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.