Answers On A Postcard, Please.

It is all too easy for those with no legal training to jump to conclusions and offer ill-informed opinions but it does seem odd to this uninformed layman that the driver of a Range Rover that was involved in a collision with a quad bike driven by a seven year old girl on a public road should be arrested. We live in whacky times, growing whackier by the day, but the possibility that the girl's parents 'may face charges' simply beggars belief. Regardless of who was responsible for the crash, they have clearly shown both contempt for the law and a barely credible degree of crassitude in the care of their daughter.

Gruff is puzzled: A driver whose vehicle appears to have been hit by an infant driving on a public road is arrested, yet the parents of the infant, who are responsible for her being in charge of a motor vehicle illegally, may possibly face charges. How so?

Answers ...

Gruff thanks to Haddock, at Something Fishy, for the link.

Who Laughs Last ...

Thanks to Inspector Gadget, Gruff has discovered PC Bloggs, the witty (and erudite) chronicle of a police officer worthy of the accolade Giftedly Cynical Idealist. This item brought just a trace of a festive tear to a jaded eye. One can't 'believe' in peace on Earth but one cannot but believe in Father Christmas.

A merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year to everyone.

Memo to The Government: How Not To Create A Police State

Rather than running away from any danger of contact with über clown Robert Mugabe, Tartan McReich's Führer Braun would do well to realise that he cannot but profit from some lessons in banana republic building from the nemesis of development in Africa. As distasteful as it may be to the Thane of Kirkcudbright, the Laird of Zimbabwe understands that no aspiring dictator worth his salt should be silly enough to piss off, almost to the point of mutiny, his armed forces and his police forces, force what laws he will. When the mob storms Downing Street there will be little point in calling in the police or the army and no point at all in calling in an army of consultants.

Gordon The McGravy Train Engine should forget his Scotch inclinations, stop quibbling about the bill and pay those whose uniforms ensure that we can sleep at nights what is owed to them.

You Can't Park Here

Is there anyone who can defend the mind boggling stupidity evident in this story from Newcastle-upon-Tyne? It's hard to imagine anyone, even a brainless jobsworth, so brainlessly unthinking and so rigid in his application of petty rules as to issue a parking ticket to an ambulance parked outside a hospital while the crew help sick patients.

Gruff thanks to Neil Herron for this link to the report. Mr Herron is a ceaseless campaigner in the fight against the petty tyrannies of illegal parking regimes and his blog is well worth reading.

Almost A Whacky Festschrift

Lovers of the ridiculous may wish to indulge themselves with a few of the whacky titbits available in today's edition of the Daily Mail. Like canapés, they can be consumed in any order but, taken as they appear on the page, the whackiest items are, for Gruff:

'We are told 'God Save The Queen' is due for a rewrite ...' is a report in which a man in buckled shoes, silk stockings, lace cuffs and a wig, Lord Goldsmith, asserts that the National Anthem (Br*tain's, not England's) should be rewritten so that its words are more 'inclusive'. The irony of a man wearing archaic fancy dress calling for our equally archaic, and now almost redundant, National Anthem to be updated is clearly lost on the 'noble' lord.

'Lesbians' sperm donor forced to pay child support' is a thoroughly modern parable of life in an 'inclusive' Br*tain in which two self-centred women assert their rights to bring up children while depriving them of the traditional male influence of a father, then, having promised the biological father of the children they claimed as theirs that his involvement in the project would be no more than the donation of a little sperm, assert their rights to end the commitment they had previously asserted their rights to make before finally asserting their rights to make the man pay for the support of the children they had asserted they were the rightful parents of. Equality, qua equality?

'Northern Rock owes the taxpayer £30billion but is lavishing pay rises and bonuses on staff' is a report that does no more than confirm the opinions of those who believe that ethical capitalism is nothing more than an oxymoron .

'Disgraced data boss sails into a top Whitehall job' is a report that does no more than confirm the opinions of those who believe that ethical government is nothing more than an oxymoron. What is truly whacky about this report is that Paul Gray is said to be 'leading a project on "developing civil servant skills"'. I kid you not.

'The bear that walked off with the Turner Prize' is a report that does no more than confirm the opinions of those who believe that, where arts funding is concerned, bullshit really does 'baffle brains'.

'Legal aid for the rich: Children of foreign millionaire given £30,750 for court battle' is a report that does no more than confirm the opinions of those who believe that 'to them that hath shall be given'. This item also shows a man in buckled shoes, silk stockings and a wig. How whacky is that?

