The world has gone completely fucking mad.

This week has been one of infuriatingly intense work, so while I’ve been watching our national descent into madness, I’ve been less disposed to comment on it at length.

A supermarket is being prosecuted over the way it packages a joint of beef, “but it will be hard to appease campaigners”. A Belgian Chechen Islamist boxer blew himself up in Copenhagen, in an apparent attempt to destroy the offices of a newspaper that is in an altogether different city.

A man in a white dress is visiting the UK, to promote his new exercise DVD. Waving is definitely going to be the next big craze. Even armchair athletes can join in the fun. Everyone on the internet is already getting quite exercised about the whole thing.

Meanwhile, Jeff Randall has cottoned on to something The Devil has been banging on about for quite a while now. namely, that the slash and burn ConDems are, in fact, going to spend more of our money than Gordon Brown ever did, yet at the same time, they are locked into a dance of mutually assured destruction with the unions. Charlotte Gore is inexplicably happy.

Here’s something to keep you distracted from the horrible reality.

 

Enjoy.

AJ

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This is just getting silly

I recently remarked upon my 2010 position in the Total Politics Blog Poll, in the Scottish Blogs section.

Apparently, I came in at #13 in the Scottish list this year, which is a decent enough improvement, and puts me in the mix with some distinguished purveyors of porridge-based prose.

But it’s time to right this wrong, so I’ve dropped TP an email to ask them to put me in the right categories.

And that’s precisely what I did. My email exchange with the very lovely Emily Sutton included the following:

I don’t live in Scotland – I’m English and I live in England. I just happen to support Scottish independence for English reasons.

I’m right wing libertarian.

So now I can be absolutely sure that Total Politics is taking the piss, having just discovered that as well as #13 in the Scottish rankings, I am also #40 in the Left Wing Blogs Top 100, ahead of Jack of Kent, LabourHome, Pickled Politics, Kerry McCarthy, George Monbiot, Bevanite Ellie and many, many others.

It looks like I’m not the only one who shouldn’t be in the list though, so it all looks like a terrible terrible mistake.

I shall communicate further with Ms. Sutton.

In the meantime, however, I’m having the badge, if only for comedic incongruity value.

Sod it, I’m having the Jock one as well.

AJ

Brainwashing state-owned children

You probably think they’re your children. They’re not. They belong to the state. You’re merely charged with delivering them back to the institution daily.

Corrugated Soundbite brings word of this (via Filthy Engineer, via Counting Cats via.. oh never mind.), from one of the biggest unacknowledged powers behind big-government across the western world.

Here’s what they’re doing to children throughout the Western world. Far Left Communists and their useful idiots with a totalitarian agenda doing exactly what a Far Left Fascist and his useful idiots were doing in the 1930s.

Look at the hatred in the eyes. Listen to the way he spews all this having evidently been given no proof whatsoever to back up these claims. Only repetition. He’s known nothing else and not been shown how to find it.

Captain Ranty is right. These are the children of Mr and Mrs Normal.

This is just the tip of the Gramscian iceberg.

So, if you have kids, just remember that every time you drop them off at the school gates, they’ll spend the next 6-8 hours being turned into a collaborator.

Have you read 1984? If not, you need to.

Unless you imbue in your kids a balanced outlook and the reasoning powers and strength of character to see that Greenpeace scaremongering and propaganda is precisely that, they’ll be your downfall, and ours too. You’ll have failed as a parent and a reasoning adult. If you can live with that, okay, but I’ll bestow no mercy upon your ignorant spawn should they cross my path.

AJ

Oh no. No you fucking don’t…

I did read something about this earlier in the year, but I didn’t take it terribly serious as it sounds completely unworkable. In light of recent monumental fuck ups by HMRC, however, the horror of this idea couldn’t be clearer:

 

Instead of employers deducting income tax then paying gross salaries to employees, the gross monthly payment would go to an HMRC-run tax “calculator”, which would then pass the net salary to the worker.

