22:10 on 6/9/12.
The big race at the para-Olympics saw TeamGB's Jonnie Peacock face off against South Africa's Oscar Pistorious and Brazil's Alan Olivera in the final of the T44 men's 100m final. After Oliveria was show a green card (equivalent to a yellow card in football/soccer) for a false start the race was eventually won by TeamGB's Jonnie Peacock in a time of 10.9 seconds which means he wouldn't have placed in the men's 100m final. However with the Rihanna featuring MTV Video Music Awards from the place where they held Michael Jackson's funeral about to go live against US President Barack Obama's speech to the Democrat National Convention (DNC) I can't help but feel I'm the main event of the evening. Therefore while I have a lot to get through and second dinner available I might just reach a point where I give up.
Britain's big set piece for the day has been the revelation that a Judge (Peter Bowers) told a man (Richard Rochford ) who'd he'd just convicted of three burglaries committed over five days that he thought "Burglars were courageous" and that "Prison never did anyone any good." The Judge then went on to sentence the heroin addicted burglar to 1 year in prison suspended for 18 months (meaning that if he is convicted of any other offence within 18 months he will go straight to prison plus the sentence for the second offence), a two year supervised drug rehabilitation order and 200 hours of unpaid work that will "benefit the community." This was quite a long sentence for three counts of burglary and was aggravated by the fact Mr Rochford has a string of previous offences including three years in prison for arson. The idea of a Judge commending a burglar could remind a lot of people about that time I interrupted a very drunk burglar who rather helpfully told me where he lived but the police still somehow failed to prosecute. However for people who aren't that interested in the exact details of my life the incident provoked a discussion about Vengeance versus Rehabilitation schools of thought within the criminal justice system. Basically there are some who think the criminal justice system should be used to allow society to exact revenge on the offender while others think it should be used simply to make sure the offender doesn't do it again. Essentially the old British Justice Minister Ken Clarke was in the rehabilitation camp and the new British Justice Minister Chris Grayling is in the vengeance camp. Therefore the Judges comments were a good way for the British public and the Conservative Party to discuss and give their reactions to the shift in policy.
Long before the story broke Mr Rochford's lawyer had lodged a complaint of misconduct with the Office of Judicial Complaints which will get absolutely nowhere. Since the Settlement Act of 1701 which acted as a sort of peace treaty between the Monarch and Parliament to prevent a third English civil war Judges have something called security of tenure to prevent a Monarch with a bad mood sacking them and/or having them executed This means that British Judges are almost impossible to sack. As a result British Judges can pretty much do what they like. Take post conviction sentencing for example. Although there must be certain phrases that must be used on the court record to make a ruling binding if a Judge wanted to use their sentencing speech to treat the courtroom to a recital of the musical "Oklahoma" they can. Similarly most British laws as passed by Parliament only contain a maximum sentence so in exceptional circumstance Judge can sentence a convicted murderer to a conditional discharge (basically a Judge telling you not to do it again) however there are sentencing guidelines laid down by the Justice Minister and sentences that wildly differ from those guidelines will most likely be overturned by the Court of Appeal. In severe cases of unprofessional conduct such as kissing a court clerk full on the lips in open court and using foul and racist language to refer to convict in sentencing will be investigated by the Office Judaical Complaints but the maximum they can do is ask the Judge to retire or if they can prove the Judge to be clinically insane the Lord Chancellor can force them to retire on medical grounds. However the constitutional grant of the Settlement Act most certainly does not mean that a Judge is above the law. If it can be demonstrated that a Judge has committed a criminal offence and they refuse to retire a representative of the House of Commons can consult with a representative of the House of Lords and if they both agree then and only then can the Monarch fire the Judge. This procedure has changed a bit over the last 311 years so I will need to check the latest legislation but crucially this procedure has never been used because normally when Judges are caught in the act of committing a criminal offence they do the sensible thing and retire. As a result I don't think that any Lord Chancellor in the past 200 years has the faintest idea how to react to such an application but frankly that's not really my problem. Of course if the Lord Chancellor were to refuse such an application, especially one as serious as mentioned in my grandmother's case, we would then have to get into a very serious conversation about whether Britain can be considered a lawful country which has a right to exist because if the International Criminal Court (ICC) or the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) interpret Britain's conduct as a crime against humanity ultimately we could be looking at regime under Chapter 7. Obviously though if those circumstances were to arise I would be the first up in front of the firing squad. One option Britain and the USA are discussing is allowing the Crown's conduct in my grandmother's case to be used as a defence of necessity of lawful excuse should I happen to kill anyone involved in the sale of my grandmother's house of otherwise demand money from her estate. Personally though I think that's just a ruse to bring down the pension bill.
23:10 on 6/9/12. I've barely even started.
Edited at around 23:20 on 6/9/12.
