nineveh_uk

There are films/books/TV series in which the heroes decide not to listen to the villain talk interminably about their evil plan. At least I think there are. But I am drawing a complete blank for examples of shows in which the villain, asked the question "But why are you doing this to us, you evil monster!"* responds "Nope, time for you to die and me to run away." Surely someone, somewhere has done this and I've simply not seen it?

(This thought brought to you by episode 48 of The Untamed, to which my main response was "will you just SHUT UP? Oh, finally Wei Wuxian has said what it was obvious needed to be said a lot earlier.**" That said, the fact I'm on episode 48 shows its strangely addictive qualities.)

*I'm now hearing that in the voice of Spike narrating Angel from the rooftop.

**( Spoiler )

A friend linked me to this story of literary feelings running high: Russian Man Stabbed to Death in Poetry-Over-Prose Dispute.

Russia appears to have form on this - last September a man was shot in a dispute about Kant.

Hard as it is to beat the headline seen on a newsboard in Bridlington "Horse Fetish Flashed in Court"* for headline of the week, the Iceland Review managed it with Seven-Year-Old Wins Iceland Ram Groping Contest. Even better, this story really is about a seven year-old who won the amateur section of a ram groping contest - prizes include (ram) sperm from the Insemination Center of West Iceland. Despite said prizes, I assume that groping is a mistranslation of a word/phrase about judging the quality of rams. Anyone can read Icelandic and would be good enough to tell me what was actually meant by groping and how the error, er, arose, the source is here.

The competition involves laypersons attempting to rank rams that have been ranked by professional ram-rankers, and explaining why. Says the organiser:

“One year a contestant was able to rank the rams correctly and described them all in a poem. That was very interesting.” Evidently there isn't much to do in Iceland in summer.

*Which turned out to be a mis-print for "Horse Fetish Flaster in Court", and is unfortunately a rather more sad and less funny story than one might have hoped for.

ankaret I believe that this is the cartoon you're looking for. I had it saved - I think it was in the Guardian.

I am off work with a mild dose of plane plague. This gives me the opportunity to catch up with the last three episodes of Doctor Who.

It also gives me the opportunity to introduce you to Thomson charter flights' (who took us to Italy and who, as previously, proved themselves rather good. They have very nice stewards) attempt to get passengers to watch the flight safety demonstration. I always watch flight safety videos because I don't trust anyone else to, and I always read the card about how to open the emergency doors, but this time I was, unusually, accompanied by almost everyone else.

This is because the 2011 Thomson flight safety video appears to be delivered by Amelia Pond.

Insofar as it is possible whilst attempting to do a full day’s work, I cannot take my eyes off the unrolling story around the News of the World, News International, and the whole story of hacking, spying, bribery, corruption, lying in various places, to various people, and under oath, appalling security failures, appalling security breaches, obstructing police investigations (sometimes by the police), covering up murder, covering up bribery, covering up lying to parliament, obtaining data illegally in clear breach of the DPA whatever the methods used. Or as someone commenting in the Guardian put it:

“If spying on the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the monarch, families of murder victims, families of dead soldiers and a child's medical records as well as bribing police officers and concealing evidence doesn't make an organisation not 'fit and proper' to hold a broadcasting licence I don't know what conceivable crime could.”

The whole thing is like a hydra in reverse: no sooner is a new head born than it sprouts another ten. Take yesterday evening’s story on a royal protection officer – a policeman - selling royal family contact details to NI – details that would allow location to be identified. It’s easy to over-use “terrorism”, but that really is serious security-at-the-heart-of-the-realm failure, because of course, once you’ve sold to one person you are (a) vulnerable to future target, and (b) have no control who will sell stuff on. Being a republican doesn’t actually mean I want the head of state’s security staff to be merrily selling their safety to anyone who comes up with the cash. And guess who the emails show was asked for the money to buy the stuff – that’s right, Andy Coulson. At this point, whether Coulson handed over the money is irrelevant; what matters is that he didn’t report an extraordinary security breach. And then he ended up in Number 10 because David Cameron decided he “deserved a second chance.”

That’s one tiny hydra head, but there’s more. And more. And more and more and more. The Met claim “cock-up, not conspiracy”. To borrow a well-known phrase, any sufficiently wide-spread cock-up becomes indistinguishable from conspiracy. Time for some independent oversight, methinks. I am sure that Hull and Birmingham would be willing. Come to that, NI is still acting directly to impede the investigation.

And there’s more. And more and more and more. “Worse to come” said Brooks (God, that woman is brilliant in her own way. It is hard to say “respect where it is due”, but perhaps “due acknowledgement that a genius found its field”). You bet there is. This one’s been building for years and it's going to run and run. The only question is, so many people having been trampled in the past, who is going down now?

I refer you again to Steve Bell's masterly cartoon. (SFW insofar as it is in the Guardian, but not if your workplace objects to cartoon nudity in broadsheet papers.)