Thursday 14 March 2019

Things can always get worse





Overall, I am quite an optimist in life, went through a bit of a downward spell as a teenager, but since then have been more one for the sunny uplands than the everything's-going-to-hell memes.

However, I am also a strong realist, with a firm grip of what is actually happening as opposed to just hoping things might turn out to my liking. Life has a firm hand for those who only want to wish.

Image result for pile up car crash UK

As such, as bad as anything gets, short of death, situations can always deteriorate as well as improve - anyone who follows my share tipping advice will, sadly, know this in spades!


So here we are today, Brexit Day minus 15 with the Country in more of a state than it has managed to date. May clings on, against all reason, with a view to pushing her deal through. Labour are just about to split further today too as Corbyn dodges or maybe evens whips against a second referendum!


Just two weeks from a very messy Brexit day. Who would have thought? Even though our current Parliament is hopeless and full of venal fools, it is amazing we have ended up here....


and yet....


The pain might still be extended with some stupid 3 month article 50 extension


May might quit and instead of Brexit we get a General Election


Parliament somehow may usurp the Government and Revoke Article 50 (Hello Mr Bercow)


We might leave with no deal and all starve within minutes (copyright Remain)


So, enjoy the rain today, somehow things are going to get worse for a bit anyway!

8 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

it seems that some Tory MP, {not me} has come out and said to combat knife crime, every knife sold in the uk should have a gps tracker in it.

This is the sort of idiot who is deciding on issues of national importance. He should be forced onto the media for this. Paxman should be coaxed from retirement for a one off special. Just on exactly,

How much a GPS knife would cost?

What happens to all the millions upon millions of non-GPS knives aleady in existemce in the UK

How many knives are sold every year within the uk?

Which satellite system would monitor the knives?

Who would be checking the trackers?

If a knife was used to stab a person and discovered to have been stolen from a supermarket, is the supermarket to blame?

If knives are potential murder weapons and require 24 hour monitoring,why not saws? Or crowbars? Or hammers?

How easy is it to make a prison shiv from household items?

Your initial suggestion was a GPs in the handle. If the handle was simply replaced by a non gps handle, how would that be detected? How would the simple removal of a gps be detected?

Are knives tracked to businesses, homes, or individuals? If not to individuals then how must they be securely contained within a business or home?
What would the annual knife crime policing GPS and tracking budget be and how would it be allocated?

And so on.

These people.

No wonder we are such a mess.
And the saddest part is MP Scott Mann, isn't even the dullest blade in that particular drawer.


Raedwald said...

Well, his heart's in the right place, Bill, but clearly industry will never cope with the costs of his suggestions. No. We need to take a far simpler approach to knife safety - and ban the sale of all knives capable of either cutting or piercing. The blades should be at least 5mm thick and the edges rounded, and a large steel bobble should be welded to any sharp projections.

I'd go further. It's materials such as steel and ceramics that are the problem - so let's make all new knives out of vulcanised rubber.

A two-year amnesty for people to have their existing knives blunted and bobbled should deal with the legacy knife problem. Ah, I hear you say, but how will people cut cooking ingredients and so forth? No problem. We'll set up a network of secure cutting centres to which people may bring their foodstuffs to be cut by specially trained and licenced cutters. So if you're having a cabbage for dinner tonight, you just pop along with the whole cabbage and for a small charge the cutting centre will divide it into six or eight pieces for you. Nothing could be simpler.

Of course, we're banning gas hobs from 2021, so cooking will become academic anyway. Supermarkets will sell pre-cut and pre-cooked food which can be reheated in solar and wind powered food warmers which we will distibute from 2020 onwards, warranted never to heat food or drinks above the safe temperature of 60 deg.C., thereby reducing also the national burn and scald statistics.

That's why I came into politics in the first place - to really make a difference to people's lives.

Bill Quango MP said...

Radders. Have you been reading my Joe Malone sub-plot/historical descriptions notes?

Charles said...

Well Jameson’s Irish whisky is on special in numerous supermarkets for £16 so I have stocked up with my own Irish backstop. As for the rest parliament has been found to be inhabited by 600 odd junior civil servants who work for the EU. I imagine that it will take several general elections for them to be weeded out.

Raedwald said...

Ah Bill not until a minute ago - I know you do some great stuff on GP but I don't visit there nearly often enough. But parallel minds - the mediocity of the political class, the paucity of intelligence amongst the patricians and our dystopian future.

G-F I have as many guests here who go for the Protestant whiskey as the Catholic one - and as the Romish tipple is distilled within the EU, no problem here, but I have a case of Black Bush (€19,90) put by in case it has trouble in future finding its way here from Antrim.

E-K said...

God's sakes.

Knives.

ANYTHING but deal with the blindingly obvious.

As always, be it obesity, drink driving... whatever... punish EVERYONE and not the minority that do it.

Anonymous said...

E-K at 20.16: in the shooting world there's a saying (well, among the minority who take an interest in the politics of shooting) that on those rare occasions when there's a high profile gun crime, they proceed to punish the people who didn't do it... I'm one of the 56,000 or so to lose legally owned handguns in 1997. As they say, never forget, never forgive. I certainly haven't - and the current contemptible Brexit pantomime is highly unlikely to persuade me otherwise.
As for knives, similar episodes of moral panic and wildly illiberal kneejerk prohibitions occur: parrot cries go up about new laws, fresh restrictions, ever more criminalisation of ordinary people by restricting their ownership of knives – my very elderly mother had a pair of miniature nail scissors confiscated at the airport, and Eurostar security goons took away a perfectly innocuous knife from me… The gobsmackingly daft MP who came out with this GPS tracker wheeze is merely one of the more egregiously weird politicians: the rest are just cynical, indolent careerists who don't give a damn.

JJJ said...

I had a toothpick confiscated at the airport.
Actual wooden toothpick.