Love and Marriage

Right back in the blogging saddle after my 3 weeks off wandering around Europe and at one point getting married.

Yes I have done the deed and after 18 years of being the unofficial Mrs Dragon, Mrs Dragon is now the official Mrs Dragon and we have a green piece of paper shoved in the back of a drawer to prove it.

But dear sweet banjo picking Jesus what a bloody fuss. Look if it were down to me this would have been done weeks ago when we both had to go and fill in the official forms with the registrar in the civil version of "Reading the Banns" which I blogged about here. After all they have all the information they need, we spoke individually and together to a registrar, surely that would be enough? All they would need to do is put the notices up and if nobody objects in three weeks you get your chitty, kind of like a planning application.

No chance. You have to hire the venue (fifty quid if you get the early bird version and turn up for the 10am slot) and have some council numpty read a bunch of words and before that another council numpty fills in your form using EXACTLY the same information that she had in front of her but we actually have to tell her the information all over again. I mean talk about feather-bedding and waste in local government.

After the round of form filling we are allowed to enter the official registry room where you have to go because if they read the magic words in the car park it doesn't count for some reason, maybe it's a magic spell and the Tennyson Room at Ely registry office is some sort of Hogwarts annexe. The special effects are not as good as Hogwarts mind as the first thing I see was a load of plastic flowers with a string of LED fairy lights wrapped round them and a cheap HiFi playing a bit from The Four Seasons and my brother in law's arse in the air as he fiddles about with the volume control - really classy.

And I mean is it really necessary for the registrar to wear her huge plastic name badge with "Ms. Important McOfficial - Cambridgeshire County Council" on it through the proceedings? Look it's galling enough that I have to abase myself before local sodding government without you rubbing my nose in it. I'm surprised she didn't insist on wearing a fluorescent green tabard with "WEDDING OFFICER" emblazoned on the back to make the point.

I then get told I'm stood on the wrong side of the future Mrs Dragon and that I need to be to her right "so as her knight I can draw my sword to defend her." I dragonfully* apply some tact under the circumstances and refrain from advising Ms Important McOffical that any knights drawing any swords in my presence are going to get both nostrils set to "roast at gas mark 8 for 2 hours".

Fortunately we had the shortest form of marriage blurb but that still went on for a good 10 minutes worth of "These lovely lovely people who are lovely and starting their new lovely life of love together and we'll pretend that they haven't been all over each other like wyverns in heat for the past 18 years" sickly sweet yuk from Ms McOfficial who had resorted to that Princess Diana coy head on her shoulder stance complete with stapled on smile before we get to take a few pics and bugger off back home for a very sun not yet above the yardarm champers

I'm definitely staying married to the new official Mrs Dragon. If that's the hassle you have to go through to get wed I dread to even think about what divorce is like.


* like "manfully", only done by a dragon.

If you follow my Twitter feed you'll know I'm gallivanting around Europe at the moment and in a couple of weeks I'm getting married so blogging will be light to non-existent for the next two or three weeks. 

So here are some horse pictures from the Bundeschampionate held at Warendorf, Germany over the week... if you're into horses prepare to drool (and no, you can't afford them)

And just for giggles:

Claudia Hat 'nen Video Spiele

17 years after its release Germany has "unbanned" the famous first person shooter game "Doom". The funniest thing reading about this was becoming re-acquainted with the German government ministry that originally did the banning, the fabulously named Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien literally "Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons"

Germany actually has this organisation that goes beyond rating media like games and films but can actually completely ban an item from sale or distribution if it is deemed "Harmful to Minors" which they define as:

Objects are considered harmful or dangerous to minors if they tend to endanger their process of developing a socially responsible and self-reliant personality.

What actually happened in practice was that items on the "index" were only available through certain outlets like sex shops.

I first came upon this "Won't somebody think of the chiiiiildren!" nightmare organisation some years ago through a German punk outfit "Die Ärtze" (The Doctors) who had one of their songs banned by the blue noses at the BPjM; it was a lovely little ditty about a girl called Claudia and her German Shepherd dog, went something like this...

Claudia hat nen Schäferhund
und den hat sie nicht ohne Grund,
Abends springt er in ihr Bett
und dann geht es rund!

Yes, it's rather rude but it really does beggar belief that some serious, educated people sat around in a room and went "Yes this song will encourage our young women to experiment with bestiality, better ban it."

So as a result of the ban Die Ärtze were forbidden to sing this song at their concerts. 

But as technically only the lyrics were banned what they used to do was play the song as an instrumental.  The audience used to sing it.

I can just imagine some Mary Whitehouse type watching thousands of teenagers singing..

