A young Swiss national, well at 32 one old enough to know better, has been arrested in Singapore and found guilt of vandalism, spraying a train with graffiti. He has been sentenced to five months in prison and three strokes of the cane. Immediately the human rights lot are screaming unfair unfair unfair. The law in Singapore regarding vandalism is strict and the man was an idiot to say the least. In my opinion he deserves his punishment. Evidently he had an accomplice who also did his bit with the spray can and when last heard of had done a runner. What on earth induced them to indulge in this nonsensical behaviour and I wonder if this young Swiss national would have behaved in the same manner in his home country. Somehow I doubt it. It is a great pity more countries, starting with Greece, don’t come down hard on vandalism. I know I’ve ranted along these lines before but I will repeat myself regardless. Greece is covered in graffiti, most of it nonsensical scribbling and, what is worse, every road sign between Xania and Heraklion is vandalised. I presume road signs elsewhere suffer the same fate. The cost of replacing them would be horrendous, possibly only for them to be vandalized again.
More and more children in the UK seem to revel in a current of violence. Apart from stabbing each other because of so called lack of respect or some such imagined insult; they commit murder simply by attacking someone, usually someone totally innocuous. The latest is two fifteen year olds in Darlington killing a vagrant. The question is why?
And still on the subject of criminal behaviour in this slowly going mad world, thieves in Johannesburg have ransacked a police station in the process of being renovated and have taken everything; doors, windows, furniture, cutlery, cupboards, basins, tiles, electrical equipment, even the kitchen sink and the mortuary fridges! All this despite the fact a security company hired by the District Works was supposedly guarding the place. It must surely be the ultimate in robbery chutzpah.
Some words of wisdom from Mister Quentin Crisp – ‘I do not mean to suggest that feminists are in error, though in my view a sex that wants “equality” with men can only be levelling downwards … we now have the ironic side effect of women having abandoned their privileged status as “ladies” they are in danger of becoming as revolting as men, and accordingly treated by men as nothing special.’
I was brought up in the old-fashioned manner of always treating women with courtesy, walking on the outside of the pavement for example even though there was no danger of skirts being splashed by passing traffic, opening doors, pulling out chairs and seating them, offering them my seat if necessary, etcetera so it came as quite a shock many many years ago in London when I opened a supermarket door for a female and received a right old ear-bashing, being accused more or less of insulting her by assuming she wasn’t capable of opening the door for herself. It really was quite a diatribe and was enough to put me off my gentlemanly behaviour.
The strange thing is in Athens, in the metro, if anyone gets up to offer this old papoose a seat, it is invariably a young gel. The old papoose usually declines with grace but what a reversal is there.