British phlegm, an objective judicial system, the state acting as dispassionate arbitrator of social problems, a dignified burial at the end of your days, your home as impregnable castle – as much as the bowler hat, the double decker bus, the distinctive taxi, and Big Ben’s authoritative tones – these were the icons of British life that gave many an ex-pat an embarrassed lump in the throat  when they viewed the Pathe news in some far flung land.

As they witnessed, from the safety of the British Embassy, the hysterical keening and wailing of curiously dressed natives flailing their arms behind the coffin of a total stranger, or politely ignored local policemen pronouncing guilt and delivering retribution on the spot, or listened to the negotiations for blood money to assuage the hurt feelings of bereaved relatives for whom impartial justice was not sufficient, they were grateful that one day they would retire to the land where a funeral meant a small glass of sherry and quiet reflection, punishment was something that was visited upon you after an objective dissection of the legal facts and with the agreement of a jury of your peers, the nature of a crime was indicated by tightly drawn legal parameters, not the victim’s view of ‘what happened’ and the entire legal system was designed to keep the understandably emotional feelings of the victim from influencing the judge when deciding on the correct punishment for contravening the relevant law.

I was reflecting on how we had changed – so quickly, one generation – as I listened to the sad news of a young girl stabbed to death on a bus in Birmingham. The flowers, candles and Teddy bears were arriving at the point at which the bus had briefly halted, duly documented by Sky news. ‘It’ll  be forgotten by next week’ said Mr G. ‘Not a bit of it, Sky will be back to film the thousands of strangers releasing candles in Chinese lanterns into the night sky next week’ I responded – and realised in that one sarky remark how easily I had taken for granted this ‘new’ British response to death. Only the week before I had been spluttering over a comment in  a newspaper in response to a proposal to part privatise the NHS. ‘Under a part privatised system the sick and the elderly will die’ said the commentator. Oh for God’s sake, the sick and the elderly have always died, that is what sick and elderly people do, death is a natural progression from birth, by all means rail against unnecessary deaths, but that comment presupposed that magically the NHS was able to avoid anybody, anywhere, ever dying, if only it had more money.

Death as an excuse for an outpouring of wailing grief from the community is something we used to witness in foreign lands; now the dead are victims, and as such we must all rise up in their defence. I was trying to decide where this had come from – too easy to date it to Diana’s death, although Tony Blair’s sound bite of ‘the People’s Princess’ certainly was part of the process, establishing Diana as someone whose passing we should all publicly mourn with sacrificial gifts of forecourt flowers. No longer just someone’s Mother, someone’s daughter, someone’s wife – but a community leader, ‘Our Princess’, ‘Our Kim Jong-il’ that we must be seen to keen over or forever be marked as heartless. Diana didn’t ‘just die’  in a motor accident, as do thousands every year, she was the iconic ‘victim’, artlessly tied into New Labour’s ideology  that only New Labour could protect the poor and the vulnerable from the forces of evil. It takes an almighty feat of imagination to see someone born into one of the most powerful families into the land, married to the sion of another powerful family, wealthy beyond the wildest imagination, as doe eyed victim who should have been the subject of conservation measures, but we managed it; buoyed up by repetitive photographs of those doe eyes peeping out at us – the antithetical image for the pantomime image of Savile with the bulging eyes. Doe eyes good, bulging eyes bad. Doe eyes = flowers and Teddy Bears. Bulging eyes = smashed headstones and demands to dig him up.

Yet what, objectively, do we know of either individual beyond the caricatures painted by a media freed from libel restraints? Very little, beyond the fact that one was allegedly a victim, and one allegedly had victims.  Beyond that they were merely one of thousands of individuals who die in old age or motor accidents.

So it is the perpetrators of victimhood, or the holders of that esteemed office, who are key to our new found emotive behaviour. The idea that ‘victimhood’ was to be the prime mover in society can be dated very firmly to the days of New Labour ideology. Jack Straw’s Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act in 1999 established that no longer were our courts objective arbiters of fact where accuser and alleged perpetrator stood face to face; now some victims were too frail, too victimised, too traumatised to be expected  to ever set eyes on the author of their misfortune again. The jury must of necessity be influenced by the sight of the witness shielded by curtains from having to set eyes on the suspect again – ‘it’ must have happened, look! they cannot even bear to see them again. Objectivity was taking flight from British justice. No longer just weighing impartial facts, but witnessing the victim’s pain.