Claudia mag keine Jungs
Und sie ist auch nicht lesbisch,
am allerliebsten mag sie es,
mit ihrem Hundchen untern Esstisch!

... at the tops of their voices as she slowly turned purple with impotent rage.

Dura lex sed lex

So the Dale Farm do-what-you-likey-pikeys are about to recieve a little visit from Mr and Mrs Bulldozer and their son Master Wreckingball.

Good. Although they seemed quite happy to resort to the law to keep their illegally built eyesore the have been handed their arses on a plate and found out that the law works both ways and it really doesn't matter if you don't think that the law applies to you or you should be allowed to do whatever the fuck you like with land you own, the law says it does apply to you and you can't. Dura lex sed lex; the law is hard but it is the law.

Look I'm no great fan of the state and many planning laws are just bloody stupid - for example when building my stable block I had to prepare and submit a flood evacuation plan, for a horse, on land that last flooded when it was a swamp back in the eighteenth century. However I would posit that the planning rules serve a purpose to stop selfish bastards doing what the hell they like with no thought for the misery it causes other people If I'd wanted to build an open air nightclub with a gigawatt sound system then it would only be right and proper that my neighbours would have the right to make representation to a planning body of the harm such an action would cause to their lives and freedoms and for that body to weigh the evidence and maybe decide that my freedom to party does not outweigh my neighbours freedom to get a decent night's kip and so no you can't have your nightclub.

And I differ from my more extreme libertarians on this notion that if you own something then it is yours to do with as you wish. For example as many of my readers know I own horses and there are various things I can't do with them, for example use certain kinds of harness or shock collars for training or, coming back to our friends in the "travelling community", take it into a river in Appleby and drown the poor beast. This is because we, as a society through our elected representatives, have decided that to do so is not acceptable and because we know some callous git would do these things we make laws and erect a system of justice to ensure people are held to those laws.

And whilst the law is hard it is moveable. Remember bottysex used to be illegal and now it isn't? The law can be changed by people agitating and petitioning the lawmakers for a change. The residents of Dale Farm and their fellows are perfectly at liberty to make their case to change the law and, if by some miracle and in a parallel universe where your average traveller is a nice, polite, honest person who actually gives a shit about other people, they get opinion on their side then the law will eventually change.

It's not a perfect system by any means as there are always those, usually with money and power, who will subvert the law, or set themselves up above the law, but given the nature of human beings it's probably the best we can do. You can always break the law, or ignore it, but you have to be aware that there will be consequences.

And in this case the consequences are large, yellow and have "JCB" written on the side.

Hiding the bodies.

It's clean, it's green, its the body dissolving machine! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14114555

OK so this hi-tech version of John George Haigh's acid bath might be a very clever way of turning granny into soup but its still using up energy (you don't get to 180 Celsius and 10,000 hPa for free) so how about we do this the old fashioned way, it's called "burial".

In my world it would work like this. You build a few big frozen storage places around the country and when people croak they get sent there, medical and dental students get to have a bit of practice at taking out the metal fillings and granny's hip replacements and then the bodies are put on ice in a dimly lit freezer. These facilities would pay for themselves as they could be rented out to the BBC every year for yet another episode of Torchwood which always seems to be set in places like this. This would have the added benefit of giving comfort to the relatives of the deceased as they would be able to picture their loved ones lying there whilst John Barrowman runs past them in tight-fitting trousers, an RAF coat and a hammy American accent.

Anyway once you have enough bods you go out to a big plantation, dig a bunch of holes, put a body in each one and then plant a tree on top. The body rots, fertilises the young tree so it gets off to a good start and in 50 years you can cut down the tree and use the wood, dig up any remaining bones and crush them up - the resulting grit is handy for spreading on ice in the winter.

All in all 100% eco-friendly and carbon neutral.

It's what granny would have wanted

Religious idiot in a silly robe gets a legal slap

Just for a change this time the religious loon wasn't a member of one of the various kiddy-fiddling christian factions, nor even one of the "Religion of Peace"® but this chap.



Yep, it's Arthur Pendragon. Self-appointed Druid leader (which is kind of like those "Community Leaders" who pop up all puffed up with their sense of self importance and everyone around them going "don't recall voting you into office matey") and head of the "Loyal Arthurian Warband" (all four of them - I met them once when I was on the same bill as "Arthur" here and all they were up to making war on was several pints of beer)

Actually he's pretty harmless, just eccentric in the finest British tradition. But it's important that any believers in any flavour of sky-fairy nonsense get a slap when then start to come out with crap like:

Pendragon, who represented himself, said the bones were remains of members of the "royal line" or "priest caste" who could have been the "founding fathers of this great nation".

for which of course he has the square-root of fuck-all's evidence. However it is a threat to him if the clever chaps with their DNA sequencers and electron microscopes up in Sheffield can actually find out who these bodies belong to and it turns out they were, lets say, executed prisoners thrown in a pit to pacify whatever sky-fairy the locals were in terror of 5000 years ago.

