The Grave yard

[Dark green 90]

Very interesting discussion and i have a question.

Si White (responce officer), Next time you bump into the helicopter support team could you ask them if they could refrain from circleing my house at 2am?

[Andy]

Wonder what the public reaction would be if all UK police forces took the same line as the USA poilce/sheriif depts ?

i think we'd all die of shock & happyness

[geoffbeaumont]

Very interesting discussion and i have a question.

Si White (responce officer), Next time you bump into the helicopter support team could you ask them if they could refrain from circleing my house at 2am?

What have you been up to then?

[SiWhite]

Next time you bump into the helicopter support team could you ask them if they could refrain from circleing my house at 2am?

I'd be delighted to. They wouldn't be doing it for no reason. Like I said to the other chap, if your Landie was pinched, would you want the Police to throw all thier resources into finding it? I know I would.

Many members of the public seem to want the Police to stop rowdy kids / car thieves / paedophiles / travellers / bogus asylum seekers / heroin addicts interfering with thier lives but they don't want the Police to wake them up with helicopters / cost them any council tax / stop them in thier cars for comitting traffic offences etc. Rock....Hard Place.....

Turning into a very interesting discussion, I agree.

And don't be too hard on the poor old PCSOs - they're just another Labour cost cutting excercise which is going to bite them on the arse in a big way. They're no cheaper that a Constable, they have very few powers and they are all members of Unison. Police on strike anyone?

No personal insults this time

[Dark green 90]

I'd be delighted to. They wouldn't be doing it for no reason. Like I said to the other chap, if your Landie was pinched, would you want the Police to throw all thier resources into finding it? I know I would.

Many members of the public seem to want the Police to stop rowdy kids / car thieves / paedophiles / travellers / bogus asylum seekers / heroin addicts interfering with thier lives but they don't want the Police to wake them up with helicopters / cost them any council tax / stop them in thier cars for comitting traffic offences etc. Rock....Hard Place.....

Turning into a very interesting discussion, I agree.

And don't be too hard on the poor old PCSOs - they're just another Labour cost cutting excercise which is going to bite them on the arse in a big way. They're no cheaper that a Constable, they have very few powers and they are all members of Unison. Police on strike anyone?

No personal insults this time

I live in a rural area,we have horses,they dont like heli's, they arnt chasing criminals round the fields at 2am.

I am not anti police

when the mrs car was nicked,they didnt come out,wouldnt go to local garage to look at cctv(it had hardly any fuel in it and no other garage for miles)

just sent us a leaflet on car security and a crime no.

[trainspotter]

Deano - sorry old chap, but I think your reply to this thread is absolutely out of order and you've shown yourself to be a bit of an arse.

Almost without exception, every frontline Officer I've met in four years in the Job has been very hardworking, enhusiastic, dedicated - and horrendously bogged down by targets and red tape demanded by the Home Office.

All forces have different targets they've got to achieve. Most Response Officers (like me) are judged by the number of arrests and detections (crimes for which the offender gets charged / cautioned etc). As far as the senior management of the force is concerned, that is all that matters. Regardless of that fact that circumstance may dictate that you spend all your time one week stopping drink drivers (for which you DON'T get detections) or searching for a vulnerable missing person, if you don't get your detections target you're not performing, and your career suffers.

Roads Policing Officers will frequently have a quota of driving offences to deal with as well - if they don't issue enough tickets they're not performing, and thier career suffers.

Your example is, I'm afraid, nonsense. The Police use of Firearms has to be authorised by a fairly senior Officer and they don't get pointed at people unless there is a real need to. Just imagine if that girl had been getting raped? What would the Daily Mail have made of Police Officers passing by without making sure that the female was not there under duress? The Officers were doing thier job - ensuring public safety. How would you have felt if YOUR daughter had been raped, and the Officers hadn't done anything to make sure she was consenting?

Your comment about the Helicopter is a bit daft as well. If your house was burgled and your Landie was stolen, and the offenders weren't caught as there was no Helicopter support, how would you feel? Then tell me how you would feel if the Police told you there was no Helicopter because they were trying to cut carbon emissions? Not too happy? Thought so.....

There is real and genuine concern at Constable level about how the Nation's Policing is being run by Bliar and the Home Office. We're trying to work our nuts off and are constrained by targets, figures, political correctness, Health and Safety, under funding, under staffing and poor equipment. If you don't believe me, have a look at Coppersblog

And if you were on fire, would I tiddle on you? Yes, absolutely, if it helped save you. Still think you're a bit of an arse

Why don't you and your colleagues forget about yourselves and your careers and do the right thing by refusing to take any more cr-p from the tos-ers at the top. So what your saying is you've got to persecute the general public every week with your quota's so your career marches on. You don't seem to have much guts in standing up against what is wrong.

