Accident Scam Latest

This report appeared in the Portsmouth News on Tuesday 9th January. Note the inaccuracies.

Pensioner warns motorists after scam by teenagers

SCENE The junction of Telephone Road and Talbot Road in Southsea

• by Ellie Pilmoor

A PENSIONER is warning other motorists after he was scammed by a group of teenagers.

Michael Read was tricked into thinking he had hit a pedestrian. And when he got out of his car to check on the youngster, the 72-year-old had his car ignition key and mobile phone stolen.
Mr Read was approaching the junction of Telephone Road and Talbot Road in Southsea when he was conned.
The former English teacher said: ‘I was driving in Southsea when I felt my car wheels run over an object.
‘At the same time, I heard shouting from three young people who were standing near my car. One was shouting that I had run over his ankle and broken it.’

Fearing the worst, Mr Read got out of his car to check on the boy who was shouting that he owed him money.
He added: ‘ I wanted to have a look at the lad’s ankle but they wouldn’t let me.
‘I also went to check on the damage to my car but they barred my view. At this point, one of them ran round to the driver’s door, opened it and took my ignition key.
‘I tried to get it back but they were still screaming at me about wanting compensation. At this point, all I was thinking was “please, someone come along”.’
Luckily for Mr Read, a lady walked past and helped him get his key back.
He said: ‘By now, I thought it would be best to call the police. I explained to them that since I had injured one of them, the police had to be involved.
‘But that was a big mistake. As I got my phone out, one of them grabbed it and all three, including the one who said I had broken his ankle, ran off with their bikes.’
The lady phoned the police and attempts have now been made to identify the thieves.
A spokesman for Hampshire Constabulary, said: ‘Police were phoned to a report of teenagers behaving aggressively towards a man, aged in his 70s, who had parked his car.
‘A mobile phone belonging to the man was reported to have been stolen by one of the teenagers. Police have conducted enquiries to identify the teenagers.’
Anyone with information about the incident, which happened on Friday, December 13, can call 101 and quote number 44130 468266.
Mr Read added: ‘I have learnt the best thing to do is to stay in your car, lock your doors and call the police.
‘In hindsight I should never have got out of the car.’

I phoned the police today as they have never taken a full statement from me and I am now awaiting contact from the officer on the case.  I am rather disappointed - yet not at all surprised - at the inaccuracies in the press report.  They have completely missed the point that the youths tried to make it appear as though I had run over one of them on his bike.

These four comments about the incident appeared on the Portsmouth News website:

Gangs of youths on bikes frequently roam this area, often after dark with no lights, intimidating other road users.
 Some ride three abreast swerving from side to side, stopping cars passing and shouting abuse at the drivers. How long before one of these idiots is seriously injured due to their own stupidity. When this does happen his mates will probably blame the car driver.
 Good advice from Mr. Read ,stay in your car, lock your doors and call the police.

I can imagine this incident would be quite distressing for many people to have happen to them and hope these youngsters are caught very quickly and punished suitably .

Should have just reversed over the little scroat to make sure he was run over... complete oxygen wasters! Karma will prevail!

I bet their parents are so proud of those darling, brave teenagers. The guts it must have taken for them to fool a 72 year old is nothing short of admirable. I have never advocated violence, but I'd just love them to try it on with me, and see if they still think they're so clever.

Bins Finally Emptied this Morning

The bins, which should have been emptied on Saturday, were finally emptied this morning but it gives rise to these questions, which I have put to the council in an e-mail:

1. What caused the extreme delay?
2. Since the refuse collection - black bins -  is now so far behind, what will happen about the green bin collection on Thursday 9^th January?
3. As the council knows there is a major issue regarding bin collection, why hasn't a statement been put out to the local media?  
4. There is obviously a major issue as it is impossible to get through to Eastleigh Borough on the phone and they didn't reply to the message I left with another department yesterday. 

I have made some inquiries into bin collection and note that it is most haphazard at the best of times:

• Crews change so there is no consistency.
• It can be at any time between 7.30am and 1.30pm.

I wrote to one of our local LibDem councillors but have had no response from her.  I have, however, had a communication from a Conservative councillor in the neighbouring ward, who is looking into it for me.  

It is interesting to note that in each of these late collections the dustcart was a much smaller one than usual, so either we had been forgotten or else they were doubling up as the collections are so far behind.

UPDATE
I have now heard from Conservative Councillor Judith Grajewski:

The disruption hasn't been widespread at all. Normal collections will not resume until 13 January. Full details at http://www.eastleigh.gov.uk/the-council/news/recycling-christmas.aspx and elsewhere on EBC website.

