And now, coming direct from the archives of the Ministry of Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction to your brain: le Union Jacques?

I have gotta check my calendar on this one… Um, nope; not April first. I’m still shaking my melon at this, though. I mean, come on, this has just got to be some kind of scam. It’s a prank, right? Some disgruntled buggers in Britain’s National Archives got tired of some know-it-all supervisor or manager and decided to pull a fast one and show him for the bureaucratic dolt that he is, right? Right…??

The revelation the French government proposed a union of Britain and France in 1956, even offering to accept the sovereignty of the Queen, has left scholars in both nations puzzled.

Newly discovered documents in Britain’s National Archives show former French prime minister Guy Mollet discussed the possibility of a merger between the two countries with then-British prime minister Sir Anthony Eden.

“I completely fell off my seat,” said Richard Vinen, an expert in French history at King’s College in London, England. “It’s such a bizarre thing to propose.”

😯 Well, then; at least I’ve got some company on the floor. Wouldn’t want to be getting lonely down there, you know. My gawd, talk about mixing oil and water –or is that and ? Where do I even begin with this one?? Here’s the Guardian’s take:

If you’re reading this on a packed, stalled train, late for work, eating a stale station bacon roll, imagine what life could have been like. If France and Britain had gone ahead with an audacious plan in the 1950s to merge the two countries, the train might have been on time, and faster, the croissants better, but then again, with Paris’s current unemployment problem, there might not have been a job to go to.

Touché. The Yorkshire Post was even more blunt:

WE might have learned a thing or two about gastronomy and dressing with style, but we’d never have accepted their two-hour lunch breaks. They’d surely have had something derogatory to say about our sheep-like ability to form an orderly queue.

They might have acquired a soupçon of understanding about tolerance, but they’d have blown a gasket at imperial measures and the idea of Sunday trading. And, somehow, I can’t see that the average British child’s lunchbox would ever have been converted to baguette and goat’s cheese.

Culturally we’re poles apart, and might as well be at opposite ends of the continent, even with the latter-day efforts of burger chains, coffee parlours and Marks and Spencer to homogenise us. La Manche could be as wide as the Atlantic, for all we have in common with our French neighbours.

Well, that’s one way of putting it. As for me, I shudder to think of what rough beast, its hour come round, would have slouched towards London and Paris to be born of such an unholy union. Thank God Her Majesty’s Prime Minister of the day (Rt Hon Sir Anthony Eden) shot the idea down.

Seriously now, can you imagine slurping back dead snails over a pint? Or washing down bangers and mash with a bottle of Chateau du Snooté? Thinks those are silly? Try this one: a French Royal Marine.

Talk about dodging a bullet…

Yes, it is; and damned fast, too. As if averaging more than one a month wasn’t bad enough, there has been yet another shooting in downtown London. For those keeping count, that makes four in three months now. That’s not for all of London, either. Nosiree, that’s just for the core area and so doesn’t include the guy that was shot on McNay street a month or so ago.

I’ve heard some people trying to take the easy road, just saying that the problem is pretty much restricted to a “certain kind” of bar or club. Translation: those clubs that play hip-hop and assorted techno crap with the bass turned up to the point where it registers on seismographs for miles around and attract the early-twentysomething crowd. Well, you can put that idea to rest. While I don’t go there myself (I prefer a more blue-collar kind of joint 😉 ), the pub where the latest incident occurred is actually kind of snooty; the sort of place where seldom is heard a “yo, yo, wazzup” and you can find enough neckties on the patrons to make a giraffe a turtleneck.
As you can imagine, the fingers are being pointed in all the usual directions with the predictable suggestions being made:

An early-morning shooting in a posh downtown bar left one man in hospital yesterday and the bar owner calling for a “zero-tolerance” approach to the core’s escalating gunplay.

“London should adopt a zero-tolerance policy for its own survival,” said John Scott-Pearse, owner of Robinson Hall. “That (approach) worked in New York City and it will work here.”

I agree. We do need a zero-tolerence policy when it comes to these assholes that think it’s all jolly to send lead flying around on our streets. Don’t go looking at the cops to fix this, though. No, I’m not blaming them. The cops are already doing their job: respond to calls, follow the leads and nab the bad guys.