If all front line policemen said enough is enough then the government would **** it's pants and start to get rid of all this PC rubbish

[SiWhite]

Why don't you and your colleagues forget about yourselves and your careers and do the right thing by refusing to take any more cr-p from the tos-ers at the top. So what your saying is you've got to persecute the general public every week with your quota's so your career marches on. You don't seem to have much guts in standing up against what is wrong.

If all front line policemen said enough is enough then the government would **** it's pants and start to get rid of all this PC rubbish

Nice idea. Unfortunately successive Governments have managed to make it contrary to Police Regulations to strike / incite others to strike / incite disquite in others etc. All very Soviet I know, but that's the reality.

I also have a Landie to run, and (soon) a mortgage to pay. Much as the beaurocracy hacks us off we still make a positive difference to peoples lives now and again.

The Police could never 'revolt' - there might be personal gain but imagine the impact on society. What is needed is strong and continued pressure from the voting public for a sea change in how this country is Policed. The Home Office is a joke, which filters down through pressure on Senior Officers, and means the frontline is swamped in H&S and Red Tape. We need more money, more Coppers and absolute support from the public in order that we can take more reasonable measures to prevent offenders walking all over decent, law abiding folk. Prison is far too easy, Custodial Sentances are very rarely given, and when they are they're far too short.

If you want better Policing, then let Bliar know about it at the ballots!

[reads90]

You could connect it to a PC.

You would need a capture card in your PC which takes the audio and probably S-VHS connections from the Sky+ box.

Whatever is playing on the Sky+ box could then be captured by the PC and written out and possibly even editted into a AVI/MPEG etc.

However that is a hobby unto itself, and very time consuming for archiving of programs IMHO

As I said in the other thread - a DVD recorder is what you need. I scored a Samsung DVDR128 for £90 delivered.

Connect it up to the SCART socket on the Sky+ and press record - easy. Whatever is playing on the screen is recorded to DVD.

You can record in 1,2,4,6 or even 8 hrs to a regular DVD-R with some quality comprimises at the longer recording length.

They can be a bit sensitive to media, but mine works fine on regular TDK-R x16 - 100 for about £20 ISTR

The only PITA is it ties up the SKY+, and in my case the television, and therefore the lounge, so you can end inflicting loads of motorsport on your "handbrake"

Cheers Andy

not meaning that i have copied you yet again

But i went out today and bought a Parnasonic (can only spell that thanks to wireless and being sat in front of my panasonic plasma ) DMR-ES15 DVD recorder and does the job great. And only cost A$170. About £70 in real money

All wired in and working fine

[GBMUD]

Sounds to me like the problem with the police is not the police but the government which is dictating what they spend their time and resources on. I am sure that that fact is clear to anyone who is in front line policing but to those of us on the outside it may appear that they are too busy hanging about main roads with speed guns finding (and fining!) "easy targets" to come out to burglaries, thefts etc. where there is a chance of catching the perpetrator of a crime on a person or his property - what we laypersons might call "real criminals".

I agree that such scrotes should waive their rights when they choose to commit a crime - I guess that such a crime would include failing to stop when lawfully required to do so.

Si, please tell me that you have insomnia and that you are not sitting in the 'station posting on the forum at 3.29AM when you could be out [DI Burnside]"nicking a villain or a scrote"[/burnside].

Chris

[white90]

Police nicking people doing a few mph over the speed limit may seem worthless to some but if you don't speed you don't get pulled over.

scummers with no road tax I'm glad they get caught I just wished their cars would be crushed there and then.

Drug dealers deserve to 1, lose the vehicle there and then 2, a a good kicking or pepper spray in their eyes every time they are found to be carry drugs.

Watching some of the police camera action style films on Sky I would love to see our police ram/shoot some of the thieves. certainly cutdown on the theft rate if you were worried about the outcome of your actions.

also god****e youngsters they deserve a bash too, when they start lipping off to the police.

As for Armed police I know one well and he is very suited to the job decent hardworking bloke as I never expect to be at the reciving end of thier guns

good on them for doing a not so nice job.

all employers have a certain amount of cretins working for them it is just a cross section of the population.

[DEANO3528]

Good discussion, pity about the name calling, but hey I'm big enough and ugly enough to look after myself.

I just stated what I believe an awful lot of people are thinking.

In closing consider this:

If I have opinions like that about real policemen imagine my feelings about specials and the like.

[LR90]

Well FWIW I've worked with several members of the police force in MRC duties and more recently come in contact with them as a result of the antisocial behaviour of our (then) neighbours. I've also been been pulled over on a few occasions, 95 on the M1 or smoking the community out when the crankcase breather packed up on my escort.

