Many people will already be aware of this story. Michelle Carter, 18, is on trial in America for allegedly encouraging her boyfriend to commit suicide.
Conrad Roy was also 18, and he had mental health problems. I won’t copy the text here, but you can read the text message exchanges between him and Carter in The Sun’s version of the story.
The message carried by these texts is crystal clear, and it only leaves you wondering how someone could be so evil, and at the same time so dumb as to document that evil so clearly.
But this is America we’re talking about, and the situation isn’t anywhere near as clear cut as you might think.
Carter is charged with involuntary manslaughter, which carries a 20 year jail term. However, Massachusetts (where all this happened) is one of a handful of American states where assisted suicide is not illegal, and that is where her lawyers are hovering. They argue that Conrad wanted to kill himself and she merely “assisted”. You only have to read those texts she sent to see just how much “assistance” she gave him.
Carter may have sent a few texts too many, though. Several months after the Conrad’s death, she sent a message to a friend which said:
Like, honestly I could have stopped it. I was the one on the phone with him and he got out of the car because [the carbon monoxide] was working and he got scared. I f***ing told him to get back in.
She also texted to a friend:
[If the police] read my messages with him I’m done. His family will hate me and I can go to jail.
When you read the full transcript of texts between her and Conrad, you can really come to only one conclusion – and that would hold, whatever the technical outcome of the trial.
Chile’s Atacama Desert is widely considered to be the driest place on earth. Some weather stations in the area have never recorded any rainfall at all, and others go for four years or more without recording any. It is believed that the region has been like this for at least 3 million years.
This story has been in the media before, but I was interested to see this BBC article which explains how they are using fine nets as fog traps to catch water from the regular fogs which roll in from the South Pacific. When I looked into it a little more, I found these two videos on YouTube.
Apparently, they can average 15,000 litres of water a day (I assume that is for each bank of nets). In the first video, local farmers are using the water to irrigate Aloe Vera crops. The second video shows them using the method to provide water to the city of Tacna, Peru, which has grown significantly in recent years. It’s weird seeing vegetables growing in desert sand.
No one can have failed to have seen the news concerning Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was apparently shot down over Ukraine last week.
Without jumping to any conclusions over if – or by whom – it was shot down, let’s just assume that it was for a moment. The first question I would ask is this: who could be so stupid as to do it in the first place, and then be so chicken shit scared to admit it after they’d done it? The second question is: why?
There are obviously a lot of complete pricks in this world, and at the moment they all seem to be congregating in Ukraine.
On top of that, if Vladimir Putin is in any way involved (as many are claiming), then the man needs some serious head surgery very soon to sort out his obvious problems with megalomania. Why – in the 21st Century – would anyone in the civilised world want to behave the way Putin is on the world stage? Such behaviour might be second nature to the troglodytes who are pushing radical and militant branches of Islam in their sorry little corners of the world, but Russia managed to dig itself out of that kind of cesspit once. Putin is just shoving it back down the hole again.
If he’s not careful, he might end up going the same way as Saddam, Gaddafi, and all the other retards that the world got tired of having mess up peoples lives for entire generations at a time.
I could have killed one of my pupils yesterday. He booked a last minute lesson in the only space available in my diary – at 9pm on Sunday evening. I could have said no, but he has his test coming up. But I did lay it on thick about how I was missing the World Cup final because of him.
I got home in time for extra time, and saw Mario Götze’s brilliant goal for Germany. I’m glad Germany won – they were the best team in the tournament, and any other result would have just been unfair. But something about the BBC’s coverage rankles me.
Götze’s name is spelt with an ‘o’ with an umlaut (or diaeresis in linguistic jargon). Thomas Müller’s name also has an umlaut, as does Mesut Özil’s, André Schürrle’s, Benedikt Höwedes’s, and manager Jogi Löws’s. The, for good measure, you have Kevin Großkreutz. And yet the BBC incorrectly reports these names as Gotze, Muller, Ozil, Schurrle, Howedes, and Lows (and misses out other diacritics). The German newspaper, Die Welt, obviously uses the proper spellings.
I’ve always been better at speaking German than any other language – I can’t actually speak fluently, but I can get by whenever I go to a German-speaking country (you know, order food and beer, get a taxi to take me where they serve food and beer. That sort of thing). But it was bad enough that they tried to replace umlauts with letters at one time. I used to do business with a company called Bausch and Ströbel, and in the English-speaking world they printed their name a “Stroebel”, because in the English-speaking world people are either too stupid or too arrogant to understand the umlaut.
In a similar vein, I’ve seen Löws written as Loews, and Götze written as Goetze. And it’s bloody wrong.
I find that the same thing happens with pupils who have non-British origins. Chinese pupils especially seem to often adopt English names instead of their Chinese ones to make it easier for the Brits. I’ve got a clutch of learners at the moment from India, Latvia, Lithuania, Senegal, and so on, and I make a point of learning their names and finding out how to pronounce and spell them correctly. I will go so far as to find out if they have a shorter nickname that they use themselves sometimes, but I insist on using their correct names if they are happy with that.
