Headline of the Week

From the Daily Telegraph no less

Harry Potter dwarf spared jail over juggler's hat sex act

Although it had strong competition from

That is all, now be about your Saturday business. TTFN

Freeze Punk, RSPCA!

Elite officers prepare to Flash/Bang pensioner for not changing her budgies newspaper

Grandmother convicted of animal cruelty and made to wear electronic tag... for being too upset to put elderly dog down

The death of a pet is a terrible thing, one that all pet owners sadly have to face, unfortunately our boon companions are not granted as long as us on the earth. Yet while they are here they provide such comfort, joy and companionship far and above their brief time with us.  Having been in a similar situation I would have given anything for just one more day, but it was not to be and it’s a terrible decision to have to make.

This is very sad story and one you might have thought could be handled by a bit of empathy and sitting down with a cup of tea and a good long chat. But not it seems for the RSPCA.

We’ve seen all to frequently how the RSPCA has no compunction in using donations to fight court cases against wills that they feel they have been bilked out of their share. But this sort of heavy handed approach is becoming far more common perhaps it’s a ploy ‘pour encourage les autres’.

But that’s not the jist of this post, no, the reason I’m writing this is a couple of things stood out in the story, now, it could just be lazy reporting (it is the Daily Mail after all)

The RSPCA broke into her home and, after finding the dog with numerous medical problems, charged 71-year-old Mrs Spoor with causing unnecessary suffering to her loyal companion.

‘The RSPCA broke into her home’ did you get that ? they ‘broke into her home’

I’m sorry I didn’t realise the RSPCA had been given Open Warrants to enter peoples property.

As far as I know, the only people in the UK with ‘Open Warrants’ i.e not needed to be authorised by a Judge are  HM Customs & Excise and the utility companies, the latter only being authorised to enter to disconnect the supply.

I hope I’m wrong, but I am assuming that the RSPCA approached the Police, the Police approached a Judge and the Judge based on the ‘evidence’ issued a warrant to enter this ladies home. Then the breaking in was carried out by a duly authorised & Warranted Police Officer  accompanied by the RSPCA.

What’s worrying  is that at no point did anybody say “Hang on a bit, this is an old lady here, looking to lose a friend, couldn’t this be handled a bit more sensitively?’

Which brings me to the second point ‘

and, after finding the dog with numerous medical problems, charged 71-year-old Mrs Spoor ‘ 

The RSPCA charged her did they, funny I thought that was the job of the Crown Prosecution Service or have the  RSPCA become  Judge Judy and Executioner*  these days.

If however the CPS did bring the charge after pressure from the RSPCA whoever did it should be sacked as they are quite plainly useless, but I suppose on the stat’s sheet a conviction is a conviction in our don’t look at the quality, look at the numbers Judicial system.

Somewhere along the line the RSPCA seems to have lost sight of what it was actually founded for, It seems to have become ‘The Royal Society for the Policing of Cruelty to Animals’

I do know they will be getting no more money from me again and stories like this will only ensure that others will follow suit.

 

 

*Hot Fuzz ref, been dying to get it in

That’s a Lot of Cheese

Now I’m quite fond of a bit of cheese, some extra mature Cheddar, a bit of Stilton on crackers at Christmas , I’ve even been known to partake of Brie on occasion (normally with bacon in a baguette mind)

But nearly  4 stone of cheese per year , surely that can’t be right?

I think even Wallace & Gromit would be hard pushed to do that and they really like cheese.

This One Goes To 11

I must have missed the other King Charles, I only learnt of 2 in O’Level History

Clearly the Daily Mail knows something I don’t.

Story here

Much Like An Elephant Or A Klingon

Teh Interwebs never forgives or forgets

This really should have been a case of check twice then check again before hitting ‘publish’

click for larger cock

The corrected version

Reves d'Etoiles….. C’est Finis

A very sad day yesterday, when the space shuttle Atlantis touched down for the last time.

For now that’s pretty much it for those of us who grew up hoping for a chance to one day be an astronaut and now with Concorde gone as well, no chance of even flying faster than the speed of sound (unless you are fabulously wealthy)

I honestly thought  growing up in the late 60’s –70’s that we would have reached Mars by now or at least had a Moon Base (like Space 1999).

Politics more than anything brings it to an end, If a politician cannot see any immediate benefit in a project to him/her it deserves no further consideration.

