Here are some completely random photographs from our trip to the Art Deco Centenary event in Liverpool last weekend, good fun meeting friends, the weekend only being spoilt by some idiot writing off my rather lovely Bentley Arnage. When I have a moment I will credit the photographer but I have been busy sorting the insurance from the car and we are in the process of getting ready to go to Kelham Hall tomorrow. Busy, busy busy!!
The following is an abridged version of a story I saw on Facebook which I thought had its interesting points.
A motorist who blocked a police speed camera van and then called the officer inside it a ‘jobsworth’ must pay him £150 compensation.
Mr Richard Arnold prevented civilian officer Richard Mackenzie from filming speeding drivers after parking his lorry directly behind the police camera van saying he had to take an important phone call, concerning the health of his new-born grandson who was in hospital.
Mr Mackenzie stepped out of the camera van and told him he was ‘compromising the ability of the camera’ and asked him to move but Mr Arnold ignored this request and unleashed a tirade of abuse at him.
He was caught on camera telling Mr Mackenzie he was a ‘f****** jobsworth’ and called him a ‘p**** and a ‘w*****’ and continued, ‘you’re a f****** jobsworth, I will park here for the next hour and you won’t film anyone.’
It gets better, he then demanded the officer’s collar number, saying: ‘I want to report you for being a f****** p****’ and when Mr Mackenzie responded that he was just trying to do his job, Mr Arnold shouted: ‘And I’m doing mine so go f*** yourself.’
He finished by saying he hoped he went home and found his family dead, which may have been a little on the strong side and presumably only said in the heat of the moment.
Magistrates in Poole, described Mr Arnold’s behaviour as ‘diabolical and appalling’ as they sentenced him for obstructing an accredited person and using threatening or abusive words or behaviour.
As with every situation there are always two ways of looking at things, if the camera van was legally parked, I would assume another vehicle parked in front of it must also be legally parked.
Obviously, it’s unfortunate for Mr Richard Mackenzie an accredited person, who is just trying to nab speeding drivers but one assumes he could have moved his van to another location and hidden it behind a bush as they usually do!
Unfortunately, for Mr Richard Arnold who parked in front of the camera van, his language was a little fruity, even though vast numbers of the passing motorists must have had similar thoughts, it seems you get in trouble when you voice them out loud.
I was surprised with the sentencing as I was unaware of the offence of obstructing an accredited person, although I assume, using threatening or abusive words or behaviour is a proper offence. Either way it cost him £150!
Very soon I am going to have to pay the ridiculously expensive water bill from Affinity Water for £821.43 for the year, bearing in mind, we live in the countryside and are on a septic tank so this bill from Affinity Water is just to supply water and nothing else.
I have to say having done the arithmetic I’m tempted to refuse to pay as it would be cheaper for us to get Mary Magdalene round on a regular basis for a bit of foot washing with some Spikenard and still have change for a freshen up with some Frankincense and Myrrh to finish off.
Even if Mary wasn’t available it would still be cheaper to use bottled water than have a supply from Affinity Water, obviously we couldn’t run to the expense of Aqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani at $60,000 but compared to the cost of water from Affinity Water, I think we could afford Highland Spring.
The older I get I’m beginning to realise I’m not cut out for modern life for I keep casting my mind back to the old days when everything was so much cheaper and wondering why it should be so expensive today? Answers on a postcard to ……
I HAVE SEEN THE CONTENTS OF THE GUIDE AND IT SEEMS THE INSTRUCTIONS ARE BASICALLY, TO EAT CHEESE AND SURRENDER, ALTHOUGH I DOUBT WE COULD DO MUCH BETTER.
The container ship Solong has collided with the enormous oil tanker Stena Immaculate which was stationary in the North Sea and at anchor at the time with a cargo of 220,000 barrels of jet fuel on board, causing a massive fire on both ships.
Humberside Police have arrested a 59 year old man on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in connection with the collision and the death of a missing crew member.
Rather amazingly the highly volatile jet fuel fire on the tanker has been extinguished whilst the fire on the container ship continues to burn fiercely with no sign of it stopping at all.
There is no word at the moment as to what caused the fire on the container ship but the fire bears all the characteristics of an electric car battery fire, in that, it seems impossible to extinguish until completely immersed in water which may only happen when the ship sinks.
A pro-Palestinian protester climbed the Elizabeth Tower in London at the weekend in a major security breach staying perched on the building for some many hours whilst negotiators attempted to encourage him to come down.
Yet, another example of one person causing absolute chaos, with a cordon of police, at least three fire brigade cherry pickers on standby, together with ambulances, all blocking the streets around Parliament.
This utter chaos caused me to wonder, surely, they could have got a fire engine with a high-pressure hose to wash his feet, they were filthy I believe possibly with blood caused by his barefoot climb which could have caused an infection and washing may have helped in this regard. Obviously, there is always the possibility he may have fallen off during the process and plunged to the ground but at least whatever injuries he may have sustained on landing, septicaemia would not have been one of them and on the plus side it might have saved all that time messing about with the cherry picker and the team of negotiators and all the rest of the paraphernalia.
I must preface this post with the following trigger warning; This post contains an image of a slug, which is a particularly unattractive garden pest but I rather suspect a vast number of young people who have never ventured into the outdoors may have not come across one before.
Further to my previous post concerning the use of the word ‘drop’ to describe the release or the delivery of a programme to iPlayer, I had a considerable number of people who also thought, like myself that the programme had been cancelled or dropped from the schedule, hence their request to explain what the word ‘drop’ actually meant, other than the dictionary definition; ‘to fall vertically.’
