Category - News

There’s a passage in Catch-22 where the Chaplain is musing over his misfortunes, and asks himself:

Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?

I have exactly the same feeling right now, having just watched the BBC Evening News, where they interviewed some of those idiots protesting over climate change in London.

Does it really seem probable that the solution to global warming will come from a bunch of hatchet-faced, middle-aged and elderly women – the same kind who camped out on Greenham Common in the 80s – with multi-coloured dreadlocks and half a kilo of face jewellery? Is The Truth only likely to be given to people stupid enough to superglue themselves to buses, trains, and each other? Or 16-year olds who should be in school?

I don’t think so.

At the time of writing, over 950 of these imbeciles have been arrested, with 40 being charged for various offences (so far). Photographs of several of these middle-aged prats being arrested show that it is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to them in the last 50 years. One of their number, an exotic specimen who goes under the name of Larch Maxey – and I’d not be surprised to find that that doesn’t appear on any electoral list – is quoted:

On Tuesday we’ve got a series of strategic points around the city which we will be targeting to cause maximum economic disruption while simultaneously focusing on Parliament and inviting MPs to pause.

In other words, they’re going to try and block parliament from sitting. If Maxey engaged at least two of his handful of brain cells, he might realise that the “economic disruption” he is causing is also responsible for far more pollution than usual, as cars and lorries (and public transport) sit gridlocked. Police are travelling from all over the country – using road transport – to help. High profile dipsticks are flying in (or using trains) especially so that it can be seen how committed they are to The Cause. And let’s not even consider the carbon footprint associated with all that extra superglue that’s being sold.

Extinction Rebellion needs to get it into its thick skulls that we’re not going to go back to living in caves and eating algae.

You couldn’t make this up.

Regular readers will know that I don’t hold back on telling it like it is. I don’t give damn that the trend is towards making it a crime to tell the truth if the truth involves women or those from minority groups having done something wrong. The truth is the truth, regardless of sex or ethnic origin.

This BBC article reports that Victoria Parry, 30, was three times over the drink-drive limit when she smashed into three other cars and careered down an embankment, where her car burst into flames. She’d drunk a bottle of wine. In court, she admitted to dangerous driving – a serious offence which carries an unlimited fine and up to 14 years in prison. To make matters worse, Parry has two previous drink-drive convictions.

Now, if Parry had been a man, he would have been starting a long prison sentence right now. He’d have been fined a lot of money. And he might even have been put on the sex-offenders’ register just as a precaution.

Parry’s case was different, though. You see, both she and the Judge were women. As a result, she was not handed down a prison sentence – which would have been absolutely guaranteed if she were a man. In the Judge’s precise words:

If Miss Parry was a man, there is no question it would have been straight down the stairs, because this is a shocking case of dangerous driving against a background of two previous convictions for excess alcohol.

The BBC article makes no mention of fines or bans, either, and I can’t find any mention in reports from other sources.

Naturally, the mitigating circumstances – which also came from a woman – Parry’s lawyer, Lucy Tapper, pin the blame firmly on men. Parry is apparently an irresponsible pisshead because of being in an abusive relationship, so it’s clearly the fault of men that she has three drink-drive convictions (now) and is lucky she hasn’t killed someone. To be fair, there is no mention of who the “relationship” was with, and I might have got that particular anti-male assessment wrong. Tapper whined:

There is deep and genuine regret on her part.

You forgot to mention that that regret extends across three convictions, now, Lucy. You missed a trick to lay it on even thicker.

Parry and the Judge, Sarah Buckingham, should both be in prison. Parry for being the serial drink-driver that she is, and the Judge for utter contempt of what remains of our legal system.

The case has been referred to the judicial watchdog. Although she probably won’t be, Buckingham should be looking at applying for shelf-stacking jobs at Tesco, where she can do less harm.

Part of me feels a bit sorry for Theresa May. She took on a problem – Brexit – which has no solution, and which is not going to let her keep her job however it pans out. But then, I remember she is also a Tory, and my pity vanishes. Being a Tory is probably why she comes out with crap like this.

The BBC reports on the “youth crime summit” taking place at Downing Street. She opened it with the comment:

We cannot simply arrest ourselves out of this problem.

This is stupid, even for a Tory. If the police had greater numbers and arrested more people, there’d be fewer of the twats hanging out on the streets trying to commit crimes in the full knowledge that currently they won’t be arrested, and that they’ll get off lightly if they are. They could at least arrest part of the problem away.

Then again, if the Tories have always been stupid and out of touch, they can’t hold a candle to the unions on that score. Plans to have teachers and youth workers help report crimes are being opposed by those fossils. So basically, you’re left with a  situation where teachers and youth workers want to deliberately overlook crime, and the police don’t want to (or can’t) arrest anyone anyway even if they’re aware of it. And we will no doubt continue to pretend not to see which groups are primarily involved in the problem – a detail which could be used to help sort it much more effectively if we stopped playing the PC card over everything.

In other words, we stay exactly as we are now, with juvenile wankers going out to stab people to score points based on where the knife enters the victim’s body, and having their idols write pathetic songs about it, thus fuelling the problem still further.

Sometimes, there is more than one thing that needs to be done to solve a problem. In this case, at the very least the police should be arresting people and the teachers/youth workers should be reporting people. Period. And speaking personally, I don’t give a damn who is committing the crime as long as I can see that efforts are being made to stop them from doing it.