It is a sad step backwards on the road to making us all medieval peasants again, afraid of the dark and in thrall to the Lords of the Manor.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

In the room adjacent you are undressing
and I imagine the wall between us is more
transparent than my heart. I trace the

shadow that marks the differences between
us (postpone for a moment the need to determine
who is light and who is darkness--both states are

preferable to the nothing in between). In this house
I wonder at the walls, how they could have been
built so much thinner than my own. At night,

deep at night, I lay awake imagining I am
on the roof mystified by starlight, lost in the
lack of self, the dark matter and the dark

energy, the dark at all, where I become the
shadow. This starlight itself is our distant past,
the place where we began. I am helpless against

the onslaught of memories. Between you and
between I there was the catalyst of love, the
spark that travelled one hundred thousand

light years to become us today. We were astronauts
training for space travel, hitching a ride on a
shuttle bound to skim Earth’s fragile atmosphere.

We catapulted fiercely upward in the poignant
attempt to grasp those altitudes previously
imagined only by poets and smitten nerds;

the moon, the stars, Jupiter's satellites, mere space.
We methodically composed a future without end
and now, stalled on this eternal landing strip, are left

embarrassingly unprepared for the inevitable
anticlimax. After all of it... after the one step, the giant
leap, the missions and the thrust, after the spectacular

and the tragic, after the epiphanies of hearts left
momentarily unbound by gravity of thought or
promise or debt, after we soared beyond all

expectations, we confront the persistent disability
that we are tethered here, after all, by our most
mundane realities. There is no app for reinvention.

Landing by Martin A Bartels

 

H/t to Clare Kirwan  & Poetry24 for the poem

Unfortunate or Mischief ?

From the London Evening Standard

How Many Times …. FFS

Pedant post

Can we not get this right  ‘Frankenstein’  was the name of the creator,  the monster had no name. Unless by chance these fossils resemble a 19th Century European scientist

Nope, can’t see the resemblance, if however you are referring to the fact that the fossils resemble a melange of various parts of other creatures, much like the fictional creation of Victor Frankenstein then the headline should read

Mysterious ‘Frankenstein’s Monster – like’ fossils provide fresh clues to evolution of insects

 

Ah, I see in some circles it is acceptable to name the creature ‘Frankenstein’, but not by me Goddammit  and never will be.

Story here

I May Not Know Much About Art…..Reprise

But I know what I like and I like this.

"This Painting is Not Available in Your Country" Paul Mutant, 2010.
click image for larger

 

Paul Mutant's painting is intended to be commentary on the incoherent absurdity of territorial rights enforcement in the age of the Internet.

Lord Nelson Is Spinning

Yes very amusing I’m sure, but surely this must have been filmed prior to the scrapping of ALL our Sea Harriers.

A little research is called for.

Directed by Outsider's Pedro Romhany, the shoot was based entirely in Thailand and encountered some interesting difficulties when the aircraft carrier they were using was put on red alert due to a skirmish between Thailand and Cambodia.

Yes the aircraft carrier is The Chakri Naruebet  the flagship of The Royal Thai Navy.

So there you have it, in the year 2011, The Royal Thai Navy has more force projection at sea than the British Navy. Now who’d have thought that could happen.

That ‘thrumming’ sound you hear when you pass St Paul’s Cathedral  is probably Lord Nelson achieving about 3600rpm.

No Need To Make New Law

As The Appalling Strangeness and others point out , there is no need to make new law over the ‘phone hacking’ issue, it was already illegal.

In fact most of the 4000 new statutes (I hate to call them laws, see Captain Ranty for definitions) foisted on us by Nu-Labour, the minority could have been covered by existing law being applied, not some knee jerk ‘something must be done’ ill tempered legislation. The remainder is just imposed EU statute turning our legal system into a Code Napoleon.

An example of old law being used today 

Carriage driver arrested outside The Chequers in Bickley for 'drunk' horse incident

Police followed the vehicle after spotting the driver slumped in the carriage with his two dogs in the back as it zig-zagged across the road at around 9pm on Sunday (July 10).

The horse galloped down the road before stopping outside the Chequers and the man stumbled out of the carriage.

Officers feared he was unwell and were met with the response: "Yes, I'm drunk, my horse is drunk, so what are you going to do about it?"

The man was arrested on suspicion of being drunk in charge of a horse and carriage on a highway, under the 1872 Licensing Act, and taken to Bromley police station for questioning.

He was issued with a £50 fixed penalty notice.

It may be a simplistic analogy, I am not a bottom feeding ambulance chaser lawyer , but there you go. 