And whoever that sky-fairy and whatever his/her religious practices were it's a racing certainty that they would be utterly alien and unrecognisable to the modern cuddly pagans and druids we have today.


(Disclaimer: Back in my 20's I used to believe in all that pagan stuff... I grew out of it)

Pockets of Resistance

Well our latest foray in military meddling in the Middle East is coming to a close. Even if, as it looks, the Gaddafi loyalists have fallen back to make a last stand in Tripoli this is the end game; no resupply of food or weapons, it's now just a matter of time. Everyone's favourite comedy dictator is probably pacing around his bunker, throwing coloured pencils at a map of Tripoli and ranting at his remaining generals "Downfall" style.

Now as we are all aware Gaddafi is as mad a box of frogs and may really believe all of Libya loves him and will rise and fight to the bitter end but I don't think he's that batshit crazy. So why didn't he flee when it was obvious that he'd lost? Well maybe the fact that the International Criminal Court have already said they would like a quiet chat with him over tea and ontbijtkoeken in The Hague with regard to, you know, war crimes and stuff might have had more than a part to play.

Back in the day when the gig was up your average dictator went round to the central bank, hoovered up everything in transferable assets and flew the presidential plane to some equally totalitarian state and proceeded to live a quiet life with just the occasional interviewer from "Time" magazine to break the monotony. Sure not very comforting to the relatives of said dictator's victims but it did tend to mean that revolutions when they happened were relatively short.

The trouble I think with these courts is that they don't really seem to work. They don't act as a deterrent as the people committing war crimes don't every think they'll have to stand trial because, well, they're going to win the war of course. It also smacks of "victor's justice" - if perhaps a certain Mr Blair were to stand trial for engaging in a war of aggression on a false pretext then the courts might seem to be at least fair and impartial. Finally if anything they maybe are costing lives, prolonging conflicts as leaders who are shoe-ins for a few weeks of stand-up freeform ranting in a perspex box somewhere in Holland, decide they have nothing to lose so might as well hang on to the last bullet.

I can see why there's a desire for a war trials court, it's a noble ideal, but I can't help think that is this case like many other noble ideals done out of the finest motives it's just making things worse

What a doughnut

The first of the looters in Manchester are being hauled before the beak this week. Now down in the smoke it was kids kicking in the windows of Currys and strolling off with a Sony Bravia. Not in Manchester:

A man who helped himself to doughnuts from a Krispy Kreme shop during riots in Manchester city centre has been jailed for 16 months.

Apparently his excuse was he was hungry:

He was not involved in rioting but took the doughnuts because he was hungry, having spent his money on tobacco

oh and before he bought his tabs:

Thomas Downey, 48, was released from HMP Manchester at 19:30 BST on 9 August when he became caught up in the riots. The serial offender went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous before downing a bottle of sherry.

That 12 step programme is working a treat I see.

According to the article on the Beeb's website this bloke has over 100 convictions for 233 offences.

You know I try to feel sorry for people like this, I really do (deep down I am actually quite a caring dragon) but I have to ask myself wouldn't it be better if people like Thomas and the few thousand other Thomases out there, you know the 0.1% of the population that cause 95% of the trouble, could just be put somewhere away from the rest of us? Hell give them access to booze, drugs and 24/7 porn or something but isolate the infection so the rest of us can just get on with doing our everyday stuff without Mr Sherry and Doughnuts wandering into view and kicking off on a booze and sugar rush.

Mind you the one man I do not have any sympathy for is this loser:

Father-of-four Anthony Winder, 38, looted the Swarovski Crystal store and smashed a display cabinet to get an ornamental dog, the court heard.

You actually wanted a Swarovski crystal dog? You deserve to be executed for crimes against taste.

Showers, moderate becoming cabbages later

... Channel Light Vessel Automatic: south west variable 3 or 4, 1012 falling slowly, showers, good...

You know you are up far, far too early when the comforting ritual words of the Shipping Forecast are on Radio 4 as you drive to the station. So why am I up at crack of sparrow-fart today. Well for a start it's August and that means everyone on the team who has rugrats absolutely must have a couple of weeks off with their spawn. Consequently those that don't like me end up holding the fort whilst the Project Manager, Team Lead and one of the senior developers bugger off en famille to Lanzagrotty, Disney World in an American Swamp or Bournemouth respectively. Even the intern has buggered off for the week as he needs to resit a couple of exams he cocked up. So its down to me to be the "senior manager" (hah!) on the ground to mop the fevered brows of our traders should they take a dislike to the particular shading of an "OK" button on any of our applications this morning.

