“Autumn is a time for pumpkin-flavored drinks, shorter days and the return of chilly weather, although it may take longer than usual for summer warmth to fade, in part due to the building El Niño.” – By ‘summer warmth’, we presume AccuWeather‘s resident romantic poet is referring to the 120 degree blistering heat domes and terrifying wildfires that have made July the hottest month in US history!
There’s denial, and then there’s denial.
Stop, Waymo!
- “Self-driving taxis have moved a step closer after Transport for London (TfL) granted private hire licences to a fleet of autonomous vehicles – on the condition that a human driver is present. Under the terms of the PHV licence, a qualified driver must be present and remain responsible for the car. Journeys could begin later this year. Uber said inspectors had confirmed that vehicles using technology by British firm Wayve met all of TfL’s policy and safety standards.”(BBC report)
Aside from the pointless absurdity of operating self-driving cars but only if there’s someone driving them, and noting that the cars also apparently require a human operator based in a call centre somewhere to intervene in emergencies, ‘autonomous vehicles’ have a somewhat chequered history in the States. Waymo has a fleet of 4,000 vehicles operating in 7 cities, and reports that accidents are down by 94%, so that’s good – Americans are obviously terrible drivers. But American cities have simple grid layouts and wide, straight streets made for the horseless carriage, while London is still very much an early Victorian rabbit warren. It might have made more sense to start the services in Milton Keynes and other ‘grid-based’ C20th new towns.
Even with their safety record, Waymo cars have not been without what the company insists are merely ‘edge’ problems; principally that they aren’t programmed to deal with unexpected situations. In one instance, a Waymo carrying two passengers drove over an exploding firework at a carnival, and caught fire. The whole lot had to be withdrawn and the software reprogrammed after several drove into floods, not recognising water. The New York Times reports that there have been numerous incidents of Waymos stopping immoveably in the street, blocking emergency vehicles. Power outages can bring an entire city’s Waymos to a grinding halt.
And there’s an account of an incident in which one car appeared to panic when confronted with an unexpected situation, an emergency road closure. The Times takes up the story:
- “Elliot Slade, 31, a San Francisco resident, and his fiancée were riding in a Waymo back to the city from an event in nearby San Mateo, Calif., in May when the car entered a construction zone that had closed the right lane of the highway. The car began driving like a ‘frightened animal,’ Mr. Slade said, swerving through traffic cones and accelerating to highway speed in the closed lane. It then wove past a truck and workers as California Highway Patrol officers hit their sirens and shouted, ‘Stop, Waymo!’ ‘We were freaking out,’ Mr. Slade said, adding that he placed his arm across his fiancée’s chest ‘just in case we crashed.’ He said he pressed a button in the car to call for support but no one answered until the vehicle exited the highway on its own. The couple got out of the Waymo and then took an Uber the rest of the way home.” (NYT)
Ahh, bless! It almost makes you feel sorry for them. The cars, that is, not the passengers. I used to drive a bit like that, not very good in tight situations; always missing turnings off roundabouts. But they’ll probably be driving themselves around hopefully, looking for fares, long after we’ve made ourselves extinct.
Travel at your own risk!
(PS could that opening BBC paragraph be the longest ever to not have a single instance of the lower-case letter “w” that I can cut and paste? My keyboard is up the creek and various keys no longer fire reliably.)
If at first….
Having lost his appeal against a lower court ruling that his gargantuan 99,000 sq ft White House ‘ballroom’ (known as ‘The Orangery’… my joke!) requires Congressional approval – “The President has no … constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people” – Trump is returning to the fray with an appeal to the Supreme Court, arguing with another preposterous bit of legal casuistry that the ballroom is “a desperately needed Military Center required for the security of Washington D.C. and our country itself”! (MS Now)
He’ll need to learn to dance the two-step, then.
Send out the clowns
The people at the National Lottery appear to have gone completely bonkers. Following on from their terrific wheeze, of duplicating the numbers you choose (for the same stake as before) and then pretending that it gives you ‘two chances to win’ – but there’s still only one draw and one set of winning numbers, so it doesn’t!* – they’re now hooked up with what looks like an American lottery offering a ludicrous jackpot prize, of 467 MILLION* pounds. (Not sure what the asterisk is for, must be a catch?)
I suspect most of us would have a little trouble knowing what to do with all that money, while it would be nice if the organisers could offer many more smaller prizes that winners might actually find useful and ‘life-changing’. Half a billion pounds is an inconceivable sum to be suddenly dropped in your lap and would probably be life-destroying for anyone who isn’t already stinking rich. Just imagine having to pay half a million pounds in tax on the interest every month!