Harriet Harman took it a step further; not only was the jury to be influenced, the judge too. The Victim Impact Statement! The Judge must take into account the victim’s heart rending outpouring of grief, a subjective fact, for whilst one person may find having their car stolen an impertinence, an annoyance, a criminal act; another will detail how their entire life – and future – was irredeemably marred, blighted, and destroyed by the loss of their Ford Fiesta. The sentence was to be influenced by matters that could not have been known by the perpetrator before he took action. Now, you may say that ‘you take your victim as you find him’ is a precept of British justice – the notion that if someone dies because they had heart failure, something you could not have known when you shouted at them, then you may still be responsible for their death – but it is also one of the precepts of social control that society is better protected when prospective offenders are aware of the penalty of offending. You knew if you took a gun with you on a robbery that it would result in ‘x’ being added to your sentence, and you weighed the odds accordingly – now it depends on how the person you pointed the gun at feels about it, which in turn depends on the victim’s past mental health and their ability to conjure up a suitable emotive reason – ‘the loss of my car stopped me from adopting this vulnerable Rwandan child’ gaining more points on the sentence than ‘the loss of my car stopped me going into work as an evil banker’.  The Victim Impact Statement is now invariably read out on the steps of the court by the podgy faced local solicitor enjoying his five minutes of fame – the frail victim being far too frail to speak for themselves.

The 2003 Criminal Justice Act provided for a stiffer sentence where the crime was motivated by hate – for a sexual preference, a disability, a race or religion, and importantly, the victim was able to decide whether their particular crime had been ‘hate motivated’. If they thought it was – it was! Thus the elderly white pensioner has no ability to say ‘stiffer sentence please, he only mugged me because I was obviously old and he figured I must have just collected my pension in that post office on a  Friday’ but the elderly black pensioner or the elderly muslim could ignore this obvious reason for being mugged and insist that it was because he was black/muslim/homosexual, and be rewarded by seeing the accused given a longer sentence. This only encouraged people to see themselves as stereotyped in one particular victimhood or another if at all possible.

Subjective justice is complete now, the victims go straight to the TV stations, having self-identified their selected niche victimhood, bypassing the police; the public en masse pronounce guilt based on their emotive reaction to the victims ’story’, bypassing the courts; God help them if their bottom lip doesn’t wobble sufficiently, they’ll get no justice, may even wind up being accused of the crime themselves.

The next stage must surely be bypassing the prison service? First one to spot a gallows on the crossroads wins.

Furor Teutonicus
March 16, 2013 at 03:21

XX but we managed it; buoyed up by repetitive photographs of those doe eyes
peeping out at usXX

I must have a heart of stone, because I always thought (Still think) she
was one ugly, skinny cow, that if she were a pig of mine, I would bring the
shotgun to.

Tina Willis March 15, 2013 at 15:57

Yep,

Checked Facts, Joined Dots – Wized Up.

LoL.

Backwoodsman
March 14, 2013 at 20:48

I think the loopy one must be the bird who used to post on Guido as
Ewanmee. Well away with the fairies !

Tina Willis
March 16, 2013 at 11:01

U nailed it BackWoodBoy.

They’re bent-meeja Dumbed Down, in deep deep De Nile – away wit The
Pharaohs.

Solution: Check facts, join dots – Wize Up.

LoL.

Griffin March 14, 2013 at 14:39

How right you are. Gone are the stiff upper lip, self-awareness, empathy
and dignity in adversity which werre once national characteristics. Our
principal attributes these days seem to be mawkishness and narcissism.