'A third of truants are caught with their parents' is a report that does no more than confirm the opinions of those who believe that forty years of increasingly whacky education 'reforms' have produced a generation of parents that has no idea of responsible parenting, making any attempt to inculcate the same with fines and custodial sentences absolutely, positively guaranteed to fail.

Laugh? I wish I could.

Bread and Circuses

Yahoo News has published this report today, which is worth quoting here:

The design for the 2012 Olympic stadium, based on a sunken bowl, has been unveiled.

Olympic organising committee chairman Lord Coe described it as a "stadium for a completely new era that will be inspiring and have a lasting legacy".
It has 25,000 permanent seats sunken into the bottom, with a layer of 55,000 temporary seats above and a roof that will cover two-thirds of all spectators.
Outside the stadium will be pods filled with facilities for spectators, such as food stalls.
Key to the design of the £496 million venue in Stratford, east London, is that it must shrink from an 80,000-seat capacity venue during the Games to one of 25,000 seats afterwards.
It will then become a multipurpose venue used for athletics and other sporting and community events, but no anchor tenant has yet been found.
Original cost estimates did not include VAT and inflation.
John Armitt, chair of the Olympic Delivery Authority, said: "Nearly £500 million is a lot of money in anyone's terms but it is the budget and we are determined to work within that.
"If there is a requirement for any extra, we have a contingency within the scheme covering this as a whole and we will use some of that,

A stadium in the shape of a 'sunken bowl' to symbolise a nation going down the pan, presumably, but the item is amusing for the cutting edge, contemporary argot (and the obligatory vacuous statement from the vacuous Lord Coe). The 'arse covering' caution of John Armitt, 'chair' of the Olympic Delivery Authority, is also something to savour and he will certainly deserve the now inevitable peerage, should he deliver sufficient olympic within the specified budget, especially since he appears to be one of the few shovelling out public money by the McGravy Train load to be aware that five hundred million pounds is indeed a lot of money for a twenty five thousand seat depression in the marshy ground of East London.

For those, like Gruff, who find spectator sports nothing more than a pointless exercise the Olympics can never be anything more than an inexcusable waste of money. The utter irrelevance of the whole sorry spectacle is confirmed by the importance that would-be 'super-powers' place on it. What is the value of national prestige if it depends entirely on one swimmer or runner or show jumper completing a course one hundredth of a second faster than another, one gymnast demonstrating an entirely subjective superiority in limb-dislocatingly tortuous movement or someone throwing a spear some fractions of a metre further than any other if one's country has, for instance, one of the highest prison populations or levels of child poverty? It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that official support for the Olympic farce is concerned more with distracting public attention from the grim reality outside the stadia walls than providing 'the community' with state of the art sporting facilities.

Off The Edge of The World?

As with most things 'American' this parable of the modern world (Americanised Western style) is not entirely accurate, nor very subtle, but several essential truths inform it, as well as a few essential misapprehensions. Watch it and decide for yourselves what is true and what not, and then decide whether or not we are sailing on a ship of fools. Gruff thinks that we are but that we needn't necessarily throw all of the crew to the sharks: babies and bathwater come to mind.

Gruff thanks to Cotlake (no identifiable link), who submitted this comment on this post at Police Inspector Blog.

The Law Is An Ass ii (LBD vii, ToC xv)

As a bear of very little brain, Gruff is wary of lecturing his betters but it seems not wholly inappropriate to observe that, apropos of number crunching, it is wholly self-defeating to initiate 'initiatives' that nullify other efforts in the same field. Inspector Gadget's report, at the excellent Police Inspector Blog, on the frustrations occasioned by government 'initiatives' to reduce domestic violence may induce apoplexy, hysteria or simply numb incomprehension in those awaiting the 'joined up government' we were promised so long ago.

Serves Her Right! (ToC xiv)

It's reassuring to know that the authorities are resolute in their determination to see that no one can flout 'our country's' really quite liberal parking laws with impunity. Neil Herron has posted a link to this story of a ninety one year old disabled woman fined for displaying her disabled driver's parking permit upside down.

Off Road Or Simply Off The Wall? (LBD vi, ToC xiii)

Inspector Gadget has posted this account of worse than whacky management lunacy at Police Inspector Blog. Except to observe that the laughter he describes can only have been of the 'had I not laughed I would have cried' type, Gruff can think of nothing to type that is fit to print.

As Others See Us

An undoubted benefit of the World Wide Web is the ability to read articles that not so long ago would have been recycled as chip wrappers or lavatory paper for the budgie. Gruff has just come across this depressingly accurate summary of the current state of the 'U'K, It's an excellent piece and the only real criticism is that the title should have read: 'Why Br*tain is Rotting'.

