On-time and all-Commonwealth.
Things are depressing here in rainy Vancouver. We haven’t seen the sun in well over a week; the wet weather is threatening to destroy this year’s pot crop (and with it the most vibrant sector of British Columbia’s economy), and gas is comfortably over $1.46 a litre.
With gas prices so high (hear that? That’s my European readers howling with derisive laughter), more and more commuters are parking their cars and taking the bus. This brings me to the depressing part: it seems that the $14,000,000,000 given to TransLink to increase ridership isn’t doing shit-all to help the system function if and when ridership actually increases.
The soaring price of gas is causing overcrowding on the Lower Mainland’s transit system, according to the company that oversees public transit in the area.
[...]
“Every time we’ve put out any new capacity in the system over the last nine years it has been gobbled up almost as quickly as it hits the road,” [Ken Hardie, a spokesperson for TransLink] said. “We know there is a lot of latent demand out there. The problem is, of course, coming up with enough money to put the public transit capacity out there.”
Those fuckers just got fourteen billion dollars, and they’re having a hard time “coming up with enough money”? What the hell did they do with it — hookers and Scotch? Are they back-filling the Canada line construction on Cambie street with crisp foliage-green twenties rather than concrete and rebar?
I say we stop giving them money until they explain what happened to the last bit.
Now, just as we’ve done for the past several years weeks, we’ll skip across the pond to the UK for Britain’s latest story of egregiously stupid police brutality (or unconscionably brutal police stupidity, if you prefer).
- The man who fell off a sofa while laughing at Have I Got News For You — and ended up in court (Daily Mail)
The story begins pleasantly enough:
Christopher Cocker, 36, was enjoying the BBC1 show when a joke made by panellist Paul Merton had him doubled up with laughter. He collapsed on the floor – but the thud startled his downstairs neighbour who, believing he had collapsed, called police.
Maybe a bit of an overreaction (if I called the cops every time my upstairs neighbours dropped something heavy on the floor, I’d probably be convicted of harassment), but it’s nice to have neighbours who care. On the other hand, this is Britain, where any dealings with the cops are likely to leave bruises:
Officers arrived and said Cocker was initially co-operative but became ‘aggressive’ when they asked his name and tried to shut his front door.
Given the notoriously sieve-like security of Britain’s database state, I can understand why he might wish to remain anonymous. “Thanks for asking, officer, but I’m just fine” ought to be enough, no?
He was eventually disabled with parva spray through the gap and arrested.
Jonathan Taylor, defending, said: ‘The officer accepts in his statement that he struck my client and then sprayed him again. ‘He was handcuffed and unceremoniously thrown into the back of a police van. When he ended up in a police cell he was asking himself how all this had happened.’
[...]
Speaking after the hearing, Cocker said he had been in his flat minding his own business.
He said: ‘I can’t believe it – I was thrown in the back of a police van before being stripped naked and put in a cell.
‘I was handcuffed behind my back and my ankles bound with plastic ties before six of them carried me to the van.
Let’s be clear about this: Cocker, having done nothing wrong (or even illegal), tried to put a door betwixt himself and the plods. For this he was pepper sprayed, assaulted, pepper sprayed again, zip-tied, stripped naked, and forcibly confined. Not for offering any sort of force to the cops — retreating behind one’s front door into one’s own home isn’t “aggressive” — but simply for… well, I’m not sure for what. Apparently, these cops just wanted to kick someone’s ass and get away with it.
I’d like to report that the plods involved were charged with assault, kidnapping, and unlawful confinement… but that’s not what happened.
Cocker, of Blackburn, Lancs., pleaded guilty to resisting a police officer and was given a conditional discharge for six months following the incident on May 20.
What a charming place Britain has become.
I’ll stick with the Commonwealth and pick on the Aussies.
- English too hard for students, principal says (news.com.au)
I will grant that, as languages go, English can be a real pain in the ass. However:
The head of one of the nation’s elite private schools has questioned whether English should be compulsory for the senior years, saying the courses being taught are beyond the intellectual ability of most students.
I’d be surprised if that particular school stays “elite” for long. Of course, this may be a measurement problem: it seems that the issue isn’t that the kids can’t hack it, but that the parents feel inadequate:
The headmaster of Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore) in North Sydney, Tim Wright, told a symposium on a national curriculum in English at the weekend that parents felt alienated from the English syllabus and were deeply cynical about it.
We all know that experts’ opinions don’t matter — they’re just elite (there’s that word again) snobs in ivory towers, after all. Rather, pure democracy ought to decide curricula:
Mr Alegounarias said the content of any national curriculum had to capture what the community — not teachers — thought was essential for students to learn.
Might we begin with multi-sentence paragraphs? I suppose that would involve grammar, which is out of fashion.
Some of you may be familiar with an individual named Trofim Lysenko. If you are, you’ll recall that he was a Soviet biologist and agronomist, famous for denouncing Mendelian inheritance of characteristics (that is, basic genetics) as un-Marxist and — with the help of Stalin’s propaganda machine and a few thousand government thugs — purged what was left of the Soviet genetics academy of anyone with a clue and condemned millions to hunger, famine, and starvation. (He also had quite an influence upon Mao’s Great Leap Forward — and if you know about Lysenko you probably also know how well that turned out. Hint: millions died.)
If you aren’t familiar with Trofim Lysenko, don’t worry: You see, history is just an outmoded construct of the middle class useful merely as a stepping-stone to wealth.
No, really.
Children should no longer be taught traditional subjects at school because they are “middle-class” creations, a Government adviser will claim today. Professor John White, who contributed to a controversial shake-up of the secondary curriculum, believes lessons should instead cover a series of personal skills.
Among those traditional subjects are history (as mentioned) and biology, as well as English (see also “Australia”, above), math, and languages. Mr. White would replace the teachings of Darwin, Mendel, and Watson and Crick — among others — with “lessons on issues such as climate change and managing debt.” How one can understand climate change without a bewildering array of physical sciences ranging from physics to oceanography, or manage debt without a reasonable grasp of algebra, is utterly beyond me — but then again I’m merely a grad student with a meagre mastery of doublethink.
Lysenko would be proud.
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