Wednesday, December 30, 2009

And in the news...

A few items in the news recently have caused a few eyebrows to be raised. Well, 2 at least.
First there is the execution of the British man in China for drug smuggling.
Now, I personally stopped supporting the death sentence about 15 years ago but it has to be said:
China makes and operates Chinese law. If the Chinese government was to kick up a stink because a Chinese man in London was going to prison for eating his family's dog, the British government would be bloody quick to tell the Chinese to keep their beaks out.
Secondly, there has been a lot of stuff about this man having Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression as it used to be known). A bit of digging reveals that this seems to be the diagnosis of a forensic psychologist, hired by the charity Reprieve for whom I have the highest regard. His diagnosis came not from interviewing the man but from speaking to Chinese Embassy staff and talking to people who knew Mr. Shaikh. Almost as good as the on-line swine flu diagnosis service.
Third, this man had 4Kg of heroin in his bag and he claimed he knew nothing about it.
Hang on. 4Kg in my money is 8.5 lbs. Imagine if someone had stuffed 4 bags of sugar in your bag without you knowing about it.
Isn't it likely you would think "Hmm. This seems to be a bit heavier than when I packed it"?
Bipolar Disorder causes extreme mood swings. It doesn't cause terminal stupidity.
Anyway, what about the shrieking from the British government about rights, liberty etc?
Who the bloody hell are they to shout, having turned this easy-going, freedom loving nation into what is possibly the most repressive regime this side of Iran?
Get arrested for taking photographs. Get your face on one of the umpteen million CCTV cameras now decorating the country. Get your DNA placed on the police database, guilty or innocent. Get arrested for making a peaceful protest on the grounds it is too close to Parliament.
Better yet; live in London and be shot dead at point blank range for looking too foreign or walk home from work, through a demonstration, say something out of order to a police officer and be dead within the hour.
Note to our government: Get your own house in order before getting high and mighty with Johnny Foreigner!

Next item to catch the eye; Metropolitan Police (Met for short). To anyone out there who is not familiar with the name, they are the people who populate Scotland Yard. They police London.
Today, it was revealed that last year the Met spent more than £6m on air travel.
Most of these flights were domestic, within the UK. They averaged 5 flights per day from London to somewhere within the country. A country which is less than 1,000 miles from end to end. 11 of these flights were from London to Southampton, a distance of 90 miles. This journey can be made by train and will take around 90 minutes. The trains leave from Waterloo which is a quick tube ride from Scotland Yard. Now figure out the time needed to get to Gatwick airport, check in, go through the security business, fly there and then get from the airport into Southampton.
A bloody sight more than 90 minutes! They are buggered now though; I believe the airline that used to run flights between these 2 cities has given it up.
Just remember; the Met Police is the police force responsible for policing London.
Not the entire continent of Europe!

Nuclear Power is creeping back into the headlines. Today, it is in the form of a group or two who want to stop the proposed new power station at Hinckley Point. One lot says it is unsafe, the other lost say it will be a nuisance.
You can't win, can you?
There is a huge clamour to get rid of coal, oil and gas fired power stations on the grounds they .... well they do all sorts of things. Acid rain, global warming, stop the hens laying etc etc.
Now here is a real example of the lunatics running the asylum. These Luddites have persuaded governments everywhere that bloody big, ugly, noisy wind turbines are the answer. Wrong! What they fail to mention is that these things are so inefficient, they can only be commissioned with the help of big, juicy government subsidies. And, just when you have decided to ignore the subsidies, along comes another problem. It doesn't blow gales of wind every day which tends to leave these monsters looking rather limp and useless. Ah ha! There is a solution to this problem; they have generators on stand-by to fill in the gaps. These generators are coal, oil and gas fired power stations which can not be switched on like a bathroom light. They need to be brought into operation over a period of time as they all need to do the same thing, boil a bloody big kettle to generate steam to turn the turbines. The only way for these power stations to be available to compensate for a flat calm is for them to be running 24 hours per day. Which puts us right back where we were at the beginning. Except we now have the enormous cost of the "wind farms" to bear.
Yippee! Everyone's a winner! Well, except for you and me, the gullible tax payers.
For Christ's sake government, stop fannying about and build the nuclear plants, rip out these turbine plantations and be done with it.

Finally, a headline that caught my eye this evening was on the BBC web site. It referred to a feature thus; "The sights and sounds of well-known figures who passed away in 2009".
They (whoever they were) didn't pass away. They died. What has become of our language that we are now scared to say "died"?
It gets worse, doesn't it? Today, we refer to certain school kids as "special needs" kids. In my day they were known simply as twats. Having been a rather well known exponent of the art of being a disruptive bugger at grammar school, let me tell you something. We never had disruptive disorders or attention deficits. We had tossers. Anyone whose attention was found to be wandering or deficient in any way was quickly snapped out of it with their desk lid being slammed smartly and loudly (or a well aimed board rubber), causing a sudden awakening, accompanied perhaps by an "out of bottom" experience.
Goodnight.
Note to any UK politicians reading this; watch out, you are about to feature in these pages in the coming week!

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