John K Mitchell's Misc Blog

The identities of two prime suspects in the shooting of Pc Sharon Beshenivsky last week have been circulated to police forces nationwide, according to reports by the BBC. A BBC correspondent said it is understood that police now know the names of two of the men regarded as prime suspects in the case. Their names, which have not been made public, are being circulated to police forces and to airports.

Pc Beshenivsky38, died after being shot in the chest on her youngest daughter's fourth birthday and her colleague, Pc Teresa Milburn was injured during a robbery at a travel agents. Pc Beshenivsky had been a serving police officer for just nine months.

Police also issued details of a silver Toyota hire car thought to be have been used in Friday's robbery in Bradford.

Detectives investigating the shooting said they had identified a car, believed to have been used in the robbery, as a Rav 4 model, registration number WP 05 YTT and want to hear from anyone who may have seen it particularly last Friday which was the day of the robbery

The Police now have possession of the Toyota and Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan, of West Yorkshire Police, said: "The vehicle was hired at Heathrow Airport on 25 October. We believe the vehicle travelled to West Yorkshire from London in the early hours of Friday and returned to London later that evening."

It really makes you stop and think, police officers in this country are not armed as a matter of course. Personally I would not like to see this change but there must be something done to deter criminals from carrying guns never mind using them. I wonder, if the law said that it was an automatic life sentance with a minimum of 25 years for people convicted of carrying a gun, whether this would deter people - of course there would then be no deterent to people using the weapon except to lock them up for ever.

I admire all serving Police officers for the work they do and, in the main, the ay they do it. Can you imagine going to work in the morning and not knowing if you would be called out to a robbery and ending up losing your life ? It's not a job I could do.

"In 2003 over 4,000 businesses of all sizes in London were contacted by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry to ask about their emergency plans should the business experience a fire, suspected bomb, a chemical incident or need to evacuate into a safer area.

The survey revealed that in the main, large and international businesses had contingency plans in place and knew how to use them. Worryingly smaller businesses did not seem to have any disaster recovery plans in place. Key findings were: -

• 83% of SME’s in London do not have either a written security policy or contingency plan.


• 20% of larger businesses in London also do not have any written security policy or contingency.


• Only 10% of businesses with plans has tested them or trained employees in how to implement the plan"

The rest of this article can be found on the Disaster Recovery Solutions website. They offer a full range of Business Continuity and server co-location services from their purpose built head-quarters in Peterborough, United Kingdom.

With over 14 years of experience in Server and network management software, their Business continuity facility (disaster recovery / hot backup) features some of the latest and most resilient services available. Their computer suites feature 2 independent and secure Server rooms, each offering full temperature and access control. Connectivity between the server rooms and the main BCC suites is via both Cat5 and Cat6 backbone with triple redundancy.

This is a disaster recovery company that obviously means business !

While on holiday this summer I visited the wildlife park on the Isle of Man and took this picture of a fishing cat. You can download a copy of this photo and use it as a royalty free image by buying credits at the dreamstime.com website. At the moment, copies of the photo cost the princely sum of $1 to download !

While "surfing" I came across this blog containing natural history pictures taken in the Peterborough area. Some of the photos are very good and they are all taken from the area that I live in.

It's fireworks night here in the UK. We went to a local display put on by the Scouts and Guides near us and for the best part of an hour watched all sorts of fireworks being set off. It makes me wonder how much it costs to put on a display nowdays, I know that another local display budgets for £15,000 in fireworks! Multiply that by the number of large displays in the country and then add in the small parties in back gardens, as a nation we must be spending millions just to set fire to gunpowder each year.

I wonder what Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators would have made of the fact that we celebrate the failure to blow up Parliament 400 years ago by blowing up small tubes of explosives and burning replica's of him on a bonfire?

As I sit here at 10:15 in the evening I can still hear the occassional explosion, thankfully its got quieter now and my dog is not worried by the odd loud bang. What ever happened to the "pretty" fireworks that I can remember as a child 40 years ago - all the modern ones seem to be deisgned to go off as loudly as possible.