The reform would mean the end of traditional monthly payslips, because employers would no longer be able to tell workers how much tax they had paid each month.

Errr.. no. No way.

If you really need me to explain how many ways that could possibly go wrong, you should probably go and read a blog about babies or kittens or football instead. Baaaa.

AJ

Polizei

It’s about time PCSOs were ditched.

Police were accused of being ‘heavy handed’ today after four officers were dispatched to deal with a 84-year old World War Two veteran – because he was riding his bicycle on the pavement.

Great grandfather James Gresty was chased into a bank by two police community support officers after they said he was cycling on the path outside.

The pair ordered Mr Gresty to come outside for a ticking off but when he refused they called for ‘back-up’ from two other regular officers in a nearby police van.

They promptly drove over the pedestrianised street outside the Halifax bank in Sale, Greater Manchester, to reach him and issue him with a £30 fixed penalty for an offence of cycling in a pedestrianised area.

Today widower Mr Gresty, who won several war medals during his three year service as a private with the York and Lancaster Regiment, said: ‘I was shocked at the attitude of these two officers who wanted to speak to me.

‘They were carrying on as if I had been guilty of committing a serious criminal offence.

‘They were being aggressive, rude and heavy handed, all over an in issue of whether I was cycling on the pavement.

‘I wouldn’t mind but they didn’t even get that right either. I had got off my bike before I got on the pavement. God knows why four police officers had to be involved.

‘You would have thought they would have something better to do with their time. I’m an 84-year-old man, not some teenage hoodie. 

‘And it’s all rather galling that that their "back"up drove across a pedestrianised area, which I think is far more dangerous than riding a bike across it.

‘It seemed that these two PCSOs were young people who put on a uniform and thought they owned the place. Obviously the power had gone to their heads.’

Indeed.

But then, this is Greater Manchester Police we’re talking about. We should expect no less.

Massive respect to Mr Gresty for standing up to the bullying little shites. He deserves our support.

AJ

UPDATE: The comments under the Manchester Evening News’ version of the same story make for depressing reading. We’re living in an age of collaborators.

Laugh? Cry? Fucked if I know.

My first reaction was to laugh. I had to think again.

 

WTF? Really? Damn, I’m strong for just driving straight past that McDonalds today, even though I fancied a Big Mac. Yeah.

The logic and ‘science’ in the article is comical in itself. But it was completely eclipsed by the comments that followed it:

Trolling, right?

I wish I could be sure.

AJ

Mad cat lady outed.

Mary Bale must be rueing her impulsive decision to put that cat in a wheelie-bin.

Commenters on my post yesterday observed that her anonymity would be fleeting, and they were right.

But I have to say, she’s not doing a very good job of showing contrition.

A woman caught on camera dropping a tabby cat into her owners’ wheelie bin said today that she didn’t know what all the fuss is about.

Mary Bale is now focus of a vitriolic campaign on Facebook with postings calling for her death, describing her as "evil" and "a psycho" and demanding she be sacked from her job as a customer services assistant with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

But the 45-year-old, who is the subject of an RSPCA investigation and is said to live just half a mile from the scene of the cat’s 15-hour incarceration in Coventry, told the Sun that she did "not deserve to be hated" for her moment of madness". People were over-reacting, she said.

Opprobrium aside, it’s really quite an odd occurrence, isn’t it? The kind of thing you’d expect a daft, thoughtless, idiot teenager. Not a grown woman. Or an overgrown woman for that matter. I suspect she’s somewhat developmentally disabled.

"I really don’t see what everyone is getting so excited about. It’s just a cat," Bale said.

Bale added: ""People are reading too much into things. I’ve no feelings about cats one way or the other. I don’t keep pets myself, but I have no problem with people who do.

"To think this video is being seen around the world is unbelievable. I’m a very private person and don’t want to upset any members of my family. I don’t know what my relatives will think, but to be honest I think everyone’s overreacting a bit.