The problem crops up when the cops manage to track down and bag one of these creeps, only to have some idiot judge fire him right back out the revolving jailhouse door again. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the case of Ahmed Moalin-Mohamed (who I’ve ranted about plenty), the guy that shot four — count ’em: FOUR — people on Thanksgiving weekend, only to get sprung from the pokey by a jackass Justice of the Peace named Jack Carroll.

And before you go yapping that that’s the exception: don’t bother.  It isn’t the exception, it’s the norm.  From drug dealers to shooters to pedophiles and even child killers, they all puke up their sob stories and stroll away, frequently vanishing, no doubt laughing their arses off at the impotence of the courts.

We don’t need more cops; what we need are new judges.

This doesn’t happen to me much. Usually, my first impression of a thing, whatever it may be, is pretty accurate and changing my mind isn’t something that I find myself having to do very often. Some people (okay, okay; most people…) will call that stubbornness but I prefer to think of it as just paying attention to what the hell’s going on in the first place. It usually works out quite well for me. Not always, mind you; but usually.

Sometimes though, I end up doing an about-face. Like today, when I started reading the Freeps this morning and found this:

Police say kin shares fault

Thu, January 11, 2007
By KELLY PEDRO, FREE PRESS REPORTER

The parents of a woman violently gunned down by her former boyfriend are partly responsible for her death, London police contend.

In just-filed court documents, a lawyer representing the force alleges Tom and Kim Bol didn’t report contact between their daughter Vanessa and her ex-boyfriend, Emerson Dominguez, when the parents knew he was not supposed to contact her.

The “WHAT THE F***?!?!?” that came flying unbidden out of my piehole was probably heard in Lambeth. The first instinct was, as you’ve likely guessed, pretty obvious and something that I think just about any parent in the world will be able to relate to…

What the hell is wrong with the cops? Have they lost their God damned minds? Just who the hell was the shithead that came up with this lamebrained idea in the first place? Even if it’s true and the parents were somewhat at fault, these people lost a daughter, for Christ’s sakes; they’ve suffered enough. LEAVE THEM ALONE!

Pretty standard stuff, right? Yeah, I thought so, too. But then I kept reading and lo and behold, there was a little detail about the whole affair that, with all the time that has passed, I had managed to forget all about: following Vanessa Bol’s tragic death at the hands of Emerson Dominguez in November of 2003, it didn’t take long for the lawyers to start circling the carcass. After all, it isn’t for nothing that so many in this world consider lawyers to be one step down the food chain from plankton. Dominguez is currently serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, with no chance of parole for 20 years (theoretically, at least; with our revolving-door justice system, you can never tell… but that’s another rant). Vanessa died on the third of November and the Bol family decided to sue the London cops a little over six months later:

In July 2004, the Bol family filed a civil suit against London police for nearly $1.4 million, claiming officers failed to protect their 17-year-old daughter.

[…]

The civil suit names London’s police services board, retired chief Brian Collins and two London police officers.

An amended statement of defence says the Bols “did not report Dominguez’s contact with Vanessa Bol to other persons or agencies of authority who might have intervened to protect Vanessa Bol.”

[…]

The statement says the Bols did not report threats or assaults by Dominguez against Bol.

So there you have it. Puts the issue in a slightly different perspective, doesn’t it? No doubt about it, there’s a turd in this punchbowl someplace. The questions is: which side is right and which side are being utter assholes and pulling some pretty lowdown crap?

On the one hand, if the allegations are true, it takes some kind of God damned gall to try to and cash in — to the tune of over a million bucks — on your own misdeeds by pinning the blame on someone else. We rely on police to serve and protect the public from scum like Dominguez but it’s a two way street; cops rely on us to tell them when we know that bad people are doing bad things. These folks ain’t psychics, ya know. If the Bols really did know about Dominguez stalking and even assaulting their daughter and they did nothing at all about it… then I say lower the boom on ’em. Bring the hammer down and make an example out of them for others that would try and grab for such a loathesome Munchausen lottery jackpot. On the other hand, though…

If these allegations are false, this represents stooping about as low as you can get. This would be the ultimate in kicking someone when they’re down, the cheapest of cheap shots, and something that we should damn well expect — indeed, demand — that those who are trusted to hold authority in our society place themselves far above. If this is some bullshit stunt, heads should roll for it.

