Author: Kim du Toit

Not Here, It Ain’t

Crime, Law and Order, Legal Stuff

Here’s one from Britishland that’s guaranteed to make yer blood boil:

Shoppers trying to arrest shoplifters could expose themselves to legal action and even imprisonment for assault, a lawyer has said.

Chris Philp told a fringe event at last week’s Tory Party conference that members of the public should make citizen’s arrests on thieves and called on security guards to step in where it is safe to do so.

But Ed Smyth, partner at Kingsley Napley, said that the law generally only permits citizen’s arrests for serious cases that could be tried in a crown court. They could also be used for low value shoplifting cases, but the force used must always be reasonable in the circumstances.

And guess what?  You don’t get to decide what’s “reasonable”.

No wonder that law-abiding Brits just cower in the face of villainy.  The law is not on their side.

When The Girls Come Out To Play

Gratuitous Chick Pics

Earlier this week there was some silly awards thing (which nobody cares about) called the “Pride Of Britain”, which as far as I can see is just an excuse for showbiz houris  to show off their boobs.  You’ll recognize some but not others, but I simply couldn’t be bothered with names because, as I said above, nobody cares.  Here’s a sample:

 

 

 

 

 

You have to know things are bad when Carol Vorderman (#1) is the most restrained of the lot.

Not Concrete

Drive Time, Travels

When I first visited the U.S. of A. back in 1982 (honeymoon with Wife #1), I decided to do a LONG drive trip around the eastern U.S. — a four-day drive from NYfC to Boston and into New Hampshire and Maine, then back down to Manhattan for a day or two, and then carrying on down to New Orleans, then to Florida (Disney World), and back up the eastern seaboard to NYfC before flying home to the old Racist Republic.  The trip ended up taking us just under a month.

Bear in mind that I’d never driven on the right-hand side of the road, and there was no Wayze or GurgleMaps, just a Rand-McNally atlas.

That wasn’t a problem.  This was.

In South Africa, there are no concrete roads;  all are asphalt, and at least as far as the freeways are concerned, very smooth.  Imagine then my surprise when I got to the Greatest Country On Earth, set out on the interstate highways and had to endure three weeks of “ker-chunk-ker-chunk-ker-chunk” as the highway joints chattered away under the tires of the rented Dodge Aries, driving me to near-insanity.

WTF?  I’ve heard all the arguments in favor of concrete as a road surface, and none of them make up for the most unpleasant driving experience on Earth.  As for the “concrete lasts longer in extreme heat conditions than asphalt” argument, please note that in South Africa (where sweltering heat is not exactly an unknown weather condition) the asphalt roads bear up perfectly well.

Indeed, when I went back to Seffrica back in 2017, I had occasion to drive from Johannesburg to Pretoria and back (about 140-odd miles) on the N3/N1 motorways, which were in perfect condition AND being asphalt, there was no road noise.  (Ditto of course in Britishland, where I’d been likewise driving around Hardy Country in a Ford Focus.)

This was brought home to me quite recently when I discovered that Plano has started covering some of our concrete suburban roads with asphalt.  The change in the driving experience (and therefore my mood) has been dramatic.  My only gripe is that the process isn’t going fast enough, and to my dismay I notice that all the road repairs currently underway [20,000-word rant deleted]  are being made by re-laying concrete slabs, rather than just covering the affected areas with asphalt.

Whichever American first made the decision to go with a concrete road surface over asphalt should have been thrown into a revolving concrete mixer for a week.

News Roundup

Bad News

And speaking of evil bitches and their webs:


...it’s difficult to imagine anyone more “dark and dystopian” than this ghastly parody of a woman.

Great Moments of Jurisprudence:


...no shit, Sherlock yer honor.  Also:


...unless she’s skinny and likes to suck dick, I’m somewhat puzzled by this one. And lastly:


...but at least he didn’t call her a fat lesbian — even though in this case, the description fits perfectly.


...they have no Posse Comitatus law in Swedishland, but that seems to be a Good Thing in this instance.


...I’m thinking large amounts of cash, flowers and a roofie… wait, perhaps I misread the headline.


...well, maybe not everyone misses the blustering Green asshole cyclist.

From the Department Of Education:


...gives new meaning to the term “pupil support”, dunnit?


…

And the part you’ve all been waiting for, INSIGNIFICA:

           ...trust me, you don’t want to go there.  No man should.

Finally, some Showbiz News:


...I report, you decide:

And in daylight:

And that’s all the news that’s fit to mock.

Reader Recommendation

Entertainment

From Reader and Commenter ChaddInFl comes this:

I recently finished the first and only series of a German Netflix series called Kleo. It’s set in late ‘80s/early ‘90s Berlin. The title character is a young Stasi assassin who is denounced and imprisoned after completing an important assassination in West Berlin. She is released from her East German prison in 1990, during the time between the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification… and boy is she pissed. It turns out that all the GDR big wigs have taken their ill-gotten millions and fled for balmier climes.

It’s a well-produced and well-written show. The main character and her primary antagonist (a West German cop) are both relatable and well developed. I’ve recommended this to everyone in my daily life, so I thought I’d send it to the author of my favorite blog.

Thankee Chadd for the kind words.  As it happens, I’ve seen the show and it’s as good as he says it is.  Please note, however, that it is more of a black comedy (cf. Tarantino) than realistic, and often veers into near-fantasy, especially in the flashbacks.

And tell me that Jella Haase is not an inspired bit of casting as the assassin Kleo:

Dead eyes, if ever I’ve seen them.