Salford councillor blames victims for crime
It seems that former Lib Dem and currently independent councillor Joe O’Neill has decided to make a habit of writing outrageous and offensive statements. Hot off the heals of likening a left-wing councillor to a Nazi, he’s this week claimed that victims of burglary are ‘as much to blame’ for being burgled as the the criminals who rob them.
Now I don’t know whether Joe is just letting his personal desire to take a dig at me (I was burgled on Sunday) get the better of his judgment on this one, but frankly I’m amazed that he’s made this statement. Here it is in full (in case he decides to change it in light of this post):
‘I Believe they have someone one the valley shame it was not a week earlier when two young girls where robbed. I wonder do these people understand what it’s like to come home to your house and finding some scum bag as been in.I Have faced the expeience when we lived in Broughton, The sad part is are the people who buy all the goodies don’t forget you are as much to blame for the rise in this crime‘ (my emphasis).
In councillor O’Niell’s world those of us who work hard for a living and buy goods with our earnings are as much to blame for being robbed as those who steal from us. The message from Cllr. O’Neill is ‘don’t buy anything nice with the money – it you do then it’s your fault that you’ve been burgled’.
As it happens I’m too busy paying my mortgage to own anything that would make my neighbours especially envious, but I cannot believe that anyone councillor O’Neill represents would share his views (unless they happen to be burglars).
O’Neill has shown that he’s out of touch, just as he crossed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour with his Nazi slur – he should resign.
Edit: as a couple of posters have pointed out – it is possible to construe cllr. O’Neill’s post in two different ways, and it is quite possible, and indeed probable that his post did not come out as intended. If this is the case, and I have indeed mistaken his intent then I apologise unreservedly for my mistake. As Confucious once said: ‘in literature, clarity is everything’.
12:14 pm on February 9th, 2010
What’s slightly scary is that someone this illiterate was ever elected for public office. I seriously cannot tell what he’s ranting on about.
1:30 pm on February 9th, 2010
I’m not sure that I’d want to disbar someone from public office based upon spelling or writing ability, and I don’t feel that how coherent Cllr. O’Neill’s blog entries are has much bearing on his ability as a councillor. As I’ve said before, I think Joe has in the past been an effective community campaigner; however, I think he’s recently shown that his judgment is poor, and these latest two comments prove to me that he’s not fit for office and he should go.
2:18 pm on February 9th, 2010
Sorry Steve but you’ve boobed on this one.
I know Joe’s writing often isn’t the best but it’s pretty obvious to me that when he wrote of “…the people who buy all the goodies…” Joe was referring to people who buy stolen goods (not victims of burglary).
____________________________
I’m sorry to hear about the burglary you’ve just suffered, I hope you and the family are getting over it. All the best.
2:27 pm on February 9th, 2010
For once I will agree with Richard and I’m sure an apology will appear here soon. But I do accept that good punctuation and sentence construction would have helped you.
4:36 pm on February 9th, 2010
Agreeing with me ‘on the quiet’ is a guilty pleasure for my political opponents.
8:39 pm on February 9th, 2010
A rare one!
8:43 pm on February 9th, 2010
Let’s be honest, Joe doesn’t help himself with his poorly written blog.
Apart from the obvious spelling and grammatical errors on his site, most of the time it is the way he intersperses his own comments in the middle of material shamelessly cut & pasted from other people’s websites that make it extremely difficult to work out just what the hell he is on about (or his position for or against something).
Joe, if your reading this, please turn on your spell checker (yes, Wordpress has a free one built-in) and learn the difference between ‘as’ and ‘has’.
I’ve actually stopped reading Joe’s blog for the above reasons (plus I’m banned from commenting on any of his “posts”).
Maybe if he made more of an effort, his audience might return?
NOTE TO JOE: ‘Hits’ is not the same as ‘Visitors’. 600 Visitors in a day might be impressive, 600 hits is not!
9:46 pm on February 9th, 2010
The point about hits is a bugbear of mine too Steve (as a general one, not aimed at Joe); people constantly talk about hits as if they mean something, when their ownly real use is to identify trends. Visitor numbers, length of stay, entry and exit pages, and types of visitor are what matter. For instance, my blog audience levels are relatively low, though I expect reasonable for this kind of blog and for a city where Internet useage is low – my Feb average of roughly 1200 hits per day only translates into around 350 visits per day; I suspect only third of those at best are unique visitors.
10:10 pm on February 9th, 2010
Weirdly, I have more hits than you but less visitors.
[tech mode on]
My Feb stats show that while my daily average is 260 my hit average is 1800.
[tech mode off]
I can only summise that visitors to my site read more pages…
:: sticks tongue out ::
1:14 am on February 10th, 2010
Another attempt at headline making Steve?
Where the truth fails, an attention seeking post will surfice.
8:09 am on February 10th, 2010
I’ve never posted anything here that I believed to be untrue. I can see lots of things on Joe’s site that I know to be untrue, and that I know to be deliberate attempts to mislead. I’m not a Christian, but I do remember a good instruction from the Bible:
‘And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?’