If you find the thought of me discussing killing my father to be all a little bit too Shakespearean I apologise but when people opt to live beyond the civilised protections of law then it really just comes down to whose best at violence. The people who killed those three British passport holders in a BMW in France yesterday were clearly very good at violence. So the incident does call into question the mother of Mark Duggan's outrage that the police fired two bullets at her son and puts it firmly into perspective because I've been led to believe that special forces soldiers routinely fire thousands of rounds of ammunition a day in order to build up muscle memory so they can put dozens of rounds into a person without having to waste time thinking about it. Of course this also raises questions about the competence of the French police because with even my extremely limited knowledge of special forces tactics I know that they were at fault in the Mohammed Merah shoot-out. The people that carried out the BMW shooting though were not so much good at violence but absolute artists because the decision to leave the four year old daughter alive was purely intentional. The idea was to convey the daily horror of what is going on in Syria where many four year old girls routinely find themselves hiding under the corpses of their parents to avoid being killed. Sadly though Hollande still seems intent on supporting the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA). I think this is because the French state is still a bit sore about British Petroleum's (BP) decision in the 1920's to steal a large section of the French Empire and turn into an oil filled pseudo-nation known as "Iraq." However this was quite a while ago so even though it makes Saudi Arabia's claim that the west should support the SQIA in order to return the region to it's historical/tribal roots look distinctly brave I feel I'm going off on a bit of a ranty tangent.
23:30 on 6/9/12.
23:50 on 6/9/12.
Today's main theme from the French BMW shooting though has been to highlight the different restrictions on what the media in France and the media in Britain can report. France has very strict privacy laws restricting the media reporting facts about their public figures, especially their politicians. For example to this day very few people in France officially know that former Socialist Party Presidential candidate and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Khan has raped a string of women, routinely uses prostitutes and has had numerous affairs. The British press however will happily report these sort of details about their public figures including untrue allegations that heir to the throne Prince Charles of Wales raped a male staff member. This is strange because while British voters get obsessed with this sort of thing rape aside French voters don't seem to care. However while Britain is trying to restrict press freedoms France is actually trying to loosen them through salacious stories about the love triangle between President Hollande, his partner Segolene Royale and his mistress. However as this is still a work in progress most of the details I've heard about the BMW shooting come from the British press because the French are still not totally happy acknowledging that a shooting has taken place. However the first new detail that has been verified with photographic evidence is that the BMW in question was in fact not a 4x4 but a burgundy 5 series estate. The second detail that has not been verified is that the victims are members of the Iraqi al-Hilli family which I take to mean the father Saad and his un-named wife and his un-named mother-in-law (wife's mother) while the dead cyclist is just a Frenchman who was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place in the wrong time. Saad al-Hilli and his family were apparently granted British citizenship after fleeing Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1970's. Through the father of the daughter of my friend's girlfriend (Selena Gomez) I know that Iraqi refugees granted British citizenship during this period were expected to contribute something in return. Mr al-Hilli appears to have contributed his skills as a mechanical and latterly a computer design engineer working on a variety of aeronautical, satellite and space exploration projects. His mother-in-law appears to have been granted Swedish citizenship under similar circumstances. So like I said they were not killed at random. As I'm quite drunk and my mouth (fingers?!?) is starting to run away with me I would go so far as to say that France which has a mutual defence pact with Britain has been trying to intimidate Germany into allowing the European Central Bank (ECB) to buy up Eurozone government bonds. This appears to have succeeded but the ECB have monthly meetings these days so that may be subject to change. Hollande of course is under quite a lot of pressure at home because after promising the world to the niggers in Paris in order to get elected he's discovered he can't deliver on any of his promises leading to quite a few riots. I think there may be a teachable moment in there somewhere about the problems with changing President's before their term limits expire but I'll need to check CNN to find out what it is.
00:20 on 7/9/12.
Edited at 00:45 on 7/9/12.
Another man who is very skilled at violence is former UFC cage fighter Alex Reid. He's been in the news in the last couple of days because following an argument on Wednesday (5/9/12) with the mother of his 11 week old child, Chantelle Haughton he was arrested for criminal damage/using violence (against property) to gain entry to Ms Haughton's home. On Thursday (6/9/12) he was released without charge after Ms Haughton withdraw the allegation. While for the 'celebrity' couple this is just another story that they will sell to the supermarket tabloids this was a reference to an incident that a Linda of "Richmond Road" - right next to mine - reported to the police in which one of her many gentlemen callers smashed a window in the frontdoor and forced his way into the property as an act of 'domestic violence.' As this was a different gentleman caller from my drunken burglar I've long decided that it's not my, erm, (try not to swear) problem. In fact I'm trying to look for a tactful way of explaining while my grandmother's suggesting that Linda gets paid for sex is the most exicting thing that's ever happened in their lives I actually know the actual people in the actual story better. When Ms Haughton was married to Preston from as ska-lite band "The Ordinary Boys" I used to routinely run into the couple in Brighton including one famous occasion where they were having a massive argument after appearing on "The Jonathon Ross" show and I'd taken far too many drugs and was trying to do something extremely complicated. I also used to share a bank/local shops with Alex Reid's ex-wife Jordan/Katie Price and my friend (Selena Gomez's stepfather) routinely delivers to Jordan/Katie Price's other ex-husband Peter Andre's coffee shop/tax write-off. And if you thing that sounds arrogant I've actually reached the point where I've decided that I can't be bothered with Rihanna at the moment although the people that are following me following Rihanna on Twitter will be monitoring any perceived changes of behaviour in great detail.