Br*tish faults are too often laid at England's door and it is important that the confusion in foreign minds between England and Br*tain is resolved. The current mess is due in no small part to the incompetence of those self-serving Scotch and Welsh politicians who have dominated Br*tish politics (and thus English affairs) for the past ten years, and we cannot sit by while they encourage the world and his wife to think otherwise.

How Much Lower ...

... will we allow the morally bankrupt Br*tish government to drag our once proud and respected country before we decide that governance is too important to be left in the hands of the sewer rats feeding at Westminster? Read this, at Rogue Gunner, and then contrast the shoddy treatment of wounded servicemen with the consideration shown towards serving female Moslems as reported in this post at the same blog.

The prison officers are unhappy, the police are unhappy and the armed forces are unhappy. When a society's 'NCOs' say 'enough is enough', that society is in danger of collapse. That day cannot be far off.

Catch Them While They're Young (LBD v, ToC xii)

Yesterday's issue of the Daily Telegraph contained this barely credible report of destructively counter-productive and unbelievably crass policing. Gruff remembers the days when individual police officers were not just allowed to use their discretion but required to do so, by the demands of the job as much as their superiors. The knowledge that they could and would was essential to the contract between the police and society that underpinned law and order and the arrival of a police officer reassured all but those breaking the law. It seems that those days are rapidly fading into the past.

Reports such as that above are becoming so commonplace that it is now difficult not to question the calibre of some of those who are being recruited into (what we must not forget are) our police forces, and it is not unreasonable to do so. Nor, given that politically correct lightweights like Richard Brunstrom and Sir Ian Blair, amongst others, hold the most senior appointments in their respective forces, is it surprising: a police force run by sycophantic careerists for the benefit of their masters has no use for those who can think for themselves. Unquestioning and uncomplaining box tickers and target chasers, thirsting for an exciting opportunity to meet the challenge of policing in a vibrant and ever changing multicultural Br*tain of the nations and regions, will satisfy the lamentably debased role outlined in the 'job description'. Ministerial briefings will be considerably easier, and the honours much more certain, but the bond between society and those of its members who are trusted to police it intelligently, and generally wish to do so, will be strained just a little further.

One need only look at videos of foreign police officers in action to be reminded that, like our armed forces, our police forces are still world class but, increasingly, the unwonted interference of incompetent bureaucrats and morally and ideologically corrupt politicians leaves them looking foolish. The police are paid to do as they are told and can do little about that but they deserve better, and so do we. It is up to us to stop the madness.

Tough on Crime (xi)

Many will remember the old line 'if you want to know the time, ask a policeman'. In McReich's Führer Braun's nasty, intolerant (and imploding) little banana republic you might find yourself under arrest for doing so. The Devil's Kitchen has posted this item about two disabled men who were arrested for looking (yes that's right, looking) at a police officer. When one must go about with eyes downcast for fear of officers of the law, one is living in a police state.

What next, Gruff wonders.

Bright Sunlit Uplands? (LBD iv, ToC x)

McReich's Führer Braun's nasty, intolerant (and imploding) little banana republic cannot be what Churchill had in mind when he led the largest empire the world has ever known as it stood, almost alone, against what was then the most powerful military machine the world had ever seen in defence of freedom. Those who still remember that struggle must wonder, on the day that doctors and local council workers are given legal access to one's phone records and bank details - all in the cause of TWAT, of course (and European unity) - why they bothered. In two years' time personal e-mail and internet browsing records will be available to them, as well.

As of today it is also an offence to buy cigarettes under the age of eighteen years and to incite religious hatred. No one with even half a brain can seriously expect that sixteen and seventeen year olds will now be compelled to give up smoking or that those who call for the murder of cartoonists will be brought to justice. These laws merely satisfy the lust of the craven bullies we have elected to govern us for bludgeoning the law abiding majority while not offending even the least vocal of minorities and lobbyists, of whom they live in terror.

Wake up citizen!

Tough on Crime (ix)

Nigel Hastilow has this to say about the perversity of the law in Big Browner's Br*tain and its attitude to the citizens it now has no interest in protecting.

Led By Donkeys (iii)

Is Gruff the only one finding it impossible to understand the opinion of 'Bystander' at The Magistrate's Blog in this case.

'Heavy-handed' policing (in itself a subjective assessment) may be cause for a complaint to whatever post-Blair body handles complaints about the police these days but it is not an excuse for a mob-handed assault on a police station and magistrates have no business asserting the contrary (in public at least).

