Long time, no see

It may be just a rumour, but I might be feeling my way on this new Twitter thingy.

See you there, if I can get it together...

Slacking off

This blog is having to take a break for a while due to the demands of work (paying work, that is).

It will return soon, if only to annoy the Guardianistas, although why they bother coming here is beyond me.

If you don't like it, don't go back

IN THIS blinkered, bag-of-shite life that we endure, badgered by targets and rankings, it still comes as a surprise that prisoners of the Devon and Cornwall Police are being asked to fill out a 'customer satisfaction survey' after spending a night in the cells.

Rapists, paedos, thugs, drunks and fiddling NuLabour MPs are being asked to rate their incarceration experience based on the quality of the food, the cleanliness of their cell, the lighting and air temperature, the quality of the towels provided and how 'safe' they felt. (Safe? They're in the fucking nick. How safe can you get?)

The full list extends to 41 questions and also includes requests for ratings on bell/buzzer instruction, the provision of outside exercise if requested, the suitability of any reading material provided and whether or not lags were sufficiently instructed in how to make a complaint.

The clown in charge of this madcap pandering to miscreants is Chief Inspector Ivan Trethewey, the force's 'Head of Custody' who, in the weasel words of modern Britain, says: "I wanted a reality check: what I think the service is that we are providing versus what detainees tell us we are giving them."

The last time I spent a night in the nick (Good Friday, 1975, since you ask), customer satisfaction surveys were a bit thin on the ground. I was on my way back from a football match in a car we'd borrowed from a bloke we didn't actually know. I was booted across the concrete of a service station, 'accidentally' had my head smashed against the roof of the van as we were loaded up, 'fell down' the stairs at the nick and was given one paper plate of cold baked beans and two cups of machine tea a day, before being chucked out 64 hours later on Bank Holiday Monday morning, penniless and 150 miles from home.

But it certainly worked for me. I haven't been back since.

Surely it's time to sterilise the poor

SO WHAT are we going to do about Theresa Winters, the 36-year-old mother of 13 who is pregnant with her 14th even though every single one of her children has been taken into care?

This mad woman is locked into some kind of battle of wills with the social services, vowing to keep on producing children until the authorities allow her to keep one. The financial bill for the care of these poor kids runs into millions of pounds; the emotional toll is even greater, with many of the children severely disabled or now dead. Yet still we allow this utter nutter to irresponsibly procreate, while getting through 40 fags a day and a carton of Findus Crispy Pancakes while on benefits.

You all know the answer, however unpalatable it might be. She has to be stopped. She has to be sterilised. As should many of the thick-as-mince underclass slappers who see producing a child as a lucrative, home-securing career.

The problem is, who decides? Who will be the Lord High Childkiller, sitting in judgement on the poor and the disadvantaged; deciding which couple might fashion a credible life from the dregs of their miserable existence while giving the tramp-stamped, lycra-legginged, benefits-blaggers a fast track to the sterilisation ward?

Well let's have a points system. Unless you can clock up a sufficient score for being in a stable relationship, with at least one partner working (or willing to work), and without several previous multi-coloured offspring, then you won't be allowed that cash-generating infant. The minute you turn up at the doctor's surgery with your beneficial bump, then you'll be shipped off to the government abortion facility before you can say Gordon's Gin.

It might seem harsh, but you have to agree that it would meet with the approval of most poor bloody taxpayers.

Blue lights and red tape

HOW LONG do you think it will be before our Health and Safety nutters start killing more people every year than they actually save?

We've already had a child drown in a pond because the Hobby Bobbies called to his rescue hadn't been trained in the correct use of Wellington boots and so declined to intervene. And a woman bled to death after being stabbed by her boyfriend because armed police didn't fancy entering her home just in case the knifeman was still on the prowl.

Now we have 61-year-old Roy Adams, who dialled 999 when having a heart attack only for the paramedic who was supposed to come to his aid refusing to enter the house until he'd spent 16 minutes carrying out a risk assessment ... by which time, of course, Mr Adams was dead.

The nub of the problem was an open front door, which suggested to the lily-livered medic that there might be armed and dangerous burglars lurking within. The truth of the matter is that Mr Adams was asked by the emergency services to leave his front door open so that assistance could be at his side all the sooner. Ironic, isn't it?