So I’d expect the BBC to at least spell the names of German footballers correctly instead of just missing out critical symbols which govern the pronunciation.
An internal flight from Washington to Denver was stuck in Wyoming due to a thunderstorm. So the pilot, Gerhard Bradner, ordered pizzas for all 160 passengers. He paid for it out of his own pocket, too (in the UK, I reckon that would come to at least £150).
Almost as heart-warming is the fact that when the airline’s president heard about it, he informed Bradner that he will be fully reimbursed.
Darren William Jackson, 21, raced through a red traffic light and smashed into a metal railing. The car was effectively written off. Jackson apparently did something else, and a witness reported it to police, who found him sitting in the car. He drove off but was traced a short time later. He failed a roadside breath test, but refused to give further breath specimens when at the station.
He only held a provisional licence and was therefore uninsured.
In court, his vehicle was confiscated and he was jailed for six months. He was further banned for two years, and ordered to take an extended test after that.
Mind you, it appears that pleas in mitigation are as lame in Scotland as they are anywhere else.
Solicitor Anika Jethwa admitted that Jackson had a record of previous offences for road traffic matters, although none for drink-driving or driving dangerously.
She said: “His last road traffic offence was in 2010. He bought the car and was taking driving lessons twice a week. He wanted to pass his test to try to find employment.”
His solicitor asked for a “community based” sentence on the strength of this:
…Ms Jethwa said Jackson has two children and appears to offend mainly when he has been consuming alcohol.
“He had stopped drinking but on that day he had been at his friend’s father’s funeral and alcohol was taken,” she said.
I like it. He’s “stopped drinking”, but was pissed and could have killed someone. Like I say, Scottish justice is much better than ours.
Don’t worry – it’s not in the UK. The Bangkok Post reports that the new multiple choice test introduced a few days ago is showing a greater than 90% failure rate in the first set of results from Chiang Mai.
It seems that the new multiple choice test introduced last Sunday – which requires 45 correct answers out of 50 – is similar to the one we use in the UK. The recent change has increased the number of questions from 30, and set the pass rate at the higher level of 90%.
The department has enforced tougher measures to obtain driving licences after it found that many road accidents were caused by a lack of drivers’ ability.
I wonder if Thailand’s driving instructors are blaming the authorities yet? After all, that’s what many of them do over here when one of their little darlings fails the UK theory test.
Thailand is also piloting a system it calls “E-driving”.
Instead of having an examiner sitting in the car with them, test cars will be equipped with computers and cameras to monitor drivers.
“The E-driving system provides accurate and precise results and will do away with problems in the old system, which relies on a committee to assess results,” says Department chief Asdsathai Rattanadilok Na Phuket.
I’m not 100% sure what this chap is saying – is it the old method which requires a committee decision, or the E-driving one? Who will decide now? Just one person? But he adds:
It will also bring a drop in the number of applicants passing the test, from 70% to only 30%.
…more than a quarter of holidaymakers are afraid to drive abroad.
Unless their entire client base consists of authentic Chelsea tractor drivers, I’ll give it 6 months before it goes under (although it is a free course which is being funded from somewhere, so it might survive just a little longer). The article also identifies the “Top 5 Fears When Driving Abroad”:
Not recognising road signs
Getting lost
Going around roundabouts
Trying to navigate
Driving on the other side of road
Errm, well actually, with the possible exception of #5 (and not even then in some cases), that’s exactly the same list most would give if asked about driving on British roads. So it’s hardly the basis for a business plan. If people are too stupid to look up the necessary details about road signs and procedures for the country they intend to visit before they go, it’s going to take a little more than a free course to sort them out.
Of course, it helps if you realise that the company behind it – SkyScanner – describes itself as follows in its “About us” section:
…a leading global travel search site, providing instant online comparisons for millions of flights, as well as car hire and hotels.
It’s not quite as altruistic as it first appears, is it? It’s not even a “school” – it’s a course (with an unspecified number of classes), which is apparently being delivered by driving instructors who have “teamed up with” (i.e. they must be getting paid) SkyScanner to deliver the “free” course. That’s a convoluted way of saying that it is a novel advertising exercise. I mean, there’s no problem with it, but you shouldn’t turn it into something it isn’t.
I can’t imagine there’d be much opportunity for practical sessions, either.
I thought our legal system was bad enough, but Australia’s appears even worse – particularly if you come from, say, Taiwan.
Meghan Hopper is the daughter of a prominent local businessman in Queensland. She was arseing about with her iPhone (apparently using Google Maps) when she slammed into Taiwanese fruit-pickers Chen-Chuan Yang and Kwan-Jun Wu. Yang was killed, and Wu severely injured. Hopper said she did not see either of the innocent parties. She was 17-years old and driving on P plates at the time.
Laughably, Hopper was awarded a 30-month suspended sentence for all this.