Led By Donkeys (ii) (ToC viii)

Is anyone surprised that Ruhela Khanom has escaped punishment for being in contempt of court? Perhaps if she'd been wearing an 'offensive' t-shirt she might have suffered the wrath of the law but, under the warped Br*tish regime of appeasement that is multiculturalism, Moslems, and other ethnic minorities, have been encouraged to believe that they are subject only to their own peculiar codes of decency and are above English law.

Law and order has collapsed in England.

Led By Donkeys (ToC vii)

Yet again we learn that in pursuit of their culturally destructive and unmitigatedly evil multicultural crusade the authorities are literally 'turning a blind eye' to extremely serious crimes that are routinely committed by immigrants against the indigenous population. Not Proud of Britain (But Would Like To Be) has posted this link to an appalling story that would have had the media in a frenzy had the races of the perpetrators and victims been transposed.

The laws of England do not appear to apply to immigrants, unless they condescend to observe them, and race equality legislation does not appear to apply to the English. We are, at best, second-class citizens in our own land. When our 'leaders' signal that they are afraid to defend our own children from the criminal attentions of what are essentially foreign perverts for fear of being seen as 'racists' (a stick that has been so frequently misused that it now only intimidates the morally and politically cowardly) they demonstrate only that they are incapable of discharging their obligations to us.

Given the appallingly low calibre of those now holding the higher public offices we can expect no improvement in the disgraceful situation to which we have been brought until we abandon the mainstream political parties, as they have abandoned us, and reclaim the political process for ourselves.

Tough on Crime (vi)

Anyone who doubts that the lunatics really have taken over the asylum should read this news report and this.

Sorting out the mess of tainted law left by Messrs Blair and Brown, and to a much lesser extent Lady Thatcher and Sir John Major, is going to take some time but (if we are lucky) at least some of the ill-conceived and ill-thought-out legislation enacted during the last ten years can simply be repealed. Eradicating the cancer of woolly thinking that has destroyed the ability of our our institutions to act sensibly and effectively is going to be rather more difficult, however.

Let Them Eat Brioche! (cf: Eat My Shorts!)

Until quite recently the average law-abiding, tax paying citizen didn't care much about the law, which is not the same as not caring for the law. He paid as much of his taxes as he had to, generally obeyed the law (few of us have not exceeded the speed limit, parked on a double yellow line or uttered treasonous comments about one or another of the rats who thrive in the constitutional sewers) and was content to get on with his life in the knowledge that the law was (generally) content to let him do so, as long as he let his fellows alone. What was then called 'give and take' governed social transactions and, although there was injustice and unfairness, most people were content, most of the time, to accept the status quo, because most people were taught that the law was only concerned with the lawless, and that was mostly true. That situation no longer obtains.

The last five decades have seen an accelerating shift in social (say 'societal', if you must) norms so that the law is now so effectively neutered by hastily enacted, and woefully ill-conceived, legislation that it is now incapable of protecting (though, paradoxically, it is unable to admit that it will no longer protect) the law-abiding and maintains itself, like some bullying yet cowardly beadle, by attempting to terrorise those who were unaware that they were anything but law-abiding. Now the law seems obsessively preoccupied with regulating not just every action, but every utterance and every thought of every person. If we are not petty bureaucrats we are now petty criminals and, whether or no, we are all suspects in Laura Nodder's great game. Should we once fail to obtain, in triplicate (and after the appropriate training) the relevant official sanction we will rue the day.

For decades people have muttered angrily about the manifest unfairness of a legal system that fines people one thousand pounds for watching television without a licence, or failing to return a completed electoral roll registration form within the specified time, or failing to notify the DVLA of one's change of address, yet awards convicted foreign rapists fifty five thousand pounds because an interpreter was not present when his rights were read to him or sends hardened juvenile psychopaths on adventure holidays or awards a typist almost half a million pounds for a sore thumb.

The English love liberty, privacy and freedom from interference but such things are anathema to the Br*tish political class, obsessed with regulation and centralised control, and fearful of individual initiative. We still maintain a sense of fair-play, despite the many unfairnesses with which we are served, and despise dishonesty. We regard even petty criminals with contempt yet crime bothers the political class only in as much as it might affect the (almost pointless) ballot: It isn't the relative handful of predatory scum that threatens the established order, it is the millions of essentially decent, law abiding, tax paying citizens who are able to function without the permission of some overpaid and under-worked official and whose dissent could derail whatever 'great project' is in hand.

