know, many of its regular contributors express views thereon that are bordering on the rabidly weird, most of which revolve around their ongoing persecution of Professor David Southall and anyone who might question their opinions of him. The Mothers Against Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy website and its members will definitely be cropping up in future posts - having had a quick shufti around, some of the material on there is just too bizarre to ignore!

But, for now, John Hemming is the star of the show. I cannot help thinking that it does not do for an MP to take part in, or even be seen to be a member of such a web site. It lends credence to the actions of a very small group of serial complainers, some of whom already have criminal convictions, and encourages them to continue their half-baked vendettas.

Still, this remains (just about) a free country, and there is no doubt that some members of the site attract a fair amount of publicity. If, as Mr Gornall suggests, John Hemming is always happy to make the headlines, I suppose he's entitled to bask in their reflected publicity in exchange for a little credibility - I doubt either commodity will last for long.

Billy Seggars.