On the plus side though there's been plenty of comedy stories to keep me amused. These include the news that an 83 year old woman has been bitten by a rabid beaver whilst swimming in a Washington, USA lake. Also the shooter from Quebec has been named as Richard Henry Bain as in "Bain Capital" from the La Conception area which apparently means a lot in south America but I just think this instance is just Protestant Christian's getting confused about the story of Jesus Christ yet again. Scientists at Aberdeen University in the Scotland part of Britain have declared that 1 in 200 people are addicted to food. If you think that estimate is about 199 people too low the point they're trying to make is that behavioural addiction should be considered as a form of addiction alongside phyiscal addiction (which requires a physical need within the body) rather then an impulse control disorder in the new version of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSMV).
Best of all though I am pleased to confirm that Russian Valdimir Putin has indeed used a hanglider/micro-light to lead a flock of young Crane birds out of captivity to freedom. Even by Russian standards this is a story that is so bizarre that along with the saga of Medvedev's missing cat when it first broke everyone thought it had been made up by the anti-Putin protesters as a malcious slander. However Putin has gone ahead and done it so could I be as bold as to suggest the 'young birds' in question are the young women who make up the band "Pussy Riot" and a concession that while everyone in Russia thought Putin looked really tough in those topless pictures of him riding a horse everybody else though he looked like a bizarre extra from the gay-cowboy film "Brokeback Mountain."
Now as I appear to have lost my power of the English language I think it's time for me to have one final beer and go to bed. It's around 01:30 on 7/9/12 but I of course will date it as "23:59 on 6/9/12" in order to avoid confusion about which particular version of 'today' I was referring too. Now here's the original version;
Yes this will be edited, added to and changed after the end of the days events.
However on the day that the para-Olympics are preparing for the men's T44 100m final a British Judge (Peter Bowers) has been reported to the Office of Judaical Complaints after making some very silly statements before sentencing a heroin addicted burglar (Richard Rochford) to one year in prison suspended for 18 months (meaning that if he's convicted of any other offence within 18 months he goes straight to prison), two years of supervised drug rehabilitation/treatment and two hundred hours of unpaid community work. This is actually quite a harsh sentence for three counts of burglary. Obviously this promotes discussions about judicial misconduct and possible punishments. So to save a bit of time I should say I won't be referring my grandmother's case to the Office of Judical Complaints and instead will be using the 1981 Supreme Court Act to go directly to the Lord Chancellor who will seek the Crown permission for the dismissal and prosecution the Judges in my grandmother's case. This is a very rarely used procedure that was last discussed in 1962 when the Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Macmillian convinced the Conservative Party Lord Chancellor Viscount Kilmuir to 'resign' during what was known as the night of the long knives.
17:15 on 6/9/12.
Edited at around 19:20 on 6/9/12 to add;
My father returned home from visiting my sister at around 17:50 after what seems to be a rather routine visit. Unfortunately I can't go into much more detail then that without starting a highly inflammatory debate about torture and interrogation techniques. However as soon as he returned home my father looked up the address of my sister's new housing association home on Google earth. The reason he couldn't find it because it's a new building which obviously means that today's British government announcement about Town & County Planning (new building development) is a possible code base for discussion about my father and sister's day together. I may say though that doesn't exactly fit into my definition of mental health rehabilitation therapy.
19:25 on 6/9/12.
Edited at around 20:15 on 6/9/12 to add:
And now I'm watching "Good Cop" on BBC1. It's about a Liverpool police officer nicknamed "Sav." After murdering a man in episode 1 his father is making it abundantly clearly to even the slowest viewer that he's being chased by an allegory for MI5 while his new partner (who looks a lot like Fearne Cotton) is questioning him over his attitude and conduct in attempting to talk down a suicide which led to the person jumping off a tall building in the opening scene.
And yes the Alex Reid thing is a reference to the original domestic violence.
20:20 on 6/9/12.
Edited at around 20:35 to add:
10.9 after a false start because I was having a fag because I'm too fat handed to use my phone.
20:37(ish) on 6/9/12.
Edited at around 21:00 on 6/9/12 to add;
Oh no Sav's gone vigilante by killing the allegory for MI5. However if you caught the scene where Sav tried to get the prisoner to identify the suicide victim and that the allegory had previously been in "Shameless" you'd know that the allegory will expand to include members of an extended Irish Catholic crime family. I think the lesson is that you never go toe to toe with MI5.
Oh and when I say expect edits there are currently two versions of this post. One on my PC and one on my Blackberry.
21:05 on 6/9/12.
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