One of the dangers of living in a closed, self-regarding community is that, because alternative views are not presented, one develops a restricted view of the world. Politics is one such closed, self-regarding community. Those who comprise the political class, those who have set themselves in authority over us, and their functionaries and flunkies, have lost sight of their ostensible purpose. Politicians evidently believe that they can maintain themselves simply by intravenously feeding us an unrelieved diet of the thin intellectual gruel that is the woolly thinking, smudgy graphics, ideology 'lite', vaguely centre-left, 'promise anything and everything to anyone and everyone as long as it gets us elected but don't cut taxes and don't stop legislating' approach to what has become nothing more inspiring than national management. Why otherwise would they persist in asserting that they are concerned only with building a Br*tain in which every 'stakeholder' is 'engaged' with the centrally determined ideas of the moment; with vacuous utterances about 'rebuilding shattered communities'; about individuals taking responsibility for the communities in which they live; about enabling all to make their contribution to society, whether they wish to or not. We are not fooled by the arrogant clowns who scramble over each other to feed on the dung heap that is politics in McBraun's Br*tain of The Nations and Regions; who have clearly forgotten that actions speak louder than words and clearly do not realise that their actions prove their words to be mere empty rhetoric.

The English have not enjoyed a revolution against the tyranny of an oppressive, bloated and self-serving establishment for some time but the necessity for another is developing fast. The spark is likely to be something mundane: a harassed citizen driven beyond breaking point by an unproductive and otherwise unemployable baboon given a badge and a fluorescent jacket and the power to annoy the law-abiding.

Life Imitating Art (Apropos of The Post Below; q.v.)

As the king's men fell over themselves in their eagerness to put poor Humpty back together again, the king dragged Alice off to watch the lion fight the unicorn, which scene neatly epitomises life in contemporary Br*tain. Gruff almost wrote 'Lewis Carroll couldn't have made it up' but, of course, he did.

All The King's Horses ... (ToC v)

Humpty Dumpty was a conceited fellow, as Alice discovered, and richly deserved his great fall, but although the king sent all four thousand two hundred and seven of his men, and all but two of his horses, they couldn't, as every child used once to know, put him back together again, which was sad for poor Humpty but resulted in one less bad egg to trouble society.

Theo Spark has posted a link to this story of life imitating art in The Daily Mail. Except to ask why a man who had no legitimate reason to be in another man's bedroom in the early hours of the morning, and fell four floors to his death trying to escape, should be described as an 'alleged' burglar, and to observe that, given the apparent circumstances, use of that adjective in this particular instance cannot but be subject to Humpty Dumpty's peculiar verbal modus operandi, there is nothing more to be said.

Full Speed Ahead and Don't Worry About Icebergs

Whoever is in charge on the bridge of The Good Ship Whacky Br*tain, if indeed anyone is, seems heedless of the disaster towards which we are steaming headlong. Wonko has posted his understandably outraged comment on this story but it comes as no surprise to read what is just another barely credible tale of the official lunacy we fund with our hard earned taxes. After ten years of the sort of government that a madman such as Caligula might have had difficulty conceiving, England has been transformed into a country in which the indigenous population are officially second-class citizens.

It might have been comforting to reflect that, failing the outright abolition of what little remains of democracy in the English part of The Plodding Scotchman's beloved 'Br*tain of the nations and regions', Big Browner would have, at most, only three, destructive, years left but, despite three convincing defeats since 1997, the Conservatives have become, under Grooovey Dave, as electable as Labour were under Michael Foot. By describing the English as ignorant to a Glasgow audience and promising the Asian population of Ealing Southall, in languages that few others in England can understand, that he will make a number of their religious festivals bank holidays, Scotchman Cameron has made it very clear that he has nothing to offer the people of England but further disadvantage, division and discrimination. That the man clearly believes he addresses his particular audience in a bubble, his words untranslated and unreported, suggests that he lacks even a basic grasp of political realities in a fragmented and allegedly 'multicultural' society in which an increasingly disaffected and restless majority can see that it is disregarded and derided. The man is a buffoon and none but buffoons will vote for him.

We are ruled, unopposed, by a foreign politician we have not elected, a virtual dictator, intent on dismembering our country for the benefit of his own. Five hundred and twenty nine members of parliament sit at Westminster for constituencies in England yet very few have the courage to defend our country from the ravages of the Scotch dominated Br*tish state. The mainstream parties have abandoned us and our only hope is to fend for ourselves at the next general election.

