The Unoriginal Muse

Updated: Welp, after a careful watch of the news for the last week or so it seems this thing is definitely an urban legend, as Baron Bodissey was kind enough to point out in the comments. C’est la vie.

My mother, bless her, works for Manchester City council. I shall not say which department she works in because there are some crazy people out there who like to beat up council workers in certain departments for no reason. Anyway, now and then she forwards internally circulated documents to me, mostly safety alerts and the like. Most of it is stuff I can safely ignore but this one, well, this one caught my eye.

CORE TEAM BRIEF

June 2007

Briefing Team: Chief Executive/Corporate Directors/Clinical Directors/Directorate Managers

Security

Warning - We have received a warning from the London Ambulance Service of activities in their area. Whilst the below behaviour is not common place in our area I have spoken with Greater Manchester Police and their risk assessment of the action is to circulate it as a potential’

The London Ambulance service have units closely associated with the Police based in South London who are basically Fighting Gang Crimes. The ’street gangs’ in London (particularly South London at present, but it is sure to spread) have initiation tasks which new gang members have to carry out to be admitted to the ‘gang’. The latest craze is to drive around, deliberately with no lights on their cars. The first person who ‘flashes’ them, points at them or sounds their horn at them, has to be followed by that new gang member in their car, who then has to fire a shot into that vehicle with no regard as to who is inside.

Our official instruction is that if we see a vehicle with no lights on, we are NOT to ‘flash’ it etc. and the advice to friends and family is that you should ignore any vehicles you see without lights. I would ask that you pass this info on to all your family, friends and colleagues and who knows, it may save a life.

Trust Security Manager

An incident similar to the above was reported in the Tameside Advertiser not more than half a week ago, wherein a passenger in a car shot at another car for no apparent reason and then sped off.

I could try and make a series of tenuous connecting links but I think I’ll just let it rest here, for now.

This is a worrying trend. The biggest gangs in greater Manchester are dominated by asian muslims these days, closely followed by hindus and sikhs, with various other gang groupings trailing a long way behind, and if they start adopting this sort of behaviour it’ll get really ugly, very fast. There are already street wars in some areas, between muslim and hindu gangs, that simply don’t get reported because it would make the whole racial harmony thing look bad. The last thing we need is another excuse for them to start shooting at each other, yet this is exactly what will happen if this fad takes hold of them.

And where are the police? Holed up in some regional headquarters somewhere, attending racial sensitivity courses, when they should be out in force, cracking heads. Who gives a damn what colour they are?