"OK, I shouldn’t have done it, but it’s just a cat at the end of the day. I don’t think I deserve to be hated by people all over the world, it was just a split second of madness."

On balance, as much of a hateful shit-bag as I think she is, I’m inclined to agree with her.

Wanting her strung up is rather out of proportion with what she’s done. Perhaps we should settle for amputating one of her arms at the elbow. Or should we take the whole bingo wing?

Jack of Kent finds reason to disagree with West Midlands Police’s claim that she hasn’t committed any criminal offence, so as I said originally, let’s hope the RSPCA do their evil worst with her.

AJ

Thieving Tory Socialist Bastard

Sorry – it’s behind the Times’ paywall, but it deserves mentioning, because it demonstrates that, in Andrew Mitchell, we have a Tory minister who is, in fact, a redistributive socialist.

After a harrowing trip to meet flood victims in Pakistan, a cabinet minister has called on workers who receive bonuses to donate some of the money to charity.

Errr okay. After 13 years of Labour I’m hideously overtaxed, my pension and other investments have been repeatedly decimated by Gordon Brown’s government. And you think I’ve got spare money to pour into a bottomless pit?

And I’m not even going to bother rehearsing the arguments regarding donating money to Pakistan.*

The Tory socialist goes further.

“There are some companies who require people who are paid bonuses to give some of it away,” Mitchell said. “It is about accepting that we all have a part to play when it comes to giving aid.”

That’s an incredible statement from a Conservative MP, don’t you think?

Let me tell you that I’d play merry fucking hell if my company forced me to give a single penny of my hard earned pay over to any sort of charity. Yes I get a bonus, comprising elements related to personal performance and company performance. It’s not a massive sum, but it’s written into my contract of employment and it was one of the reasons I took the job in the first place.

Oh sure, they run a GiftAid scheme for those who choose to donate. They contract that out to some hokey outfit who have a list of about 40 charities you can give to. I ran through the list and identified that nearly 30 of those were fake charities according accounts filed with the Charities Commission.

What this implies is that I’ve already given involuntarily to those charities via taxes. So naturally I don’t give anything more to them. Not a red cent.

But to be forced to make donations? Fuck. That.

What’s that you say? I’ve already given money to Pakistan? Of course I have. Silly me.

Mitchell has just doubled the government’s contribution to the floods fund to more than £64m — so he can afford to take the moral high ground. However, the British public, while giving generously, are not digging as deep for this natural disaster as they have for others.

My share of that £64 million is already way more than I would be prepared to donate to the cause.

Perhaps my philanthropic aspect will become more prominent when the state stops taking my money with a gun to my head and giving it to causes – that more often than not I disagree with – on my behalf.

AJ

* If you’re quick, there was a surprisingly balanced debate on that matter on Any Questions on Friday night

UK Government demands that Libya doesn’t laugh at our rank stupidity

“At least restrict your pointing and sniggering to the Scots,” says the Foreign Office.

Abedelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was freed on August 20 last year by the Scottish Executive on the grounds he had only three months to live. However, Libyan officials said yesterday that he was now expected to live another two years.

Col Muammar Gaddafi has decreed that Megrahi must receive the same level of medical care afforded to state leaders.

The Foreign Office warned that any celebration of his freedom would be ”tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive”.

It’s utterly fucking slapstick, isn’t it?

A spokeswoman said: ”The Government is clear that Megrahi’s release was a mistake. Both the current Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary made this clear at the time.

”Particularly on this anniversary we understand the continuing anguish that Megrahi’s release has caused his victims, both in the UK and the US.

”Any celebration of Megrahi’s release will be tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive to the victims’ families.

”We have made our concerns clear to the Libyan government.”

And the Libyan government put the phone down politely, then collapsed onto the floor on howling paroxysms of laughter.

Once again, politicians make us an international laughing stock.

AJ

I errr. Oh FFS.

I despair at this sort of utter stupidity.

