Hurricane

Michael Fish

Following a generally cool start to the day, Thursday will develop into a sunny day of plenty of warm sunshine and light winds with the best of the dry weather across England and Wales and a chance of temperatures reaching as high as 20 degrees Celsius in the South-East. A weakening weather front moving south across the Scottish borders might cause an occasional shower but for the most part fine, settled and dry conditions will provide the perfect conditions to exercise a democratic duty by going out to vote in a variety of elections.

There are lots of elections to enjoy.

Advertisement

Ready to Rumble

Via bbc.co.uk

Just when you start to think that politics could not descend any further into the cesspit of disgraceful opportunism, along comes another piece of low life ready to plumb new depths of disrespect.

Wolverhampton councillor Bob Jones was elected as the first Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands on November 15th 2012. He died suddenly on Tuesday 1st July 2014 aged 59. By all accounts and judging from the many tributes paid to him from across the political spectrum, he was very good at his job even though he stated that Police and Crime Commissioners were not a terribly good idea in a mature and open democracy. Those that knew him and even those that politically opposed him are unanimous in their admiration for this good and honest man.

Irony`s last will and testament

Dean Perks image via freethinker.co.uk

Ukip, being of unsound mind and decaying body, hereby bequeath all its worldly bonkers ideas to the nation in perpetuity.

Dean Perks is almost certainly a fine, decent, hard-working self-employed builder and that unfortunate misunderstanding with Her Majesty`s Revenue and Customs was, I`m sure, due to a simple error that any small businessperson can make but is yet another example of EU tax extortion of decent, hard-working British citizens. Similarly, saying: “Sharia Law in my opinion it works as a prevention and prevention is better than cure. If you think you are going to get your hand chopped off for pinching something you won`t pinch it” is a simple error that any prospective Ukip parliamentary candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis can make. Mr Perks was addressing a massed rally of the Ukip faithful in the back room of a pub in Coventry and was advising his supporters and a passing dog of the dangers of social media. He told his followers to be careful of expressing any opinion on the internet thingy because Ukip might get found out. Sadly, his wise words to the bemused audience of old, white, slightly portly male technophobes were recorded and ended up on social media.

The Royal Hunt of the Sun

Image via internationaltimes.it

It cannot be easy being the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police or, for that matter, a Chief or Assistant Chief Constable of various other dwindling constabularies. Imagine having to spend your working day outside your HQ talking to cameras to explain that yet more lessons have been learnt, yet more lines in the sand have been drawn and issuing yet another appeal for calm and information.

If tackling crime and keeping us safe wasn`t difficult enough, pity the poor plod who has to deal with a half-wit of the calibre of Home Secretary Theresa May and yet another overweight, bald, wealthy white man in the shape of Justice Secretary Chris Grayling. However, even in the face of such adversity and even with 14,000 fewer police officers since the coalition regime assumed power recorded crime has decreased by a massive seven per cent. Experts and analysts have expressed their delight, surprise and bafflement that such a dramatic decline in bad things happening has been achieved in the teeth of economic ruin and Tory politicians` bellow of actual evidence of recovery even as they line their own corrupt pockets. But it was left to the BBC Conservative press office to give the most elegant of explanations to this unexpected fall in the level of crime. It seems that our collective unconscious has been so disgusted by the violence of the twentieth century that society has turned its back on wrongdoing and we are all now much nicer people. Do you see those people running around and jumping up to try and catch straws in the gale? That`s the BBC, that is.

Yowsah yowsah yowsah

Staying alive

According to the increasingly eccentric Express and Star, it is still not clear if Walsall suffered disco hate crime or smoke machine terrorism some two and a half years ago.

Under the headline “Walsall town centre alert sparked by smoke device”, the Wolverhampton based purveyor of cat litter and rabbit hutch lining ran a baffling story that abandoned the Five W principles of journalism in favour of an attempt to stoke up tension and fear in a community that has previously manifested little fear and tension. No less a towering figure of journalism than Rudyard Kipling summed up the Five W principles of Who and What and When and Where and Why and even added an H in his poem from the Just So Stories:

“I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.”

Even if George Orwell described Kipling as a “prophet of British imperialism” and ignoring his disturbing obsession with Masonic ritual and a rather unhealthy interest in the Scouting Movement, old Rudyard came up with useful guide for journalists and, indeed, police officers. It might be illuminating to run the “Kipling Method” past the latest piece of Express and Star frippery invented to cause sensation or outrage or fury or anger. It would be easy to simply link to the tawdry piece but that would increase advertising revenue for the Swastika and suggest that the drivel was popular with the online readership. Instead, I will type the wretched thing out word for word but not disclose the identity of a man who has no right of reply.