How Nice It Must Be To Take Pride In Your Work...

...just not, alas, if you are a professional signwriter. *sigh*

No-One's Asking You To 'Speculate', Claire...

Avon and Somerset Police spokeswoman Claire Stanley said: "A thorough investigation is under way and we are exploring various lines of enquiry. However, at this stage it is too early to speculate about a possible motive for the graffiti."

Really? Even though the local 'anarchist' idiots have confessed?

In a note posted online, the anonymous group admitted targeting the front entrance, smashing windows and daubing "liberate" in graffiti on an adjacent wall.

...

The group went on to criticise the "hypocritical mind set" of zoos which "put themselves forward as champions of conservation".

*sighs*

Next Time, She Might Go Before She Leaves Home..?

Natalie Turner, of Kirkby Drive, Ripon, was travelling on the 36 bus from Ripon to Harrogate to visit a friend on December 13, when she had to get off the bus for medical reasons.

Miss Turner explained she was ill to the driver and needed to leave the bus in Ripley to use the public toilet.

Despite holding a valid £4.80 bus ticket, the bus driver told her she would not be allowed back on the bus or on the next bus if she left to use the toilet –so the 19-year-old student had no choice but to walk along the dark rural route to Harrogate in minus two degrees.

 And mum is, of course, furious. And does, of course, charge straight into the fray in the local newspaper:

Miss Turner’s mum Vikki, 46, said she is “appalled at the blatant disregard for a young girl, travelling alone, in extreme temperatures in the dark along a lonely road.”

Mrs Turner, a nurse for a GP practice in Ripon, told the Gazette: “Natalie didn’t have any cash on her and was only wearing a short skirt with tights and a leather jacket instead of a coat.”

Bit hard to see how that's something that's the fault of the bus company.

H/T: APILN

I Think I've Spotted This Year's 'Van Helsing'!

It's got it all, hasn't it?

Medieval high-tech weaponry: check!
CGI monsters a go go: check!
Leading man 'o the moment: check!

Please god, we'll at least be spared the comedy monk sidekick..?

Yet More Taxonomic Confusion At The 'Mail'...

*boggle*

There Goes Your Core Vote, Diane!

Local authorities should be given stronger powers to ban the spread of fried chicken shops and other fast food outlets, and end the sale of cheap alcohol from corner shops, especially near schools, according to proposals put forward by...

Wizened homunculus Tam Fry? No. No, actually.

...Diane Abbott, the shadow public health minister.

Diane Abbott gives an interview from her beach holiday 

Yeah. I know. Me too...

Discussing the need to tackle obesity and alcoholism, she said: "I am looking at planning legislation to make it easier for local authorities to ban not just McDonald's, but those chicken and chip shops that cluster around schools.

"I certainly think as part of Labour's policy review we should make it easier for local authorities to use public health criteria in planning and to stop the proliferation of chicken and chip shops. For too many children, fast food is not a treat but a dietary staple."

I can only imagine that Abbott's never taken a rush-hour train at the times schools have turned out for the day, and clocked the identity of the kids usually found tucking into the fried chicken.

If she had, she might have held her tongue.

Glenn Greenwald Is A Bit Naive, Isn't He?

Or...maybe that's just what he wants you to think:

Before getting to the merits of all this, I must say: I simply do not understand how someone who decides to become a journalist then devotes his energy to urging that the government be empowered to ban and criminalize certain ideas and imprison those who express them. Of all people who would want the state empowered to criminalize ideas, wouldn't you think people who enter journalism would be the last ones advocating that?

Well, no, Glenn, I wouldn't. And unlike Longrider, I'm not so sure you really get it, either...

How do people get so convinced of their own infallibility that they want to arrogate to themselves the power not merely to decree which views are wrong, but to use the force of the state to suppress those views and punish people for expressing them?

Gosh. It's a mystery, all right...

Maybe he just hasn't been at the 'Guardian' for very long?

A Little Thought To See Out 2012...

Dear, dear Yasmin:

The pressies were the usual nice and familiar stuff, except for that purple, satiny garment from my husband with a confusing number of straps and no instructions.

There! That'll set you up for 2013, won't it..? ;)

The 'Mainly Fail' Won't Change In 2013, I'm Betting...

Good old 'Daily Mail'. First, the headline:

Wow! A stuffed tiger, eh? Better click on the story.

Hmmm, hedging our bets are we? Now it's just 'stuffed animals':

And here's the ex-beast itself, identified in the caption as a jaguar.