GildasTheMonk
March 14, 2013 at 10:19

Well said and well observed. Was it those naughty guys from Viz or maybe
Private Eye who produced an advert for the “Port – a – Shrine”, a handy and
convenient mobile Shrine complete with Teddy Bear and flowers that can be
towed to any accident and form a focus for the floral and Teddy Bear tributes
to the departed.
All this reached is apogee with the “Diana Affair”, of
course

GildasTheMonk
March 14, 2013 at 10:32

I couldnt find the actual advert for the Portashrine but I found some of
the copy/content:
“The PortaShrine can be stored under the stairs and
erected in minutes. It contains all you could ever need to demonstrate your
empathy with everyone from road accident victims and murdered prostitutes to
dead celebrities.
Retailing at just £49.99 plus 20 per cent VAT, and
weighing a mere 5lb, every PortaShrine comes loaded with wilted flowers, a
tatty teddy bear and a badly written note of sympathy.
Just imagine:
you’re sitting at home watching the news and you learn that a young woman
you don’t know has been reported missing on a nearby council estate. You can
be round there in minutes and have your shrine up and running before the TV
crews arrive.
Or you hear that an American pop singer you’ve never met
has died of a drugs overdose.
Just grab your PortaShrine and rush down to
a HMV store to join the mourning.
In addition to the basic model, our
website http://www.portashrine.com/ offers an exciting selection of
football scarves and T-shirts, which can be printed with a glossy photograph
of the dead celebrity of your choice, or the slogan ‘Pray 4 . . .’ followed
by the name of someone you’ve never heard of until now.
The website will
also give directions to designated central grieving points and the address
of the nearest petrol station selling floral tributes.”

Ho Hum March 14, 2013 at 10:53

A step up for the teddy bear though, as permanent employment must have
been better than contract assignments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ2bvR3BT_g

Belsay Bugle
March 14, 2013 at 09:27

Wins what?
Do you not think this has its origins in the abolition of the
death penalty?
Whatever the handwringers say, the common man lost faith in
the protection that objective justice was supposed to give him when the rope
and the black cloth were abolished.
Without the ultimate penalty there is,
in what the people are pleased to call their minds, a void. And sooner or
later they will begin to fill it for themselves, if they haven’t begun to do
it already.

Elena ‘andcart
March 14, 2013 at 08:12

I blame it on The Kardashians myself. That Kris Humphries is a victim if
ever I saw one. Can’t wait for his impassioned plea for an annulment. And she
deserves ten years for ruining his life, and for boring the arse off me.

Ho Hum March 14, 2013 at 09:09

Are they the people that could possibly be mistaken for Elvira,
reincarnated after a burial where they muddled up the enbalming fluid with
botox? I once had the misfortune to run into some media circus, I think it
was on 5th Avenue, which was running around a couple of strangely similar
women who seemed to be, I guess, doing something esoteric, like shopping

Elena
‘andcart March 14, 2013 at 11:59

That sounds like them. They are very good at Shopping, and anything
starting with “K”. I’m surprised that Kim hasn’t gone through the entire
Klu Klu Klan. Although she might have done when I was busy Knitting
Kardigans one rainy afternoon, and somehow had the good fortune to miss
it.
Rumour has it that her and Kayne are going to call the baby
Knickers. They’d call it Pants but it doesn’t start with a “K”.

Ho Hum
March 14, 2013 at 12:05

If they have twins, will they be called Knockers?

Chromatistes March 14, 2013 at 12:10

Almost as much fun as Pin The Tail On The Boson.

Ho Hum
March 14, 2013 at 12:17

Must be at least 5.9 sigma?

JohnS March 14, 2013 at 00:05

When I first saw bits of US programmes like Donohoe and later Jerry
Springer I thought that such shows would never work in the UK as people would
be far too reticent. It really wasn’t long before the same sort of thing was
being produced in Britain with surprisingly similar results. I don’t know
whether people changed in that relatively short period or whether I
misunderstood the capacity of some Britons to be so undignified.
I had also
overestimated the good taste of UK TV channels, but that’s another story.

Ho Hum March 14, 2013 at 01:36

It’s more likely that you underestimated the propensity of those that are
thick to prove themselves so, and that the greatest concern of those who
would pander to them is collecting their 30 pieces of silver at the end of
the week

Mina Field March 13, 2013 at 22:24

Is this comments section in English?

20 Rothmans March 13, 2013 at 22:08

Mudplugger:
If he’d run into a queue of schoolgirls at a bus stop as
opposed to a road sign? I think the thing is that the guardrails weren’t up to
preventing a careering vehicle getting onto the line. Just how heavily do they
need to be fortified? Maginot Line?