There was a problem with access to Cumberland Avenue and the garden waste lorry broke down yesterday affecting Hiltingbury collections, most of which have been collected today with 3 or 4 roads still to do tomorrow.
Wednesday 8th January
 After an afternoon spent in the council offices I have been unable to find out anything much except that there was a change of crews (which happens all the time anyway) and that some roads were blocked for a variety of reasons.  It looks suspiciously as if our road was just forgotten because it's a cul-de-sac!!

THE NEXT BIN COLLECTION WILL (or should) BE ON FRIDAY 10th JANUARY.

Do let me know if you hear of more problems.

UPDATE 10TH  JANUARY

I have recently heard from Cllr Mrs Pam Holden-Brown, who has taken the trouble to contact the Area Coordinator, who advises that there are no definitive issues so they are getting feedback from the crew and hope to have more information shortly.

The point is made, as was made earlier by Cllr Ms Judith Grajewski, that access issues can be caused by too many cars parked over the holiday period, so this raises a separate issue related to parking.  Apart from that, we shall probably have to wait until the Local Area Committee Meeting at the Dovedale Centre at 7pm on Wednesday 22nd January.

In the meantime, the bins were collected this morning on schedule.

UPDATE 20TH JANUARY

I have just discovered that the bins weren't collected around the corner in Ashley Gardens, so this really is a major problem.

Uncollected Rubbish

We seem to have a major problem with rubbish over Christmas and the New Year and it seems to be quite impossible to speak to anyone in the right department of Eastleigh Borough Council.  This is obviously because they are inundated with phone calls about the issue.

I have sent the following e-mail to our local Lib-Dem councillor:

Dear Pam

By now you have probably realised that there is a major problem of uncollected bins over the holiday period in Oakmount, Chandler's Ford.

Our normal collection day is Thursday.  However, holidays over Christmas and the New Year necessitated a change to Saturday 28^th December and Saturday 4^th January.   When they weren’t collected on the 28^th some of us left them out to be collected on the Monday – which they were.

 I then telephoned the council, on Monday 30^th December, and asked what would happen the following week.  The girl assured me quite categorically that they would be collected last Saturday – 4^th January – although I doubted that this would be possible.  She didn’t see that there was a problem at all except for a few “missed bins”.

 They weren’t collected last Saturday and they haven’t been collected today, so I phoned the Council again and was pleased to note that there is now a special extension for uncollected bins.  However, I was put through to an overflow number and the lady was unable to tell me anything, except to say that she was e-mailing the appropriate department to explain the problem.

 There are three issues:

1.       When will our bins be emptied?
2.       Since the refuse collection - black bins -  is now so far behind, what will happen about the green bin collection on Thursday 9^th January?
3.       As the council knows there is a major issue regarding bin collection, why hasn’t a statement been put out to the local media? 

 I have made some inquiries into bin collection and note that it is most haphazard at the best of times:

·         Crews change regularly.
·         It can be at any time between 7.30am and 1.30pm

 I look forward to hearing from you.

 I have no idea whether the problem is the weather or some other reason but, as I said in my e-mail, and as you can see from earlier blogs, the waste collection is haphazard anyway.  The Echo are now aware that there's a problem

 

Has your waste been collected?

Lucy, the Sad Story of the Budgie who Couldn't Fly

This is 4 year old Lucy, with Elder Wu, a Chinese missionary elder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Christmas Day.

She was sold to us  at a knockdown price in 2009 because she was very bedraggled and could never be used for breeding or exhibiting.  She was the replacement for a budgie that had died from a very large tumour and had been the companion of a cock bird.  We had been given this pair some years earlier by a lady who was going to take them to the vet as her son had become allergic to them. 

We therefore gave them a home. The problem was that they weren't tame, unlike a previous bird I had had in my youth, and wouldn't come to us, although we let them out whenever we could.  Lucy, on the other hand, was tame but we soon discovered that she couldn't fly. 

To begin with, she would come out regularly but she soon became frightened as she just flopped onto the floor, so she took to just sitting in her cage, only venturing beyond her cage once every few months.  And neither would she eat her greens, but lived only on birdseed - and millet spray - which can be quite fattening.   

I noticed that leading up to Christmas she had been quieter but I didn't really attach any importance to it.

Despite the theft of my smartphone 12 days earlier, we were having a lovely Christmas.  We spoke by Skype to our son, who is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Spain, and invited four missionary elders and a missionary couple to Christmas dinner. 

But Lucy somehow managed to get out of her closed cage, I think through a feeding tray, and flopped down onto the floor.  She squawked as I picked her up but was much more docile than usual.  After a while, we passed her around the table and here is Elder Wu, one of our two Chinese elders, entertaining her.