It's clearly a leopard. Even for the 'Mail', that's impressive FAIL! you have to admit...

Chapter 542 In 'Piers Morgan Just Says...

...The First Idiotic Thing That Pops Into His Head':

CNN host Piers Morgan has said he believes the Bible and the U.S. Constitution are 'inherently flawed' and that the Bible needs an amendment changing its stance on same-sex marriage.

*boggle*

The man is, of course, a smug, self-publicising fool. The best thing the Americans could do is to simply ignore him.

"Ye Canna' Change The Laws Of Physics!"

Sue Hitchings and her husband Robert visited Knowle Post Office in Wells Road on Saturday to pay bills and to buy stamps.

But as they were queuing to be served a staff member approached them and said Mrs Hitchings would have to wait outside because her wheelchair was taking up too much space.

The couple believe Mrs Hitchings was discriminated against because of her disability.

Well, of course they do! However, the postmaster has to consider other things:

But the sub-postmaster who runs the post office has told The Post that banning large electric wheelchairs is not discrimination but a "health and safety issue".

It's quite simple - they can't fit in the shop! Naturally, that doesn't stop the usual disability advocates from demanding the moon on a stick:

Cheri Wilkins, chief executive officer of West of England Centre for Inclusive Living (WECIL), said that in an ideal world everyone with an impairment would have access to all public places and services.

She said the Equality Act 2010 was a positive step towards a reduction in discrimination, but believes there is still a lot more that needs to be done.

"This is a common problem that arises around access for disabled people," she said. "Many people do need to use wider wheelchairs and if a shop aisle is not wide enough, it does exclude them."

Well, Cheri, sweetie, just what are shopkeepers supposed to do? Apply for an exemption from the laws of physics?

You really should have learned at school that two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time...

The sub-postmaster of Knowle Post Office, who refused to give his name to The Post, claims he previously checked with The Post Office Ltd and Bristol City Council that the set-up of his shop was acceptable.

He said the aisles between the Londis convenience store part of the shop and the post office part were wide enough for manual wheelchairs but not wide enough for electric wheelchairs, like the one Mrs Hitchings uses.

He said: "Large electric wheelchairs don't fit down the narrow aisles because they are too wide and there's no turning space for them.

"We go out of our way to help all our customers, especially those with disabilities.

"I have asked many people in electric or motorised wheelchairs to stay outside while we get them what they want, or a family member gets it for them from the post office.

"We have had people in motorised wheelchairs lose control in the past. One customer had his foot run over, another was hit by a wheelchair and once a wheelchair user collided with our lottery machine. It is a health and safety issue.

"I've explained many, many times to many people and normally they don't have a problem. I also informed Post Office Ltd and the city council about it, as we are providing a public service. Neither of them raised any concerns."

It comes down, as it always does, to 'reasonable access'.

Sadly, some people just aren't reasonable! The law should maybe have accounted for that...

Move Over, Horatio! Step Aside, Grissom!

...this is a job for CSI: Tealing (Avian Division)!

Mr Donaldson, 39, a janitor at Dundee University, said he believes the mystery bird was killed on the spot by a bigger animal.

And, clearly, he's an expert...

He said: 'I'm baffled by what this bird was. 'Some people have speculated it might have been an ostrich but it doesn't look exactly like an ostrich to me.

Janitor training at Stirling University is more intensive than I thought!

'And even if that's what it was, what was it doing running about an abandoned airfield?

'I can think of no logical explanation.

Really? Not going for the UFO link then?

'The bird has clearly been killed here, by what I don't know. It looks like it's been moved around by whatever was eating it.

'But it was still fresh, and it stank a bit.'

Ah. Right. The possibility that it's a dead pet that someone's dumped for the foxes is out of the question, then?

As yet, no one has been able to come up with an explanation for the bizarre find.

Eh..? I just did!

You Fooled Me?! You Must Be A Soooper Genius!

There's always a few stories every year of the greedy and the mildly-criminal gullible fools who get duped by conmen. You know, usually if it's too good to be true, that's a clue.

And those stories are often filed in the 'And now...' section, with the sneering contempt of the editor practically wafting off the page. 'Ah', you can imagine them thinking, 'the lower classes are so dim!'

So, when they are the ones duped, it's time to break out that popcorn!

We feel so stupid: how could my wife and I have been conned out of more than £7,000 by one phone conversation? The answer is that the scam was brilliant in design and execution.