A bereaved mother has led a protest against the ending of a speed camera partnership scheme in her area.

Presumably the young child she lost was mown down by a speeding driver. No? What then…

Claire Brixey’s son Ashley, 20, was killed in a crash in Limpley Stoke, Wiltshire, in 2004 when the car in which he was a passenger landed upside-down in a swimming pool after the driver lost control.

Well, very sad I’m sure.

Ms Brixey, who lives in Standerwick on the Wiltshire/Somerset border, has been a road safety campaigner since the crash.

In the protest in Trowbridge, she urged a rethink of the decision to end the Wiltshire and Swindon Camera Safety Partnership scheme.

Ms Brixey told Sky News: "We need to show the importance of them (speed cameras) and that we need to keep them, that they are there for a very, very good reason and they do save lives."

And this tragedy happened in 2004 you say? When there were FUCKING LOADS of speed cameras operating in Wiltshire?

They didn’t save your son. What good did they do? Anything?

UPDATE: As pointed out by @TheABD on twitter… regarding the car in which Ms Brixey’s son died:

The driver Richard Joyce, who was twice over the legal alcohol limit and had taken ecstasy before getting behind the wheel

So errr… speed cameras, which have replaced traffic policemen are REALLY GREAT at detecting drugged and drunk drivers. (More from The ABD on this incident and the way it has been manipulated here).

This is precisely why the bereaved should not be given a voice in policy, because they are rendered incapable of rational and objective thought.

Have some dignity and grieve in peace, then move on, instead of dedicating the rest of your life to a misguided march of miserablism.

Fucking idiots.

AJ

UPDATE: I missed another golden quote in that article:

Ellen Booth, campaigns officer for road safety charity Brake, said: "Increasingly, decisions being made on speed cameras are more about politics and less about facts.

Ahaha… Ahahahahaaaaaa. Ahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaasaaaaaa GRRRRRRRRR. Do these people have no self-awareness at all?

For those who don’t know, Brake was set up by a woman who wanted to campaign for speed cameras, reduced limits, more penalties and fines etc, because her son was killed by an HGV whose brakes had failed.

If you want to know some of the FACTS that Brake find deeply uncomfortable, get yourself over to the Safespeed website.

In the case for sterilisation

… I give you exhibit A:

  

LARA CARTER has slept with 20 strangers in the past year – in a desperate and reckless bid to get pregnant.

The self-confessed "sperm hunter" uses ovulation kits to tell her when she is most fertile then pretends to be drunk, throwing herself at unsuspecting fellas and making it obvious she wants sex.

If Lara, 25, meets a man who wants to use a condom, she will offer one from her purse – which she has already pierced a hole in.

Lara, an assistant office manager, says: "This is absolutely the right time for me to have a baby and nothing is going to stand in my way.

"All my friends have babies and I desperately want to be a mum.

"I don’t have a steady boyfriend and feel my time to have a baby is running out. I only need a man to provide his sperm – I would have no interest in seeing him again. That is why I’m a sperm hunter."

It’s really difficult to know where to start, isn’t it?

With no regular boyfriend, Lara’s desire to have a baby has driven her to target strangers as potential fathers to her unborn child.

She says: "I’ve had a couple of proper relationships in the past two years.

"But each time I have mentioned the idea of having a baby, the bloke has run a mile.

"Men my age aren’t that interested in settling down with a kid so quickly into a relationship, so I have given up on trying to have a baby with a partner. I’ve looked into getting a sperm donation but it’s too expensive.

Men her age aren’t interested in getting shackled to someone who is quite clearly mental and a filthy duplicitous slag.

"My nearest private clinic costs £295 for a consultation then it would cost a further £2,000 for a donation.

"There are plenty of men out there willing to have a one-night stand for free."

Oh yes – and lots of free money and free housing for you to raise your little miracle.

I hope she turns out to be barren.

Remember guys – be careful out there. Always provide the condom and always make sure the contents can’t be retrieved after you’ve gone home.

