Antony N Britt – Author

Things are a little to PCC, over here.

I hardly gave it any notice, I have to admit, but Thursday saw the UK taking part in elections. Who were we voting for? Apparently, police across the UK are now going to get elected chief commissioners to oversee budgets, police priorities and hiring and firing of senior staff.

Sorry … I may need to read that again. No, I wasn’t mistaken, but isn’t that job which the current chief and his half-a-dozen assistants, already employed on around half a million quid a year, are supposed to do?

I find it obscene that in a climate where good, hard working officers are being forced out of their jobs and thousands of civilian workers also face redundancy, this government sees fit to splash out further millions on yet another figurehead for the ivory towers at Police Central.

Take my area in the midlands. Do I want some political ponce who knows fuck all about policing at a cost of £100k a year, or four new recruits at the same price to keep me safe?

What the hell do you think?

Still harping on about the Olympics?

Can’t help it. I saw an advert this week for the official BBC DVD. As you know, I was pretty underwhelmed by the whole thing when it was on. I say well done to all the British who won but still stand by my thought that it was a terrible waste of money, especially as many charities and small arts organisations folded when their lottery funding was removed to pay for the Olympics.

Anyway, the BBC, as well as condoning pedophilia for forty years in the Jimmy Savile case, have now released the DVD of the 2012 games.

That’s it, but if you were hoping for 15 hours of sporting highlights, forget it. Here, you get 7, then another 7 of the ridiculous and irrelevant opening and closing ceremonies.

The BBC never know how to do sport, it’s why they’ve lost to the rights for most of them over the years. Take football. Match of the Day. You get ten minutes of highlights and without fail, two of those minutes are taken up with the commentators droning on as the players warm up and walk on and off the pitch.

I mean. Who wants to see a blooming good goal?

And here’s a blooming good goal.

The latter part of this week, all I have heard about in the media is the wonder goal by Zlatan Ibrahimovic for Sweden against England. Yes, it was a wonderful piece of improvised skill but to call it the best goal ever …? I’m not so sure.

Here we have it, just after calamity keeper, Joe Hart has raced out of his area and made a hash of a headed clearance. Ibrahimovic spins, then does an overhead kick with the ball looping into the empty net to score. As I say, great piece of skill but to me, the best goals occur when there are at least some players and always the goalkeeper, in the penalty area.

A load of junk.

I read the other day that nearly half of the mail delivered in the UK are flyers and leaflets. I can concur with that. My lobby is filled with them. I clear the lot out into the recycling, turn my back and before I know it, there’s bloody more on the floor.

Junk mail – people keep sending it to me. Either that or there is some new breed of genetically engineered beastie which keeps getting into my front porch and shitting paper everywhere.

Send them to the Tower.

I was reading the other day that somebody tried to break into the Tower of London. In true journalistic fashion, The Sun newspaper reported the fact, also telling the tale of Colonel Blood who tried the feat in 1671.

Is it a sign of a writer when all you do is spot grammatical errors? Now I’m still looking for a job and I reckon I could do one for the Sun as a proofreader. Shouldn’t there be a comma in the bottom sentence? Bafflingly isn’t a great word anyway but without a comma, it reads as though King Bafflingly gave the robber a pardon. I never knew we had a King called Bafflingly.

Am I being pedantic here?

No energy going that way.

I read this week that former MP and BBC trust chairman, Chris Patten, also receives a salary of £40k from EDF Energy for taking part in a few meetings a year.

Hmmmm … My money isn’t going EDF’s way in the near future, then.

And following on from pieces told in previous weeks …

I’ve spoken recently about the fact Richard III has been found and dug up. I have also spoken about the vile Jimmy Savile, and the subsequent hysteria which blames him for everything from child abuse to being the Yorkshire Ripper.

Well, scientists investigating the Richard III thingy planned to reconstruct the king’s face but scrapped the idea when a trial run of his likeness produced a possible clue as to his descendants.

Okay, I may have made that one up.

Just read this one.

Some textbook has been introduced to schools in India stating that eating meat makes you lie and commit sex crimes.

This load of bull states God didn’t include meat in his plans so why should we need to eat it?

I find it amazing that anybody can write whatever rubbish they like and claim it to be true. It’s no different over here. In schools in the UK, we have bullshit promoted to our young every day through an official and popular book. It’s called the Bible.

But back to our new police chief.

Bob Jones became the West Midlands new head-honcho the other day in an election which cost the nation £75million, nationally. Still, he can sort out the problems on his £100k salary and try to find out why policing isn’t working. The reason being, the other goons in charge, costing hundreds of thousands themselves, have got rid of a huge amount of experienced officers. When was the last time one of the nobs at Police HQ got the chop to save money?

Idiots.

Cheers.

Nick