So there I am on the train, another wage slave, with a few other bleary-eyed companions trundling through Cambridgeshire in some clapped-out carriage we'll all have to pay 13% more for next year.

Now I don't know if you know the area between Ely and Cambridge, it's called "The Fens" and up until the 1800's it was just marsh, bog and shifting rivers. Then the happy collision of a clever Cloggie called Vermuiden and a load of free labour in the shape of prisoners of war from the little spat we were having with Napoleon came together to construct drainage channels (and these are no mere ditches, one is called "The Hundred Foot River" because that's how wide it is, it's 18 miles long and straight as a die, you can see it from space) and turned the area into fertile, productive land to feed the growing cities of the 19th century.

It was this I was bimbling through now. Flat as a pancake and acre upon acre of every kind of salad crop you can think of. It was before 6am and already there is plenty of activity; these big rectangular tents on wheels moving back and forth which house the pickers and packers working the rows of lettuce.

And I can tell you now every single of those will be from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, anywhere but here.

I don't begrudge them the work, they work bloody hard; the ones I've met in the market towns around here, Wisbech, Downham Market, Ely, are all polite and don't cause any bother.

But why the hell am I paying for a whole fecking underclass of zero-achievement ferals who have a sense of entitlement but no sense of responsibility who right now are tucked up in bed sleeping off the booze, dope and a hard night's looting of the local branch of JD Sports whilst I'm hauling my green scaly tail into London at 5 in the bleeding morning? There's work out there, tons of it, but it's been done by the aforementioned Eastern Europeans. Take a look at this from the Telegraph today

This is just not bloody on. If the state is to have a role here it is as a facilitator and broker. You have no job but you are fit and healthy, well here's a job, 50 hours a week picking cabbages. Here's your bus fare, your new employer will sort out some temporary housing.

What's that? It's demeaning? How are you supposed to use your DJing and Hip Hop dance skills in a cabbage field? Well fucking boo-hoo, let me call the whaaaaaambulance for you. Walk off the job and no money for you matey.

But you're unemployable because you perpetually skipped school and the only way you know how to talk is in a language that is a cross between pseudo Jamaican patois and the sounds a rutting pig makes? Just how much do you need to communicate to be able to pick a lettuce?


---
PS: Welcome to everyone who's arriving here from Old Holborn's blog and a big thanks to the masked maker of mischief and all-round thorn in the side of government for the link.

Haunted by the ghost of Macpherson

So now we cower in fear of a bunch of 100 or so teenage hoodies smashing up the place and nicking phones and tellies.

Well we let it happen, you and I. Sure some black kid got stabbed by a bunch of white thugs and plod make a horlicks of the investigation and so along comes the Macpherson report and lo and behold the police are "institutionally racist" and for years afterwards it's diversity this and kid-gloves that, maybe it needed to happen but it went way, way too far. Then along comes NuLabour with a new law every 32 nanoseconds and anyone who so much as raises his voice at anyone doing wrong or breaching the peace is descended on like the proverbial ton of bricks and hauled away as the miscreant.

"The police will protect you," we were told, "do not get involved, call the police, that is what they are there for, they're trained you see and have been on the relevant diversity and health and safety courses and wear florescent jackets. You, citizen, are not qualified. And don't you even dare think of arming yourself to protect your life, family and property. Trust in us, the police will be there."

Only now we see that Faustian bargain was just that. The police aren't there, they're not going to help, they will not stand there and protect your property or your life. Sure they might trawl facebook when this is over and nick the few mouthbreathers who were stupid enough to put "this is me an' me mates looting PC World innit" photos online but that's scant comfort to the asian corner shop keeper who's seem his livelyhood taken from him by the feral youth that decades of softly-softly policing, lefty pandering to the feckless, celebrity above talent and hard work culture and, quite frankly, not one us feeling we are able to stand up to insolent and loutish behaviour has created.

The scumbags perpetrating these mass lootings don't just think they are immune, they know they are untouchable. There are no consequences, even if caught they'll jet some token community sentence and an ASBO badge of honour.

This has, I would posit, gone too far for any remedial tinkering by our spineless politicians. If we want our communities back we will have to fight for them. What you won't see in the mainstream media today is the reports of mainly Turkish shopkeepers arming themselves with baseball bats and banding together to protect their businesses. Of 400 mainly asian young men fighting off 100 or so mainly afro-carribean youths in East London who were set on looting and causing mayhem. You need the very tools the rioters themselves use to get these stories.

We do have an answer. It's quite an old one, dates back to 1791 and it goes like this:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.