This is what Brexit is all about - native Britons trying to protect what is theirs - including what used to be their right to free speech. There is unrest amongst the people - crime figures are soaring - homophobic attacks increasing - it all signals that the man in the street is reaching boiling point.

I have to wonder if the elections are fixed. It seems the people of Britain don't favor the policies of their politicians. Do the candidates lie to them and then govern differently?

I know that vote fraud is a big problem in America. It is a miracle that Trump was elected. I guess they miscalculated how many votes they needed to rig to steal the election.

The police seem to be scared of the political class, afraid to arrest Muslims for fear of being branded Islamophobic or something.

But the majority of the people can speak up loudly and they can change things. I hope that is beginning now.

I have often thought that elections were rigged - but the way we do it in Britain - it would be very hard to get away with it. I think that politicians promise us everything - and when they are elected they backtrack - blaming the previous administration. But if they try to backtrack on Brexit and ignore the referendum - well - that will be the final proof that we are not a democracy - even the remainers will have to understand that - and goodness knows what will happen. Britons are by nature lazy and apathetic - but when it comes to something really important - we can be a force to be reckoned with.

Changing subjects. I don't recall if we ever talked about the movie Wind River or not. I saw it a few months back and enjoyed it a lot.

The plot: A veteran hunter helps an FBI agent investigate the murder of a young woman on a Wyoming Native American reservation.

So, Native American reservations are sort of like separate nations located and operating under the auspices of the US government. The FBI can come in to investigate federal crimes, but they have to work with the Indian government. I am not entirely clear how that legal framework is laid out, but the Indian Nation has much autonomy. This story plays out near Boulder Flats, Wyoming. This is wide open country, and it gets brutally cold in the winter, especially in the upper elevations, as the region is mountainous.

It is a law enforcement story, involving a hunter familiar with the area who is contracted to help investigate and assist local law enforcement. It has enough twists to keep it interesting. If you can get it, put it on your list and check it out. I think you might like this one.

I will search Netflix for it - it sounds interesting.

Btw, you mentioned that you like the subtitles of foreign films. I think there is a way to get your TV to do subtitles on English language films. I am able to get mine to do that. I find it very useful. So many times I can't pick up the dialogue, either because the actor has a soft manner of speaking, or because the background music gets so loud that I have to keep the volume down.

I watch Netflix via Roku and it has a special remote which has the option to use subtitles. I think most remotes have that option hidden in them somewhere.

Thanks for your suggestion - I have tinnitus - 3 separate tones I have had most of my life - now plus audio hallucination due to a virus I contracted just after Christmas that lasted three months - it means I have constant random music in my head - plus a degree of age related deafness - so as you can imagine - subtitles are absolutely essential for me. I find Netflix usually very good at supplying subtitles - much better of late than they used to be. I find the worst offender by far is constant music - even when people are speaking - the crime documentaries are terrible for this. I watch most things on mute. With regard to "Glitch" I have just watched the first episode and for a bit of fun here are my first thoughts on it - firstly - nobody is buried naked - they are all in their best bib and tucker for God - most people are in coffins that are screwed shut - most people unless embalmed - are pretty much either mush or skeleton after three years and most people are buried at least six feet under the ground. So - I am thinking is this a virtual world - is the glitch of the title a computer malfunction. Is it going to be like a twilight zone episode where the people in a child's game became self aware and sought to escape. I hope I am hopelessly off course and all will be revealed in a completely different manner. By the way - I think this is written by women - that's why he cries all the tine !!!

Not only are their bodies not mush and bone, Kate's mastectomy is gone, she is healthy and whole again! They all are. That's the deal with sci fi and fictional stuff, they have those weird plot elements you have to overlook. In case you watch more, I won't tell you how it eventually explains them coming back this way. You must know that the explanation cannot be sufficient since it is impossible, but they do provide an explanation of sorts toward the end of the second series. There are still a lot of questions which are hanging out there for the third series to answer though.

As a lover of sci-fi I suppose it goes with the territory !!

