Un-belivable!

My lad has spent the last month with his wife and baby daughter in the States - a little farming town on the shores of Lake Michagen, just outside Chicago. He's supposed to fly from there to New York and from there home.

First, guess where they've been his with 20 inches (51 cm) of snow and temperatures from a nice warm minus 6°C to minus 30°C? Yup. From a storm covering 30 States. The roads are blocked, everything is shut, so he may not even get to the airport, ne'er mind get his flight.

To add insult to injury, his home was burgled last night or the night before. Luckily, he had the foresight to move anything really expensive from there here before he left.

They ransacked his place. Threw a brick through a window, emptied all his drawers and tipped the contents all over. It's amazed me what they've pinched. His aged and cheap microwave, and a couple of games - that I understand. But a box of wires? Baby clothes he'd been stockpiling? (his US wife is barred from the UK at the mo.).

A couple of ancient videos? Xbox game cases - with no games in them? Tea, Coffee and sugar? A kettle ? I mean, I know it was Kenco Coffee, but blimey.

But what's really annoyed me is the next door neighbour openly admitted to the police that he and his family knew something "had cracked off", but didn't call the police because "they didn't want to get involved". It took another neighbour some doors away to do that. Tsk. Some people.

The police - who phoned us - have been very good. Forensics and all that (who explained everything to The Bear - even pointing out glove prints, partial shoe prints what they do and why) . They even arranged to get his landlord in to board up the window.

Bear has spent today putting everything away and sweeping and cleaning up. Poor Bear.

But Coffee? By 'eck.

~~~~~

If you haven't heard of Police.uk, it's worth a little look. Basically, tap in a post code, part post code, area or street, and in a very general way, it shows the crimes that have been looked into in the last month/6 weeks. For privacy reasons, it doesn't pin point exact addresses.

Once you are shown the results page, click on the map. The figures shown for an area covered are a total. Zoom in bit by bit using the slider. As you zoom in, the figures break down, finally into figures by street.

There are a couple of caveats. One is that there is a category for 'other crimes'. No idea what that covers.

Another is the way it works. It seems to be grouped by post code. For example, large city centres, ie Manchester or London, have multiple postcodes, but a pub/nightclub/accommodation population of somewhere like, umm, Preston. But Preston's city centre is covered by one post code, so they get a bad rap because similar facilities are more concentrated in one post code area.

Partly thanks to the homogenization of city centres. Don't get me into that one :)

Another worry is that insurance companies might use this data to hike up their rates in some areas, or that the data may be used to force property prices down.

Having said that, as a curiosity, and a bit of fun, I like it.