Some of those women are mad, bad and dangerous to nob.

AJ

Prize-winning audacity and unparalleled delusion. Labour in a nutshell.

You couldn’t have scripted this shit:

Question: who said the following about which administration?

"…the greatest advances in civil liberties of any post-war government…"

Any guesses?

The answer is almost too unbelievable to be true…

They’re right, you know.

The above quote is taken from former Home Secretary and retiring Blackburn MP, Jack Straw’s endorsement of David Milliband yesterday (full text available here). It refers, incredibly, to the government of which both he and the Labour leadership contender were members.

Jack. Straw. ?! Thinks the New Labour government brought about "…the greatest advances in civil liberties of any post-war government…" !?

That’s right readers; the government which:

• Introduced, then fought the ECHR for, the indefinite retention of innocent DNA profiles
• Introduced the Identity Card and National Identity Register
• Tried and failed to increase the length of detention without charge to 90, then 42 days
• Introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, to allow bureaucrats, councils and quangos to spy on people
• Empowered the police to conduct random stop and searches under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act
• Introduced authoritarian programmes such as control orders, the intercept modernisation programme and the e-borders scheme
• Created a dizzying number of large and unstable state databases from ContactPoint to the Summary Care Record system

In fact, it was none-other than Jack Straw, who tried to remove the right to trial by jury during his time in the Home Office.

Those are some advances, Jack.

By Dylan Sharpe

For further analysis of Straw’s speech and Labour’s record, check out Full Fact’s article here.

Where do these people get the sheer brass nerve to make such assertions with a straight face?

Oh well, bye Jack – don’t hurry back, you wretched old bastard. I’ll pray for you tonight while I’m advising God of the people who need an immediate dose of brain cancer.

AJ

H/T Dick Puddlecote

CPS attempting to use BAD LAW to stitch people up. Again.

At least this time they eventually failed.

But not before a man’s name had been dragged through the mud and his access to his child denied.

Back in March:

The first charge centred on an allegation that he had in his possession a clip featuring human-animal sex. This was dropped after the prosecution discovered that the animal in question – a tiger – was actually a CGI-generated spoof, modelled loosely on Tony the Tiger of Frosties fame, and that the tiger finished off his sex act by turning to camera and saying "That beats doing adverts for a living".

The first charge was dropped by the CPS on the date of the court hearing.

On the second charge, the man was told by the judge that he faced being sent to prison.

Yet, last week:

…

In March, following advice from his legal team, Holland pleaded guilty to possessing one extreme porn clip and was stunned to be told that he might face a prison sentence. Holland then spoke to members of Consenting Adult Action Network and sexual rights organisation Backlash, who put him in touch with their legal adviser, Myles Jackman of Audu and Co in King’s Cross, London.

So he pleaded guilty on the basis of his legal advice. A bit like the Paul Chambers case.

Then along came a lawyer who had made a different reading of Labour’s wooly and insidious legislation and…

Jackman, a solicitor specialising in extreme pornography offences, advised Holland that contrary to previous advice, there were grounds for pleading not guilty.

On this basis, Holland took the unusual step of applying to the court for permission to "vacate his plea". This is a technical device whereby an individual may go back on a guilty plea at any time before sentencing.

In May, His Honour Judge Rogers, sitting at the Mold Crown Court granted Holland leave to vacate his plea from guilty back to not guilty. Holland was therefore due to stand trial again yesterday. He was expected to call several expert witnesses who would have challenged the characterisation of the clip as "pornographic", arguing instead that the content was intended to be a form of extremely bad taste joke and not sexual in nature.

The CPS, however, declined to offer any evidence, and the matter is at an end.

Err…

We spoke to Holland after the case yesterday and he declared himself very relieved. Due to the sexual nature of the case, he has been barred from contact with his daughter since the case began and he is now determined to re-establish contact. He told us: "Now I can start to put my life back together."

