Sunny, calm and pleasant at the Castle this morn, the Strawberries are just about ready to pick, and I have just returned from Tesco’s with the stale bread, gruel and cat food.
Nightmare of a day yesterday, hence no post-fucking Microsoft decided to download an “update” while I was backing up my laptop and it froze then crashed, I couldn’t repair it so I spent 12 hours re-installing Vista(again), but I have lost the last three years of blog posts, picture, emails and my backup hard drive is stuffed as well.
I can recover the lost data if I am willing to pay $89 which I am not, so a truncated post today.
Anyone got a Mac they don’t want?
Over 2,000 frontline police officers are to demonstrate against police budget cuts in London next month.
The rally will be the police's biggest protest in the capital for three years and will be held by the Police Federation of England and Wales at Methodist Central Hall on July 13th.
Wonder if they will be “Kettled”.
Old fart Ken Clarke is in the doo, U-Turn Cam doesn’t know which way to face and crims are in abundance on our streets.
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate found that more than 100,000 criminal offences wrongly result in an “out of court disposal” every year.
The verdict was delivered as David Cameron faced calls to sack Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, over his plans to halve the sentences of many senior criminals who plead guilty.
More than a third of the 1.3 million crimes resolved by the police every year result in an “out of court disposal” such as a fixed penalty notice, a caution or a warning, a total of almost 500,000.
In a report published today, the inspectors conclude that around a third of those cases should have been dealt with in court, where magistrates or judges could impose larger fines, community sentences or a jail term.
Those who escaped court proceedings were “frequent or serious” offenders, the inspectors found.
No surprises there then....
Have a read, interesting article.
Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington State.
The victim asked, "Why are you carrying a weasel?" Police said the attacker answered, "It's not a weasel, it's a marten," then punched him in the nose and fled.
Police later found the 33-year-old Hoquiam man arguing with his girlfriend at another location and arrested him after a fight.
He said he had found the marten dead near Hoquiam, but police don't know why he carried it with him.
A marten is a member of the weasel family.
The mind boggles, pop goes the Weasel?
Gator the rescue goose’s adoptive parents, Bob and Lauree Strouse, were so concerned his feet would suffer on their walks; they got him a pair of sandals.
The couple designed the footwear to combat the hot and harsh concrete in the town of St Augustine, Florida.
The trio have become a regular sight since finding Gator wandering along the edge of Lake Roy in Winter Haven, Florida.
They feared its resident alligators would gobble him up, so took him under their wing. ‘We rescued him,’ said Mrs Strouse. They called him Gator because it’s a shortening of the rather pessimistic ‘Gator bait’. That was four years ago.
They now regularly take him out for a walk but make sure he is on a lead in crowded areas to make sure he does not get into mischief.
But at heart Gator is a home body. ‘He grazes in the yard,’ said Mr Strouse. ‘He eats grass and ants and bugs,’ his wife added.
Hippy Gander...
And talking of footwear, a school that banned 17 pupils from a GCSE exam as they were wearing the wrong shoes was labelled “draconian” by parents yesterday.
Four students refused to take off their casual footwear and missed the maths test, while 13 took it in socks.
Patrick Doherty, 15, was worried his feet would smell and sent his sister to fetch another pair – but she got back after the exam started and he was not allowed in.
Mrs Doherty has complained to governors at Cardinal Newman Catholic School in Coventry.
The school stated: “We have offered financial support to help buy shoes so there is no reason why anyone should not be in full uniform.”
Catholic school-should have been wearing chastity belts....
And finally:
A beer-loving inventor who created a motorbike out of a lager crate and a lawnmower engine is in hospital with after pranging the creation on its maiden voyage.
Mechanic Martin Koenig, 22, from Ober Olm, Germany, overturned the trike on a turn and was hurled to the ground, say police.
"Unfortunately he was not wearing a helmet and he hit his head. It wasn't the most stable vehicle in the world," explained one officer.
"He had built the entire thing himself from the frame to the engine.
"We don't think he'd consumed all the beer from the crate before the crash, but as he was on private land he wasn't tested for alcohol."
Just for his IQ,
That’s it: I’m orf to update the periodic table.
Angus
