More Shit on the News
Posted: Fri 18 December, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »via Failblog
Rain
Posted: Tue 6 October, 2009 Filed under: General 1 Comment »It’s absolutely chucking it down outside – and I’m really pleased to see it.
Where we live, I don’t think there’s been a decent dollop of rain in about two months. The water-butts certainly haven’t filled up in that time.
So yes, I’m happy to see that it’s raining here today. The animals aren’t overly happy about it of course – Psycho Cat was outside and is currently soaked and lying on the bed, and Hound is also deeply soggy having been chucked out while I cleaned up the dollops of puke she’d scattered in the hallway.
Yes, it’s seriously glamorous, being back at home for a few days…
Getting Arty
Posted: Sun 4 October, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Taken while out with Sevitz and Dragon on Wednesday…
Hayward Gallery
Taken while we were sat outside the Concrete bar – I just liked the imagery.
Mind Crime
Posted: Fri 18 September, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, General, News, Thoughts 4 Comments »Over the last week or so, I’ve been churning this post around in my head – and it’s still a work in progress. I’ve written about it before on a couple of occasions, but in the last ten days there have been two big – and well-publicised – court cases based around conspiracies, and planning to commit offences.
In one case, two boys in Manchester were supposedly planning to blow up their school – and have now been found innocent of all charges, and there’s a small ruckus going on about whether the entire thing was actually a total waste of time and money. The second one (although it actually came first chronologically) was of course the ‘liquid bomb’ plot to detonate bombs in mid-air on several flights. They were found guilty, and this week got sentenced to incredibly long terms ( between 32 and 40 years each)
Now I can’t deny, I find I have a real problem with people going to court to answer a case that they were thinking about doing something bad.
Obviously, I haven’t been in the court hearings on either case, so I don’t know the true weight of evidence in either case. I just find myself uncomfortable with the concept of having people get taken to court and going through epic legal proceedings for an offence that has been talked about, but not actually committed.
Mind you, in my opinion terrorism is the ‘child porn’ of the 2000s, it’s the Big Bad Thing where people appear to say “Oh, well if [the accused] was into that then they’re beyond the pale, just lock ’em up and throw away the key”. It’s the “Ultimate Offence”, or whatever.
I suppose that the difference between the cases is that with the aeroplane bomb plan the people had actually put together the things they needed, whereas the Manchester one appears to have been more about talk and ‘let’s do that’ discussions, rather than serious preparation.
Even with that though – and I totally acknowledge the difference between ‘planning’ and ‘making the things necessary in preparation’ – I keep coming back to the entire concept of being able to be tried for an offence that hasn’t actually been committed. After all, isn’t that pretty much what Orwell described in “1984” as “Mindcrime”?
Frogfest
Posted: Wed 12 August, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »In general, I really don’t mind frogs and toads – we have loads of them in the garden, and they’re fine. Sure, they make me jump on occasion when they bounce around just as you’re walking through the grass. But OK, that’s what they do.
However, this just makes me shudder.
Not just the video of the frenzy of tadpoles eating unfertilised frog eggs, but the sheer size of the frog in the photo…
They run up to about 1kg in weight (Image (C) BBC)
Bleh.
Local Elections
Posted: Thu 4 June, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »The BBC has a piece on “All you need to know about today’s Elections“.
In fairness, I’d say that the main pointer should be “Just don’t vote for the BNP. Ever.”
Other than that, just make sure you vote. Don’t waste it by not bothering, make the effort and put your vote in.
Don’t know what each party’s policies are? Take a look here.
Garden Work – Again
Posted: Mon 1 June, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Another quiet weekend here at D4D although that doesn’t mean it was quiet all told.
As we had Saturday available again as a result of Depeche Mode postponing their concert at the O2, we did some work in the house and garden instead – including trolling off to one of the local garden centres, and buying some new plants (a bamboo and a spectacular lilac for the bit round the pond) as well as various other odds and sods.
In addition, our nice gardener man came round on the Saturday morning to finally fill in the potholes and craters left behind by compressing earth in the part that had been dug out to replace the water pipe (which we had expected to happen, and had plenty of spare earth to use for it) and then recovered the entire driveway with some two tons of grit.
On the Sunday, the mower came out with a vengeance (yet again – it’s a regular occurrence) as well as lots of planting going on, taking stuff from out of the greenhouse and getting it potted up properly. Oh, and getting rid of a poxy big honeysuckle plant that’d died off, and has now been burned in the garden incinerator.
Lots of progress all told – culminating in the first barbecue of the year.
Not a bad weekend at all, allbeit one that didn’t result in many updates here on D4d.