The CPS has not yet commented on this matter, or on the fact that on each charge, it was not until the day of the court appearance that it decided the evidence to hand was inadequate. ®

So that’s it then.

No harm done, eh?

Fascist idiots.

AJ

Siding with the enemy

Feminists are up in arms about this:

Six street-based sex workers in Newham, east London, were named on the Metropolitan police website. Police posted their photos, full names and dates of birth.

…

In a second case, two Polish women who were selling sex from their home in Aldgate, east London, were raided by City of London police as part of Operation Monaco.

…

Police took photographs of the Polish women, who were not charged. Last Sunday, photos appeared in News of the World. The women said they were distressed by the police raid and the lack of warning that their pictures would appear in a tabloid newspaper.

And for once, I am in complete agreement with them.

Absolutely disgusting fascist policing. Yet again.

AJ

Equality: Great job, ladies

I wonder if the ConDems are intent on keeping Jack Straw’s policy of preferential treatment for female convicts.

Miss Brown stabbed her boyfriend’s upper thigh with a carving knife severing several arteries, before running away.

Her sister Toni, 25, refused to call an ambulance to her home in Greater Manchester.

A jury at Manchester Crown Court was told he would probably have survived if he had received medical attention.

And another:

Lucy Viner-Mood, 22, and Lois Gibson, 18, locked Georgia Fenn in a flat for 18 hours while they beat her unconscious repeatedly.

Miss Fenn, 19, suffered burns from a cigarette lighter, had her ponytail cut off and suffered two black eyes and a broken nose.

The two flatmates attacked her in March after hearing that she had slept with Viner-Mood’s former boyfriend, Maidstone Crown Court heard.

A judge, who described the attack as “evil”, sentenced Viner-Mood to five years in jail and Gibson to three years in a young offenders institute.

Actually, this raises an interesting point. The latter pair got 5 & 3 years for “burns from a cigarette lighter, her ponytail cut off and two black eyes and a broken nose”

The former, where a guy was stabbed to death?

Samantha Brown was sentenced to five years in a Young Offenders Institute while her sister was received a four-year jail term

Oh, fair enough then. In the eyes of the law, the life of a man is worth less than the life of a woman.

That’ll be just fine. Pfffft.

AJ

Their mothers must be so proud

I refer, of course, to the lawyers acting on behalf of Ian Huntley.

This country is utterly beyond redemption.

Kill it with fire.

AJ

ConDems busy with the *real issues*

I’m pleased to see they’re keeping focused on the prize.

The coalition government is to put the fashion industry under pressure to stop promoting unrealistic body images and clamp down on airbrushed photographs in magazines and adverts.

Lynne Featherstone, the equalities minister, who has long campaigned against size-zero photoshoots, will convene a series of discussions this autumn with the fashion industry, including magazine editors and advertising executives, to discuss how to promote body confidence among young people.

WHAAAAAAAT?

Are you paying for that ‘series of discussions’, Lynne?

Oh, no, of course you’re not.

WE ARE, YOU LUDICROUS MONG.

 
Lynne Featherstone, after being airbrushed with a big pile of our cash.

AJ

Wrongness of the RSPCA

Someone (John Northam) posted a comment on one of my RSPCA threads earlier:

Came home from work to see a chitte to say they had taken my cat while i was at work- no explanation. A phone number that after 30 minutes of annoying waiting music and patronising advice on the treatment of snakes (!) turned out to be a fucking call centre and no attempt made to contact me.

My cat is 18 years old half blind and on his last legs but still comes to me for cuddles and food (he loves bacon). He is not in pain and I know he will tell me when it is his time to go. If the fucking bastards have not put him down already they will have scared the poor fucking creature to death by sticking him in a cage around loads of other distressed animals.

Which serves as a good reminder of the evil that is the RSPCA.

The RSPCA have their own little piece of New Labour legislation that they get to enforce. They have powers of entry and confiscation. It’s called the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

All of which I was reminded of when I read this:

Once captured, they should, according to the 1981 Countryside Act, be humanely destroyed.

