Paramilitary policing.

Tom Uttley, writing in the Daily Mail, makes some timely observations on the increasing militarisation of the police and their increasing indifference to the general public. They are starting to behave like the states enforcers rather than the uniformed citizenry that we are encouraged to see them as. It's not going to get any better either!

The elephant in the room is always the same one though. The law abiding majority haven't got the guns and that sets them up to be victims.  If  there really is a need for the police to be routinely armed and armed to the degree that they are in the instance highlighted in the article, perhaps it is  time that our laws on personal defence and the ability to defend ourselves and our property were looked at with a view to empowering the law abiding not to be victims.

That won't happen though will it? The ability to control comes from fear. Give the population the rights and the tools to defend themselves and you lose that fear, control is reduced, freedom guaranteed. Instead we will see more laws and regulations, more bans and restrictions that will only ever be applied to the law abiding, because the criminals don't care - they got to keep their guns.

Gardening.

What little has been planted is not thriving and has been subjected to a continuous assault by the twenty million or so snails and slugs that appear to live there. If you add to this the fact that the entire cultivated area has been sown with cat turds and that the salad beds, which do have some quite good plants in them, are marinaded in cat piss, I can no longer be bothered to grow stuff that I can easily buy. I'll keep the strawberry beds and the herb garden but the rest will returned to lawn and shrubs beds and will become again a source of relaxation rather than a source of disappointment. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy gardening but I want to enjoy the results too. Collecting cat turds and waging an unending mollusc war just isn't enjoyable.

Picture from here and an old, but good, post on the subject of cat shit too.

This year has been a lousy one for the garden in general and especially for the vegetable garden. So I'm giving up!

Five years ago.............

We could do with more of this...........

Being forced to state the obvious just makes children of us all!

A bit of sarcasm is always welcome when it is used to exemplify the rank stupidity of having to state the bleeding obvious. I remember once, after reporting a minor crime, the policeman asking what my ethnicity was. When I asked if I said that I was black when I was obviously not would he have to record me as a black victim he told me that he had to record what I told him not what he could see for himself, which probably explains a lot.

 

Looks like we will have to let Maggie go!

Personally, I am saddened to hear of the death of Margaret Thatcher. I expect much will said and written about her over the next few days. I also think that much of what will said and written will be quite polarised with as many against her as for her. All I can say is this;

When I left school in 1978, I and most of my friends expected to work in a lousy low paid job with little hope of breaking out and improving ourselves, far less starting our own businesses. When Thatcher came to power in 1979 she changed something, somehow she swept away a lot of these preconceptions and as a generation we saw that we could do anything we wanted. As a result I have no debt and am able to generate an 'unearned' income, I have effectively retired at 50. The only reason I work is because I choose to. I am not alone, many thousands of my age are in a similar position.

Thatcher didn't make that happen, she allowed me to believe that I could make that happen.  She let me see that the state was not there to gift me everything but that everything was there for the taking. All I had to do was find the way. Margaret Thatcher was not perfect, she made some bad decisions, some good ones and some inspirational ones.

She was the best Prime Minister that I have lived under. There is no one in the current political class that even comes close and especially not in the Conservative party

Feline foolishness

Once you struggle through the mangled English and sentimental whimsy that flows through this article in the Herts and Essex Observer you realise that what we are talking about is a case of poor shooting at vermin, nothing more!
Why this needs door to door police enquiries in a time of (not much) austerity beggers belief.

If the owner of the animal in question  is prepared to stump up £2000 in vet fees, perhaps they should pay for the unwarrented police investigation into this non-crime. Why no insurance I wonder? Perhaps they just couldn't be bothered.

Seriously, if you choose to own an animal which is allowed to roam unchecked, destroy wildlife and defecate at will on others property, you have to expect some sort of karma now and again.

It's April and the Music Festival Season begins.