 

 

Then she flopped - and I lay her on some napkins for a bed and after a while tried to put her back in her cage on a perch, but she didn't have the strength so I put her on the floor of the cage.

Later last night, after taking the four missionaries home, I rang a friend who is a vet, while Lucy lay in my hand.  He said I should give her heat by putting her in a cardboard box with holes in it and putting her in the airing cupboard. 

 
However, she died in my hands before I could do that.

 
The consolation is that if she had stayed in the aviary she would have been pecked to death by the other birds, whereas we gave her a loving home.  As the runt of the litter she was never strong, and as she couldn't fly she just couldn't get the exercise all birds need.  So getting on for 5 years isn't really too bad.

 
You might say I've had a rotten Christmas, but that's not true!! Although I was robbed of my brand new smartphone, and at the moment can't afford the £50 excess payable before I can replace it, and the budgie died on Christmas day, it doesn't change what we are celebrating:
The birth of a baby who went on to atone for the sins of the world.

"Peace can come to all who choose to walk in the ways of the Master. His invitation is expressed in three loving words: "Come, follow me.""

—Russell M. Nelson, "Jesus the Christ--Our Prince of Peace"
So Lucy has gone to the budgie spirit world but we must be thankful for all that we have.

And in particular we must be thankful that the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in now on the earth and is to be found in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 Of course, I am anxious for the police to track down the youths who robbed me, particularly as they could target someone much frailer than I am, so await news from them, but it's worth pointing out that frontline police are being reduced all the time, when it's bureaucracy that needs to be cut.

A New Type of Accident Scam

Accident Scam in Southsea

DON’T GET OUT OF YOUR CAR

 

This is a warning to motorists about an accident scam that happened to me in Southsea.  And some advice:  If in doubt DON’T GET OUT OF THE CAR!!!

 

The scam is to make you think you have injured a youth on a bike so he can get “compensation”.

 

This is how it happened:

At about 6pm I was crossing the junction of Telephone Road and Talbot Road, shown above, and had almost reached the other side, when the wheels of the car went over an object.   And at the same time there was shouting behind me.

 

I looked in my mirror and then stopped.  I saw three youths shouting that I had driven into them and that one of them had broken his ankle.  Fearing the worst, I jumped out of the car to see what had happened and saw youths between the ages of about 15 and 17 standing over a bike with a buckled front wheel.  They shouted at me that I had deliberately driven into them and that they wanted money.

 

Since there would be damage to the front of the car I had hit them , I tried to look – but they barred my way.  And one of them opened the door and took my ignition key.  While I tried to get that back the others were still screaming that they wanted compensation, and I was thinking “Someone please come.”

 

Someone did.  A middle aged lady in a black waist-length jacket and carrying a file of papers arrived.  She and I managed to recover my ignition key, but the  youths were still screaming that I had broken the ankle of one of them, so  I told them that since he said he had been injured I would have to phone the police.

 

And here I made a big mistake.  I got out my phone – a brand new Samsung Galaxy S4 - and started to dial 999.  But the tallest youth grabbed it out of my hand and after little more than a minute the ankle was miraculously healed and they ran off. 

 

I then borrowed the lady’s phone and called the police who were on the scene within 2 minutes.  About ten minutes later the police reported a drugs deal just a very short distance from where this scam accident had taken place, and the description of the youths involved fitted those involved in this scam. 

 

Although the lady who arrived on the scene was able to give a full description of the youths to the police, as yet I have heard nothing further. However, it would appear that my phone was used as payment to the drug dealer.  

 

In hindsight, I can see that I should never have got out of the car.  There was no damage to it so the youths must have thrown something under the car so the rear wheels went over it.  The advice has to be the same as in South Africa: stay in the car, lock the doors and phone the police. 

 

The photo taken just after the scam shows a completely clear road with no debris, so we have no idea what they threw under the car.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find out who the kind lady was and I'd really like to thank her.  It happened on Friday 13th December at about 6.05pm.

Why Voting Conservative Tomorrow Makes Sense

Hampshire County Council has  an excellent record:

CONSERVATIVE HAMPSHIRE RATED TOP COUNTY COUNCIL BY AUDIT COMMISSION

·         Council tax increased by only 1.9% for the next two years

·         Lead in children’s care. Provided expert help in Haringay after “Baby P” failure

·         BEST COUNTY COUNCIL IN THE LAND

WHAT WE HAVE DONE:

·         Highest Performance

·         Lowest council tax

·         Excellent value for money

DESPITE

LOWEST GOVERNMENT GRANT

·         Introduced 30mph speed reduction programmes for 106 rural villages

·         Refurbished libraries, expanded their services and extended opening hours

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS BY CONSERVATIVES IN HAMPSHIRE

Invested £74m a year maintaining our roads

Provided £2m extra for pothole repairs

Pioneered “20 is Plenty” to improve road safety outside schools

Kept children safe and secure

Expanded and improved special schools

Provided 50 Community Safety Oficers

Provided 10 new nursing care homes

Increased the number of care beds from 873 to 1,436

Pioneered care programme to allow elderly to live at home.

