Theft by any other name, smells as foul…..

Today I would like to have my first BlogWhinge. (Not to be confused with being on the soap box, by the way, which is more a platform for sermonising). A BlogWhinge is simply my way of giving vent to the injustices of life and because this is my BlogSpot I suppose I can jolly well have a whinge if I want to.

My whinge is about theft and the fact that some people cannot keep their hands off of other people’s things. By now you have probably deduced that something of mine has been stolen and I am feeling highly peeved about it. (this is a Family BlogSpot so I am deliberately choosing words like peeved over other infinitely more suitable phrases to describe my feeling of indignation. I will leave these to your imagination.)

Yesterday morning at about 06:15 whilst trying to catch another 2 minutes of shut-eye under my cozy duvet before getting up, I heard some strange noises coming from outside. On investigating I found to my dismay, that the tap for the water mains and the entire water meter were missing.!!!! By the looks of the exposed pipes you could tell that they had both been cut just below ground level and I had no way of turning the water off!! The spectactular and noisy jet of water spraying into the night sky was something to behold, rivaling that of the Adderley Street fountain. A brisk wind blew the spray into my next door neighbour’s garden, saving him the trouble of watering it later on. To cut a long story short, the municipality eventually came and replaced the missing parts with plastic ones and everything is now back to normal. All except my feeling of indignation and anger that is.

Apparently many neighbourhoods have been thus vandalised. The brass and copper fittings find their way to scrap metal dealers for a few Rand courtesy of these scum buckets that prowl our streets in the dead of night. I think it is the shady scrap metal dealers who should be watched like hawks and raided on a regular basis as these are the same criminals who receive copper cables stolen from railway networks, Telkom and Eskom, the theft of which greatly inconveniences thousands of people on a regular basis. May their murky little souls be held accountable one day.

Theft touches all our lives at one time or another and we can only take sensible precautions in order to minimise it happening to us in the first place. But what about out here in the genealogical world? How vigilant are we? Theft is just as evident in our world as in our local neighbourhood. Just the other day I was shown an article in a newspaper where an entire section had been copied verbatum from a published book with no credit to the author. Plagiarism...that’s theft with a capital “P”. We must guard against it at all times. (now I’ve jumped on my soapbox)

When it comes to the Internet many people plagiarise entire family trees without one single twinge of conscience simply because it is hanging out there in ‘cyberspace’ for everyone to see. This is a BIG no-no!!! Acknowledging sources is a common courtesy but more that that, failure to do so can land you in the doggy-doo if you are not careful.

One day I am sure all us Genies hope to publish our family’s history in some form or another and I don’t think any of us would like it if someone took the research we have spent years accumulating and used it without acknowleging our hard work.

Enough fellow BlogDwellers – I must attend to the cauldrons and feed the cats!!! The family and a glass of vino awaiteth.

What’s the Genealogist’s favourite movie?…..“Good Will Hunting”