Grumpy Old Git

at one time, if a copper arrested you and he wasn't wearing a hat at the time, technically he was not in uniform and the arrest was false.

These days, looking and acting like like storm troopers, in the many real Police programs on TV, I have rarely seen a patrol car officer wearing a hat when he makes an arrest.

Does the no-hat = not in uniform ruling still apply to the Police?

In the Armed Forces one never salutes an Officer unless you are both wearing a hat and therefore in uniform.

all the railway tracks were ripped up?

And now they are just cycleways for health freak cyclists wearing stupid cow-pat helmets?

Many of these lines could have been easily re-opened by heritage groups and run at a profit, as all heritage railways do today. They also would have given access to many places that are otherwise impossible to reach by public transport. Unbelievable though it sounds, there ARE actually people in Britain who do not own a damned car.

Had the tracks been left, re-opening them would have been relatively simple. Now, the prohibitive expense of re-laying railway lines make the scheme impossible in most areas.

But now we worship the great god car, I suppose most people just don't care.

of Human Rights is now telling the UK that to imprison a murderer for a whole life sentence (i.e until he dies) is a breach of his human right.

I note that there is no mention of the human rights of the victim or victims, whose lives were so brutally cut short.

It's past the time when the European Court stopped interfering in our affairs. It was because of them that it took 10 years to get rid of the terrorist Abu Qatada.

Perhaps we should bring back capital punishment.

Hang murderers like we used to and the E.C.O.H.R wouldn't be able to complain about whole life sentences.

that gay marriage should be made normal? That same sex couples can be married in Church?

The Conservative Dictatorship is forcing it upon the British people.

I think it is sick and perverted.

Not for any religious reasons. It's just the thought of it makes my stomach heave!

on the North Korea missile test?

It's worrying isn't it?

An unstable country with a new despotic child-dictator who is flexing his military muscles and defying UN resolutions, with the tacit blessings of their Communist superpower ally, China.

We've put a satellite into orbit they boast.

Yes. But here a satellite goes today, a warhead can go tomorrow. We still do not know anything about their nuclear capabilities.

If there is to be a worldwide nuclear armageddon, my money's on North Korea starting the whole catastrophic process.

selecting a best answer?

For two days now I have been choosing best answers, only to have the question reappear as open, and not 'Resolved'.

Today I have tried 5 times to choose a best to my question on modern childhood, and I'm still back at square one.

It seems the mighty and omnipotent Yahoo has still not got its act together.

is Mega-Monday?

The day when we will do the most internet shopping prior to Crimbo.

Apparently, every person will spend an average £222.

So who's spent my £221 then?

I admit to having been somewhat derogatory about our country in the past, to say the least.

But when I think about it, would I want to be anything but British?

This afternoon, a bitterly cold, bright day, I went for a stroll along the seashore and did a lot of thinking.

I thought about our rich heritage, our pageantry, our colourful history. Our magnificent cathedrals like Lincoln, Salisbury and Durham. Our beautiful countryside, our open spaces. Our quaint and eccentric customs. Cheese-rolling and Morris dancing. Our wonderful Armed Services and their magnificent rolls of Honour. They may be small in number, but they are rich in tradition and sheer tenacity.

I thought about the tattered colours of the 24th Regiment of Foot with its wreath of Immortelles hanging in a chapel in Brecon, a tribute to the men who fell so tragically at Isandhlwana, and defended Rorke's Drift so magnificently. Indeed, it was a member of my own former regiment, the Royal Engineers, who commanded that hopeless defence.

I though about our Kings and Queens, our ancestry, the way we stood firm and alone against the might of other nations in two terrible World Wars. How we can dig up relics on our islands from the Iron Age through to World War II. How we have trees that are older than many nations.

How we can always manage a smile, no matter how adverse the conditions, how we always seem to think that a good cup of tea is the answer to all life's challenges.

How the indomitable spirit of men like Cook, Shackleton, Scott, Trevithick and Brunel have forged the very fabric of our national identity. How the music of Vaughn Williams, Purcell and Elgar have epitomised it.

Yes. I've been doing a lot of thinking today.

Am I finally losing all my marbles, or have I suddenly seen a truth I have denied for so long?

you can't sleep?

It's now 04.05 hrs morning of Wednesday and I've been up over an hour.

I's peeing down outside and dark and wet and horrible and nasty, so a walk on the beach is out of the question. Anyway, the monsters are still out and about.

I'm on my 4th cup of tea and the ashtray is full. There's nothing on TV except the deaf bloke waving his arms around and I never realized the freezer made such a racket.

There' absolutely nothing to do except have a moan on S/C's.

How do you fill your sleepless nights?

are NOT prohibited in Britain?

