Clowns

David Cameron:
"And to the lawless minority, the criminals who have taken what they can get, I say this: We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you. You will pay for what you have done."

Q: How much will you pay exactly?
A: 60 quid.
And a district judge's comment:
"He [Tim Devas, district judge at Nottingham Magistrates Court] went on to address the court in general, saying: "If there are any criticisms of sentences handed down by the courts, if you want anyone to blame, then go and speak to the government.

"Do not blame the judges or the magistrates who do their jobs professionally and abide by the guidelines set down."

At the same time, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has warned against a push for new sentencing powers in the wake of the riots. He told BBC Radio 4 the existing system was working and cautioned against knee-jerk reactions to shocking events.
Not that anything Clarke says should be taken seriously after this.

And then:
"Met Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin paid tribute to his "brave" officers after the meeting, saying they had "faced unprecedented violence and damage and criminality and looting" and that "any suggestion the officers stood back is wrong"."

From Cameron's Commons statement, linked above:
"Police chiefs have been frank with me about why this happened.
Initially the police treated the situation too much as a public order issue - rather than essentially one of crime."

Public order issue, standard response = stand back.
Which could have just been understandable for the first few hours on Saturday night, but for the next 2 days???

Anyway, Tobias Ellwood (MP for Bournemouth East) had a great suggestion to deal with that particular problem in the future: the Police should be able to close down phone masts if mobs are using social networks to co-ordinate trouble. Brilliant, so when you're being attacked you can't even call them to come to help. If they're not there they can't be accused of having done bugger all.

Meanwhile, Inspector Bob Cantrell (GMP) has also revealed the equipment used to deal with rioters and vandals on Tuesday night was 17-year-old and not fit for purpose.
However, on some other planet (the House of Commons):
"Mr Cameron insisted the cuts were "totally achievable" without any reduction in the visible policing presence on the streets."

He forgot to say that's because there's fuck all visible Police to start with. You can't notice reductions in what's not there to start with, or am I missing something?

In other news, the House of Commons is practically empty right now, during the main debate on public order.

But not to worry, Britain is leading the way out of this crisis!

While on the subject of clowns, here's Bozo.

My personal plea to the looters

Possibly, stay home tonight. But if you really can't...

Please, please, please. When you get dressed for the party, could you please ensure you wear some decent fitting trousers, or at least a tight belt? That'll spare us the sight of your dirty pants when you get carted off in cuffs, as per a few pictures going around.

Come on baby light my fire!

What's been going on in London is pretty harrowing, but thankfully the Westminster and Met clowns have provided some light relief, aided and abetted by the multitude of white van men and women when the BCC shoved a mike in their faces.

Let's start from the Met's Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin calling on parents to rein in their children. Seriously? No, seriously? Should they do that before or after they get home wheeling a massive new colour TV, a fridge and a microwave on a trolley from the local Curry's?
Oh yes, please do, says Mr Godwin, because we will be using CCTV footage to identify the rioters and bring them to justice, and we will also make it public so Londoners can assist with identification. Would that be the same footage that is so grainy that a mother wouldn't recognise her sprog if it was waving at the camera? That's assuming the camera were working in the first place.

Let's move on to Theresa May. Actually, I almost wholly agree with what she said, except just seeing her sends me into a rage. Is it possible to almost completely agree with someone whose voice alone is enough to propel me into the arms of the Monster Raving Loony Party? She neatly sidestepped the reporter's question about maybe, just maybe, her own party's savage cuts being part of the background of civil unrest. Having said that, there isn't much "civil" about the riots and looting.
At least she did show up in London, unlike the Mayor and the PM being adamant they wouldn't spoil their holidays as the Police were doing a brilliant job (although they did eventually give in).
However, Ken Livingstone covered the cuts angle: "This is unacceptable but what are you going to do to give a generation of youth hope for the future?"
Put the man on the fourth plinth, I say!
(And Boris, why the heck wasn't it you on Newsnight discussing the riots in your city, instead of the previous Mayor? Oh, prolly 'cos you needed some peace and quiet to think up the next tax cut for your rich mates).

David Lammy (the MP for Tottenham), bless his heart, blamed thugs from out of the area. That's right. Brixton thugs travelled to Tottenham, while the ones from Tottenham moved up to Enfield, whose own thugs went miles South to Lewisham, seeing that their own had popped over to Peckham. At some point they all bumped into each other in Oxford Street.

