If you think the public sector here is bad . . .

A doctor in Italy has been paid for 9 years’ work but he has actually put in only about a fortnight’s doctoring by exploiting crazy rules. He was able to spend the rest of the time on courses, off sick and on paid family leave. His next move will be to not-doctor for two more years by doing a Ph.D. course.

Just a thought for the day

Blaming the thunder on a god and assuming it happens because you've done something wrong demonstrates an overactive guilt complex and an overblown sense of your own importance.

Dave the Disaster

Will Dave the Leader start listening to what the real Tories want now that his MPs are starting to look for alternative homes with some values of the sort which used to be exclusively Tory? Don’t put any money on it.

No one in the public sector is every guilty, in Rotherham or anywhere else

The situation in Rotherham is a road map of the public sector. Those who turned a blind eye to years and years of sexual abuse in pursuit of racialist policies have moved on and they feel no connection and no responsibility. One is even the local Police & Crime Commissioner. He was the councillor “in charge” of social services but, he claims against the evidence, he had no idea what was going on, just like the rest of the gang. And, presumably, he never bothered to read the inconvenient reports supplied to him. Just like the authors of the reports. And what of those involved in aiding and abetting the Asian abuse gangs. Also blameless.

Public sector crimes = no penalties

Will there be charges of criminal racialism brought against the members and officers of Rotherham council, who covered up sexual abuse of schoolgirls by gangs of immigrants from Pakistan for 16 years? It’s as unlikely as charges being brought against the police officers and CPS stooges who joined in the conspiracy.

Bad buy!

Whatever you do, don’t buy a Russian vehicle GPS system. Not after a whole gang of Russian armoured vehicles managed to “stray” into Ukraine “by accident”. As a result of this “mishap”, the crews were taken prisoner by the locals and paraded on TV to make a liar out of President “I’ve got no troops in Ukraine” Putin. Oh, dear.

So much for the “experts”!

“Experts” are claiming that the word fortnight is dropping out of use because it’s too vague. But a fortnight is two weeks, neither more nor less. How vague is that?

A fitting punishment for Rosberg by the FIA?

The Rosberg Manoeuvre: causing a collision with your team mate, knowing that you might suffer some damage but he will end up totally screwed. Not as blatant at Michael Schumacher’s assaults on Damon Hill (he got away with that one because the FIA wouldn’t believe it was deliberate) and Jacques Villeneuve. Schumacher was disqualified from the 1997 drivers’ championship and had all of his points wiped out for the latter offence. Maybe wiping out only half of Rosberg’s current points total would be appropriate. With disqualification to follow if he does it again.

All very puzzling, really

You have to wonder why the area where Michael Brown was shot by a police officer had mainly white cops policing a black neighbourhood. Why is it that the locals don’t see the police as a career? Why won’t they step up and take on the responsibility for policing an area which, they claim, white cops don’t understand?

Repetition

Is anyone surprised that the Scots Nats have corrupted the Scottish civil service and diverted taxpayers’ cash to their own political causes, including propaganda in favour of breaking the Union to massage Alex Salmond’s ego? Not if they know that New Labour did exactly the same south of the border and got away with it.

More licence-payers’ cash down the drain?

As well as causing outrage by invading Sir Cliff Richard’s home to film police officers spend a day turning the place over, the BBC is liable to be sued under privacy laws for broadcasting material which could be of use to any burglars, who feel like taking a crack at Sir Cliff’s mansion while he’s out of the country. But no one will get the sack, of course.

The real story

The last government blew £500 Million on a computer system called eBorders to keep track of people entering and leaving Britain. Naturally, it has huge holes in it because it infringes EU rules on free movement. Worse, the Home Office has a vested interest in ensuring that the system doesn’t work because it lets ministers lie about the true extent of immigration, legal and illegal.

Don’t hold your breath

Will the parents of the children found in the shipping container at Tilbury be sent back to the port of origin, Zeebrugge, to face charges of felony child endangerment? Or will they just get the usual package of benefits and a free home, courtesy of the British taxpayer?

Ignorant dolt!

Some expert is claiming that because King Richard III drank a drink a bottle of wine a day during his brief reign (deduced from tests on his remains), that made him an alcoholic. Which is total rubbish because he lived in an age when it wasn't safe to drink the water.