The Scum of The Earth

A fine appreciation of irony is, we like to think, a characteristic that defines us as Englishmen and women and one of the supreme ironies of Br*tish history is that those who were lauded for having made Br*tain great invariably garnered the credit, and the honours, that rightly belonged to those whose lives were governed by their whim, and whom they not infrequently despised. The Anglo-Irishman Arthur Wellesley once described the men under his command as 'the scum of the Earth', yet his fame was founded on their unwavering courage and unquestioning loyalty. It was a bitter irony that many of them ended their days as inmates of workhouses or as crippled beggars on street corners. A reasonable person looking at the way that their successors are treated today might not unreasonably assume that those who ultimately control them share the opinion of His Grace.

Another characteristic that we like to think defines us is an ability to laugh at ourselves, and our blackly ironic humour has certainly seen us through some dark days, but for some of those who have taken The Queen's shilling laughter rings hollow and the continued failure of our 'leaders' to take their plight seriously smacks of taking the piss.

It is blackly ironic, though far from funny, that when our servicemen and women return from defending democracy in some land that, often, few here knew existed beforehand, they find that as far as those whose freedom they guarantee, such as the good people of Ashtead, Surrey, are concerned, they are still, apparently, 'the scum of the Earth'.

So much for 'progress', so much for 'social democracy'.

Who's Zooming Whom?

Truth is stranger than fiction, they say, and for those of us not 'in the know' it can be difficult to disentangle the one from the other but one can be forgiven for thinking that since the truth needs no defence, strange stories of this sort naturally beg the question (of democracy, the law and the western liberal tradition): Quo vadis Domine?

Although it is not a Whacky Br*tain story, it is a whacky story about a Briton in a Europe that is daily becoming whackier, and less free.

Ever Decreasing Circles

Pity the poor residents of Ashtead, Surrey, who will now have to suffer the presence of wounded service personnel and their families as a result of a unanimous decision by the planning sub-committee of Mole Valley District Council.

Unbelievably, 86 residents of the area objected to an application to convert a house into accommodation for the families of wounded servicemen (and women) receiving treatment at Headley Court rehabilitation centre. This report is disturbingly similar to accounts from the First World War (another pointless slaughter of men with qualities far superior to those of the pen pushers and desk warriors who sent them to die) of letters to the papers complaining that the sight of so many mutilated servicemen disturbed the wives, children and servants of respectable gentlemen.

How frightfully infra dignitatem.

Gruff can never read or hear the words 'Mole Valley' without thinking of the anally retentive Martin Bryce, the character played (and evidently thoroughly researched) by Richard Briers in the television comedy series Ever Decreasing Circles. Hopefully the circles in which the good people of Ashtead move will decrease to the extent that they disappear up their own backsides. It's unlikely, however. The spiteful, petty-minded meanness of such characters deserves ridicule but reminds us that, like the poor, the unbelievably selfish and stupid will always be with us. When contrasted with this tale of Whacky Br*tain it's hard not to suspect that someone, somewhere, is having a bloody good laugh.

Tough on Crime (iv)

More lunacy (of the target driven policing sort) here. Police officers do what they are told and rightly so, it is after all what we pay them to do, but someone, somewhere made a wholly frivolous complaint and someone of some authority decided that it merited action. No offence was committed, no laws broken, nor any harm done but a police officer was presumably ordered to visit a mother who appears to take her responsibilities seriously and to lecture her on what some overpaid and obviously underworked clown considers the 'error' of her ways.

This sort of nonsense infects the culture of our institutions at all levels and it will take determined action to remove those responsible and eradicate it.

Tough on Crime (iii)

As a boy Gruff was taught, for a while, by an obnoxious old man who had taught the father of a school chum before the war. This man was still a spiteful old bully (fond of bringing the sharp edge of a wooden ruler down on one's knuckles, often for no real reason) but in more authoritarian times had been famous for thrashing every boy every morning as a warning of what they would receive should they dare to break any of his numerous petty rules. Such a sentiment can be the only explanation for this barely credible story of a non smoker who has been fined for throwing a cigarette from the window of his car, in which no one, not even his wife, is allowed to smoke.

Once upon a time, of course, we could safely assume that a simple mistake had been made and the matter would soon be satisfactorily resolved by whomever was in charge of the official concerned but the comments of 'a council spokesman' perhaps suggest otherwise:

A council spokesman said ... "The senior enforcement officer is very clear that an offence was committed, but the details of the circumstances that she witnessed are very different to what has been reported, so there is obviously further investigative work to be undertaken."

'Different to (sic)'? How different? Regardless, council tax payers in Leeds may wish to ask their council how much the investigation of this abominable crime is going to cost them.

