snafuAs a closet socialist idealist…
Others have replied to this so there is really no need for me to highlight it again, but… No.
Just, no.
Go far enough to the right and you end up going left, but I would have assumed John would have topped himself rather than say something like that; as I said elsewhere, where is John Green, what have you done with him?
People on benefits are already in subsidised accomodation of one kind or another.
You might be aware that there is a benefits cap coming into place/in place. I have met a family (two adults, both unemployed, four kids) who are in private but council allocated housing who are paying nearly £200 a month on top of the housing benefit to live in a small, three bedroom former council house (£700 a month) who are shortly to suffer a benefit cap which will mean £150 will be deducted from their housing benefit. The local borough council does not have any housing of its own; there are local housing associations who do not have vacant property – it is essentially a case of dead mans shoes, with a long waiting list. This family are trying to make ends meet, don’t smoke or drink, don’t gamble with the lottery, the kids didn’t get new uniforms for the new school year – so what is going to have to be reduced in order to keep a roof over their heads? Food? Electricity? Heating? And what happens if they don’t/can’t find this extra £150, say they have payments to make on credit, or other demands (in this case new fridge, cooker, washing machine since none of this was provided in the house)? Will it help the economy if large segments of society are unable to get loans or credit in the future because the government cut payments and ruined their credit history?
How would you feel if your employer reduced your wages/salary by £150 a month? The spokesperson I spoke to admitted that she would find it difficult to cope if her money was £150 a month lighter, but it was the governments policy and she, privately, informed me that she was sorry for all the families put under such measures, also sorry for the staff members who would be put under stress from people ringing up to complain, shout, swear, etc, but the official view is that those on benefits can easily absorb these cuts. In the run up to Christmas we shall see how this works; the wise money is apparently on the first suicide due to capping before November starts.
snafuWhy bother working hard, or even at all, when I can just call in sick and spend all day in bed with the wife?
How does she feel about this?
snafuA man who successfully knocked a little white ball around in a well kept landscape…
Arnold Palmer, one of the greatest players in the history of golf, has died at the age of 87, a source close to the family confirmed to magazine Golfweek.
It was reported he died on Sunday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Palmer’s health has been in decline for some time.
His great rival Jack Nicklaus said on Twitter Palmer was a “legend” and “icon”, but also “one of my best friends”.
“He was the king of our sport and always will be,” Nicklaus wrote.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/sep/26/arnold-palmer-us-golf-dies-aged-87
snafuYes I am. Would you like one or wouldn’t you appreciate the history.
I appreciate history, just not really bothered enough to debate whether the Saxons were invaders or not, and whether that watered down the English bloodline, remembering what that sort of thing did with Hitler, and all that.
You are a Traditionalist, are you not? Do you believe in the sacred, near religious, in fact, origins of the imperial system of measurement, John?
snafuWhat, eating a bacon sandwich?
Grief! Now I am filled with lust! And hunger. And jealousy.
Brown sauce? Mmmmmmmmm!
snafuI’ve been involved – in depth – with metrication issues for long periods of my adult life. I’ve stated my case as Chairman of the Anti Metrication Board on TV chat shows and undergraduate comic books like ISIS. So, don’t try to lecture me.
Ah. That John Green. Should have known.
Still flogging the flags?
My Armageddon complements you ‘compliment’. Even Snafu would get that right.
Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. Try a few more patronising put downs first.
snafuWe’re all in a porn film for a higher intelligence. QED.
And you think that they are getting off on what you are, erm, doing? Does your wife know?
snafuWell, I’m simulating someone who is confused.
Or maybe I’m not simulating…?
snafuI was talking with eldest daughter about the protests in Charlotte, North Carolina, this afternoon and whilst investigating some questions she asked I came across this incident.
West Virginia cop fired for not killing a man with an unloaded gun
By Radley Balko September 12We’ve tracked countless cases here where cops were able to keep their jobs after killing unarmed people, killing people after responding to the wrong house, killing people and then lying about it . . . the list goes on.
Give the Weirton, W.Va., police chief some credit. He’s come up with a new spin on the the same problem. He just fired a cop for not killing someone.
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
After responding to a report of a domestic incident on May 6 in Weirton, W.Va., then-Weirton police officer Stephen Mader found himself confronting an armed man.
Immediately, the training he had undergone as a Marine to look at “the whole person” in deciding if someone was a terrorist, as well as his situational police academy training, kicked in and he did not shoot.
“I saw then he had a gun, but it was not pointed at me,” Mr. Mader recalled, noting the silver handgun was in the man’s right hand, hanging at his side and pointed at the ground.
Mr. Mader, who was standing behind Mr. Williams’ car parked on the street, said he then “began to use my calm voice.”
“I told him, ‘Put down the gun,’ and he’s like, ‘Just shoot me.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not going to shoot you brother.’ Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it.
“I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop” situation.
Mader was responding to a 911 call from Williams’s girlfriend. In that call, she told police that Williams was threatening to kill himself, not anyone else.
What Mader did upon arriving at the scene is a hell of a lot braver course of action than simply opening fire when the suspect doesn’t immediately disarm. What Mader did is in fact exactly what we want cops to do when someone is in crisis. It’s also precisely what law enforcement officers say they do on a daily basis — put themselves at risk in order to save lives. Mader should have been given a medal. Unfortunately, two more cops then showed up, and quickly shot Williams dead.
As it turns out, Williams’s gun wasn’t loaded. There’s no way any of the police officers could have known that. But it does show that Mader had read Williams correctly — he wasn’t actually a threat to anyone but himself. His life could have been saved.