The sentence was considered to be too lenient by the Attorney-General (AG) and it was appealed. The AG said:
I appealed the sentence of Ms Hopper because I felt her sentence was manifestly inadequate,
I note the Court of Appeal agreed that ordinarily this offence would demand a sentence of imprisonment.
Incredibly, the appeal was lost and the court ruled that the original sentence would stand. The AG subsequently added:
Even so, the court [of appeal] did not hand down a prison sentence and I must respect its decision.
He also added that he had no further avenue of appeal.
To make matters worse, a “respected” former traffic cop has waded in. I’ve put the word “respected” in inverted commas because Garry Church, the person referred to, is a long-time friend of Hopper’s uncle. So obviously he is TOTALLY unbiased on the subject. He is also completely devoid of any logic, and you can only offer thanks to whatever God you believe in that you never had someone like this working against you. He says:
“I don’t by any means condone what Meghan has done in taking a life and seriously injuring another, and I certainly don’t condone the second incident where she was caught using a mobile in the Brisbane area.
“Having a driving licence means you take a big responsibility when entering our road for yourself and other road users and this responsibility shouldn’t be taken lightly.”
But he said he did not believe sending a young person for jail was warranted in this case as it did not involve speed, alcohol or any deliberate act.
Have you ever heard such complete bollocks in your life? In the UK, what Hopper did would have got her sent away for up to 14 years (though being a woman, our Courts would probably have gone for a sentence way down at the lower end).
And it gets even worse. Five months after her spoilt brat attitude killed Yang, she was stopped in Brisbane by police after she was caught using her mobile phone while driving.
The Appeal Court totally ignored that detail, or the fact that she clearly hadn’t learned any sort of lesson. Her well-to-do family hired a lawyer who – at the original trial:
…put in a sterling performance and kept the teen out of the big house.
His address was professional and impeccable.
He told the court Hopper had “found religion” since the incident. Looks like she forgot it again when she was driving around Brisbane.
The stupidity doesn’t stop there. At the appeal:
The Queensland Court of Appeal on Friday dismissed Mr Bleijie’s [the AG] appeal despite all three justices agreeing the sentence was manifestly inadequate.
Two of them exercised their discretion not to interfere based on Hopper’s rehabilitation attempts and psychologist visits since sentence.
The Aussie judges are on a more distant planet than UK ones, it seems. How can you agree that the sentence is inadequate, then turn down an appeal to have it sharpened?
Justice Hugh Fraser said new evidence showed Hopper had benefited from not having a custodial sentence.
Yes, and she showed what benefit that was 5 months later when she was caught using a phone at the wheel of her car. Again.
Apparently, there are over 7,000 other people serving jail terms in Australia for lesser crimes than this. It is worth reading that whole article just to get a handle on how stupid the Australian legal system appears to be, especially over this affair.
Let’s just go into theoretical territory a moment. Nothing to do with Hopper or her wealthy family with it’s obvious connections to the local police force, you understand. You can imagine how – if you had the right connections, and if the courts were corrupt enough to respond to such connections – you could put sufficient pressure on them to get an ultra-soft sentence for a crime which would ordinarily warrant a much harsher outcome. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
One thing we can conclude with some confidence. The life of a Taiwanese fruit-picker is worth a lot less than that of a dumb and spoilt little Australian rich girl as far as this Australian court is concerned. I wonder if they’d have behaved as leniently if it had been a Taiwanese fruit-picker who had slammed into Meghan Hopper? I doubt it.
People will have picked up from some of my articles that I am a cat person. This brilliant story came through on the newsfeeds about a cat which saved a boy from a dog attack in California, USA. (Edit: the original video has been removed from YouTube. This one is from the newspapers).
From what I can gather, the dog has been is to be put down (and so it should have been). But kudos to the cat, who clearly seems to be defending the child and not just its territory. Cats might square up to dogs if they’re threatened themselves, but they don’t usually get physical. For one to go in with such ferocity is very unusual, particularly since the threat was not directed towards the cat itself. The dog, which had clearly been after blood, was certainly fazed by the attack.
This has been all over the news today. The BBC has an interview with the family here, and the hero cat – who is called Tara – is a dead ringer for one we used to have. Apparently, she was a rescue cat or stray the family adopted.
Watching the video of the attack again, you can clearly see the cat slam into the dog, look round at the boy, then chase the dog further away.
I’ve tagged this as “funny”, but that’s only in the sense that the dog got the tables turned on it. It’s a great story, though.
This keeps getting better. It would appear that Tara has been invited to pitch the first ball at the next home game of Bakersfield Blaze minor league baseball team.
Actually, having seen the video of the event, it wasn’t as funny as it could have been. Still a nice story overall, though.
The Appeal Court totally ignored that detail, or the fact that she clearly hadn’t learned any sort of lesson. Her well-to-do family hired a lawyer who – at the original trial:
Apparently, she was a rescue cat or stray the family adopted.