Because I can't think of any.

about the breakthrough made by Cambridge boffins?

Apparently, they have been able to restore some movement to the hind legs of paralysed dogs by injecting them in the rump with cells taken from the lining of their noses.

Will this have the added benefit of enabling a dog to sniff its own bottom then?

there is 1 CCTV camera for every 14 people?

Every 14!

And they say we are not a surveillance society.

Yes. And I'm the King of Poland.

Do you like living under a constantly watching eye?

for Christmas dinner for a single man who lives entirely alone and has no visitors whatsoever?

I can't afford to have a Christmas dinner at a restaurant, and these do-it-yourself Christmas dinners for 1 insipid, are totally lacking any taste or flavour.

If I buy in a chicken, veg and all the trimmings I'll still be eating it in March. Besides, it's not worth it financially.

Also, it seems pointless spending 3 hours preparing and cooking it, and 30 minutes washing and clearing up afterwards, but only 5 minutes to eat it.

I have the same problem each year and always end up having a meal for 1 shepherd's pie or a few sandwiches. And I'm heartily sick of them.

Any ideas, you clever people you?

thinking of?

The radical Muslim cleric, Abu Qatada, described by the Home Office as a "very dangerous man" has been granted leave to remain in Britain, because to deport him to Jordan would be a breach of his 'human rights'.

This is the man who advocates acts of terrorism against the west, and the total destruction of the Jews, who openly congratulated Osama bin Laden on his campaign of death in western cities, and is publicly committed to further violent outrages against innocent people.

And he's not even in jail!

The judges granted him bail, freedom to walk among us unmolested.

And the judges further refused the Home Office leave to appeal against their decision.

When only recently, a motorist who refused to pay a speeding fine was jailed for 4 months!

It beggars not only belief, but all common sense.

Just what is WRONG with this bloody country?

each year are bitten by New Yorkers than are by sharks?

And that if your nerve endings were joined end to end, they would stretch to the moon and back 8 times?

And that if all the dead of World War I were lined in single file and marched past you at a standard military quick march (120 paces per minute), the line would take 2 years to pass by.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

What is the weirdest fact you know folks?

people wearing poppies this year?

I have just come home, thoroughly shagged out and totally broke after my fortnightly shopping trip, and noticed only about a dozen or so people wearing them, from among all the crowds I saw whilst I was out.

Furthermore, I noticed that it was many of OUR generation who were without poppies, the very generation I thought would be most likely to support the Royal British Legion.

I always buy two, one to wear and one to place on my front door. It's all I can do in remembrance of the many comrades I personally lost, as well as those who gave their lives in past and present conflicts worldwide.

Do people seem to be caring less these days, or is it just Bridlington?

competitions on a regular basis, including the lottery? And are you lucky or not?

The reason I ask is that I have NEVER won anything in my entire life. I have been doing the lottery since it started and have never even won £10.

Every day I enter the Dickinson's Real Deal competition .

Nothing. Nieto. Zilch.Nichts. Niente.

I only once went to the races, where, at Goodwood, there were 13 horses running in the 3.30. I thought if I back 10 of them each way, I can't lose.

The three I didn't back came 1st 2nd and 3rd.

And yet I have known people that win everything they enter, and often for the first time. The lottery or the Pools, cars, holidays, cash, photographic equipment, motorhomes, you name it.

Are some people just born unlucky?

Or did I once fart in church?

alarming aspect of the recession that may not at first be obvious?

On the local Look North bulletin at lunchtime, it appears that there is an alarming rise in the numbers of rats now affecting the poorer urban areas of Britain.

The reason for this is simple. Because of Government slashbacks, local Councils can no longer fund their pest control programs. And rats being rats, they are breeding at their usual alarming rate now totally unchecked.

As usual, it will not be the leafy suburbs of the rural idylls where out esteemed leaders hide behind their ornamental gates and Jacobean facades that will suffer this infestation.

But in the homes of the poor and disadvantaged in crowded concrete estates with overflowing dusbins, because the Council have also cut their waste collection services.

Are we soon to see the spectre of typhus, Weil's disease and even worse ravaging the poorest districts of our towns and cities, a situation that was thought to have been left behind in the Victorian era?

While the rest of the world moves forward into the light, Britain recedes back into the darkness.

programme called 'Britain's hidden hungry' at 22.35 tonight?

I wonder if David Cameron saw it?

And I wonder how he can sleep at night.

where you live?

I hate it when I start seeing the damn things on sale in the shops, because I know there will be no peace until 5th November, and then there are all the parties leading up to Christmas.

The streets around where I live have sounded like a bad night in Beirut for about 10 days now.

Isn't it about time our Government banned the sale of fireworks to the public?

After all, they've banned just about everything else.