RANDOM THOUGHTS

Oh how modest... not a word about your porn?

Just the kind of thing your average politician doesn't want to see.

Dunno whether that's down to the low murder rate,
or the propensity  of the DWP to get it wrong.

In our United Kingdom we seem to celebrate mainly English history.

This is true. 

It's when you have to honour the pigs that it gets really tiresome.

Well, you have to prove to the DWP that you are trying.

Yes, but these things don't make Dave look big
on the international stage.

So, getting it in perspective, it isn't exactly an empire, is it?

If only you were still PM, Mags, we'd be independent.
Or maybe not...

The reality is of course less spectacular.
There are a variety of reasons that operations don't go ahead.
Not least that people pull out at the last minute.
Fail to show for elective surgery.

This is an example of Labour running the health service in Wales.

But we all know that no matter how well they do,
 the press will always conclude that the SNP are bad.

A 'WHO DONE IT' TO PUT MISS MARPLE TO THE TEST

I know this is a long piece, but it is worth the time to watch and listen to just how corrupt the English legal system and the British Establishment is. Bonus it's produced and narrated by the brilliant is Keith Allen (of Sheriff of Nottingham fame).

Some random thoughts that flitted through my mind....

On average, figures suggest that there are around 120 murders a year in Scotland. Why then have our newspapers and news channels been so full of one murder in Bristol? It is likely that, in the time that this has been being reported, 10 people have been killed in Scotland, and apart from the one at the bottom of my street, which I only heard about because I have very nosey neighbours, there’s been no mention of them. Strange!

Isn’t it wonderful what money and a title can do? His Nobleness Strathclyde, the Tory leader in the Lords, looks like something you would see in the ring at a cattle market. No one in their right minds would call him aesthetically appealing, and yet he managed to arrange a series of sexual liaisons with Brigit Cunningham, who is a bit dishy, even if she is 48. Of course she has been round the block a few times, but even so. Someone with Strathclyde’s looks would have, without £10 million found it difficult to pull a dead rhinoceros!

Richard Lochhead, our Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, is working hard to get America to lift a 40 year old import ban on Haggis. US import laws ban any product which contains sheep’s lungs (I didn’t know that!), but with the vast number of Americans who have Scottish ancestry, a huge market could open up for Haggis manufacturers if he is successful. Good work Richard. Another example of the government of Scotland working for Scotland.

Didn’t Her Nobilityness Warsi make a bit of a twerp of herself with her rant about Islamaphobia? She has embarrassed the government for the second time in a few days. Dave was forced to distance himself from the comments she made on dinner party conversations about Islam, and of course she put him in another difficult situation when she put the boot into the right wing of the Tory party for not making much of an effort in Oldham and Saddleworth. One of the pitfalls, perhaps, of appointing inept ministers because they tick boxes as representing a couple of minorities?

When Alex Salmond appointed his first cabinet in 2007, he reduced the number of Cabinet Minister (and therefore the cost thereof) to 6, including himself. By contrast the Labour shadow cabinet contains 10 members plus a parliamentary business manager and chief of staff, and a chief whip, who also attend shadow cabinets. Should Labour win the General Election in May, can we look forward to a doubling in the cost of the top level of government?

Gordon Brown apparently fears that journalists may have hacked his phone. The number of times it was flying across the room and smashing to pieces against a door, wall or fireplace, I should imagine no one much left him any messages. Who’d want to speak to him anyway? How incredibly dull that would have been.

Pope Benedict must lack an irony gene as he called upon the Italian government to show a strong moral example to the public following on the scandal of Sylvio Berlusconi and the underage prostitute. Who was it again that said “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Oh yes, Jesus wasn’t it? Have you heard of him Papa?


Pics: Tubs to his friends (and lovers) Strathclyde, the answer to a maiden's prayer, specially a maiden that's short of a few bob. Richard Lochhead, our man down on the farm, being force fed carrots. Baroness Warsi two steps behind her beloved leader. A Nokia after Gordon discovered that Tony had beaten him to see Obama in the White House!

SUICIDE ..... MURDER ..... SUICIDE? ONLY IN AMERICA!

As it is Easter holiday, I thought you might prefer something more lighthearted than the politics that dominates our lives at the moment and fortunately a mate sent me an email with this weird true story from Associated Press (reported by Kurt Westervelt) from the land of weird stories, America:

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS President Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:


On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus, and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly.


Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers, and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.


"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "Someone who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide."


That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.


The room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife.


They were arguing vigorously, and he was threatening her with a shotgun!


The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife, and the pellets went through the window, striking Mr. Opus.


When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B" in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject "B." When confronted with the murder charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant, and both said that they thought the shotgun was not loaded.


The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, assuming the gun had been accidentally loaded.


The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother.. Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now for the twist... Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder.

This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window.

The son, Ronald Opus, had actually murdered himself. So the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide. As "Letter From America" Danny is forever saying to me....Only in America!

............