When Ze Tjermans start to openly mock the rampant, box-ticking mentality and bureaucratic stupidity of your country on their main television news programme, it really is time to wonder if NuLabour’s touchy-feely infantilisation programme hasn’t gone a little bit too far.
What, you want a proper translation of the story as well? But I’m ‘working’! Oh, okay, maybe later.
German Phrase for the Day: Schlusslicht - The quirky, feel-good story about skateboarding ducks at the end of the news.
Song playing as this was published: Depeche Mode: Strangelove
I vaguely recall my father having to report something innocuous to the police for insurance purposes (bent car arial or something) and getting a letter from these people (victim support agency or something) offering to help him over his shock. Can’t remember when it was, but it was definitely pre-NuLabour, probably the NuMajor era.
Wasn’t there some controversy recently about rubbish being collected less frequently in order to persuade people to produce less of it?
Ah yes, it must have started as a Victims’ Charter or somesuch nonsense. How long have you been away? I’m not sure that NuMajor was exactly what drove me away, but in the last 10 or so years, the number of people who are employed by councils and government to do god knows what has exploded - and of course they have to justify their existence. It’s a little bit mental. And no, I’m not just annoyed that I’ve received a fine for a trivial misdemeanour.
Trivial misdemeanour?
Is that throwing a strop because someone’s getting more multicoloured wedges than you?
Badoom! Tish!
How long have you been away?
(Gets the calculator out) 16 years. 20 months since the last trip, come to think of it.
I was listening to Radio 4 the other day and there was some depressing piece about people having the temerity to defend themselves / their property from yobs being charged by the police for assault etc. (Apparently it helps the police meet their detection targets).
A lady I know who runs her own business from home recently had visitors from some council or other in West Sussex to check that she’d stuck a no-smoking sticker (don’t know in how many languages) in her own, home, one-woman office. A touch bonkers.
MountPenguin: I was reading a piece by Boris Johnson in the Telegraph yesterday, whilst on the train (I think we can safely say “in standard class accommodation, located towards the rear of train”, with an opening sentence like that). In it, he said… well, I’ll just link to it. Anyway, if even Radio 4 is mentioning it, it must be true.
It has to be said that my feelings towards the police as I’ve changed from being lefty student (they’re fascist pigs/Thatcher’s stormtroopers), to my current state of being a decent, upstanding, middle-class chap (they’re pc- (ho ho) -crazy, box-ticking lunatics/New Labour’s stormtroopers) seems a little strange, but something’s definetly happened when my mother no longer instinctively trusts the police.
BiB: Without wanting to get all Daily Mail (considers pointing out your sexuality, immigration status and when you were last seen in the company of Peter Stringfellow/The Duchess of Cornwall) there’s loads of this nonsense (gone mad) going on, that’s quite obviously ridiculous to all involved (I hope), but “the rules say….” It’s almost like Russia, except it’s really bloody difficult to bribe the jobsworth little twats from the council.
It isn’t anything like Russia, they love fags in Russia! It would be like the French banning Gitanes!
Hey, there’s a huge no-smoking sticker in the staircase of my block of flats. Probably at least a foot high that thing (well, I might be exaggerating slightly here). And a two or three page letter about it was shoved into my letterbox, explaining all the reasoning behind it, a copy of the law and everything.
Quite an effort, considering that in the 3+ years I’ve been living there I think I’ve smelled cigarette smoke once.
Too bad the sign doesn’t apply to burned food smoke, which happens fairly regularly and the culprits air their flats by opening their front door…
I can’t believe I left that comment without picking you up on the fact that you not only read the Torygraph but read a piece by BoJo into the bargain! Did you feel your right arm twitch or straighten at all? Urge to hear Wagner, read Nietzsche that sort of thing…?
As for the song of the day, are you sure it wasn’t Dr Strangelove!!!