The Weirton police department then refused to name Williams for three days and assigned an investigator to look into the shooting . . . who then promptly left for a weeklong vacation. Then came the punchline.
Mr. Mader — speaking publicly about this case for the first time — said that when he tried to return to work on May 17, following normal protocol for taking time off after an officer-involved shooting, he was told to go see Weirton Police Chief Rob Alexander.
In a meeting with the chief and City Manager Travis Blosser, Mr. Mader said Chief Alexander told him: “We’re putting you on administrative leave and we’re going to do an investigation to see if you are going to be an officer here. You put two other officers in danger.”
Mr. Mader said that “right then I said to him: ‘Look, I didn’t shoot him because he said, ‘Just shoot me.’ ”
On June 7, a Weirton officer delivered him a notice of termination letter dated June 6, which said by not shooting Mr. Williams he “failed to eliminate a threat.”
The city mentioned two other incidents in firing Mader, but it seems clear that his failure to kill Williams was the motivation for his termination. Even the rare cop who gets fired often gets to keep his pension. Mader won’t be getting one.
After he received his termination notice, Mr. Mader sought attorneys to help him fight the city. He was told because he was still a probationary employee in an “at-will” state, he could be fired for any reason and there was no point in fighting the city.
One attorney told him the best he could hope for was to ask to resign instead of being terminated.
“But I told [the attorney] ‘Look, I don’t want to admit guilt. I’ll take the termination instead of the resignation because I didn’t do anything wrong,’ ” Mr. Mader said. “To resign and admit I did something wrong here would have ate at me. I think I’m right in what I did. I’ll take it to the grave.”
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran an article about the longstanding problem in which even the rare bad cops who do get fired are often able to quickly find work at another policy agency. Mader, who served a tour in Afghanistan and has two sons under five-years-old, told the Post-Gazette that he’s now studying for a commercial truck driving license, but he’d consider another job in law enforcement if he were offered one. I hope that happens. I hope he’s given the same second chance that corrupt, trigger-happy cops are given. My hunch is that he’ll be driving trucks.
Suffice to say the man was black.
The two other incidents mentioned when the officer was fired are mentioned in the original story:
The notice of termination included two other incidents in which the city believed Mr. Mader acted improperly: An incident in April where neither he nor two other more experienced officers – the same two who were involved in the Williams’ case – reported as suspicious the death of an elderly woman who appeared to have had a stroke and fallen in her home, though no one has been charged in her death; and an incident in March when a woman complained that Mr. Mader was rude and swore at her when she asked why her husband was being arrested for disorderly conduct over receiving a parking ticket.
Mader claims he was not questioned about either event or given an opportunity to clarify his position, believing that these incidents were used to cover for the other two officers who were involved in the shooting, so as to not need to admit that their actions were wrong and the almost certain lawsuits that would follow. Mader was a probationer and therefore easier to drop.
Additionally, Mader was fired 6 June, received notice of the termination 7 June when it was delivered to his home by another officer, yet his chief told a press conference on 8 June that all three officers involved in the shooting were ‘back at work and doing fine’!
Further, the deceased man’s family are not happy. Various reports gave the number of shots fired as as few as one and as many as four; the killing shot was found by the independent pathologist they hired to have been fired downwards, behind his right ear, yet the police reports did not indicate how this could be. A full week after the press conference that lied about all three officers working and doing fine, the deceased’s family were given the same information – eight days after Mader was fired.
But the prospect is, the real danger is, that this will inform other police officers that if you see a gun, you shoot, or you are out of a job.
Rather than sizing up the situation, as Mader with his marine training did, the police chief wants unthinking drones to resolve – monkey see, monkey do.
And they are protected since they are rarely subject to investigation, let alone prosecution.
Does this worry you, America? It will worry the rest of the world.
snafuMy several dictionaries do not run to words of more than one syllable.
Why does that not surprise me? But what a syllable it is!
Beermat
Please don’t make me think of you as an idiot. I won’t do that no matter how much diatribe you make up as you go along.
Oooh favoritism! He never says that to me…;o(
I occasionally use the millimeter.
As the missing in action Charlie Hunt said to me on a couple of occasions – are you an American?
And what do you use the millimetre for – measuring your wit?
I think that in this particular case, my credibility rating as poor as it is, is rather more credible than yours.
Oooooh, that is harsh John.
Poor really is too kind a word, considering.
snafuNot by John, it seems.
Maybe his title is hereditary? From his mother, obviously.
snafuDon’t tell me anything. Non entities…
Christmas is coming and they are trying to raise themselves out of the bargain book basket; and he will be trying to improve his recognition to get on things like, oh, I don’t know, I was a celebrity, get me on TV or whatever that show is called.
snafuJohns dictionary does not contain the word xenophobe.
snafuHow do you know he was half way in?
He might have gone on for several paragraphs…
And if this is a simulation, what is it we are simulating?
snafu[ATTACH=CONFIG]248407[/ATTACH]
Interior view of HMY BRITANNIA’s Drawing Room being used as a temporary dormitory by British and foreign national refugees picked up on Khormaksar Beach on 17 January 1986. Men are shown crouching on the sheeted floor with their luggage
Not quite wounded troops, but it was used to evacuate people from South Yemen.
The Britannia was on its way to New Zealand when it was diverted to stand off the coast of South Yemen, where it has been sitting for the past 48 hours. Queen Elizabeth, who is due to meet the yacht en route to a royal visit to Nepal, Australia and New Zealand, said she was “delighted” it was being used in the evacuation, Buckingham Palace said.
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