Peter Roebuck: the plot thickens

Ther has been a series of conflicting and increasingly weird news reports on the death of Peter Roebuck, the cricket commentator.

An early report, in The Guardian said simply that he had been found dead in a hotel room in Cape Town, where he had been covering the current test series between South Africa and Australia

The former Somerset cricketer Peter Roebuck has been found dead in a hotel room in South Africa.

Roebuck, who was 55 and played alongside Sir Ian Botham and Sir Viv Richards at Somerset, had built a reputation as an acute observer of the game since retiring from playing in 1991, and worked as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age. He also worked as a broadcaster for ABC radio and had been covering Australia's tour of South Africa.

"He could describe a game of cricket in such a way that even if you didn't like the game, you liked the way that he went about his business," said Craig Norenbergs, the ABC Grandstand manager.

Roebuck was known as a solid batsman, passing 1,000 runs in nine out of 12 seasons and was Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1988.

The BBC put a different and more ominous slant on it BBC Sport - Ex-Somerset captain Peter Roebuck dies at 55:

South African police said Roebuck had taken his own life and are investigating the full circumstances surrounding his death.

The Sydney Morning Herald, who Roebuck had written for since 1984, reported that he fell to his death from a hotel window on Saturday night after being questioned by police.

... leading one to wonder how he could have been found in his room if he had jumped to his death from the window.

But that's not all.

Roebuck falls to death after sex assault questioning - Sport - NZ Herald News:

Renowned cricket writer Peter Roebuck reportedly fell to his death from a South African hotel balcony while being quizzed by Cape Town police over a sex assault on Saturday night.

Australia's The Age news website said an agitated Roebuck had asked another cricket writer to help him, after police began speaking with him at a hotel near the Newlands ground.

"Can you come down to my room quickly, I've got a problem," the website reported Roebuck as saying.

Roebuck then fell to his death while a police officer was reportedly in the room.

I wonder what really happened.

G20 summit

Watching Sky News reporting on the G20 summit.

What's it all about, according to Sky News then?

1. The police
2. The police
3. The police

Seems that Britain really is a police state.

It reminds me of a book I read nearly 40 years ago:

Halloran, James D., Elliott, Philip & Murdock, Graham. 1970.
Demonstrations and communication: a case study.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
The demonstration against the Vietnam War in
London on 27 October 1968 was overwhelmingly
peaceful, yet the press and television
coverage concentrated on the tiny violent
minority. The authors have analysed the way in
which the news media determined the quality of
the event and then were compelled to find
incidents to fulfil their prophecies. This
analysis is a study of the structure of our
understanding of "news", of what counts as
"news" and why the media are committed to
reporting not what happens but what they think
should happen.

Seems that nothing has changed. The media continue to manipulate the news.

Gunfire

Up at 4:10 am, woken by sound of gunfire. There were about four shots, and the dogs didn't bark, then about a minute or two later, four more shots, very close together, as if from an automatic weapon. Then the dogs barked. After a few minutes a police helicopter was circling overhead. It's still circling as I write.

Heard something similar on 5 Dec 1996, when it sounded like a minor war. Turned out to be an attempted heist of a security van at the freeway interchange about 2 km away. This is much closer. Back then there was automatic gunfire for more than a minute, and when daylight came there were empty cartridge cases all over the road verge. This time there were not more than 10 shots altogether.

Update: it's now 4:45, and the helicopter seems to have gone.

Kill the bastards!

After urging the police to shoot to kill, Deputy Minister of Safety and Security has now advised ordinary citizens to do the same if they are threatened by criminals pointing guns or other lethal weapons at them.

clipped from www.pretorianews.co.za Deputy safety and security minister Susan Shabangu has said that ordinary citizens of South Africa who are threatened by criminals pointing guns or other lethal weapons at them do not have to fire a warning shot before shooting to kill. Section 49 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which governs the use of lethal force when dealing with criminals, made it clear that police and ordinary citizens were entitled to shoot if their lives were threatened, she said in Cape Town. Laughing off her choice of the word "bastards" to describe the criminals responsible for the violent crime wave sweeping the country, she said that part of her speech had not been scripted. But in her search for the right way to express herself, she had succeeded in getting across her message. On why police routinely opened murder dockets against citizens who killed criminals who had threatened them with guns or other lethal weapons, Shabangu said there had to be an inquiry into the process.

Cable theft -- under the noses of the cops

It is said that Eskom doen't like us to talk about blackouts.

The politically-correct term is "previously illuminated areas".

But when we woke up at about 4:00 am on Friday, with the electricity doing strange things, it wasn't Eskom's fault. The lights dimmed, the fan slowed, and then the lights came on again, and the streetlight outside was shining with unnatural brightness.

A few minutes later our dog Ariel came in through my son's bedroom window, which is usually an indication that there are baddies about. She can be fierce with the postman or the plumbers, but when there are genuine baddies around, she seeks protection.

My son went out with a torch and a big stick to see if anyone had been trying to break in, and while he was out in the garden, two cop cars came roaring down to the end of the road. They asked my son if he had seen anyone, and he said he was still looking, and after a brief conversation among themselves, they roared off again.

Since we were now all well awake, we made coffee, and I began reading my e-mail, and then the lights wen't off again, suddenly, with no preliminary flickers. After waiting a few minutes to see if they would come on again, I phoned the City of Tshwane electricity department. It takes a couple of minutes to get through -- press 1 for this, three for that, 1 for electricity, 1 for power failures, listen to a long spiel from an auntie about Eskom's rolling blackouts and telling you what web page to look at for the schedule (as if you could look up a web page if you are sitting in a previously illuminated area anyway). Then another plastic auntie asking what suburb you are in, and then asking to confirm that, and finally you get through to a human being.

I said the power was off, told her the street, and said I suspected cable theft. The flickering just before the power finally went off suggested that someone or something was trying to short out the wires. There wasn't a high wind or a thunderstorm, so it was unlikely to be tree branches. It was not on the hour, so it wasn't likely to be Eskom's scheduled load shedding.

Now, 27 hours later, the power has come on again, on Saturday morning. At one point they had about eight lorries of municipal workers there, trying to replace the stolen cable.

And the cops were here!

They did it right under the noses of the cops.

And last night, about 9:30, with the neighbourhood in darkness, no lights, no street lights, nothing, our next-door neighbour's burglar alarm went off. I phoned to ask if everything was OK, and said I could hear the alarm going off, and then the signal broke up and I couldn't hear anything they were saying. But it sounded as though they were out, so I called the cops.

Ten minutes later a cop van comes past, goes up the road the other way. I was flashing a torch, and they came back. I told them about the alarm going off in the house next door, and they still dashed off in the opposite direction.

The last couple of days have considerably diminished my confidence in the South African Police Service.