I loved Anna’s essay- I had an urgent errand to run but it was made to
wait. Mrs 20 can get by without her insulin for a bit.

Mudplugger March 13, 2013 at 21:39

In a similar vein, it’s interesting to note how the scale of victims, or
spectacular nature of consequence, affects the penalties in the justice
system. Take the Great Heck train incident.
A driver unintentionally fell
asleep at the wheel. If he had merely veered off the road and damaged a road
sign, he would have been fined a few quid and collected a few points.
In
the Great Heck case, and without any deliberation by the driver, his car just
happened to fall down an embankment onto a busy rail-line and, by sheer bad
luck, was hit by two trains, as a consequence of which there were fatalities
and many injuries. The driver got a 7 year prison sentence.
But his source
offence was the same as that of the theoretical sign-hitter, only the
consequences were different, consequences in which he had no deliberate
intent.
I’m not defending sleeping drivers or minimising the impact on the
victims, but it is hardly justice when the penalty is so disconnected from the
actual nature of the offence, but almost entirely linked to its incidental and
random consequences.

Ho Hum March 14, 2013 at 01:24

Two things on what you wrote

1 – With regard to Great Heck, the driver’s explanation seemed to be
belied by the physical and other available evidence, and a lack of due care
as to the state in which he chose to drive may rightly have been concluded
to have created an unacceptable risk to others, to the extent that he did
not actually act in a manner that offered them the due care which was
appropriate. I think those factors might well have been the cause of his
getting a little bit more time to reflect on the error of his ways, than had
he just had some out of the ordinary narcoleptic episode over which he had
no control

2 – I fear that it might become quite dangerous to walk down the pavement
in the future, if everyone who ends up driving on one could plead that, be
adjudged to only have done so on the basis that, their detour from the
carraigeway was by way of unintended, innocent, accident, with the
consequence that they would then be convicted on a par with the same sort of
misdemeanour that might apply had they merely knocked down, say, a No
Parking sign, regardless of what actual harm they really caused

Real justice needs to be bit more relevant, relative and deterrent in
nature

That’s not implying in any way that what Anna says is incorrect. On the
contrary, she has hit the nail on the head, in that

– no crime should be able to be deemed to have been committed, or
created, merely by the subjective perception of any individual that some
wrong has been done to them

– justice is not served well, or going to be dispensed properly, when the
penalty imposed can be tainted by the victim’s desire for revenge

I would probably add to that, that no individual should be able to
influence the administration to create new crimes that they have no mandate
for, in that these have not been set out in any electoral manifesto, merely
because those individuals want something added on top of whatever laws
already exist, to be imposed on everyone else, all too often in an ill
thought out manner with unintended consequences, and too often for the
purpose of satisfying their personal need for revenge, assuaging their own
perceptions of guilt, or as a result of the misconceived notion that more
law will prevent whatever happened to them happening to anyone else ever
again, because it won’t.

Woman on a Raft
March 14, 2013 at 10:13

An aside: In 2009 Labour peer Lord Ahmed was jailed for dangerous driving
after sending and receiving text messages minutes before being involved in a
fatal motorway crash. The Court of Appeal later suspended his 12-week
jail sentence. He was freed after serving 16 days in jail after Martyn
Gombar, a 28-year-old Slovakian was killed on Christmas Day in 2007 after
his stationary car was hit by Lord Ahmed’s Jaguar.

Apparently victims are a lot less dead if run over by a txting Labour
lord and the appeals against sentencing are heard within days.

JuliaM March
14, 2013 at 11:19

That’s the same Lord Ahmed that the Labour Party has had no choice but
to suspend because he blamed that conviction on a great Jewish conspiracy
on some Urdu-speaking radio station interview, yes?

Woman on a
Raft March 14, 2013 at 13:50

Yes. Apparently he was off-message and should have yelled that it was
all Thatcher’s fault, she clearly planted the deceased right in the
middle of the road to discredit him.

Ian
Hills March 13, 2013 at 19:38

Strangely, you hardly ever get white victims of “hate” crime.

Matt March 13, 2013 at 22:38

http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/environment/ross_parker_trial_cold_blooded_racist_murder_1_106338

I suspect there is an imbalance in the cases reported in the MSM and how
readily they are ascribed to racist motives. Don’t forget only whites can be
racist.
In USA cities if you are white you are 40 times more likely to
the victim of a black than vice versa.

