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  1. Diary
15 January 2025

In praise of neighbourhood sleuths

Also this week: Sympathy for Liz Truss’s lawyer, and mum’s not the word.

By Joanna Hardy-Susskind

The Prime Minister has promised a named, contactable police officer for every community. Life must be different in No 10 because the rest of us already have local, named crime-fighters in our lives: neighbourhood apps. I doubt the residents of Downing Street have time to engage in online vigilantism, but I’m hooked. My local app is full of armchair detectives equipped with enthusiasm, video-doorbell footage and a penchant for television crime dramas. I have Ian, who lives ten minutes away, and Edwin, on the opposite side of the park. If I am troubled by a broken window, a stolen plant pot or a suspicious stranger, then I can fire up the app and the crime will probably be solved by lunchtime.

Underestimate these sleuths at your peril. These are not your genteel Neighbourhood Watch groups of old. They are relentless. They are cross-referencing incidents and identifying modi operandi. They are logging real-time updates and detecting patterns of offending, street by street. They are doing everything you would want from a police force, but faster. They are so efficient that I have had to mute incessant notifications on my phone. Perhaps they could lend Sir Keir a hand in training up new recruits.

On your bike, mate

The app sadly could not save me from another organised group in my neighbourhood: the Electric Bicycle Bandits. These two-wheeled piranhas circle unsuspecting pedestrians before snatching their smartphones and zooming off on supercharged getaway bikes. They came for me on a busy street, in broad daylight, with my baby strapped to my front. A whoosh from behind, the skid of a wheel, and an outstretched thieving hand tried to pluck my phone from my grasp. This blighter, however, misjudged his victim.

As a new mother, I have spent every waking moment of maternity leave grabbing and catching things. I have the precision and response time of a trained marksman. While my assailant had the advantage of surprise, he was no match for my maternal reflexes. He could not keep hold of my phone and it clattered to the pavement, just out of his reach. He cycled off dejectedly.

It is weird for a criminal defence lawyer to become a victim of a crime. You would be forgiven for considering it a heavy dose of karma. I had to resist yelling after him: “I am usually on your side, mate!” Instead, I opted for some fruity language, a police report and the overwhelming desire to post about it on my neighbourhood app for their approval.

Reputation SOS

Liz Truss has reportedly been dabbling in some lawyering of her own. A “cease and desist” letter said to have been sent by the former prime minister to the incumbent has been doing the rounds. Truss is of the view that claims she “crashed the economy” are false and defamatory. Whatever the rights or the wrongs of that, the exercise appears to have backfired if her aim was to silence the debate. I could not help but imagine the meeting between Liz and lawyer-of-Liz that resulted in this letter. What did she ask for? What did she expect to achieve? Every lawyer has sat across a desk from a client hoping for the unlikely and embarking on the unwise.

In my imagining, Truss’s lawyer must have had a good poker face. I have perfected my own over the years. When advising someone who might be about to score a spectacular legal own-goal, I have honed the words that are required: “I cannot promise you we will win this case, but I can promise you I will try my best.”

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The jaws of defeat

I have certainly been trying my best at maternity leave. After pausing my career and having my baby surgically removed from my abdomen, I decided that it was only fair that my daughter’s first word should be “Mummy”. A small sign of her gratitude. “Muh-muh” I enunciated at her, month after month. I pursed my lips into the “M” shape and leaned close to her tiny face. On car journeys I sang “Mumumumum” into the rearview mirror. It all seemed to be paying off. She made some noises. Some gurgles. A first word was brewing, I could feel it.

Last week, time stopped. She began to babble, smiled her toothless smile and opened her precious lips. I leaned forward. She locked eyes with mine. It was finally happening. “Dada!” she exclaimed into my crestfallen face. Cease and desist, indeed.

[See also: The magic of seeing in the New Year in Sydney]

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This article appears in the 15 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Disruptors