All other news has stopped these last two days (mid-January 2019, when I first wrote this) because of the motor accident involving Prince Philip near Sandringham. Apparently, he’s already back behind the wheel.

The last line in that article made me smile.

Chris Spinks, who led Norfolk’s roads policing team for five years, said the royal would not be shown any “favouritism” in the investigation.

It’s too late, Chris. He already has been if he’s back driving again already. If it had been any other 97-year old who had hit the wrong pedal because of being dazzled by the sun, they’d probably have had their licence confiscated on the spot. And if they’d have driven into a Royal vehicle, they’d still be in the cells helping with enquiries. And at that age, they’d be unlikely to get their licence back without so much hassle that it would be simpler to just forget it.

Age is both a progressive and a relative thing. We’re all affected by it as our lives progress, but some people more so (and more quickly) than others.

On the one hand, age should not be seen as a barrier against learning to drive. It should not be seen as a direct barrier to carrying on driving well into your old age (however that might be defined). However, there comes a point where you – as an individual – have moved as far along the timeline as you can without becoming a serious risk. As I said above, some people get there quicker – and earlier – than others. Getting the pedals mixed up – along with not being able to see very well – is most definitely the point where Father Time is telling you you should stop.

I would bet money that Prince Philip has never got the pedals mixed up before. But he’s 97 – and he has now.

Fortunately, no one was killed or seriously injured.

It gets better. If a normal motorist was observed not wearing a seatbelt, the police would go nuts over it (they have done, before). It’s a good job the Duke is not getting “favourable” treatment, isn’t it?

And in the latest update, Prince Philip has done the right thing and surrendered his licence. Whatever the reasons – sensible or political – he’s made the right decision.

And in still another development, he’s got off with it. No further action will be taken. Although my view on older drivers declaring themselves fit, and then proving that they’re not by driving into things, is no secret, let’s hope that the same leniency is extended to anyone who does this sort of thing in future – even if they’re not Prince Philip.

I’ve been thinking about getting a drone for some time. If I did, I would also take the necessary flying courses to make sure I was fully legal and capable of handling it. And I wouldn’t break the Law with it.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will be aware of the chaos at Gatwick over the weekend before Christmas, where thousands of flights were cancelled or affected by someone flying what appears to be a commercial drone (or drones) into the airport boundaries. The disruption meant that tens of thousands of people were screwed for Christmas – they missed holidays, connections, funerals, and so on.

Whoever is responsible deserves to be flung, kicking and screaming, into the intake of a 747 engine just so they – and anyone like them – can see what the effects of a large object being sucked into an engine could do.

The editors of certain newspapers and current affairs TV shows – and I’m referring to both present and retired editors, here – should be flung in with them.

The chaos at Gatwick is hard to comprehend, but once you start to get your head around even a small part of it, you begin to realise how ineffectual the police were in handling it (more on this later, as it seems they may have actually been the cause of later disruption). I don’t necessarily mean that they were handling it badly (well, wait until later). Just that they didn’t have a clue how to do so, and so didn’t handle it at all. And that perhaps explains partly why they arrested a couple and took them in for questioning.

Precisely why these two were arrested – vague stories suggest a neighbour “tipped off” the police – has not yet been made clear. Of far greater importance is the fact that they have been released without charge. Not “under investigation”, or “on bail”. But without charge. That means that they were not involved in any way with the problems at Gatwick.

I stress at this point that the police didn’t do anything wrong. But the press did. Yet again.

You see, the police simply reported that a 47-year-old man and 54-year-old woman from Crawley had been taken in for questioning. However, reporters from trash publications such as The Mail on Sunday and The Sun (not to mention Piers Morgan on TV) crawled out of their sewers and U-bends and managed to obtain the names of the two arrestees from small-minded neighbours. And then they published those names, along with photographs, and went as far as it is possible to go towards saying that they were guilty without actually stating it. And they now find themselves right in the middle of yet another libel action.

The problem is that it doesn’t matter how much they get paid in damages. Mud sticks, and you can pretty much guarantee that there will be at least one twat out there who still believes they were guilty, and who could decide to take their own style of revenge. No amount of money can compensate for having to live with that. They’ve already had a ruined Christmas, but that is likely to be small fry compared to what they could endure. When certain sections of the press gets things wrong, to save face they usually tend to work on the principle that even if someone wasn’t guilty of one thing, there’s bound to be something they’re guilty of if you dig deep enough.

The Sun’s former political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, reckons the papers were right to name the two arrested people. It’s good to see him keeping down his standards into retirement. I didn’t think he could go any lower, but he’s proven me wrong. He reckons that by potentially destroying these two people’s lives, the police found out more quickly that they weren’t responsible, and that that’s a good thing. What a prat!

Since then, though, the situation has lurched from one farce to another. At one point, the police seemed to suggest that there might not have been a drone in the first place. They backtracked on that, but in the last day it has emerged that the latter sightings, which caused further flight suspensions even closer to Christmas, could actually have been police drones – which Sussex Police had started using as part of whatever it was they were pretending to do to sort the problem out. I mean, come on. They were flying drones, and couldn’t identify them as theirs when people reported seeing them? And that’s even before you ask what the hell they thought launching drones would achieve by way of bringing the matter to a suitable conclusion.

As it stands, 10 days after the first sighting and airport lockdown, no one is any closer to finding out what happened and who did it, and there is still the whiff of a possibility that no one did anything – so let’s go and arrest two innocent people and let the press loose on them.

Oh, and ban all drones.