I am currently watching a Netflix series called "Murder Map" which covers several famous killers from Britain. I just finished watching the one about Neville Heath. Wow, that fellow had no scruples at all. He sounds like a psychopath, and I think the court determined that he indeed was one. He thought himself a bit too clever as well.

I think people like that begin to think they are smarter than everyone else because they have been successful in telling big lies in the past. Of course, all that proves is that most people are not liars and therefore tend to believe what others tell them, until they discover reasons they should not. Psychopaths feel no guilt about lying, and may learn to be very charming, so they may not show the signs of deception which ordinary people tend to display. They are not completely without feelings, and they may care about a few people. If the show is accurate on this point, it seems that Heath's lawyer convinced him to try to spare his family some pain by claiming diminished mental capacity. It was an impossible defense, but his lawyer had no other strategy available to him. The evidence was too damning. Why do killers want to keep trophies?

On the one hand, I think I would find the study of such people fascinating. But I suspect that fascination would give way to an urgency to get away from them. I would want to take a bath after speaking to them. Mentally I would feel the need to cleanse myself somehow as well. I am sort of glad I don't really understand them or how they think.

Ahh - back in the good old days when punishment was just and permanent. I remember when murder cases such as these made front page headlines - now they are so common they are barely reported. You have to wonder why this has happened - has the incidence of psychopathy increased in the last fifty years - and if so - why? I don't remember the murder rate being anything like it is today when I was growing up - but then people had standards and the pc brigade was yet to be born. People didn't look so tolerantly on deviant behaviour as they do today - and children were seen and not heard. There was a sense of order in life. Killers were killed - the guilty were punished. Now sentences for murder are "life" which means 14 years and out sooner for good behaviour. Their victims do not come back so why should they? This lack of justice is fuelling criminal behaviour. No wonder murder is so prevalent now - maybe the question should not be "why" but "why not?". As far as trophies are concerned I think it is generally accepted by the psychobabble brigade that they are a means of reliving the crime - personally I think you would to be pretty stupid to take trophies - so maybe we overestimate the intelligence of psychopaths. I have studied criminology for many years - all the famous British cases - all the famous British pathologists - in my view killers are people who simply take what they want regardless of any one or anything - there is an emotional vacuum in them - they are not treatable and that is why they should be executed or kept behind bars for life. Maybe I am old-fashioned - but I believe in the concept of evil - and some people are simply evil - not mentally ill and they deserve the death penalty.

I think you hit the nail squarely on the top there. There were standards, the culture included a set of moral assumptions and rules of behavior, and there was no PC brigade scolding people for wanting to punish bad people. It was the same in America. In the first half of the 20th century, more households owned firearms than do today, yet mass shootings were unheard of, and violent crime in general was quite rare, aside from mafia activity. Some things were considered ordinately right and wrong; there was no moral relativism being taught back then.

Public executions served a purpose. Nobody watching one could miss the point that there is a price to pay for committing murders. (Of course, when John Christie got on the stand and helped convict Timothy Evans for the murders Christie himself had committed, it pointed out the weakness of the system. Our system isn't perfect, and especially today I think, prosecutors and others may bend the rules to convict someone they believe, but cannot really prove, is guilty. I still support capital punishment, but the proof must be incontrovertible. It must be more than "the preponderance of the evidence", or "beyond a reasonable doubt". What is a reasonable doubt? To actually kill someone I want a certainty, I want no doubt whatsoever that he is guilty. )

There are evil people. And psychopaths? They are not unable to keep from killing. They make the decisions to do the things they do, knowing that they are wrong. They simply calculate that their own needs are more important to them than another person's life.

There are people with the same general psychological makeups who lead productive, useful lives. Their lack of fear may make them great test pilots for example, or bomb disposal technicians.

And the evil ones, who choose to sacrifice others for their own gain or pleasure, their behavior can be modified, held in check, by the threat of punishments they don't want for themselves. But only if society once more produces a culture with standards similar to those we knew when we were children.