But you know all this –you and your irony.

Ho Hum March 13, 2013 at 18:45

I could almost live with the ‘wild wailing on death’ shenanigans, as long
as we were also allowed to import one of the other practices which seems to
commonly attach to the way in which death is celebrated in the cultures from
which those emanate, ie the unseemly, but probably very cathartic, ‘let’s go
around waving the deceaseds’ heads on sticks while singing and dancing in
great joy’, something which seems to so often greet the rapid despatch of
those apparently considered unworthy of continuing to grace the earth. Just as
long as, once in a while, I have the privilege of choosing which heads should
next be deemed most usefully impaled and so displayed

Maybe now might be the time to start compiling a list? The Matthew Hopkins
emulators would be a good place to begin.

carol42 March 13, 2013 at 18:34

Very true and so very depressing, it is hard to believe the changes that
the last 50 years have brought. I think I preferred being young in the 60s, a
lot of things are better now but an awful lot has been lost in the
process.

Stephen Davies March 13, 2013 at 18:23

On the money Ms Racoon with this blog =Sadly right on the money —Time for
Gildas to find an historical precedent

Ho Hum March 13, 2013 at 18:22

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40749798@N07/5603813476/

Moor Larkin March 13, 2013 at 20:37

Good one!! I think you win!
Here’s another, inspired by yours…
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/136707

JimS March 13, 2013 at 18:03

Why are some deaths more worthy of note than others?

The tsunami of 2004 ‘merely’ doubled the death rate on that day. The London
bombing of 2007 was just a blip on the city’s normal death toll, yet a year
later I and my fellow workers were expected to take part in a ‘two minute
silence’. As far as I was aware none of us was at all directly involved in
that incident and without the media interest the day would have passed
unnoticed for most of us. However the day is ‘special’ to me because that is
the day that a drunken car thief killed my brother, a thief who had been
caught drunk in charge of a stolen vehicle just two days before.

For every one of these ‘special’ deaths there must be many, many others on
the same day that pass with no public note but which are far more ‘special’ to
those with a more immediate connection.

Chromatistes March 14, 2013 at 08:07

Tokenism is a pernicious element of current public life. I decline to
abide by the two-minute silence imposed by Flatland Enterprises each 11
November, so take a walk out of the office instead. However, when in the
Cathedral of Flatland of my own volition, the situation is diametrically
opposite. You are perfectly justified in highlighting the value of each
individual, and marking that special day (dating from 2005??) in a form that
has resonance to you.

Hijacking events to serve a political agenda, personal prejudice, or
sheer ignorance, encroaches on personal liberty, and the Sussex motto WE
WON’T BE DRUV is a useful counterblast.

belinus March 13,
2013 at 18:00

Quote
I was reflecting on how we had changed – so quickly, one
generation – as I listened to the sad news of a young girl stabbed to death on
a bus in Birmingham.

Well that would be your generation would it not, busy wrecking the family
unit so sisters can do it for themselves un shit, so busy in fact they forgot
that freedom only exists when the people keep it that way.

Trouble is of course the entire raft of civil servants of ‘the generation’
chose to act in the fiction, written by er maj, called lets suck the nation
dry then blame the unemployed, at least until there is no unemployed left then
we go for the middle class.

cha cha

JuliaM March 14,
2013 at 11:16

Bit unfair to blame ‘a generation’, isn’t it? Can’t you name names?
Surely you don’t think the Swingin’ Sixties swung for everyone?

Tina Willis March 13, 2013 at 17:27

‘Victims Sell Sentimental Media & Judgemental Lawyers’ and much more.
Began 20-years before NuLab=Olde Tory mere pawns of Non-Brit Mad Dog
Murdoch.

Try the raving-Right/Wrong-uns of US-UK Anglo Fascist Fraud marketeers
neo-naZty Thatcher & robot Reaganomics. Unleashing their Greed Is
God/Beast Of Greed making ‘Gt Britain’ into Grim Mammon, and the U.S. into Mad
Max meaning Mad Dog Murdoch The Great Brain Robber.