And what's with the people who gladly will talk to anyone with a mike, tearful about their burned down homes and shops, saying how scared they are? People, with all I imagine you have to do, what with just having been made homeless and jobless, do you really need your 15 minutes of fame so badly that you put up with the inevitable moronic question: "how do you feel?"??
If you have this pressing need to speak and cry into a microphone, go get yourself a karaoke machine from your nearest Argos. They've had 24 hour opening for the past few days and I'm sure when they see your face in the CCTV footage they'll give you attenuating circumstances. (That doesn't apply to one of the shopkeepers near Mare Street who refused to close shop when advised to do so by the other shopkeepers, went home at 5 to look after her baby, who can be heard gurgling on the BBC interview recording, then called the BBC to get on the news. Lady, the world really was not dying to hear your baby gaga-ing in the background, cute as it may be to you, while you were saying how nothing had happened on your patch, either before or after you went home, nor how you'd heard nothing in the run up to it.)

But I think Paula Radcliffe nailed it: "In less than 1 year we welcome the world to London, and right now the world doesn't want to come".
It appears every cloud has a silver lining.

London Bridge is burning down, burning down, burning down...

Ooops, got that wrong. I should have said Tottenham. Oh, and Enfield. And Brixton. And... never mind.

Meanwhile, our great PM is going back to leave a tip, although the BBC obviously have inside information as they tell us he told her to keep the change from a 10 euro note.

Mr Cameron graciously told the woman not to worry, even though he knew she'd made a mistake. A mistake, no less. Not recognising someone and telling them to get their own drink (incidentally, table service attracts an extra charge in Italy) is a mistake? What a ponce! Now, I wonder why an Italian waitress working in the sticks should apologise for not knowing who the bloke is. I mean, most people in the UK wish they'd never seen his face, and quite a few would be pretty happy never to see it again. But I digress.

Mr Cameron, I'm sorry to inform you that you've been mugged. Tipping isn't the norm in Italy, especially so when you're having a cappuccino, much less a 100% tip. That's just being extravagant and showing off, not to mention grabbing a photo opportunity. No wonder Ms Ariani gushes how lovely he is.

Sure beats being mugged in Tottenham, though!

How to make a bomb in your mom's kitchen

You will need:
sugar
butter
flour
baking soda
eggs
icing sugar

Mix everything together except the icing sugar. Stick it in the oven for half an hour. Leave to cool and add the icing.

Or sumfink like that.

Bomb-making for dummies

Seriously, fairy cakes? I choked on my cappuccino when I read that article sitting in a local cafe'. And who could have thought of that except the British?

I did what?

I'm not best friends with clothes shopping.

I tend to avoid it as much as I can. Until recently, I'd splash out every 5 years or longer on classic good quality things that I'd then wear out until they're dead, before doing it again. No shopping in between, none at all.
Before I lost weight I used to go to a plus size store. I liked their clothes and I knew that their sizes would fit me without even trying things on. Now of course I can't go there any more so I'm stuck. Back in March I bought a few pairs of trousers in size 14, thinking that the additional weight loss wouldn't make much difference now as it was only about 10 kg left. What I hadn't counted on was losing inches and not weight. In the past few weeks inches seem to have disappeared into thin air. My weight has only slightly changed, but the trousers I bought in March are now falling off my hips.

Today I decided I'd look for new trousers. Partly it was 'cos this morning I'd had an argument with my sister who's being much less than supportive - her comments when she saw me after a few months were along the lines of: "you look older", "I'd stop now", your bones are sticking out" and the likes. Hey, I'm not saying she should tell me how wonderful I look, but a "wow, well done, are you feeling good about it" would have been nice. For the record, the bones that are "sticking out" are the cheek bones and the collar bone, and they're not sticking out: they're visible, which they should have been before if they hadn't been covered in fat. She also told me that I looked ok when she saw me last year, after I'd already lost some weight but not as much as now, completely ignoring the fact that when she last saw me I was still officially obese. She then added that it wasn't about looks, and that if I felt good I shouldn't be upset at her opinion. So I replied that it wasn't her opinion I was upset at, but the fact that of all the comments she'd made not *one* was positive, supportive or encouraging and that *she* was making it all about looks (older, bones sticking out, looked ok last year etc...). I also reminded her of the saying "if you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut", especially since her opinion hadn't actually been asked.

But I digress. Today I was upset at the argument, and I was also thinking that I'll need more trousers soon as the ones I bought in March were mostly summery, and on top of that they're now falling off my hips, so I had a look around when I went out.