The Christie case is always referenced when it comes to capital punishment - and yes - it was a terrible miscarriage of justice - but if Timothy Evans had been truthful from the beginning it may not have ended the way it did. The police did not seem to have the same standard of evidence required for conviction in those days. The same kind of thing happened with James Hanratty who was also hanged. They say they have proved it forensically now - but I do not believe them - it is forty years ago and they just want it over with. There was no motive - no association - he was not resident in the area where the crime took place which was a remote cornfield - there was no other car - how did he get there. He had an alibi of being in a rented room in Rhyl at the time which was disregarded - he was a getaway driver yet Valerie Storey said that he asked her how to drive the car - the car itself was seen by two witnesses being driven erratically - neither of these witnesses identified Hanratty as the driver. Valerie Storey described him as looking like a Spanish sailor - he was blonde haired and blue eyed. She said that Hanratty told her "Be quiet - I am finking" (Cockney accent used by millions) because Hanratty spoke the same way that was regarded as evidence against him. It has been said by lawyers that if this crime had happened today they would not have had enough to charge him - let alone hang him. Then we have the picture of Valerie Storey (who was left paralysed in the attack - her married lover Michael Gregsten - was killed - both were shot) being visited in hospital by her lover's wife - who had a history of mental illness. Hanratty's family never stopped campaigning to clear his name and I believe that the so called evidence (Storey's underwear and Gregstens clothing and Hanratty's clothing which had all been kept in the same cardboard box without being separately wrapped and labelled) was conveniently found to incriminate Hanratty and put an end to it once and for all. First of all they tried fiber evidence and when nobody bought that - suddenly there was forty year old semen which had not degraded at all despite being stored with no protection whatever to prove he was indeed the killer. I also concur with the necessity for incontrovertible evidence which should be a lot easier to obtain with all the technology now available to the police force. I agree with you that all psychopaths are not necessarily serial killers - they just have a personality trait that makes them more ruthless and driven than most people - as you say - they can be brilliant at high risk jobs and it is said that the banking world has a very high percentage of psychopaths in their employ - indeed they say this could well have been a factor in the global financial crash of recent times. It is obviously not just psychopathy in play here - there has to be an underlying evil that decides which way that psychopathy is directed. I forgot the best bit of the Hanratty debacle - when Gregsten's wife was shopping in London with a friend - she "happened" to see James Hanratty in the street - and she said to her friend (paraphrased) "Oh look - he looks just like the man who shot Michael" ?!! It seems to me that if she knew her husband was having an affair then she was the only one with any motive to hire somebody to kill him. One of Hanratty's friends who told the police where Hanratty was likely to hide a gun (in the back seat of a London bus) killed himself shortly after Hanratty was hanged.

@strangebedfellows said:

One of Hanratty's friends who told the police where Hanratty was likely to hide a gun (in the back seat of a London bus) killed himself shortly after Hanratty was hanged.

That sounds suspicious doesn't it? You could take that two ways I guess.

1- Hanratty told his friend where he hid the gun and his friend ratted him out- or Hanratty regularly stored a gun under the back seat of a bus and the friend knew about that,

2- The 'friend' was involved and decided to pin it on Hanratty to save himself.

And in either case the friend thought Hanratty would somehow beat the charge and couldn't live with himself after he hanged.

I just read a short summary of the Hanratty case. Some witnesses picked him, and some didn't. Doesn't sound very convincing. Also Storie first picked an airman as the killer from a lineup. Later she picked Hanratty by his voice. As you said, there are plenty of people with Cockney accents. (I wonder if any of the others in the lineup did.)

Hanratty changed his story on his alibi. That seems to be something which really hurt him. But he was a career criminal and would be in the habit of lying to police.

I suspect you may be right about the authorities seeking to put the whole mess to bed by faking DNA evidence. In fact, there have been mistakes made in DNA identification, whether by sloppy work or on purpose. Sometimes the system can be corrupt. That is more scary to me than any criminal.

Have you seen the movie The Highwaymen starring Kevin Costner as Frank Hamer? It tells the story of Bonnie and Clyde from the perspective of the retired Texas Rangers who hunted them down and killed them. It's nice because it shows the outlaws as killers instead of heroes, and it shows the old time lawmen who hunted them down. Frank Hamer was an old Texas Ranger until the Texas governor disbanded that lawman organization. Hamer and his partner were hired to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde and finally got them.