Considering his predicament, Raymond Elliott no doubt cast his eye around his garden. What should his eye alight on? The water butt. It was the work of a moment, he said, to immerse the squirrel, which died “almost instantaneously”.

But one man’s rodent euthanasia is another man’s squirrel slaughter, a fact that Mr Elliott found out when the RSPCA turned up and recovered Tufty’s remains. A six-month conditional discharge and £1,547 pounds in costs later, he has become the first person prosecuted under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act for causing harm to a non-domestic animal.

So how should one kill a squirrel?

“There are three methods we use,” he says. “Instant kill traps are always the first port of call.” If these can’t be used, Inglis turns to an “especially formulated warfarin grain-bake”,

Aha! Squirrel poison. Just like rat poison, sounds like a winner.

So I wanted to know a bit more…

Under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act, once an animal is under the responsibility of a human they have a duty not to cause unnecessary harm. ‘Pests’ like the grey squirrel can be killed in a ‘humane way’, such as a blow to the back of the head or shooting, but drowning or beating the animal to death is illegal.

Wait.. what? A blow to the back of the head is okay, but beating is a no-no? What if you land a poor blow first time. How long has to elapse before you take another swing without it constituting a beating?

Back to the poison then…

Foresters have a licence to kill the animals with poison

You need a LICENCE? Oh just fuck off.

This leaves only one option.

Inglis reaches for his trusty air rifle. “We do shoot them,” he says.

Win!

So, back to the RSPCA:

most people choose to trap them with wire cages that are available for as little as £12 from garden centres

However Laura Bryant, an Inspector with the RSPCA, said the majority of ordinary people will be incapable of killing squirrels without causing “unnecessary suffering” and predicted more cases in court.

“This case has very serious implications to anyone who has purchased a trap and then set it in their garden as to what they are going to do if they catch a squirrel in the trap?” she said.

She even questioned whether shooting or a blow to the back of the head could be considered humane. She said most people will have to pay a vet to have the animal put down or call in pest control experts and advised "squirrel proofing" the garden instead.

Take it to the vet to have it put down? Are you for REAL??? Jesus wept.

Okay, then…

Tom Blades, at the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, suggested people should take trapped squirrels to the RSPCA to dispose of since it is illegal to release the animals into the countryside.

Oh yes – take it to the RSPCA. Hand yourself in on a plate after they examine the squirrel, determine that it’s in poor health and decide that it had got that way since you trapped it. Ergo they have you on the same charge of “causing harm to a non-domestic animal”. They’ll bring a private prosecution against you and testify against you in court.

So I’d say they’re best avoided altogether. If you donate money to them, incidentally, I urge you to either reconsider or go suck an exhaust pipe.

Still, the RSPCA have a long and colourful reputation as being self-serving bullies and storm-troopers

We worked particularly hard for the Animal Welfare Act to be put into place

Indeed they did.

So what other voices of sense can we hear from the animal welfare community?

On Gardeners’ Question Time recently, the panel discussed several ways to dispatch a squirrel. But their answers prompted a storm from some animal rights activists, such as Andrew Tyler, director of Animal Aid. “The whole premise of gardeners killing squirrels is hateful and bigoted,” he said. “It’s the worst kind of intolerance. People should cherish them.”

Really? Killing squirrels is bigoted? The worst kind of intolerance?

I.. errr.. oh I give up.

AJ

UPDATE: Quentin Letts takes the matter up over at the Faily Nail.

Other bloggers on the RSPCA:

http://jamesmarchington.blogspot.com/2009/07/rspca-bully-boy-tactics.html

http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2010/02/15/rspca-greedy-bastards/

http://thylacosmilus.blogspot.com/search/label/RSPCA

I have twine. I shall now make a rope.

Prompted by something highlighted by CharonQC.

Police were investigating today after an officer accidentally discharged a 50,000 volt Taser weapon into a man’s groin.