The first shop I stopped at was ok-ish. I tried 3 or 4 pairs (sizes ranging from 12 to 16), and guess what, none of them fit me properly. The best option was a pair of jeans in size 14 for £35. They looked ok but didn't feel quite right. I thought to myself that £35 was a lot of money to spend on a pair of jeans that didn't feel quite right, so I went to have a look in the second shop. There I tried another 4 pairs (ranging in size from 12 to 16 to XL). The size 16 wouldn't even fit through one leg. The XL fit, the 12 was very tight. In the end, the choice was down to two pairs of trousers (one for £35 and one for £50). Again, they looked ok but didn't feel quite right, and £50 was way too expensive for something that didn't feel quite right. By now I was feeling quite annoyed and ready to go home. The second shop was made for women who want to feel and look like pre-pubescent girls, and the shop assistant had been looking at me all through my visit with an expression in her face like: "you'll never find anything *your* enormous size here" ("enormous" meaning anything above a size 10 which in any other shop would probably be an 8 or 6).
As I was walking home I went past a third shop, and forced myself to go in, even though I didn't believe it would be any better. How wrong could I be? I looked through the rails and grabbed an armful of trousers and jeans, helped by the incredibly sweet shop assistants. When they had asked me what size I was I had told them I'd no idea so I was just trying different ones, as I was currently wearing a 14 that was falling off my hips at every step, but I had just tried some 14s and 16s I couldn't even get into, and some 12s that had fit me. The guy had looked me up and down and told me that he thought I was a 12, but that there was this type of jeans just arrived, called "Tummy Tuck", where you should go for one size lower, so he pushed a 10 in my arms before I went to the fitting room (trying not to laugh at him - me, in a size 10? Purrlease). Anyway, I picked all the trousers from the mess on the hooks one by one and tried them on. I was aiming for black and started from those. There were a pair of leggins, a pair of trousers and one of jeans that fit me (all in size 12), but again I wasn't entirely convinced (the one I liked the most was £80, but no way I'd spend that much on a single item of clothing!). I then had a go at the others, blue, pairs. All except one fit me, with the same problem - doesn't feel quite right). I put the Tummy Tuck on last, without much conviction: first, they were blue, secondly, they were a 10, and thirdly, they looked like a completely ordinary pair of jeans. In other words, "they won't fit me and even if they do they don't really look that hot".
Boy, how deceiving looks can be! They went on like a pair of old slippers, I zipped them up before I remembered to hold my breath in as no way I'd make it with a size 10, and up the zip went, nevertheless. They felt like I should have been born in them. They moulded to my legs, hips and bum like a second skin, soft and smooth as silk. And as for the "tummy tuck", I looked at my profile in the mirror and... it just wasn't there. No tummy! Flat as a pancake! But the best thing was that I didn't feel constricted. I have a thing about tight clothes that make me freak out, I need large, airy things. Not today - they were tight but a right kind of tight, not a freaky kind of tight. I felt as if my body was being supported without anything actually making me feel like I couldn't breathe. I popped my head out of the fitting room and said "I'll have these". I had to force myself to take them off so they could be scanned at the till... and that's when I saw it. The price tag. I looked at the woman and said: "Bloody 'ell, one-hundred-and-thirty quid for a pair of jeans? Are they made of gold thread???"
She just winked and smiled at me saying, "Look at it as an investment, you'll have them for years and you said yourself how they felt like a second skin".
I handed my credit card over and even left my number for them to call me *if* they get them in black! Apparently I wasn't the only one either: the lady told me how every one who'd tried those jeans on had ended up buying them, and then coming back for a second pair as basically they wear them all the time and need a spare for when they're in the wash!

Vanity sizing at its best - give a woman a pair of jeans with a label claiming they're 2 sizes below what she is, add some trick that makes them feel like she's just had cosmetic surgery without actually seeing a knife, and fleece her of roughly half what she'd normally pay for clothes in 5 years!

If it walks like a duck...

It looks like a duck, it sounds like a duck, it's a...

Du'h!

Which is what I felt like this afternoon. I spent a couple of hours with my neighbour today, chatting, drinking coffee and messing around with the bike. We were testing the gears trying to work out what the best combination was for going uphill. I then went up the hill to see if the practice matched the theory.

The problem is that I've still got problems with changing gears, I often forget that it needs a couple of revs before the gear clicks, so it was a bit tricky 'cos I kept switching without giving it time to adjust. Which also meant I kept losing my balance and bumping into bits of road, pavement, parked cars and the likes. At some point I got the hang of it just enough to cycle a few hundred yards without toppling over, and this is when I heard "the noise". I could hear it coming from the front wheel and I could feel it vibrate through the handle bars. I kept getting on and off the bike, pushing it back and forth trying to look at the wheel but I couldn't see anything. And yet every time I picked up a bit of speed, there it was: "wrack, wrack, wrack". So I started worrying that maybe something had gotten loose and if I kept cycling the wheel would come off and I'd end up splattered all over the road, or under a bus, or head down in some nearby bush; I had this gory horror movie in my head of how my cycling exploits were going to be cut short due to a loose screw or something. So I went to the shop and explained the problem to the guy, telling him I was worried blah blah blah. He lifted the front of the bike from the handle bars, simply gave the wheel a spin with his other hand and said: oh, it's the mudguard touching the tyre.

Ooopsie! You mean my horror movie star career is not going to happen???

I thanked him and walked out with Ginevra, trying not to look like the prat I felt like!