Updates, Updates, Updates!

I've noticed that I haven't posted here for a while. The main main reason for this is that nothing much of interest has happened but I hate people that can't stand their blogs so here we go.

The main bit of news is that we've proved once and for all that my father will officially sleep through anything. Last week some little charmer set fire to the Wheelie Bin outside my house. With the front windows open the acrid smoke you get from burning plastic soon wafted into out living room where my father was asleep on the sofa. Failing to rouse him from his slumber the smoke then drifted into the hallway where it set off the smoke alarm. At this point I obviously went to investigate and ended up kicking the offending bin into the road to prevent it from setting fire to anything else. The fire brigade then turned up on their big red fire engine with it's siren, flashing blue lights, crashing, banging and a little swearing. After they put the fire outI went back inside and there was my father, still fast asleep on the sofa.

The next day he comes up to me and says; "Did you know there was a fire outside yesterday?!" To which the only possible answer was "No shit! That's probably why there's ash and molten plastic on my shoes!"

On a related note my grandmother, following her successful operation, is now out of hospital and has been moved to a rehabilitation unit attached to a local nursing home. There's no real medical reason for this move it's just that after several hours in my fathers company even the caring professions patience had worn seriously thin and they decided my grandmother needed a little bit of a holiday. As the move means that her wound dressings are being attended to by a qualified nurse and her exercise program is being supervised by a physiotherapist I can't really complain to much.

The program of testing and monitoring at the rehab unit did throw up a blood test result that gave the doctors cause for concern. This meant that last night my grandmother was rushed to the local accident and emergency department where further investigation revealed the situation to be an issue rather then problem and she was sent back to the rehab unit after a few hours.

By a stroke of luck the ambulance crew that took my grandmother to hospital also happened to be one of the ambulance crews that attended Sundays impressive Tram/Bus/Car crash. Apparently what happened was that one of Croydon's famous Trams plowed into a bus killing one man before propelling the bus down a pedestrian street. Further loss of life was only prevented when the bus collided with an illegally parked car causing the two vehicles to crash into a shop front. The whole incident closed the centre of Croydon for most of Sunday while Transport For London's major incident response teams dealt with the carnage.

From what I've heard some eyewitnesses reckon that at the time of the collision both the tram signal and the bus signal were set to green. I'm sure this is just eyewitnesses being confused by a stressful situation. If however they're not it does mean the civilian death toll from the Bristol Abuse Case has now risen to 8.

Greenpeace yesterday got a very good result in the UK courts when a jury ruled that six activists were justified in causing £30,000 worth of damage to the Kingsnorth power station because their actions were necessary to prevent a greater crime being committed.

Although unusual this verdict is not unprecedented because under UK law it has always been accepted that if you witness a person committing a criminal act you are allowed to yourself break the law in order to prevent that offence from taking place. For example if you hear your next door neighbour attempting to commit a murder you can lawfully commit the offence of breaking into his house and lawfully commit the offence of assault providing those offences were committed in order to prevent the murder. Hell if the offence is something as serious as smoking in a public place you are actually legally obligated to take action to prevent it.

The principal of lawful excuse does raise some interesting questions though. Imagine if you will that you witness someone kidnap, rape and psychologically abuse a young woman before forcing her to give birth to a child so that child could be used for scientific experimentation what steps would be considered reasonable to prevent that from happening?