More abuse

Does being bust and in the hands of the taxpayer mean nothing? Lloyds Bank, which has only just been fined £28 million for its misdeeds, is still threatening staff with the sack if they fail to unload unwanted loans, new bank accounts, etc. on customers who dare to enter its branches.

More news

A police rummage squad has been turning over Sir Cliff Richard’s gaff following allegations of things going on 30 years ago. No hope of finding anything relevant in the way of evidence, of course, but it must have been a bit of a day out for the coppers. At the taxpayer’s expense.

Hidden truth

“News” of the moment is the story, revealed in a air-accident report, of the pilot of a small passenger plane, who made a heavy landing at Belfast airport in windy conditions in February. The landing was heavy because his artificial arm came off. But you had to dig fairly deep before you realized that the clamp holding it to the control yoke came loose; the arm didn’t come off the pilot’s body. A case of “read the story you want to be there, not the actual one”.

Bang away!

Yesterday was the Glorious 12th of August, when those with toffish tendencies can blast away to their wallet’s extent at grouse. Can’t say there was any great explosion of gunfire in my neck of the woods, though.

Lenovo makes peace with AMD?

I’ve just heard from my tech guy, who has been in touch with the lad who got the benefit of the Lenovo Thinkpad, which I junked in February because the AMD video driver kept crashing repeatedly to make the thing unuseable for long periods of time. Apparently, after a long period of trouble, it is now behaving itself and the recipient can’t remember the last time it crash. Still, its replacement hasn’t given me a moment’s bother, so I’m still happy with the deal.

Whingeoholics

People are moaning because our Dave is on holiday. But Dave is the prime monster of Britain, there’s nothing happening here, so now is a good time to be on holiday. Okay, so the Middle East is going up in flames. The Middle East is always going up in flames. And if we steam in, we might do a bit of temporary good, but the problem will remain. The Middle East is full of bolshy sods who just won’t get on. So we should stop trying to unscrew the inscrutable and stop wasting our time on a problem which doesn't want to be solved.

Not exactly accurate or honest

I have discovered, to my amazement, that the 1997 edition of Chambers Biographical Dictionary, which puffs itself as “the most comprehensive and authoritative” such volume, doesn't mention William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy, but it does give a grudging 3 lines to Gene Roddenberry. And yet it claims to cover the world of television. One big fat raspberry on the way to Mr. Chambers.

Pre-Grave-Robbing

The geniuses at HMRC have come up with a truly monstrous scam – to charge people inheritance tax while they are still alive. No doubt, their HR department is busy recruiting a gang of psychics to predict what the unfortunate customer will have in the bank at the time of death so that HMRC can pretend that its acts of pillage are fair and proportionate.

Brain dead

The Dept. of Wk. & Pensions, and its subsidiary the Universal Jobmatch service, conspired to ban an advert from a communications company, which wanted to specify that the applicant needed to speak excellent English for a job on offer in England. Do they automatically switch their brain off when someone joins the civil service?

Planet-Buster

Some genius at the Dept. of Energy & Climate Change has finally worked out that it generates more carbon dioxide if you convert a coal-burning power station to wood chips, and fly in the wood chips from the other side of the world. But nothing is going to be done to reverse the policy and/or put something more sensible in place, of course.

What they say and what they mean

Everyone at the Mansion has been assured that their vote matters by our local Electoral Registration Officer. Apparently, everyone is now responsible for making an individual registration instead of leaving it to the head of household. The 2-page letter is very coy about the reason for this, but it’s obviously an attempt to address the problem of 50 people being registered to have a postal vote at the same one-bedroom flat in an area where “community leaders” take charge of the postal votes.

Movie Night

Ancient and modern on the TV last night. First up, The China Syndrome (1979), a vehicle for Jack Lemmon, who put in an anguished performance as a shift supervisor at a nuclear plant, who found there were problems and was murdered by management stooges because of it, with some ineffectual flapping around by TV journalists also going on.
Then Sand Sharks (2011) which is a ripoff of elements of Jaws (the festival and the beach not closed) and Dune (monsters that can swim through sand, only sharks not giant worms). If you are into dafty sciffy films, this is what you need to be watching!