Except it won’t be like that. The promotional splurge on the National Lottery website explains, the money will be paid over 30 years, “So your brain can compute’. Compute what, it doesn’t say. I’m not too good with computers these days. Anyway, my brain computes that I’m not going to have a lot to spend on champagne, yachts and a private island, as I’m already 76 years old and am quite unlikely to live to be 106 to experience the full benefit.
Got any more bright ideas, Allwyn Entertainment Ltd? I never thought I’d be pining for the days of Camelot, but at least you could imagine you were dealing with rational actors and not a bunch of overexcitable clowns.
*and they’ve more than halved the minor prizes. A quid? Fuck off!
GW – I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
USA: “Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that July was the hottest month on record in the US. … average temperatures in July were 1.8C (3.3F) above the 20th century average.” (Carbon Brief)
Spain: “A large wildfire continues to burn in the south-west of Spain as “hot and windy weather fuelled other blazes raging across the country”, reports Reuters. It says more than 244,000 hectares of land has burned in 400 fires so far this year in Spain, based on estimates from the European Forest Fire Information System. It adds that this is six times larger than the area hit by fires by the same time last year.”
India: “the flood crisis in India’s north-eastern Assam state remained critical, with the death toll reaching 100,” reports the Associated Press. It adds that several rivers “remain above danger levels, raising the risk of fresh flooding in vulnerable areas”. In Kerala, heavy rains have claimed “15 lives so far, while seven people remain missing”, the Hindu BusinessLine reports. It quotes chief minister VD Satheesan saying that flash floods were caused by “extremely intense, localised rainfall that left little time for evacuation.” (Carbon Brief)
Philippines: “At least 15 people were killed by floods and landslides in the Philippines after nine days of incessant rainfall that left one mountain city receiving more than twice the precipitation London gets in a year. Ten people died in a landslide on Sunday evening, when a hillside battered by more than a week of rain collapsed onto three houses in Baguio, a city north of the capital Manila. Baguio recorded 1,413mm (56-in.) of rain between 1 and 9 August, the highest anywhere in the country, against a normal August total of 963mm.” (Independent)
London: Nope, no rain.
Tailpipe
Apart from terrible hair and an insatiable desire for love and money, what have Donald Trump and Baris Johnson got in common?
It’d make a great ‘Have I Got News For You?’ quiz question. The answer is, they’ve both had to hide in fridges!
In 2019, The Guardian reported,
- “The prime minister was ambushed by the Good Morning Britain producer, Jonathan Swain, during a pre-dawn visit to Modern Milkman, a business in the Tory-held constituency of Pudsey, in Yorkshire. When Swain first approached Johnson, he asked: ‘Morning prime minister, would you come on Good Morning Britain, prime minister?’ Johnson’s aide can be heard mouthing ‘oh for fuck’s sake’ in response. When Swain presses the prime minister, stating he was live on the show, Johnson replied ‘I’ll be with you in a second’ and walked off, before Piers (Morgan – for it was he) exclaims: ‘he’s gone into the fridge’. … Conservative sources subsequently insisted that Johnson was ‘categorically not hiding’ in the fridge, from which Johnson emerged carrying a crate of milk bottles…”
And today, scarcely credibly, the New York Times is exclusively reporting that last month, after the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump had to be smuggled out of Ankara inside a ‘catering container’ in an elaborate deception organised by his security team, owing to a credible threat from the Iranians to assassinate him at the airport, possibly by targeting his waiting plane. There followed a version of the well-known ‘three-card trick’….
- “Mr. Trump and other officials had said publicly that he would be leaving Turkey on July 8 aboard one of the older versions of Air Force One rather than a luxury 747-8 donated by Qatar that he had flown in on. Mr. Trump told reporters at the time that he was making the switch for ‘old time’s sake.’ Mr. Trump boarded the older plane from the left-side door in view of cameras, and news organizations, including The New York Times, which reported that he had traveled on it to Britain, where he switched back to the newer plane. … But instead of flying out aboard that older, powder blue, modified 747, Mr. Trump was whisked off that plane via a catering container that had been lifted to the opposite side of the plane from where the journalists traveling with him boarded, one of the U.S. officials said. The president was then taken to a third (military) plane, which he flew in secret to Britain, the official with knowledge of the matter said.”
And finally caught up with his beloved new Qatar-supplied ‘gift’, the (dollars 400 million) stretched Boeing 747 – which has since been taken out of service for extra security modifications, after the US taxpayers (me included!) had already been bilked of possibly a billion dollars to have it adapted to fit the mad Emperor and his grotesque tastes. Landing at RAF Mildenhall, Trump was again smuggled out of the military jet he had escaped in, across to Airforce One, that had landed a few minutes later – this is all a bit confusing – and pretended he’d been onboard his official plane all along; although you’d think someone would have noticed he wasn’t.