19Hateys BIG selling sentimental ‘victim’ shite from Oprah & Springer
was way before late-90s Brit PM in-waiting B-Liar at Murdoch’s Hayman Island
lair made an offer he couldn’t refuse, paraphrased: “Stay Right and stay in
for a while. Stray Left and Ur right out for another 18 years!”

Robotic USA and Grim Britain where now you can almost literally ‘sell your
granny for neo-Victorian ‘Burke & Hare’ bodyparts.

Let’s get real about the 19Hateys ongoing EVIL raving-Right Fascist
Fraud-Market, Murdoch media et al .

So predictably hit the wall at Wall Street ’08 with toxic fallout still
falling worldwide for the forseeable future.

As BIGtime anti-social engineers B-Liar/Brown & Co can’t even shine
their boots!

Dick
Puddlecote March 13, 2013 at
20:34

Did you get a load of wavy red lines under the words when you wrote
that?

Tina Willis
March 13, 2013 at 21:44

Hey, Dick. Lurve them wavy-reds rollin’ over the red mist.

Not forgetting ‘Reds Under The Bed’, fake bogeymen made by Rockin ’50s
raving-Right/Wrong-uns McCarthyite-type Witch Hunts.

Reincarnated now with very convenient 19Hateys Fraud Market media-made
climate-of-fear ‘bogeymen’ – pedos. Supposedly now with ‘Peds IN The effin
beds’ !

While some of Britin’s finest were and are pedos, (mostly good-uns, not
the few bad-uns bent-media exaggerated – no names needed).

From 17th century Anglo King James 1 (V1 of Scotland) authorizing his
Anglo Bible while surrounded by courtiers all young boys with slim legs
and pert bottoms, to many more adored thru the decades. PostWW2 boy-lover
with proud 10ft statue opposite Downing St by Whitehall’s Cenotaph War
Memorial – Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery Of El Alamein.

Oops, watch out Anna. We might start a tearin’ up and burning of all KJ
Bibles worldwide, and Monty’s statue torn down and trashed with effin
effigy hanged for good measure organized by Non-Brit Great Brain Robber
Rupe’s Redtop SUNazi !

Watch this red-space.

Dick
Puddlecote March 13, 2013 at
22:16

It was a spell checker reference … but don’t let that soaring around
over your head interrupt the conspiratorial flow.

Moor Larkin March 13, 2013 at 23:05

I’m just lovin’ those Positive waves Tina…..

Yeah, man, you see, like, all the tanks we come up against are
bigger and better than ours, so all we can hope to do is, like, scare
‘em away, y’know. This gun is an ordinary 76mm but we add this piece
of pipe onto it, and the Krauts think, like, maybe it’s a 90mm. We got
our own ammunition, it’s filled with paint. When we fire it, it makes…
pretty pictures. Scares the hell outta people! We have a loudspeaker
here, and when we go into battle we play music, very loud. It kind of…
calms us down.

Ho Hum
March 14, 2013 at 07:44

I tried running it through Google Translate. Unfortunately, I found
the English > English version to be no more comprehensible, at
least to me, but in Japanese kanji form, it did look ever so
elegant

Tina
Willis March 14, 2013 at 10:54

Dick ducky.

U know their flow when they lie – their lips move. CONman Sense,
Repugnant & CONservative Party CONmen & wimmin – not
CONspiratorial – WTF?

Check the facts and join-the-dots mainstream Dumbed Down dude, and
cum back all Wized Up.

Lurve.

Tina
Willis March 14, 2013 at 11:06

Dear MuddleMoreon the HoHum-trail to D.C. Shitty (ole Viet ref
there.)

The smellcheck nod was VERY well noted at the get go.

Now go check the facts, join-the-dots and cum back all Wized
Up.

Lurve.

Daedalus X. Parrot March 14, 2013 at 15:08

To Ho Hum: “I tried running it through Google Translate.”

Does Google Translate not have a Drugged-Up-Hippy –> English
option?

bunny March 14, 2013 at 11:02

Mad as a box of frogs

Tina Willis
March 14, 2013 at 11:07

Sweet tawkin Bunny.

JuliaM March
14, 2013 at 11:12

It must be spring, and a New Moon…

Tina
Willis March 14, 2013 at 12:23

Julia M, mmmm.

