A couple of days ago in London, a Polish woman, Magda Pniewska was accidentally caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between two gangs. Her death has shocked Poland, a country where gun battles just do not happen. Now that Magda is dead, her parents have talked of her fear of living in South London and the differences she experienced between there and Poland.On a visit home, Magda had told her parents she was afraid and that she heard gunshots at night and sometimes even during the day. She had taken her dog, Bandera, over to England with her for protection, and seldom left the flat alone.No one doing anything about crime is an interesting phenomenon that seems to be limited in the West to the more Socialist countries (such as Britain and NZ) that have been experiencing high rates of family breakdown and casual family relationships. Maybe I'm making a bit of a leap here, but then maybe not. I remember Theodore Dalrymple remarking that he felt far safer in American cities at night than he did in down town Auckland and America has a high rate of legal private gun ownership. While as Britain is disarmed.
"She only felt safe here [in Brzeg]. If something happens in London, nobody does anything about it, but if something happens here people do something about it," said her mother.
A major difference between NZ and Britain is that we haven't been disarmed ... yet. As we have the "doubtful honour of being among the most violent and crime-ridden societies in the western world," I wonder if we were disarmed as a population, if we would become more dangerous to live in than South London. Because, when you disarm a population, it appears only the criminals have guns.
I was particularly struck by the similarity with Britain, where if a crime is committed in London, no one does anything about it. That sounds pretty familiar. How many people don't report thefts in NZ because they know nothing is done. Compared with Poland, both Britain and New Zealand are pretty bad on following up on crime.
Poland has an almost identical crime rate to Great Britain, but the vast majority of incidents are petty offences such as theft, and violent crime in Poland is lower than in the UK.That's just the weirdest of statements. How could Poland and Britain have an identical crime rate when when violent crime is far higher in Britain. Do they just count up all the incidences of crime and put them together indiscriminately into one hat and say, there ya go, there's our crime rate?
In contrast, south London has been plagued by gun crime in recent years. In the past 12 months, the Metropolitan Police recorded almost 900 gun-related offences in Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Wandsworth alone.
Local police spokesman Miroslav Dziadek said that in his 18 years in Brzeg [Poland], he had never come across anything remotely like the killing of Magda.... "Every policeman has a gun. If he goes out he takes a gun. It makes an impression on people. Knowing that a policeman has a gun and he will use it if he has to makes people more law-abiding."As a child, it was made very clear to us that NZ was like Britain. Our police didn't need guns, because if they had guns it would encourage the criminals to get guns as well, thus increasing the likelihood of more dangerous crimes. It made a real impression on me, so the first time I saw a cop in Australia wearing a gun on his belt, it was almost frightening. Now I realise I was indoctrinated in Socialist theology that really had no bearing on reality.
Most violent criminals grew up fatherless as a result of Socialist policy that encouraged the decline of the middle class bourgeois family structure of Mum, Dad and biological children. We are seeing the result of this in Britain, of which Theodore Dalrymple has much experience, and are seeing what occurs in such a society when it is disarmed.
I wonder when our *Disarmament Minister will spring into action.
Related Links:
Disarmament in Australia and Britain ~ Crusader Rabbit
Murdered Polish nurse came to the UK looking for a better life ~ UK Telegraph
* Not a joke. NZ actually has a Disarmament Minister as part of the Government. So far, most of the attention has been directed outside of the country, pontificating to others how they should not have weapons.
Most violent criminals grew up fatherless as a result of Socialist policy that encouraged the decline of the middle class...
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you have any proof fot this statement? And is mots crime committed by the off spring of the middle class? Or is there a greater connection with the New Right's destruction of jobs that we held by the lower class?
Remember the days of railway gangers? garbage truck runners? Factory workers? The New Right destroyed meaningful work for a large portion of the population, not in the name of socialist theology but simply to further enrich themselves at the expense of others and communities. Of course, the doyen of the New Right denied there were such things as communities.
Of course, we could have much safer streets; East germany under Hoenecker had an almost nil crime rate, so I guess we could follow his formula.
This poor womans violent death is a tragedy.
ReplyDeletePlease bear my sentiment towards her when you read the next sentence.
Perhaps as tragic as her death is some good may come of it. Namely some of the half million economic refugees from Poland that are currently sucking the system dry in Britain may now decide to go back.
Fugley i can confidently say (using my normal sweeping generalisations when reading crime stories from Britain) that the perpetrators will be immigrants or offspring off immigrants.
ReplyDeleteYour Hoenecker reference is timely when you consider what the Beast and her party are trying to do here at the moment.
Fugley, while poverty/unemployment can explain economic crime, there is no way you can claim that poverty leads to gun battles. That sort of crime can only be explained by the attitude and general culture of a society and the way children are bought up. The family unit (which is being destroyed by the socialist social engineering agenda) is a big part of this.
ReplyDeleteAlso this blog is about conservatives who mainly advocate traditional values, not big bussiness or the new right.
"Now I realise I was indoctrinated in Socialist theology that really had no bearing on reality."
ReplyDeleteEr, Britain is one of the world's oldest capitalist countries. Poland, on the other hand, had a well-armed police force while a member of the Warsaw Pact - just like the other socialist members of that Pact. I don't think many of their citizens felt particularly comforted by the sight of the guns on those cops' hips.
Psycho, Poland was Communist unwillingly, as a result of Soviet invaders from 1939, temporarily driven east by their co-invaders (the Germans) to come back in full force 1944 until Poland gained independence in 1989. Surely you know this and are merely trying to annoy me.
ReplyDeleteWhile as Britain could not shake off a strange sort of nostalgia for WW2, which lead the country to implement full-on socialist policies willingly post WW2.
You can read more here.
"Surely you know this and are merely trying to annoy me."
ReplyDeleteI do know it, but don't raise it merely to annoy you. Your post attributes Britain's belief in an unarmed police force to a "socialist theology that really had no bearing on reality." I believe you're wrong - Britain's police force has been unarmed since the start, long before either WW2 or a Labour govt were even dreamed of, whereas "socialist" countries, of which Poland was one, willingly or not, universally have armed police.
It's certainly true that Britain's (and NZ's) belief in an unarmed police force is no longer sustainable, but that's another argument, one that I'd also dispute has anything to do with socialism.
As for Dalrymple's article, maybe he was out of the UK while Thatcher was dismantling British socialism? Certainly, the current "socialist" features of Britain he describes are features of pretty much every modern Western country.
A glance at the NationMaster web site shows that Poland has the 20th highest homicide rate in the world at 0.0562789 per 1,000 people, while the UK is down at number 47 with 0.0140633 per 1,000 people - a significantly lower number.
ReplyDeleteViolent crime rates in Poland have soared over the last twenty years, closely linked to the mass unemployment (10.5%) caused by their free market reforms of the 90's. Like most of the former communist countries, organised crime is now powerful and ubiqitous. Polands major cities are teeming with Russian prostitutes and Afghan heroin.
In my opinion, walking through downtown Warsaw at night was much, much scarier than walking through the very heavily policed and monitored streets of central London