So what does it say the 1872 Licencing Act

Penalty on persons found drunk.

Every person  who is drunk while in charge on any highway or other public place of any carriage, horse, cattle, or steam engine, or who is drunk when in possession of any loaded firearms, may be apprehended, and shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding forty shillings, or in the discretion of the court to imprisonment for any term not exceeding one month.

See, covered in a law made 139 years ago,  Although it doesn’t say anything about sheep, maybe shepherds were more temperate in 1872.

Interesting the bit about  “Drunk when in possession of any loaded firearms”  see it actually was not illegal then to carry a firearm for your own protection, how times change.

Question

Slightly O/T , it may be an old wives tale, but I remember being told, that  you couldn’t be arrested or charged with ‘Cycling while Drunk’. As no such offense existed, as the mere fact you were capable of riding a bike meant you were not within the definition ‘drunk’

Any thoughts?

It’s For The Cheeeeeeldren……. Eventually

picture edited to make paedo safe

Try to follow Councillor Tim Stevens train of thought here as he eventually gets from the clamp down on counterfeit tobacco to the cheeeldren .

Councillor Tim Stevens, said

“Illegal tobacco is thought to be responsible for four times as many deaths as drugs. Cheap tobacco makes smoking affordable, which reduces people's motivation to quit, encourages smokers to smoke more, and makes it easier for children to take up the habit.”

So not really about protecting Tax Duty , it’s for the cheeldren.

“Illegal tobacco is thought to be responsible for four times as many deaths as drugs.”

O’Reilly,  I smell a made up ‘ASH thought’, show me the numbers.

Also what the cocking hell is a ‘Portfolio holder for public protection and safety,’  I thought that was the Police’s job.

Can we get back to Local councils just emptying bins, sweeping the streets and keeping the street lights on. You know what they used to do, before they became social engineers.

Guns and The Daily Mail (again)

So, the headline 

Oooh, “hunting rifles”, It conjures up images of bolt action beasts, snipers, big game hunters, etc. Never mind that at most in the UK we can probably only get a  .22 Calibre rifle licence if we can prove to the PTB that it is a necessity.

Following the attack, a local gamekeeper inspected the gunshot wounds and claimed rustlers had used a rifle powerful enough to hunt deer.

So what photo does the Picture Editor after combing teh interwebs for suitable imagery use to illustrate this ‘ rifle powerful enough to hunt deer.’

That’s right, a bloody shotgun 

Story here

[Yes it’s another pedant post, but cut me some slack will you, I’m having a tough time at the moment, I just lost my job, I can’t seem to find another one and I’m fighting off depression by the skin of my teeth]

Couldn’t Find A Badger Picture?

click for larger

Whilst not technically incorrect, I can’t help thinking that perhaps the News Shopper needs to expand its Stock Photo Library.

I know these days we have to have ‘visuals’ with everything but perhaps the story might have been better illustrated with a picture of say a bad badger (It is not as if they don’t have previous in posting animal identification pictures)  or even a picture of a petrol station.

story here

Love the comment  “Young man driving like a pratt makes up badger story.”  It’s what we’re all thinking 

You Might Have Missed This

 

Seven anti-facists face jail for an attack on two 'Nazis'

Seven anti-fascist protesters are facing jail today for plotting to ambush two men making their way to a 'neo-Nazi' event.

The masked and hooded demonstrators lined a railway platform waiting for their targets to get off a train, and attacked on hearing the command: "Kill the Nazis", the court heard.

Patrick O'Donovan was punched and kicked to the ground and his companion Michael Heihl was chased onto the tracks at Welling station, Kent, the jury was told.

Why might you have missed this?

Well, I’ve looked and looked, but out of the MSM it seems only the London Evening Standard deemed it worthy of reporting.

Regardless of your opinion on the politics (both groups to me are equally loathsome) The fact that a mob was formed to beat and possibly more, to then travel and then not ‘counter-protest’ but with the intent to inflict harm, should be reported. (The initial mob was reported as being 30 strong and things can get out of hand very quickly if you add in the shout of ‘Kill the Nazi’s)

Is it because the MSM is so far Left these days that any reporting of malfeasance by its followers is strictly off limits (see no articles about the UAF)  or is it because the victims were allegedly ‘Fascist’ they deserved what they got.

All I know is that if the headline had read.

Seven Neo-Nazi’s face jail for an attack on two ‘Anti-Facist’s’

You would have seen it plastered on everything from the Red Tops to the broad sheets.