Full Metal Wheelbarrow

My UK chums might like to know about the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which will make it a criminal offense if "a person has or might engage in behaviour ‘capable of causing annoyance’ to another person."

The whole thing is outrageous , the "might" particularly so.

It also contains measures designed to prevent public gatherings and basically gives the police a charter to arrest anybody they don't like the look of - after all they might hve been going to annoy somebody...



If you think this is unacceptable, there's a petition here :-

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/uk-government-reject-the-anti-social-behaviour-crime-and-policing-bill?utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition

and then there's the write to your MP and try to get them to give a toss option, which may work if enough of us do it.

Come back Winston Smith, all is forgiven....

I'm sure we're all astonished to learn that the Gibberment has utterly failed to count the number of badgers in the proposed cull area properly and has therefore "postponed" said cull until they can borrow somebody else's fingers to count on.

Meanwhile, if you live in the UK, you can write to your MP <a href ='https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/stop-the-badger-cull">via this page</a> to tell them what a rotten idea it was in the first place. Hopefully, by next summer they'll have forgotten that they meant to do it at all.

Hardly surprising from the leader of a party whose ideology is founded on racism and bigotry, but Nick Griffin has proved what a lousy human being he is once more by tweeting the address of the gay couple who won their court case against a B&B landlady who discriminated against them. He's entitled to his opinions of course, vile though they may be, but he's not entitled to publicise confidential information which may lead to these inoffensive gents being targeted by other bigots. What a ghastly man.

 The UK Gibberment, in the assumption that they know better than the scientific advisers who're all telling them it's a bad idea and won't solve the problem, are about to authorise the slaughter of a bunch of blameless badgers in a futile attempt to halt the spread of bovine TB.

I don't know how much good online petitions do, but there's one to ask them not to kill the badgers :-hereabouts
Our mustelid chums would appreciate your support if you're able to sign the petition. The Babirusa of Rage is decidedly not amused.

Is it just me, or is there more than a touch of irony in a statue of Martin Luther King that's carved out of stone that's as white as snow?

Don't get me wrong - I think a memorial to Dr King is well-deserved and long overdue - but the word "whitewashing" was sloshing about in my brain as I watched Barack Obama give his speech. Perhaps I'm getting too cynical in my old age...

Today a leaflet came through the door explaining that we can no longer put cardboard in our brown compost bins because the rules for compost have changed and cardboard has too many contaminants.

And then they say that they're planning to introduce a new kerbside cardboard recycling collection …..in 2013. [headdesk}

Now, fair dos, it isn't the council's fault that the rules have changed, that's beyond their control. But a little bit of joined up thinking might have allowed them to line up the new collection service with the end of the old one I'd have thought.

Ah well, back to ripping up the cardboard and putting it in my compost heap...

Sometimes the Daily Mash seems to be a bit too close to the truth to be funny, like today's piece on the the arrest of Julian Assange.

Fewer swearwords than many Mash articles, but the pages isn't really worksafe, and much of the rest of the site definitely isn't.

I've just seen on the BBC news channel, some of the opening ceremony for an obscenely expensive hotel complex in Dubai.

$7 million dollars worth of fireworks.

Is it just me, or is it really quite appalling to spend so much money on needless frivolities when there are people dying in Zimbabwe and Congo because they lack the basic necessities of life?

This morning, there was an item on the radio news about how the UK is in peril from all the  bugs/spiders/wildebeest that sneak into the country in boxes of banananananas imported from Forn Parts.

Yesterday, they were singing the praises of importing some bug from Forn Parts to eat all the Japanese Knotweed.  What are these people on?

Meanwhile, we're apparently lending sixteen squillion quid of British taxpayers money to Iceland so they can restock the freezers repay the money they owe to British investors...

I didn't even watch "Yes Minister" but somehow I have a mental image of a sardonic Sir Humphrey explaining this slowly and carefully to an increasinglly confused and frustrated Jim Hacker.