I can almost hear that obnoxious old man unctuously intoning, with a malign smile on his face, 'you may not have done anything wrong but let that be a warning to you'.

A Shambolic Farce.

The ridiculous farce surrounding the slaughter of an infected bull in South Wales demonstrates that irrationality and intransigence are as much characteristic of 'enlightened' beings of a higher caste as they are of the 'ignorant'. Read this and laugh, and note, yet again, that those who vigorously assert the right to respect for their own values, morality and opinions (recte superstitions) see nothing at all incongruous in showing complete disregard and profound disrespect for the values, morality, opinions and, more importantly, the health and safety of others. Respect for the 'sanctity' of Shambo's life might be commendable were it not for the threat Shambo's continued existence poses to so many others.

Religious zealotry is just another form of bigotry, and is no more respectable than any other.

TWAT

Truth in our septic and decomposing isle long ago surpassed fiction in its strangeness and few can be surprised by the official insanity that is daily exposed in the media. Something Fishy has posted this link to yet another barely credible but sadly no longer surprising 'policing in Braun's multicultural Br*tain' report. Paradoxically, while the police are given ever greater powers to annoy the average law abiding citizen, ostensibly in the fight against foreign terrorists, they apparently have no power to prevent those same foreign terrorists from working as police officers.

Thirty years ago such stories were the the ramblings of lunatics, the nightmares of blimps and the stock in trade of nightclub comedians. Now, like The Archers, they are just tales of everyday folk.

Got Any Change, Mate?

This morning the postman, who, in his short sleeved shirt, rumpled shorts and sandals, can only be identified as a postman because his 'uniform' is in two shades of blue that no one would willingly wear, with red trim, and he carries a red and fluorescent yellow sack on his shoulder that still (though only just?) has 'Royal Mail' printed on it, left two items., one of which was a leaflet advertising the introduction of a five pound coin.

Gruff has always thought of post gold standard coins as representing 'small denominations' of cash and it is a sign of just how little money is worth in Braun's New Britain that the penny, once the standard coin in England, is now of no use other than as change for £4.99. The Monster Raving Loony Party once proposed the introduction of a 99p coin and the idea has considerable merit; the introduction of £4, £9 and £19.99 coins would at least save banks the expense of handling so much useless metal and beggars the irritation of pretending gratitude for button sized pieces of scrap.

Welcome to Slough

Nanny Gruff used often to opine that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions', and an 'open door' immigration policy in a country rotten with the culturally destructive doctrine of multiculturalism (which has allowed the development of situations like this, reported at Migration Watch UK) suggests that she was correct.

The idea that foreigners should enjoy the same rights as citizens, in any country, is merely one of a number of whacky ideas currently paving the road to hell for the people of England but until our welfare and rights laws are redefined to recognise the distinction between universal human rights and citizens' rights the madness will continue.

A Bright Future?

Culture is pervasive and can be persistent, and undesirable traits can be difficult to eradicate. The sort of intellectual insanity described in this report, in the Daily Telegraph, took root in the 1940s and had its first flowering under the regime of Harold Wilson in the 1960s. Determined action will be required to weed it out but weed it out we must if, in ten or fifteen years time, we are not to be faced with yet more pressing social problems, yet more fundamental skills shortages, yet more anguished liberal hand-wringing.

The real reason, Gruff cannot help but suspect, for stripping education of its essential rôle in teaching children to think for themselves is to prepare them for life as gullible automata, capable only of parroting the latest logic defying ingsoc (recte jocsoc) pronouncement. The danger for England is that when the regime eventually collapses, as all such do, the people shall be left bereft of identity, and in Big Browner's multicultural Br*tain that is a danger as great as any we English have faced in the last one thousand five hundred years.

The Joy Of Diversity Or Policing On A Budget.

As immigration spirals out of control and the socially divisive effects of doctrinaire multiculturalism continue to nourish the decay of social cohesion, what cannot but be the wholly unforeseen effects of four decades of woolly thinking manifest themselves with increasing frequency. This is a sympton of cultural and social collapse and if urgent action is not taken political and economic disaster cannot be far ahead.

Old Soldiers Never Die

They just fade away, which is presumably why the government feels that it can ignore with impunity the needs of those who pay the price for having taken The Queen's shilling. No one can doubt that were the Guardian reading classes disposed to consider the welfare of serving and former members of the armed forces with the concern they feel for criminals, illegal immigrants and the growing battalions of illiterate, ill-mannered, anti-social trash the country might not be in quite the state it is.

