Glance

I know I said I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't going top subject myself to the Daily Wail anymore, but a link sent to me earlier in the day took me unexpectedly into the pit of wallowing ignorance, and once there I saw this story. Pensioner (95) threatened with legal action for putting a butter tub in the wrong recycling bag.

Sod it, this is too good to miss. Here's what actually happened (which is in the article if you read it carefully). The recycling guys were picking up the bag into which tins are placed. They spotted a plastic butter tub in the bag. They suffered a common sense bypass (which would have seen the tub removed and the bag taken). They left a standard note on the bag explaining why the bag hadn't been lifted. That note contains a line stating that incorrect recycling can lead to prosecution. Take note. Can. Which would be serious instances, or repeat and repeat offending. The note's main purpose is to let someone know why the bag has not been lifted.

But this is Daily Wail world. "A 95-year-old widow has been threatened with legal action." "Her family said they were horrified at the warning, which they say could have triggered a heart attack." Oh please. Just feck off. She most certainly has NOT been threatened with legal action. Let me put it this way, if you get a parking ticket have you been threatened with legal action? There's a line on there that non-payment could lead to court action. But threatened? When I filled out my last electoral register form for the house there was a message that deliberate falsification could lead to prosecution. Did I feel threatened with such legal action?

And what the hell did age have to do with it? How would the binman know how old the person was who had put out the bag? And old people aren't the only ones with potentially weak hearts. Should we ban all such notices because they may cause someone to have a heart attack???

AND it's a standard notice! Do they expect the binmen to have a collection of notices for specific circumstances and different types of person who has committed the mistake? "Julian, Julian! There's a butter tub in this bag and it's supposed to be tins, where's the notice?" "Hang on, I've got them here. That's for bottles in the paper; erm, cardboard in the plastics; ah, here it is. Oh wait. No, that's butter tubs, but in the glass recycling. Right, got it. Now who is she?" "95 year old woman." "I've got 32 year old single mother; 19 year old bachelor; hmmmm, would an 87 year old male retired fireman note do?"

Hyperbole-topped misinformation which hasn't even been entertainingly written by the ubiquitous Daily Mail Reporter (a designation they use for filler pieces that they know are deliberate attempts to incite displeasure). And oh how that displeasure made itself clear in the comments section....

"Poor old dear lived through the Nazis the first time around and now........." was a great one from 'Happy Over Here' in Narbonne, France. That's right HoH, in 30s and 40s Germany those mean old Nazis left notes on the bins of Jews telling them they'd got their recycling mixed up. Those evil bastards! I hear they also brought in Health and Safety laws and put up speed cameras.

"I never seperate, and I never will seperate my rubbish. These jobsworths can whistle dixie as far as I'm concerned. They'll be telling us what we cannot stick down the toilet next!" said Billy G in London, who presumably sticks his children's heads down the toilet before flushing it and doesn't think the State should be sticking its nose in on his parenting.

And the 'jobsworth' and 'gestapo' comments go on and on. Right, seriously, I'm going to stop reading anything from this paper, and I'm going to stick my neck out and make myself unpopular with some people. If you read the Wail and actually, genuinely believe what you're reading then you're stupid. Not just daft. Not just a bit dim. But mind-bendingly, can't-tell-a-spoon-from-a-fork, enjoy-britain's-got-talent, lacking in intelligence.

Ah. That was cathartic. Been put in a bit (for bit read MASSIVE) awkward position at work which I can't really go into. I guess this is what I get for truly being the company lawyer now but.... So I headed out after work in the sun to grab some Saughton Skatepark photos. I particularly liked All the Old Dudes (there were loads of these guys about, sort of my age, revelling in a 20-30 year wait for a facility like this), and some great flatland boarding. What was really great about it was that there must have been 200 people there, either riding or skating or boarding or sitting round the periphery watching, and in 40 minutes of watching there wasn't one shouted annoyance at someone getting in the way, not one scream of pain (though that I'm sure does happen fairly regularly) and such a great mix of ages and abilities. At one point an older boarder, having just cleared a jump, found a kid on a bike starting out without looking. Boarder dismounts kicking the board one way, jumping the other and clipping the back wheel of the bike. Does he have a go at the kid for not looking? Nope. He stops and checks that the kid and bike are alright before going to fetch his board. I can see why the people of Inverleith were so against these awful yoofs having a skatepark near them...

Too much writing? Probably, it was a night I needed to get things off my chest. Blipfoto serves its purpose once more...