No One Escapes

Of all the people you'd expect to be affected by the 'economic downturn' (or whatever is this week's euphemism for recession) the Amish would be low on the list. And yet they are suffering along with the rest of us according to the LA Times and Wall Street Journal.

The austerity with which the Amish are associated has apparently been relaxed by some of late. In Indiana US a number of Amish moved from traditional farming to well paid factory work and opening their own businesses often around craft skills. This resulted in the (rather hard to imagine) sight of Amish 'souping up' their carriages, buying second homes and jetting off on holidays.

When redundancies started to hit last Autumn, local religious leaders relented on their traditional forbidding of social security claims. At the same time there was a bank run on the community's Land Trust.

With unemployment at almost 20% in some parts of Amish Indiana, times are very seriously hard. Since the Amish espouse modern technology like cars, some are having to think again and, though there is a precedent for relaxing these rules because Amish men were allowed to drive during the depression if it was a viable way of earning, this is a major life change that will not be taken lightly.

An altogether strange side of the current world dilemma.

Credit Crunch Hurts

The idea of a backlash against bankers is all the rage at the moment - from viral games to jokes to stand up routines. For most if us this is the safety valve that we all need to deal with the collapse of jobs, savings and career prospects. For some though it gets real. The London demo scuffles and even the smashed window of a certain ex RBS CEO don't seem too odd. A group of over 60's kidnapping an IFA however does.

James Amburn was apparently attacked with his assailants' zimmer frame before being tied up and driven 300 miles after which he was imprisoned in a cellar and tortured for four days. The attackers were after some recompense from Amburn for the investments that he'd made on their behalf which went the way of most investments of late. The victim was only able to escape when he alerted his bank when asking them to transfer funds to his captors' account (he added a little 'call the police' PS).

All of this happened in Bavaria (with a little off-stage scene in Switzerland where Amburn did his banking) but it probably isn't too far fetched to imagine it elsewhere. The two men had accomplices too - their equally senior wives who allegedly contributed to the incarceration and torture.

The Price Of Justice

Between 2002 and 2006, Pennsylvamia judges sent about 10% of kids appearing before them to detention centres. judge Mark Ciavarella however sent 25%. The difference was marked but the reason was not clear until recently when he - and another judge, Michael Conahan - were convicted of taking cash from the owners of the centres.

Keeping the jails full meant that the owners kept the tills ringing so having a 'friendly' judge clearly made sense - indeed it seems to have been worth their paying the judges over US$2.5m.

Even in a world where the expectation of corruption high places is pretty much the norm, this story still shocks.

It all seems to have come to light because of a particualrly absurd case in which a 15 year old girl was sentenced to three months without even having the chance to put her case against the charges of a heinous crime - that she wrote an unflattering comment about a teacher on her MySpace page!

Removing the judges from their posts - and putting them in their paymasters' facilities for over 7 years - doesn't of course fix the outstanding problem of many hundreds (maybe thousands) of convictions that now need to be reviewed. What's more, there are suggsteions that there may have been many more cases beyond just juveniles so this may be the tip of the iceberg.