The problem is that we don’t know which story is the truth and which is bullshit. So there it is, big as life and twice as problematic. And here I am, in territory about as unfamilliar as it gets for me… on the fence.

And I don’t like it.

When I see stuff like this, my nature practically demands that I take one side or the other and be quick about it. But make sure it’s the right side. I wish I knew enough to make that decision but I don’t. So here I sit, in the mushy middle, wanting to speak up for somebody but not sure who, and haunted by the words of Mark Twain:

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Easier said than done.

Why the hell is this even a story to begin with? 🙄 Decima Research has cacked up a little hairball and is now trumpeting that “most Canadians want a Democrat president,” as if it’s any of our God damned business. The pollsters blather on that we Canucks would rather have a jackass than an elephant by a margin of four to one.

Republican preferences were particularly low in Atlantic Canada, among women, retirees and francophones, with support ranging from five to eight per cent.

The Democratic option found favour, relative to Republicans, in every region of the country – including Alberta – and among self-identified Conservative voters.

Albertans in the Decima poll preferred a Democratic president in 2008 by a margin of 43-21. People who voted Conservative in the last election were only slightly less enthusiastic, choosing the Democratic option over a Republican by a 41-24 split.

Well, golly gumbucks, four out of five; ain’t we an opinionated li’l bunch all of a sudden? Try this one on for size:

FIVE out of five Canadians don’t GET to vote in American federal elections, shitforbrains!

And just where the hell do we get off trying to think that we can tell the Yanks how their country should be run? If they tried a stunt like that, we would finally see some true all-party unity in this country: everybody would go apeshit about it.

Ah, but polls and headlines are interesting, spinny, little things, aren’t they? What you won’t hear hooted in the headlines is this: almost half (42%) of everyone that they asked replied that it was none of their damned business who was the next POTUS.

But you won’t find any headlines shouting “42% of Canucks Choose to Mind Their Own Business,” will you? Nope, you won’t. I wonder why that could be, eh? Could it be because the media in this country — more so than even in the US — is rabidly leftist and bent upon overinflating any slight hint of moonbattery that it can find in our collective consciousness in the hopes that, if they tell us often enough how far to the loopy Left we are, we’ll start to believe it? Let’s face it, anybody with two brain cells to rub together knows damn well that the MSM in this country, from the TO (red) Star to the Ministry Of What You Should Think, is saturated with lib-left malcontents with more “hidden agendas” than Harper was ever even accused of having. This is just another example.

Who the hell was is that said that polls are most productively used by dogs? 😕

Um, okay; anybody have any idea just what the heck this James Bond bullcrap might be all about? I guess truth really is stranger than fiction but come on now, boys and girls; this is loopy even by my standards. While I can admit that loonies and toonies bug the hell outta me, I never thought of bugging one myself. It seems, though, that someone else out there doesn’t quite have my level of restraint:

They say money talks, and a new report suggests Canadian currency is indeed chatting, at least electronically, on behalf of shadowy spies.

Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.

“…and for God’s sakes, 007, do try not to break this one.”

Now I’ve heard everything. While the Yanks are keeping a tight lip on the details — not surprisingly, most of them are classified — of the little gizmos, it’s kind of hard to see what use they could be in an uncontrolled environment. I mean, come on now. The range on those things can’t be more than a few hundred metres, at most, and besides that, Chris Mathers (a security consultant and former undercover RCMP officer) manages to point out one doozy of a drawback, if you’re planning to track somebody with one of these things:

“From a technology perspective, it makes no sense,” he said. “To me it’s very strange.”

Then there’s the obvious problem: what if the coin holder plunks the device into a pop machine?

“You give the guy something with a transmitter that he’s going to spend — I mean, he might have it for an hour,” Mathers said with a chuckle.

Well, I guess it’ll be one helluva well-observed pop machine then, won’t it? 🙄

Yeesh. File this one under “why can I never be making this crap up,” if you will. Hat’s off to DMB, by the way, since that’s where I stumbled over this in the first place. What we have here is Sheik Abdullah Aal Mahmud, in a televised lecture given on the Bahrain boob toob, explaining the Religion-of-Perpetual-Outrage-approved method of slapping your missus around if she gets out of line. Because, after all, beating on women is all fine and dandy as long as it’s done the Islamic way, right?

Assholes.