Peter Cox, 49, was seeking legal advice over the incident which started when he was stopped on suspicion of driving a BMW without insurance.

He spotted a patrol car following him and pulled over at his friend’s house in Bridgwater, Somerset, where he was doing landscaping work on July 13.

The officer pointed the Taser at him for a few seconds before lowering the weapon.

At this point, it discharged, narrowly missing the father-of-one’s genitals and hitting his groin and ankle.

Unemployed Mr Cox, who suffers from Guillain Barri syndrome, fell to the ground in agony and he was treated by paramedics on the front lawn.

He denied being aggressive and said the insurance company confirmed the car had valid insurance immediately after he was stopped.

An Avon and Somerset Police spokesman said the weapon was discharged by accident and that an investigation was under way.

Mr Cox’s disease by the way, is this:

Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (AIDP), an autoimmune disorder affecting the peripheral nervous system, usually triggered by an acute infectious process.

Some of the symptoms seem disturbing and very unfortunate.

Meanwhile, the other day, Ambush Predator pointed this out:

That doesn’t count accidental discharge of Tasers, apparently, since they’re not mentioned in the article.

And yet Tasers are, by law, classified as firearms. In days gone by, only firearms certified plod could carry or use a Taser. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, as I know Labour wanted to hand 10,000 of the things to non-firearms trained coppers last year.

So how does this affect you or me, in the world of law-abiding, middle-class professionals.

Well, stopped for a BMW apparently being uninsured? Hardly a Ford Escort, is it? Okay, I know there are now loads of snotty old Beemers around, but still, the one I sold last year was a 2001 model – hardly brand spanking new.

But of course, you and I always properly insure our cars, as much for reasons of exposure to unlimited civil liability as to remain within the laws of the land. So, if you read the article at the top, did Mr Cox.

the insurance company confirmed the car had valid insurance immediately after he was stopped.

So did my commenter in this thread. My emphasis.

AJ – I’m painfully aware of the new insurance database laws. I have had one car impounded because my insurance wasn’t on the database. I had to walk home and It cost me £117 to get it back the following day. The insurance company wouldn’t pay up because apparently it takes up to 5 days for your policy to appear on the database.

I was stopped later on in the year and had my documents with me. Again I wasn’t on the database. It appears that my reg no had been entered with a zero that should have been a “o”. They didn’t impound me that time because it was not the traffic cops that stopped me; they phone my insurance company and verified my insurance.

They did tell me that if it had been a traffic stop, my car would have been impounded, regardless of the fact that I had my documents because they could have been fake. They also said that the traffic cops wouldn’t even have made the phonecall, they would have just taken my car and left it up to me to prove I had insurance.

So there it is. Change insurers, or have an insurer that enters your registration plate into their computer in an unorthdox way, and you will get stopped.

You may be denied the opportunity to prove your car is insured, before it is impounded at your cost.

I travel all over the UK on business. What if something like this were to happen when I was in, say, Newcastle? 250 miles from home and 100lbs of luggage and kit either carried home or lost with the car.

I think I’d get pretty fucking irate. Possibly on account of my own health issues. And then PC Fucksmith would accidentally taser me in the bollocks.

There but for the grace of my imaginary best friend go I…

I give you the Muppets:

AJ

What???

Speechless.

New laws are being passed by MPs which allow them to avoid tax on their expenses, including their commute to Westminster, free travel for spouses and late-night meals in the House of Commons.

Under the Finance Bill, MPs will be given exemptions so they cannot be pursued by the taxman over their claims.

MPs claim about £6m a year in travel expenses and the new laws will formalise a special concession that they are granted by HM Revenue & Customs.

Tax experts say it means they will now be guaranteed special treatment compared with ordinary employees.

Mike Truman, editor of Taxation Magazine, said: “They’re voting themselves an exemption from scrutiny. Other employees would face a tax bill.”

You. Utter. Fucking. Cunts.

AJ