Kenny Collins, Friends, Rugby Predictions
People
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Tartar Robbers Dividing Spoil, William Allan (1782-1850)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]
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Kenny Collins, who is 78, was jailed for 2,309 days – just over six years.
…Collins has already served his time for the 2015 burglary, and this additional “default” sentence comes because neither he nor his fellow burglars have paid back all of the £7.6m demanded of them by the court.
…While awaiting the hearing Collins told The Observer why…he got involved in the robbery, rather than, as the judge suggested, enjoying a quiet retirement.
“I didn’t want to miss out. I was 74. I thought f**k it. You’re talking about 10 years maximum and you don’t think you’re going to get caught. The job had been around for a while. We might have done it at Christmas [2014] but Brian [Reader, the ringleader] fell out of a tree, so it had to be put off. I was the last one in. My last one, it would have been.
“My son, Vincent, died a couple of years ago – I might not have went if he was alive. He was special needs. He couldn’t read or write or tell the time, and he never worked. He died of diabetes – he was only 53. That’s the only thing that might have stopped me.
… “As boys, we played in bomb sites in Tottenham [north London] and started nicking things. My first offence was in 1951 for stealing bikes when I was 11. I nicked money off the place outside the church where you got newspapers. When I was 16 I worked in the timber trade and got blinding wages - £4 a day – but when it finished I couldn’t get back to what I was making before so I started thieving. I got done for robbery in 1961 and I got five years.
“I’ve done about 10 lots of bird. I was in borstal with James Hanratty [controversially hanged in 1962 for the A6 murder] and I’ve been in Wormwood Scrubs, Pentonville, Maidstone, Blantyre House, Belmarsh, Brixton, Wandsworth, Parkhurst … 1987 was my last conviction, conspiracy to rob. Since then, the last 30 years, I was selling things – fireworks from China, all sorts of things.”
… Collins has so far paid back £730,000, and his house in Islington, north London, is being sold for £740,000, which will also be forfeited, as will an apartment in Spain, worth £90,000.
(The Observer, 2019)
Kenny’s been in jail at least ten times yet he still insists,
when he did this robbery, that he didn’t think he would get caught. Well you
can’t say he learnt from his mistakes, can you?
Last of
the Innocents
People born in the late 1970s are the last to have grown up without the internet. Social scientists call them the Last of the Innocents.
… “Which would you rather be, extremely poor with loads of friends or super rich with no friends at all?” This hypothetical question was put to me recently out of nowhere by my 11-year-old stepson. For me the answer was easy. “Poor with friends,” I said. “In the long run, loneliness would be worse than poverty.”
My step-son disagreed. “Defo rich with no friends. I’d just stay in my mansion and play Fortnite and watch YouTube and hang out with people online.
He’s a popular kid and part of a close-knit group of boys who’ve been friends since starting school. When offered a choice of whether they’d like to watch a movie together or spend two hours playing Fortnite and interfacing remotely on headsets the lads didn’t miss a beat in choosing the latter. This is because, for digital natives like my stepson and his mates, socialising online is the same as – at times even preferable to – socialising in person.
… By resigning ourselves to the frenetic distractions of the attention economy, digital natives like my children and yours risk losing touch with the experience of what it is to be truly alone with their thoughts … those empty, restless, vaguely melancholic hours spent staring at clouds and lounging in trees … Not that they’ll long for what they don’t know. But we will, the innocents aka the ones who recall the emptiness and boredom. For it’s in those lost hours that we unwittingly got to know ourselves; our imaginations, unbridled, were free to play and laze and wander. And while it was dull and uneventful at times it’s also true that all of humanity’s wonders – including the internet itself – have arisen from this one simple source: a person, a thought, a daydream.
The author, Michael Harris, explores these themes in his book, The End of Absence.
His experiments with regaining solitude … go for a long walk without your phone… Spend an afternoon writing in longhand. Read 150 pages in one sitting. Simple in theory, but strangely terrifying in practice.
… Harris told me he doesn’t consider himself anti-technology so much as a critical observer of its effects. He points out that all human inventions, even those we consider banal or beneficial, such as cars or books, hijack our brains and disrupt our consciousness. What we risk losing to the emergence of big data is the richness of our interior lives.
“The experience of empty space allows for the growth of imagination and independent thought, the ability to form ideas without being swayed by mass opinion or bot armies,” he said.
More than anything, Harris worries that in future only the privileged few will be able to afford to take regular “digital detoxes” from the exhausting demands of the attention economy.