Nope not Spring Moon nor Mad March Hares, those CON & Repug
Party CONmen & wimmin are proven bent 24/7-365.

Just like their 24/7-365 Dumbed Down rollin drivel Newzac; ProZac,
Muzac – same shit, different dawgs.

Check the facts, join-the-dots and cum back all Wized Up.

Lurve

Ho Hum
March 14, 2013 at 12:45

Your concerns are noted, but please remember that most of us here
had joined up the dots, and wised up, before we reached puberty,
thanks. And that was so long ago. Otherwise, where did I put Big Billy
Goat Gruff’s telephone number? My recollections are that he just
lurves trolls…..

bunny
March 14, 2013 at 15:04

As I was saying to my mate the Mad March Hare the other day in the
pub ……….

Tina
Willis March 14, 2013 at 16:58

Hey Julie.

If that’s wot they call ‘post-pubertal Wized Up’.

Then the ‘real Dumbed Down’ must be Great Brain Robber Rupe’s
SUB-Sewer Of The World, defunct junk.

From where it sure is a VERY laawwwng way UP.

LoL.

Chromatistes March
13, 2013 at 16:06

Flatland contains a gallows at every crossroads, the better to deal with
the political classes. Owing to a paucity of dimensions, gravity is an
ineffective agent of execution, so passing citizenry are invited to help
deliver a sharp tug to the neck of the condemned. There has never been a
shortage of volunteers.

Friend of Dog
March 13, 2013 at 17:48

How much to swing on their ankles ?

Daedalus X.
Parrot the Lacrimose March 14, 2013 at
19:24

POSSIBLE ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH MASS-OUTPOURINGS-OF-GRIEF SYNDROME

I am ashamed to admit that this Mass-Outpourings-of-Grief syndrome,
that regularly erupts in this land, may have originated in my old
stamping
ground of Brentford in west London.

When I was a nipper and we used to get the 65 bus to the local swimming
pool, the bus would always stop at a large T junction in that part of
West
London, near Kew Bridge. There was a very long, 12 to 15 feet high
wall along the road and everyone in the traffic had little option but to
gaze at this
vast expanse of ancient brickwork for some minutes.

Perhaps because of this captive audience and its high volume of
onnlookers, there appeared late in August 1977 some graffiti in huge two
foot high
letters on the wall proclaiming:

ELVIS LIVES IN OUR HEARTS

This was just after said Elvis’s death on 16th August 1977. “Oh come
on,” you may say “nothing so extreme about that”. Well the story doesn’t
end
there. Maybe some of the latin temperament of Julius Caesar and his
army (who first landed on the Thames shore not far from this wall) had
just
started to seep through to the psyches of the local
Brentfordonians. Because shortly after this, another gesture of grief
erupted.

During the night a (admittedly economically minded) grief stricken
Brentfordian had brought his step ladder and a very small pot of paint to
the wall to
strike a thick line through the letters of ELVIS and write
neatly underneath in two foot high letters the word:

MARC

This was a reaction to the death of Marc Bolan on 16th September 1977.
Passers by of that time were quite shocked at seeing two outpourings
of
grief that were not in a cemetry and in one location.

Ashamedly I must relate that the outporings did not end there. Shortly
afterwards, someone brought another pot of paint, daubed a thick line
through
MARC and painted in two foot high letters underneath it, the
words:

VICTOR THE GIRAFFE

This was a reaction to the sad demise of a Giraffe called Victor in a
British zoo who had collapsed with his legs splayed. The TV news had
been
relaying the story of his attempted rescue for a few days.

Now my recollection is a bit hazy but I seem to reacall that this list
extended to at least four names, maybe more. On doing a bit of googling
some
possible candidates might be:

19-Aug-1977 Groucho Marx
16-Sep-1977 Maria Callas
died
14-Oct-1977 Bing Crosby died

I can only apologise if my neighbouring Brentfordonians were
responsible for planting the seed of this Mass Outpouring of Grief
syndrome. However
I hope you at least admire Brentfordonians for their
admirable thriftiness in only repainting the names and reusing the
original LIVES IN OUR HEARTS
paintwork. I hope you also notice that
some typical Brentford restraint was in evidence by the lack of flowers,
photos and teddy bears at this site.