I was robbed

The chances of any item listed as stolen being offered to anyone on this forum, being noticed and then subsequently resulting in any positive outcome are truly so remote as to be virtually zero.

I really think the only option is to leave it to the Insurance Company to reimburse the value and let it go.

The longer term solution is to make a better society, starting with Education and the serious teaching of the concept of Self Discipline.

John,

So you reckon it is not worth the effort to create such a list? There are several members on the forum that buy secondhand lenses in particular, how do we know things are not hot property?

Don't they already do this in English schools?

"serious teaching of the concept of Self Discipline" - or was that dropped from the 70's onwards? I went through the English system in the 60's and 70's and came out of OK, able to appreciate what is mine, and what belongs to other people........

It's not really a question of effort, more of reality. For eample, you are in Switzerland and I'm in the UK. The chance of your stolen lens being offered to me is pretty remote.

As regards knowing if things are "hot property" it's a matter of commonsense. If I'm offered a Gold Pentax LX for £50 in the local pub then clearly something is amiss. If I'm offered it via auction by someone with a good eBay track record who clearly deals in classic cameras and knows what it's all about then I'm pretty sure it's OK. Also, in the latter case it's very public and absolutely available for anyone who thinks it isn't OK to take the appropriate action.

In fact, some well known and well trusted sellers are members here and I would buy from them confidently.

"Self Discipline" was taught as a concept when I was in school in the late 1960s but I'm not so sure it has the same emphasis now. Perhaps we have some teachers who might comment?

Unfortunately we now have so much monitoring, checking and supervision that the message seems to be more that nobody can be trusted unless they are being watched. Who watches the watchers is always a problem, but I assume they watch each other. Computers are part of this problem. But just because we can track and monotor people doesn't mean that we should. We could trust them instead.

There is already a database available, not directly aimed at lenses, cameras etc. but you can put them on there

https://www.immobilise.com/

Never heard of that. Thanks for the information.

Hi Clarky,

sorry to hear about the theft. It sounds as though your government is as inept as ours when it comes to policing. The police themselves do as good a job as they can with limited resources. I think I'm right in saying that there are only six uniformed police per shift where I am, a population of 100,000+ (excluding traffic and PCSOs). Stick one in custody, and then for every petty offence that happens, each is looking at 4-6 hours paperwork.. effectively taking them off the street for at least half their shift. I'm surprised that total anarchy doesn't reign.. but that at least shows that the vast majority of people are basically honest.

I may as well put my twopenneth in concerning capital punishment now I'm here..

I don't really disagree with it in principal, but as there's no hell for them to rot in, it's the easy way out.. for them. Once you're dead you're dead. The only people being punished are the families of the criminal, usually as innocents. When capital punishment was repealed here in the '60s it was on the understanding that life would mean life. Now that can mean as little as 5 years with current sentencing tarrifs, and that's not good enough. If you get life at 18, it can potentially mean that you're out before your contemporaries have finished their Phds.

Clear the prisons of those incarcerated for non payment of TV licence tax.. er.. fees , and others that are no threat to society. That will free up room for those that society should expect to be protected from.. and make sure they stay there until they are no longer a threat; if that's the rest of their natural, so be it.

Right, off to work..

Cheers

Liam

Liam,

That was what I really wanted to say. The public has to be protected from certain individuals, and in my view it is not. On the other side I feel that the police through political correctness and politicians are tying the police up in knots making their work much harder.

The only problem with that is that it ignores two things:

1 Some murders have mitigating circumstances, which should be reflected in the sentence.
2 Some murders are much worse than others, and deserve harsher punishments.

An abused and battered wife who finally cracks and takes a kitchen knife to her drunken and violent husband is not in the same class as a vicious criminal who tortures somebody to death over a period of hours or days.

G

I'm sure in this scenario it would be man slaughter not murder, murder is a pre-meditated with intent crime.

The punishment should fit the crime, and life should meam life in my book.

Life on bread and water and no luxuries like they have today in the UK.

In some places in the world, the population demand blood for giving a teddy bear a stupid name. The same name adopted by a world class US boxer many years ago. Thank god he chose the name Ali and not Alah . . .

Mad? You bet it is.

I agree George, life is a mandatory sentence for murder, but in the first example it would more than likely be reduced to manslaughter as mentioned above. If life is indeed issued as sentence then it should mean life, not 15 years.

Cheers

Liam

The law then is an ass. How many times does one hear of a mass murderer getting 2 or more life sentences - an extra life after the first one becomes meaningless. Rather like having twenty burglaries taken into consideration and only being charged for one.

Sorry to hear of this Clarky. Having had a similar thing occur may years ago I think I know what you are going through. I had my beloved ME Super and other personal items taken in a burglary and it was most upsetting. I have since always had home monitoring which seems to have helped. At least we haven't had a repeat. It's not so much the physical items, which can mostly be replaced, its the violation felt afterwards.