Established award winning Discovery Centres

Supported local communities through Councillor budgets

Led the country in reducing landfill – down to 10%

Produced electricity from waste: enough for 50,000 homes

Increased and improved household waste recycling centres

Amongst the best GCSE results in the country

Saved £50m by refurbishing rather than replacing condemned offices. Halved its carbon footprint and reduced leasing cots by increasing its capacity to provide workspace for double the number of staff.

UKIP say many of the right things BUT THEY HAVE NO LOCAL POLICIES.  They suggest that by putting them in power in Hampshire they will miraculously be able to halt immigration.

There are some who say this is the time for a Protest Vote.

I, too, am dismayed by the ambitions of the European Union and its tightening grip on our daily lives. Unless we can return many of its powers to the United Kingdom, I shall have no option but to vote for our withdrawal when the time comes. I am equally opposed to Same Sex Marriage and open door immigration. However, we should remember that the County Council has no power over the EU or immigration, so to vote for a party concentrating on these issues could rob you of an excellent Conservative County Council for four years by splitting the vote in the forthcoming County Council Elections.

This County Council Election must be about GROWING HAMPSHIRE’S ECONOMY WHILE CARING FOR ITS PEOPLE

The LibDems make many false accusations about the Conservative run council but:

Hampshire County Council has an income of £900 million with borrowing of £500 million.

Eastleigh Borough Council, on the other hand, has an income of £12 million while borrowing an enormous £100 million.

AND EASTLEIGH INTEND TO INCREASE THAT BORROWING BY £12 MILLION in order to move the civic offices into Eastleigh centre with the following consequences:

·         It will cause massive congestion

·         Make parking more difficult for visitors

·         This will cause the continued decline of  the retail sector, with more shops closing.

·         The likelihood of the development of the existing site and, very possibly, the development of part of Fleming Park.

One of the most important  duties of  our councillors is to explain how they are spending our money.

So how did Eastleigh Borough Council explain the above this year?

The Lib Dem leader, Keith House, spared exactly FIFTEEN SECONDS of his valuable time to explain it: not enough time to explain how he was saddling them with debts of £112 million.

 Godfrey Olson, the Conservative opposition leader, proposed using a little of the income from parking charges to give up to 30 minutes free parking to encourage shoppers back to the centre; but it was ridiculed by the LibDems.

DON’T LET THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS GET HOLD OF HAMPSHIRE

Tempting as it may be to vote UKIP tomorrow it could so easily let the LibDems in.

Remember the by-election?

Why You Should Vote for Me Tomorrow

A reminder why you should vote for me tomorrow:

I have, for some time, been involved in the local community and should now like to make a more positive contribution. The County Council elections on May 2nd give me that opportunity.

I am already getting things done:

MICHAEL READ HAS SUCCESS WITH MUDDY SHAKESPEARE ROAD BUS STOP

Flooding at a bus stop at the eastern end of Shakespeare Road, that was causing considerable inconvenience to residents, had not been reported.  But as soon as I reported it to the County Council they took action and issued the following statement:

It is anticipated that a hard standing area will be formed between the hedge and the kerb line as you suggested and as you will appreciate we will need to ensure that this is constructed with a suitable fall to ensure that water is shed directed onto the road eliminating the current flooding issue. 

If elected I will:

• ·         Fight to preserve our green spaces from inappropriate development, including the continued threat to Eastleigh Recreation Ground and Stoneham Park
• ·         As a former teacher, work to maintain the quality of our schools
• ·         Fight for 20mph speed limits outside schools for when pupils arrive and depart, controlled by electronic traffic signs.
• ·         Prevent the use of speed humps as road pinching can be used instead and is far less damaging
• ·         Seek to improve driving standards across the county by driver education, both through the cooperation of schools and colleges and road safety groups.  This includes the use of appropriate speed.
• ·         Work to ensure that public transport services are maintained
• ·         Work to maintain the current level of council tax and services
• ·         As Labour and LibDem climate policies have brought power cuts closer, work to lessen their impact by encouraging economical use of energy at home and work.
• ·         Seek to increase apprenticeship schemes and encourage industry to come to Eastleigh.
• ·         Make myself available for consultation at any reasonable time by personal contact or e-mail.