Ordinary people living ordinary lives

Mr and Mrs Normal.



My poor boy has component failure. The orthopaedic surgeon gets to him on Thursday. As he will need to learn to walk again I won't have much time to blog so if I am not about it is because I am nursing my gorgeous man/having to cook my own tea.

BBC Illiterati

"The BBC understands Mr Darling will have to borrow large over the next two years - equivalent to at least 8% of GDP which adds up to more than £110bn per year."

Is this what passes for standard English these days? Is this statement "borrow large" meant to distract the reader from the sums involved?

Article here

Police love an easy target: cheers Jacquie!

A friend of a friend (FF)was driving home at around 11pm on Sunday night. He had had his customary pint and a half with a mate, left the pub and rang his wife to say he was picking up a takeaway and on his way home. His journey home took him across the edge of the red light district (Cowley Road, Oxford). As he turned into a side road to transfer to the Iffley Road a woman with loads of bags ran towards the vehicle and into the front of it. FF was going very slowly, negotiating the cars parked either side of the narrow side street so she wasn't hurt. In a flash she was round to his passenger door and into the vehicle, bags, stench, insane burblings and all. "Drive" she says.

Now, you and I might have demanded she get out. Or we might, like FF be shocked and compassionate, and think "It's late, she's off her head on the street, she looks messed up, perhaps I should take her where she needs to go". He takes her a few hundred yards, during which it becomes apparent that she is a crack whore. He demands she gets out. When he stops to get her out there are policemen right there. His passenger is known to them. Next thing he knows he has been arrested for persistent soliciting. I am sure it must be dropped as he has not "persistently solicited" and the police have no evidence that he has. But ghastly experience all the same.

Gentlemen, lock your doors when driving home late at night.

The resistance has begun. Suck on that, Jackboot Jacquie.

Pilots reject ID cards

This is the cutest video, cracked me up.

Utterly adorable.

Wrong Kind of Social Worker and buck passing

Perhaps what is needed in Harringey is a Social Service made up of enormous, burly, stongly paternal blokes, minimum height 6'6". Instead we have stringy, nervous exhausted women with absurd case loads.

I heard a social worker on the radio yesterday saying that a boy in his care was being left in the family home (where he has witnessed rapes, where there are drugs and violence every day). The SW said in his opinion this was wrong and dangerous. Because the child is a ward of court the SW has to "sign off" the "Care Plan" to present to the judge. However this SW was not prepared to do this as he didn't agree that the boy was safe being left at home. His line manager was not prepared to either, and so it went on up the chain until the Head of Service has to sign off the Care Plan. The Head of Service is happy to do this because what the boy "needs" ie. residential therapeutic care, costs £5k a week and Head of Service doesn't have the budget.

Someone signed off Peter Connolly's care plan. Someone made the wrong decision. Someone should lose their job.

This whole nightmare begs the question: Why do we need Contact Point? "Early Intervention" is one of the supposed aims. The children who are at risk are KNOWN to the "authorities" as Gordon Brown likes to call them, and are not helped with the resources already available.

Meeting Bloggers, and random Brown Haters.

The first was not achieved. I blame E-K. I spent the morning sandwiched in a train, stuck in a valley getting claustrophobic because of an incident. When I finally, 3 and a half hours after leaving home, reached Bath Spa ( a distance of 13 miles) I had had enough of trains and caught a bus home again. So, I was sorry I didn't get to meet up but I think it was Electro Kevin's evil plan.

The second, "random Brown Haters" was encountered by Elby when walking Pig.

As he commented on Guido:

Elby the Beserk said...

So I'm walking the dog this morning, and meet a runner I occasionally see on this our regular walk. Woods, river, beautiful Somerset.

Usually he runs past and we exchange hellos. This morning, he stops, and says to me

"Do you hate Gordon Brown?"

Like that. Out of the blue.

"Yes", sez I, "indeed, I loath the man and and wish him all manner of ill".

He laughs and says "It's not particular his politics. It's HIM".

Spot on mate. You, me, and much of the rest of the country. That's why all these opinion polls make me laugh - they completely miss the point.

Gordon. Just stop breathing, mate, and do us all a favour.

Word ver : "murbrie"

Scottish for not being able to extract your head from your arse.

E.G. "I'm in a right murbrie today"

Jon Stewart notices our national shame...

Rick Rolled

Lilith's Movie Recommendations #1 in a very occasional series

Stumbled across this movie trailer, for an EXCELLENT film, The Petrified Forest. The trailer is good in it's own right but it doesn't do the film justice. It really is griping stuff. Recommended for a long winter night.

Dedicated to Old Holborn and people who like to walk

I cleared some of my junk from my Dad's flat that he had hauled from the roof of his house before selling it last year...I found lots of (mostly) embarrassing singles and some mildewed clothes. Amongst the singles was this. It made me think of Old Holborn, partly because he was an '80s group keyboardist and partly because it seemed so apt.