The London Ambulance Service says: "In this case the medic conducted an on-scene risk assessment and had safety concerns and decided to call for back-up. The assessment is a mental check list which medics are required to go through when they arrive at an emergency. Questions include: does the scene look safe? Are there any obvious risks? Will I need extra help? Are there any steps or other obstacles that could cause a problem?"

Well no, you shithouse. There's just a dying man lying on the floor on the other side of that open door and you're such a jobsworth that you won't even help him. Honestly, it beggars belief.

EDIT: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1203501/Health-safety-row-man-dies-water-ditch-999-services-stood-waited.html

Make our MPs line the road at Wootton Bassett

I WAS going to go to Wootton Bassett on Tuesday. I don't know why; I just thought I should.

But when it was clear that it was going to turn into a flower-chucking, Diana-inspired media circus - as we saw on the telly later that night - I decided to give it a miss. I'll go again, another day, when it's quieter and a lone squaddie is being brought back in a body bag.

I'm torn on this whole thing. The lining of the streets of this minor English town to show respect for our fallen has grown organically, and for the right reasons. It began when a funeral cortege just happened to go down the High Street as the local branch of the British Legion were rehearsing for a parade. From there it's grown and grown, but it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between a genuine outpouring of emotion and respect and a sort of ghoulish theme park experience.

What is certain is that not a single government minister has ever shown his face in the vicinity. Neither, to the best of my knowledge, has any representative of NuLabour, the people who sent Our Boys to war, ever attended a funeral of one of the fallen. The excuse is that "if we go to one, we'll have to go to them all". Well what's wrong with that?

Unless some of the thieving bastards have resigned in the past 24 hours, there are 349 Labour MPs across the country. There is no reason at all why they can't draw up a rota to ensure that one of them manages to don the black tie and drag themselves along to any Army funeral in their vicinity. It's the least they can do.

And if that proves too difficult to organise, then let's just send toothbrush-moustached Bob Ainworth, Minister for the Armed Forces, down to Wootton Bassett every time that coffin-laden plane flies into RAF Lyneham.

The lads who are dying are simply doing the government's bidding. So why are our politicians so desperate to distance themselves from the death toll?

Coffee morning leaves a bitter taste

WE ALL know that old people can be bitter and vindictive - anyone who's experienced the hand-to-hand fighting in the queue at the Post Office on pension day will know what they're capable of - but to suggest that they might willingly maim toddlers is a bit beyond the pale.

Yet pensioners have been banned from holding a coffee morning at a public library in Peterborough amid just such fears.

The seven members of the over-50s coffee morning club have met at the library without incident for the last four years, but now 'officials' claim that toddlers who use the building at the same time could be injured by hot coffee.

Well, yes, of course they could, but they could also be hit by a block of ice dropped from a passing aeroplane, struck by lighting on the way there, or battered to death by their feckless parents while social services look on.

Death to Jackson fans

THE man behind the world's biggest Michael Jackson fan club claims that followers of the star have committed suicide because of his death. Gary Taylor, owner of MJJcommunity.com, said he understood the tragedies had taken place mostly outside the UK, but he believed one might have been British.

"I know there has been an increase. I believe the figure may now be 12. I believe there may have been one Briton who has taken their life," he said.

Let's hope that there's not a branch of the fan club in Bridgend, or it'll be a bloodbath.

Roll up for the pikeys' picnic

POLICE in Warwickshire, where an illegal gypsy camp sprang up on a Bank Holiday weekend a year ago, decided that they needed to improve relations with 'the travelling community', so they hosted a bash for 400 them at the force headquarters yesterday.

There were traditional Roma bands, dancing, bouncy castles, story-telling and food and drink provided for free. A PC PC said: "The party is new and engaging". Yes, I bet the tax-paying, crime-plagued families living next door to the illegal site are delighted about this pikeys' picnic.

But it's not just Warwickshire where cops would rather wine and dine disruptive elements than police them. The nutter in charge of North Wales police decided that he needed to 'engage' the area's Polish community and hear from them first hand about how they were 'victims of anti-social behaviour', so set up a £1,000 bash, refreshments laid on, for around 100 people.

One small problem - no-one turned up. Amazingly, this was seen as a positive, with Community Officer PC Keith Sinclair claiming: "It's reassuring to know that they have no real concerns."

It would be more reassuring if our police had the faintest idea about what concerns the poor bloody taxpayer.