Well, of course it must have been! It was you, after all,. And you wouldn't fall for anything other than a scam conceived and executed by a Moriarty, a Napoleon of crime, a Hannibal Lecter of scamsters. A perfect con with no flaws.

So...how'd it go down?

It began with a phone call after dinner on a Friday night. My wife answered the phone and the caller announced herself as ‘DCI Jane Seymour of the Serious Fraud Office’.

The usual story - your card's been used in a scam. So...call the officer back to verify she's who she says she is? Our hero is prepared! Good lad:

Was DCI Seymour who she said she was? How could we know she was really working for the Serious Fraud Office? Her ANSWER turned us from cautious sceptics into credulous fools. ‘Call 999 and check me out,’ she urged.

Whoa, Nellie! Dial 999? The emergency number? The ones the police keep haranguing us should only be used in an emergency?

FAIL!!

So we did. I put the phone down, picked it up again and dialled 999. The dialling tone was normal, the phone rang and the response was as prompt and efficient as a law-abiding citizen could wish for.

*sigh* Scammers always are. They know you catch more flies with honey than vinegar...

‘We can have your cards blocked immediately,’ said DCI Seymour to reassure us. ‘New cards can be delivered to your house in three working days, or five for the foreign cards. But first we’ll need your PIN numbers.’ That should, of course, have rung alarm bells.

Well, duh!

How many times have we all been told, ‘Never, never give your PIN number to anyone. Your bank will never ask for it’?

Well, quite!!

We hesitated — and this is where DCI Seymour scored again. ‘Don’t tell me the codes,’ she said. ‘Tap them into the phone and they will be sent straight to our technical team.’

Because it's OK to give the codes to them. Riiiight.

DCI Seymour kept reassuring us that all would be well. ‘Are you OK? Do you have enough money for the weekend? We can get you emergency funds of £300 delivered to you by 3pm tomorrow. We’ll debit it from your HSBC account and I’ll call you again tomorrow at noon.’

Because that's the sort of service you can expect from the police, right? Or rather, it's the sort of service that people like the author fondly think the police should offer.

And when she said she would send a courier round to pick up our compromised cards, it seemed so reasonable.

/doublefacepalm

The conclusion to this sorry tale? Well, as you can guess, the penny finally dropped. But it took a while.

The police — the real police — have been sympathetic and tell us that the con is targeted at the well-to-do and the elderly who may not be as techno-savvy as younger account holders.

Apart from the 'not hanging up their end', there's nothing 'techno-savvy' needed here. Most of it's good, old fashioned suspicion. And also a bit of worldly experience - is what they are saying plausible?

And I'm afraid the answer was a big 'No!'. Unless, of course, you inhabit the quaint liberal world where everything is just supposed to work that way. The police will liaise with your bank? Why, yes. Of course they will! That's just how it works, isn't it?

So let's hope that the next time an idiot swaps his hard-earned for a laptop that turns out to be a bag of water bottles, the newspaper won't sneer.

But of course, they probably will.

"Beat the clock, ya gotta beat the clock.."

Some fun to be had in Plymouth:

A new type of crossing is up and running on Royal Parade.

Oh?

The signals, next to the Big Screen, were installed this week and count down to show pedestrians exactly how long they have to cross the road.

A green man still lights up when it is safe to cross, with a countdown before the red man appears to let people know they should clear the crossing.

Oh boy! That's not going to have some unforeseen consequences, is it?

"I felt a great disturbance in the (Police) Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."

"I fear something terrible has happened."

A constable is now known to have falsely claimed he witnessed Andrew Mitchell’s encounter with two other officers in Downing Street when he is alleged to have called them ‘f***ing plebs’.

And CCTV footage screened by Channel 4 News last night cast doubt on the widely-publicised police version of the incident on the evening of September 19.

Ooops! Cue frantic spinning from those who pinned their hopes of unseating the government on this.

But on the bright side, suddenly there's a new found respect for what the public thinks, at least!

*settles down with huge box of popcorn*

When You Sneer At The Lower Orders In The 'Guardian'...

...do at least try to get your own fact straight, eh? Stewart Lee on the UKIP fostering scandal:

Was there nothing Gove's adoptive family could do to nurture his nature, just as Gregory Peck in The Omen could not change the fact that his adopted son Damien was the offspring of Satan and a goat?

It was a jackal, Mr Lee, as every fule know.