… Which isn’t to say innocence, or some version of it, can’t be regained through careful daily practice. Like the act of disconnecting our kids and sending them out to play in the garden. Or of sitting, just for an hour, at my father’s empty desk.
(Leah McLaren, The Observer, 2019)
People born in the late 1970s are the last to have grown up without the internet. Social scientists call them the Last of the Innocents.
… “Which would you rather be, extremely poor with loads of friends or super rich with no friends at all?” This hypothetical question was put to me recently out of nowhere by my 11-year-old stepson. For me the answer was easy. “Poor with friends,” I said. “In the long run, loneliness would be worse than poverty.”
My step-son disagreed. “Defo rich with no friends. I’d just stay in my mansion and play Fortnite and watch YouTube and hang out with people online.
He’s a popular kid and part of a close-knit group of boys who’ve been friends since starting school. When offered a choice of whether they’d like to watch a movie together or spend two hours playing Fortnite and interfacing remotely on headsets the lads didn’t miss a beat in choosing the latter. This is because, for digital natives like my stepson and his mates, socialising online is the same as – at times even preferable to – socialising in person.
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Children Playing by the River, William Gibbes Mackensie (1857-1924]
Photo Credit: Northern Ireland Civil Service [CC BY-NC_SA]
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… By resigning ourselves to the frenetic distractions of the attention economy, digital natives like my children and yours risk losing touch with the experience of what it is to be truly alone with their thoughts … those empty, restless, vaguely melancholic hours spent staring at clouds and lounging in trees … Not that they’ll long for what they don’t know. But we will, the innocents aka the ones who recall the emptiness and boredom. For it’s in those lost hours that we unwittingly got to know ourselves; our imaginations, unbridled, were free to play and laze and wander. And while it was dull and uneventful at times it’s also true that all of humanity’s wonders – including the internet itself – have arisen from this one simple source: a person, a thought, a daydream.
The author, Michael Harris, explores these themes in his book, The End of Absence.
His experiments with regaining solitude … go for a long walk without your phone… Spend an afternoon writing in longhand. Read 150 pages in one sitting. Simple in theory, but strangely terrifying in practice.
… Harris told me he doesn’t consider himself anti-technology so much as a critical observer of its effects. He points out that all human inventions, even those we consider banal or beneficial, such as cars or books, hijack our brains and disrupt our consciousness. What we risk losing to the emergence of big data is the richness of our interior lives.
“The experience of empty space allows for the growth of imagination and independent thought, the ability to form ideas without being swayed by mass opinion or bot armies,” he said.
More than anything, Harris worries that in future only the privileged few will be able to afford to take regular “digital detoxes” from the exhausting demands of the attention economy.
… Which isn’t to say innocence, or some version of it, can’t be regained through careful daily practice. Like the act of disconnecting our kids and sending them out to play in the garden. Or of sitting, just for an hour, at my father’s empty desk.
(Leah McLaren, The Observer, 2019)
Leisure
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, as woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night…
*Times Writers’ Predictions for the Wales England Rugby Game
Sam Warburton. Wales 20 England 22
Even though I think it is a one-off game, I suspect England’s run will give them the confidence to win away from home.
Ben Kay. Wales 17 England 24
It will be tighter than England’s games so far but they have the weapons in the back line to score a try against the run of play.
Owen Slot: Wales 20 England 28
Wales will clip England’s wings but England will weather the storm and they have a bench that will just put them beyond the reach of Wales.
Stuart Barnes: Wales 13 England 29
Cardiff is not a city that intimidates England any more. England will miss Mako Vunipola and Maro Itoje but Wales will miss the running power of Talupe Faletau even more.
Alex Lowe: Wales 19 England 23
Wales have picked the wrong fly half, with Owen Farrell more capable of seizing control in a tight game than Gareth Anscombe, plus England’s bench is superior.
Steve James: Wales 16 England 16
Just can’t split them as both defences are superb and there will be an awful lot of kicking. No easy tries here.
John Westerby: Wales 19 - England 23
You can never quite tell how their less experienced players are going to react to the atmosphere at the Principality, but England should have too much pace and power.
Rick Broadbent: Wales 20 England 18
Having predicted Wales would win the Six Nations I feel honour-bound to stick with them. Home advantage can be huge in the Six Nations and expectations can be anathema to English success. Also it’s about time Wales started playing as they can.
The Result:
Wales 21 England 13
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