In an effort to clarify the situation I replied thus; It’s the use of modern language where one uses completely the wrong word to describe something and sadly this sort of thing is becoming more and more common place. I seem to remember watching His Majesty’s BBC news where they used the word ‘dropped’ when talking about something which had just been released, my how far we have come from the days of Alvar Lidell reading the news on the wireless dress in a dinner jacket and with received pronunciation.
I’m hoping this fad which was started by the youth of today will eventually fade away before we get to a point where complete sentences will be made from random words, none of which relate to the topic being written about and are completely incomprehensible.
However, I had a thought that those of us who find this sort of thing a little uncomfortable might start a movement to show how foolish this is by starting our own trend using a word ourselves in completely the wrong context in the hope that it might point out the error of this sort of behaviour. I had thought I would start using the word ‘slug’ to describe something really ‘good’ and see if the young folk would start to use it but failed dismally as I’m not in touch with sufficient numbers of ‘d’ yoof dem,’ as they say. It may of course require a visit to my local neighbourhood to see if I could contact some of ‘my brothers in the hood’ to start the ball rolling.
Conversely, us older folk could take possession of the word for our own personal use and spread it about like wildfire in the hope it may catch on and here are some suggestions as to how to use the word ‘slug’.
Try, if possible, when using the word ‘slug’ that the intonation in your voice suggests a rather dreary and downbeat tone to imply the word means the complete opposite of ‘good or excellent’ God forbid someone should understand what you are tying to convey with your use of the word.
I shall dear reader, leave you with that challenge and wish you ‘slug’ luck whilst saying how really ‘slug’ it is knowing we are at the forefront of the evolution of modern language.
With all the nonsense that has been going on with Mr Trump recently, I just wanted to step back for a moment and reassess the events of the last few years in an attempt to put them into some sort of perspective.
Firstly, an aggressive foreign power, Russia, invades part of Ukraine and no other countries in the world come to their aid.
Some times goes by and the same aggressive foreign power invades yet again, this time destroying and capturing a considerable amount of the sovereign territory of Ukraine even though they have, with the assistance of America and other European countries fought bravely to defend their country.
A new president, Mr Trump is elected in America with a policy of putting America first and fxxk everyone else, who then decides he will no longer assist the Ukrainians in this war for their survival which goes down very well with Mr Trumps supporters in America. Not so well with the poor Ukrainians who are still fighting for their very existence.
If things aren’t going badly enough for the Ukrainians, Mr Trump then comes up with the bright idea, that he will force Ukraine to surrender to the Russians, allowing them to keep all the territory they have stolen, which once again goes down very well with his supporters in America and Mr Putin’s supporters in Russia.
Finally, Mr Trump is getting fed up with the Ukrainians and decides he wants the money back which the Americans have given to Ukraine to fight the war against Russia, so he will now put American companies into Ukraine to rape their vast mineral resources.
I think that’s a reasonably accurate summary of the timeline of events of the war so far.
So, to recap, an aggressive foreign power can invade a country, start a war and then be allowed to keep all the territory they have stolen and following that, another aggressive foreign power can effectively invade the country and steal all the mineral resources.
I would love to come to a conclusion on this matter but I cannot for the life of me think of a way to make any sense of this situation, how can these two evil men be allowed to get away with this? I am utterly discombobulated that this can happen in a supposedly civilised world, what strange times we live in!
I still speak normal English, so when I saw this, I was under the impression that the programme had been dropped, as that is exactly what this says. However, up until fairly recently when a programme was dropped it used to mean they had scrapped the programme for some reason or another, as when a programme was dropped from the schedules and it no longer remained.
Whereas I believe what this is trying to say is they have released or delivered all the episodes to iPlayer, even though what they have written has a completely different and opposite meaning. I do wish people would just stick to writing English, it would save me so much time that I waste trying to translate what they actually mean.
A shocked world yesterday listened in horror as Mr Trump conceded defeat to the Russians, saying ‘you may think this makes me look like a weak and defeated man, but I have to say this is far from the truth, just look at the way JD Vance and I beat up that little man from Ukraine.’ ‘Not only did we throw him out but he had to leave without having lunch.’
Whilst, we in the western world may see this as the beginning of the end for us with the continued march across Europe of Mr Putin’s stormtroopers, taking country after country Mr Trump sees things very differently stating, ‘there’s a different sheriff in town now and I’m putting America first, so if Europe wants to keep funding the war, that’s up to them, I’m out!’
So, not only is Trump abandoning ship, he’s leaving Europe without any lifeboats and although he never said, ‘I’m alright Jack, pull up the ladder,’ he might as well have.
Whilst Mr Trump’s version of negotiating world politics is more like the bullying tactics used to brow beat a less affluent competitor in a race to purchase a golf club and may well succeed with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy but I can’t see it working with Mr Putin especially as he has just seen how weak Mr Trump is having just thrown in the towel.
I know most American’s grasp of world geography is abysmal and Mr Trump obviously has a vision of Putin just marching into his immediate neighbours which I assume is why he is willing to leave us in Europe alone to get on with it. We are used to seeing world maps with America on the left, Europe in the middle and Russia on the right, however when looked at on a globe one can see the remarkable proximity of Russia to America. Perhaps, it might be useful if someone were to point out to Mr Trump just how close his neighbours are.
The Diary of a Country Bumpkin 