In all but one isolated occasion (being pulled when on a m/c in wales in the pooring rain for no good reason) they've been great people just trying to do a job and certainly to my mind very fair. They've been far more supportive locally than the useless council bods who are supposed to deal with noise and anti social behavior, even to the point of giving assistance when off duty, and they could appreciate that doing 95 from Leicester to Rotherham at 3am with a clear road didn't warrant any paperwork.

To my mind the problem is not with the police but the HO that sets their performance criteria and a growing culture of political correctness. Change that and the police might have a better chance at doing the things most of joe public (and many of the police) would want.

[Guest MJG]

The title should of course read 'Vista' ... but you can't edit that!!!!!

Just wondered anybody on here tried MS Windows Vista yet???

Personally given my Dell PC happily and safely (with up to date anti-virus and anti-spyware installed) seems to run just fine with XP installed, and given the system requirements, I haven't bothered upgrading just yet.

Has anybody made the leap and would you care to comment.....

MS say they will support XP 'till 20011 , this will take me well past beyond the time I will need to change my PC which by then, when renewed, will come with Vista installed.

Till then William G I'm hanging on to my hard earned cash......

[LR90]

Might add it as another VM to my Mac but haven't found a real need yet

[MogLite]

20011 - wow thats a long time

A couple of the geeks have tried it in the office and gone back to XP

It needs a lot of hardware, laptop graphics cards struggle especially

Its also very expensive, maybe the OEM versions with new PC's will be cheaper.

I'm not sure if its got IE7, but that is causing lots of issues at work too, and we've been told to steer well clear of that too.

In 6 months time, when buying a new PC paying £20 extra for Vista over XP may make sense, but its too bleeding edge/costly for most at the moment.

[Mark90]

Wait till SP2 at least

[HoSS]

I tried the betas & I'm running a full version now.

Lets just say first i'm not a microsoft fan particulary, its a necssary evil.

but...

Vista - I like it very much, to my pleasant surprise. It's slick, better organised & good looking. Yes it's hungry but i already have a high spec machine (AMD X2 4800, 2gb, Gf 9850).

Its also not got to be expensive. Ultimate edition OEM 109 quid, or home premium for 61 quid, from www.overclockers.co.uk

[Paul Humphreys]

Vista Basic £44.70 +vat

Paul

[FridgeFreezer]

You mean we're supposed to BUY operating systems? Ooops, well I need the money more than Mr Gates does

<cue knock at door and being black bagged by the Microsoft authorities>

[BogMonster]

Bit like a new Land Rover, I'll buy it after a year when the wrinkles have been ironed out by all the folks who just had to have the latest thing

I see no reason to change the current OS for something that will make a perfectly usable PC slower so it will probably wait till my next PC purchase which will be some time after the one I have starts being slow enough to annoy me which it isn't at the moment.

[Guest MJG]

Bit like a new Land Rover, I'll buy it after a year when the wrinkles have been ironed out by all the folks who just had to have the latest thing

I see no reason to change the current OS for something that will make a perfectly usable PC slower so it will probably wait till my next PC purchase which will be some time after the one I have starts being slow enough to annoy me which it isn't at the moment.

I'm with you on this - does surprise (and irritate) me how system requirements escalate so dramtically each time a new version of Windows launches

[pugwash]

who's got a hacked copy?

there must be some around by now, after all it's been out at least a month

[GBMUD]

Perhaps this new power hungry OS explanes why Crucial.com are out of memory for my upgrade.

Chris

[geoffbeaumont]

Vista Basic £44.70 +vat

Look carefully at what you actually get with each version - from memory, Basic doesn't come with the new interface or quite a few bits of software that are bundled with higher priced versions. You might actually find it a step backwards from XP...

I've not tried it personally (I don't own any hardware capable of running it...) but one of my colleagues has - he was quite impressed with it, found that although it appeared to hog lots of memory when first started it wasn't using any more as he started applications and stayed responsive. He had to remove it and reinstall XP after a few days because he needed to run software that didn't work on Vista (and we're talking latest version, mainstream Microsoft software here).

I'll be steering clear for now - I don't think it's ready for use yet. Plus it still doesn't do anything I need that most free Linux distributions don't do on hardware with a quarter of the power...

[Mark90]

I'm with you on this - does surprise ( an irritate) me how system requirements escalate so dramtically each time a new version of Windows launches

This is the first big leap in hardware that's been required for some time. I have hardware that shipped with Win98 running XP quite happily with just a bit more RAM added.

However with Vista it is a big leap, 95% of our clients desktop hardware (which is on a roling 3 year replacement so it's not old carp) won't run Vista properly.