Author: Richard

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

| Richard

Well you have to laugh: the Association of Chief Police Officers’ head of road policing and Chief Constable of South Yorkshire police, Meredydd Hughes, has allegedly been caught speeding in North Wales - home of the most motorist-unfriendly police force - doing 90mph in a 60mph zone.

What are the chances of this hypocrite being banned?

Of course, he’s no stranger to the Courts, having been caught speeding by speed camera twice before. And he’s also been taken to court on behalf of his own force for failing to inform the Courts of the identity of one of his speeding officers. But then again, one of his own was acquitted of speeding to collect a takeaway, though Hughes did subsequently remove him from traffic duties, with a spokesman saying:

“Such reprimands are normally dealt with by an officer of the rank of superintendent, but the Chief Constable wanted PC Akrill to understand how his conduct had directly led to a lowering in public confidence in the police.”

I see. I wonder how Hughes will deal with himself, then, as surely by being such an obvious hypocrite, public confidence in the police is further lowered by his shining example. After all, didn’t he himself once say:

“Driving is a privilege - not a right…”

Pay As You Dump

| Richard

So Councils in England are to be given the power to introduce pilot schemes to charge households according to the amount of rubbish they throw away.

How stupid are they? At least the Conservatives can see the tiny flaw in the plan: it was bollocks:

“The shadow communities secretary Eric Pickles said: “What we should be doing is increasing recycling. We can do that without doing it through a bin tax.” The scheme would lead to a surge in fly-tipping, people dumping their waste in neighbours’ gardens and more back garden bonfires, he said.”

Exactly. And don’t we pay Council Tax in the first place to pay for recycling schemes? Just because the money we pay gets wasted on focus groups and committees discussing committees shouldn’t mean they charge us even more.

Scary

| Richard

I’m just sitting here watching Psycho. Funny how, in these days of slasher flicks and supposed horror movies, a film made nearly 50 years ago remains genuinely scary and shocking without actually showing anything gruesome (apart from the mother in the basement…).

A classic film in the true sense of the word.

The Sopranos – It’s Not Just Me Then…

| Richard

Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m not one for watching a lot of TV – I tend to latch onto certain series and watch them until they run out of fresh ideas (24 and Lost, for instance) or until they’re snapped up by satellite TV (24 and Lost, for instance).

The Sopranos was a series that I followed from a very early stage despite Channel 4’s dubious scheduling decisions early on (and indeed splitting the final season in two). The show’s finale was shown last night on E4, so if you don’t have satellite or Freeview, you should look away now as here be spoilers.

This is how the official Sopranos web site portrays the final scene:

“Tony is the first to arrive at Holsten’s for a family dinner. He sits in a booth and plays a song on the jukebox, watching the door. Carmela enters and joins him, asking about his meeting with Mink. He tells her Carlo’s gonna testify and she takes the news with a sigh. AJ arrives next, complaining about the more mundane tasks of his job but quotes old advice from his father: “Try to remember the times that were good.” Meanwhile, Meadow struggles to parallel park outside. Customers come and go – a shady looking guy who’s been sitting at the counter enters the restroom. Finally parking the car, Meadow runs inside to join her family, just in time for dinner.”

What actually happens is that just as Meadow is about to go in the screen goes black – I thought there was a technical fault with the network or my TV and that I’d missed something as a result but no, the end credits came up.

I was expecting that “shady looking guy” to emerge from the toilet with a gun and shoot Tony in an homage to The Godfather or for the family to die in a hail of bullets after the couple of black guys who’d also entered and wandered over held up the diner.

Either of those would have been a satisfactory ending. But no, this was worse than Dallas’ “and then I woke up” homework essay ending.

I see that the Wikipedia entry for the Sopranos currently states that:

“Immediately following the airing of the final episode, the HBO web site crashed from an excess of visitors. Media reports speculated that the surge consisted of viewers disappointed by the finale. [49]“

It’s worth following that superscript link as it takes you to reports of the apparent outrage at the lack of “visual closure”.

Too right. Lazy writing at its worst and a terrible way to end a wonderful drama series.

More Spammer Idiocy

| Richard

I mean come on: what’s the point?

Today one of my sites has been generating Spam from a contact form - the usual links to sites selling pretty pink placebos or whatever.

So what exactly is the point? It’s so pathetic, I don’t even get annoyed and I’m clearly not stupid enough to buy any of this shit from a bunch of no-mark twats.

Still if it keeps some third world countryman employed at the expense of these twats then so be it.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

| Richard

…or “who will guard the guardians?”

So it appears that the head of the National Audit Office – which is there to “[scrutinise] public spending on behalf of Parliament” – is able to authorise his own expenses. In carrying out his role (apparently), Sir John Bourn has over the past six months spent £16,998 of taxpayers’ money on mainly first class travel for himself and his wife. And she does what, precisely?

Sir John and Lady Bourn took first class foreign trips to San Francisco, Venice, Lisbon, Brazil, South Africa, the Bahamas and Budapest. One trip to Brazil cost £15,997. So why – exactly – is the watchdog for public spending in the UK travelling first class to these destinations and more to the point why is his wife accompanying him?

Still the Public Accounts Commission investigated and cleared him of any wrongdoing. Well they would, wouldn’t they, given that our MPs claimed £87.6M in expenses themselves last year…