So That's Why They Cut The Hands Off Thieves In Sharia Law!

A computer thief could not understand why he was charged with burglary because he had not set foot in the house he raided, a court heard.

Wha..?

Robert Mochrie, mitigating, told the court: “He didn't appreciate he was committing a burglary at the time.

“It was not the case where he actually entered the property as one would ordinarily expect. He broke the window and it was his hand that went in.”

Oh! Right. Well, that's clearly differ...

Wait! No, it's not! The judge'll never fall for that, especially when he's a prolific burglar and so should really know the rules of the game?

But then, I remember what passes for a 'justice system' here...

Crozier faced a minimum three-year prison sentence because he has two previous convictions for burglary, Teesside Crown Court was told.

But the judge, Recorder William Lowe, QC, accepted there were “unusual features” to to case and jailed the 24-year-old for 18 months.

*sighs*

Mr Recorder Lowe said: “It is a burglary in law and I understand you might see it somewhat differently.”

Is it me, or does he almost sound...apologetic...about having to pass sentence at all?

H/T: The incomparable Anna Raccoon via email

The 'Mail' Photo Editor, Folks! /Golfclap

Eagle-eyes readers will note that, despite the headline, not one of those vehicles is a 4x4.

Oh, except for the vehicle that the man whose car is stranded in the bottom-right picture is being helped into - that's a Land Rover.

That's some spectacular fail, 'Mail'...

The Local Paper Isn’t The Best Forum, Sometimes…

Angry David Oultram has been left without gas for more than a week – after engineers claimed they could not work in his cluttered home.

I'm not entirely sure ‘cluttered’ is the word. ‘Cluttered’ implies he has too much stuff, too many books, nick-nacks, etc. Something I'm surely guilty of...

This isn't ‘cluttered’; this is the first stage of hording:

Maybe there’s a previous gas engineer under all that…

The unemployed 56-year-old believes Moorlands Housing has put his life at risk by denying him heating and hot water as temperatures dip.

I can’t see how – those layers upon layers of accumulated stuff must insulate the house pretty well!

… furious Mr Oultram, who suffers from arthritis and sciatica, believes the engineers could have worked around the clutter and should not have turned off his gas.

Mr Oultram, who lives in Wardle Crescent, said: "My mother and sister both died a couple of years ago, and they left me their belongings, and I have a lot of things in boxes and bags that have built up over the years.

"But there was enough room for them to do their work. I used to work as a painter and decorator and I sometimes had to work in a cupboard where you couldn't swing a cat.

"I think these gas engineers were just being awkward."

Well, no. No they aren't. You cannot expect anyone to work in those conditions.

And did you really expect that, having seen the pictures of your house, any reasonable person would agree with you, rather than with the gas company?

Well, Of Course Not. Who Expected Any Different?

Two bungling police officers who failed to find Tia Sharp's body while they searched her grandmother's New Addington home will not face the sack, a Met source has revealed.

The constable and "supervising" sergeant – part of a team of officers who scoured the loft because sniffer dogs were not trained to – have escaped with a "minor" telling off, despite the blunders making it harder for experts to establish the 12-year-old's cause of death.

Splendid! No doubt Inspector Gadget will find time to crow about this, as he watches the reputation of the police sink even lower in the eyes of the public…

A police source told the Advertiser: "It is the most minor form of discipline. This is at the bottom of the scale.

"It's like when you go to court, you can get life imprisonment or you can get an absolute discharge. It is a telling off but it's a minor one. Nobody's job is at threat."

The source added: "It strikes me as odd, that when a policeman makes a mistake people want to sack him, but when a news reader gets their lines wrong nobody complains."

Yes, well, when Kay Burley or the like makes some huge error it’s amusing or infuriating, but hardly ever does it result in a failure to find a dead body or have the potential to jeopardise a trial!

Despite widespread public anger over the bungles, New Addington councillor Tony Pearson said tougher disciplinary action against the officers is not necessary.

He said: "It will never change the investigation. It was difficult for everyone concerned and the key for the family is to make sure there is justice for Tia, not to have a witch hunt on individuals."

It’s not a ‘witch hunt’ – it’s ensuring that those who fail to do the job for which our taxes are taken from us are properly dealt with.

But changes have since been made to the force's official search guidelines since her body was found in The Lindens roof space, wrapped in a sheet and plastic bag, on August 10.

A great big 42-point font warning saying:

HAVE YOU CHECKED THE LOFT??? 

I assume.