It is not necessary to be a 'jingoistic blimp' to express concern or anger at the disgraceful neglect of those who, for whatever reason, have served our country and it is right and proper, once a year, to wear a poppy and recall the lines:

They grow not old, as we who are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them.

but it is necessary to remember, every single day, that those who were, and are, left do grow old, often with injuries, scars and needs that we who enjoy the freedom they have guaranteed do not suffer and cannot really imagine. The Cenotaph and the Tomb of The Unknown Warrior are fitting memorials to the fallen but the living need and deserve a good deal more than The Abandoned Soldier.

Blurred Vision and Customer Focus.

Br*tain has a long history of incomprehensibly idiotic management initiatives, dating back to well before the Charge of The Light Brigade, and this item from Inspector Gadget, at Police Inspector Blog, is not particularly remarkable; it is simply one more example of the mindless bullshit that cascades like vomit from those for whom 'soft skills' are of more importance than technical competence or practical ability. When those who govern are obsessed with style over substance, social breakdown is inevitable.

All of A Qiver Over A Quaver In Creepy Crawley

As Big Tony segues effortlessly into Big Browner with no more than a change of grin, saving all the fuss and bother of that inconvenience known as democracy, his 'legacy' becomes increasingly apparent. We can all sleep soundly knowing that even if we are more than ever likely to be stabbed or shot by gangs of immigrant criminals, the authorities will not tolerate the dropping of food by toddlers out with their grandmothers.

Silly Bitch

'Bad workmen always blame their tools' was once the automatic response to stupid people who lacked the maturity to accept responsibility for their mistakes. Read this story about a modern 'ms' who lacked the brains to cross a railway line safely and decided that her satnav was to blame. It has nothing to do with anything The Snivelling Little Rat is responsible for but it is a whacky story about Br*tain, and it begs the questions: How did she get a driving licence and why isn't she facing charges for driving without due care and attention, or whatever charge is applicable?.

Tough on Grime, Tough on The Causes of Grime

If only people would listen properly to what the Great Leader has to say, they wouldn't build up false hopes of a new dawn that was never in prospect. What The Snivelling Little Rat Blair actually meant when he promised to clean up our streets was a clampdown on those dangerous little girls who play such socially destructive games as hopscotch, and not any sort of effective action against those poor unfortunates from the ethnic minorities whose alien cultures lead them to express themselves in gun crime, drug trafficking and violent robbery. This story shows that our streets are now safer as a result of the courage and dedication of our gallant boys (and girls) in blue in bringing anti-social elements to justice. Those who have had to suffer the inconvenience and indignity of wiping chalk from the soles of their shoes on the doormat will offer up a silent prayer of thanks.

Cynicism, Incompetence and Criminality

How low will we allow ourselves to be dragged before, resolved no longer to be degraded in the ethical gutter, we shout 'enough and no more' and rebel? Ten years ago Anthony Charles Linton Blair and his gang of ex-varsity chums and assorted old Scotch cronies promised us that 'things can only get better'. One expects a certain degree of hyperbole and hubris from a politican, empty, boastful rhetoric is, after all, typical of much of the output of those who perform the rôle, but Blair's Labour party long ago exceeded what any but the the most turpitudinous would consider acceptable limits. No one can deny that things have not only not got better, they have got a great deal worse, so much so that very little can now possibly surprise a populace that exists in a state of jaded cynicism far more acute than that characterising the eighteen long winters of Conservative and Unionist (mis)rule under Mrs Thatcher and John Major. This, however, must be beyond the 'wildest imaginings' of anyone not certifiably insane.

It's not unreasonable to expect Grooovey Dave to have had something to say about the report. Given that he acted with (what was to many) indecent haste to retard the career of Patrick Mercer for the non-offence of reporting what squaddies commonly say to each other by way of comradely endearment, he is obviously capable of rapid reaction but he has, thus far, not seen fit to speak out on the issue. Perhaps electoral fraud is now considered 'par for the course' and thus not so very exceptional; The article quotes David Crompton, the Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, as saying: 'This is extremely sharp practice and a clear breach of the guidelines'. Is that all it is, a 'breach of the guidelines'? If a senior police officer can describe a serious criminal offence as 'extremely sharp practice' without drawing down opprobrium on his head we might reasonably fear that, constitutionally, we are in serious trouble.

The Law Really Is An Ass

In a country run by, as well as overrun with, devious criminals and clever lunatics a degree of incomprehensible surrealism is to be expected in the judgements of a judiciary that considers ivory towered detachment from the sometimes cruel realities of everyday life to be a sine qua non for impartiality but this beggars belief. Unbelievably, the decision is not the first of its kind.