Anyway, the deception having only just come out, the hundred or so journalists and staffers aboard Airforce One that day and various opposition congresspersons are now excitedly demanding to know why they were used unwittingly as decoys, sacrificial lambs, when there was a ‘credible’ security threat against their flight that they hadn’t been warned about? Does Trump hate journalists that much? Shades of Lockerbie! And who knew the President had even visited our shores? Does he come here often? Should we be told?
It’s quite funny, really.
Let the wrong ones out
As you know, your Old Uncle is afflicted with a condition known as cognitive dissonance – the ability to support two entirely contrary propositions at the same time.
Especially where public opinion is concerned.
The case of Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, two rustic teenage tearaways who in 2019, aged 18, were passengers in a car racing to escape justice after being confronted by police constable Andrew Harper, 28, following a report of the attempted theft of a farmer’s quad bike, is obviously tragic. Harper became somehow entangled in a strap and was dragged for a mile behind the car to his death. The jury was not entirely convinced the boys in the car were aware of his plight, although the driver, Henry Long, 19, apparently attempted to ram a police car as they fled.
Uncle B. is currently quite conflicted about it. Should they be released early, as part of the general ‘amnesty’ programme designed to free more prison places to keep the justice system creaking on, or should they be made a special case because of the nature of the crime, and kept inside for what would be only a few more months, just to please the family of the victim? And, he wonders in passing, why Britain locks up more criminals per head of population than any other country in Europe? Last year, for instance, the Netherlands actually closed 40% of their prison estate because it wasn’t being used.
In 2020, Cole and Bowers were sentenced to 13 years for manslaughter, which entitled them to be considered for parole in October, 2027. However, owing to a program announced two years ago – why is everyone getting hot under the collar about this only now? – to release several thousand less controversial prisoners on licence early, to free up space in our overcrowded Victorian prisons, their release dates following an urgent review of the scheme by new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, were brought forward to January next year.
I don’t suppose he even knew these guys existed when he exempted manslaughter cases from the list of those who were considered a threat to society and not to be released.
But at that point, all hell broke loose. Harper’s mother made numerous emotional appearances on TV, claiming it was an insult to her son’s memory, and that nobody was ‘listening’ to victims – although Burnham has appointed a minister for victims and is clearly aware of the problem and doing his best to resolve it. Despite that, many serving and ex-police officers and crime commissioners came forward on their high horses to announce that, as one of their own had been killed in the line of duty, to let Cole and Bowers of all people out before they had completed their sentences was an insult to our brave bobbies on the frontline and a travesty of British justice.
More pertinently, there appears to be a concerted campaign encouraging public vilification of the two boys, who had foolishly – and possibly illegally – been filmed entering the courtroom to be sentenced, sneering defiantly at the camera. Photographing the accused is still not allowed in British courts. The unpleasant image has been repeated over and over again on the news, contrasted with sympathetic pictures of PC Harper on his wedding day, his attractive new wife, and a shot of him looking – dare I say – sweet. Not one second of airtime has been given to pointing out that the young men will have served over 7 years in prison by January and are unlikely still to be the nasty little 18-year-old scumbags depicted on the news, whom any reasonable human being would naturally like to see banged up for life. What is the point of prison, if those convicted can never be rehabilitated becuse of public opprobrium stirred up by a prurient media? We all did a lot of bloody stupid things when we were 18.
Let’s remember, too, that Long, the driver of the car pleaded guilty, and is not being released. The public has their revenge on him. Cole and Bowers would have been let out anyway next year, and their earlier release would probaby mean stricter supervision than they would otherwise have been under. In the interests of justice, I don’t like this idea that, because a police officer is involved, a special example should be made of those already sentenced – the law has changed since the incident to increase the penalties for killing emergency service workers. The two are probably in more danger now, thanks to the highly politicised storm of outrage that has greeted the story, which has revived all the bitterness and anger and ‘victimology’ that surrounded the early release scheme when it was first introduced.
To exclude these two specifically from a general amnesty for manslaughter convicts merely because of heightened public emotion would simply highlight the proverb that ‘bad cases make bad laws’; it would be necessary to deny all such offenders the opportunity of early release, whatever their original sentencing ‘tariff’; while I hate the idea that a public petition stirring up the mob is any basis for a legal system. Britain is not Dodge city.
Is it worth whipping up controversy over what might have been only a few months’ reduction in their time served? and what then should we make of the 2,200 prisoners whose time has run, in some cases, many years over their original sentences for minor crimes, because of an idiotic mistake by a former Home Secretary, David Blunkett in introducing ‘indeterminate sentences’ for certain classes of prisoner, that were abolished in 2012? One such case cited in The Guardian, 10 Aug., concerns a 17-year-old boy, gaoled for 19 months for stealing a flower pot, for god’s sake, who is still incarcerated 19 years later.
Does the great British public concede that it might be time to release him?
The Boglington Post (Incorporating The Pumpkin) 