The Impotent Guardians of Virtue
Last week, due to a bungled dispatch call, a local woman watched two 18-year-old vandals trash a local landmark and a business ... for a couple of hours. She attempted to follow the perpetrators in her car, but gave up when the dispatcher told her she could be fined for speeding.
Police took four hours to respond, eventually popping by to notify the business owner that his establishment had had all its windows busted. Apparently because one of the lads was pissed that his skateboard had gone missing.
One reason for the sluggish response is that we have no police force in town. This is ridiculous for a town the size of ours, but apparently it's more effective to have an empty police station on the main street than to actually have cops inside it? Instead, we piggy-back off the RCMP in a larger hamlet some forty minutes by highway from here.
That's one extreme. Then there's this morning.
As Mme and I drove to work (I have an excuse for not wanting to walk 1.8 km--my back's out) a pair of elderly men in yellow jackets with clipboards were standing by the local school zone. A big sign read "You have just been clocked at 37 km/h by City Speed Watch."
I am the first to complain about speeders on our street. In my reckless youth I liked to whizz down suburban streets at 60 km/h. Now that I'm a property co-owner, I feel cars should be banned, as should the construction of the 200-unit condo hell they're putting in up the road (though that's another blog post).
But my response to these people is "£µ©λ off".
I despise prodnoses and curtain twitchers. I distrust people who call the cops on their neighbours. And I loathe nannies who peep through the fence to see what you're up to in your own back yard.
And these well-meaning clowns with their fancy radar sign and their high-visibility clothing are just as bad. If they were serious, they'd have a police car there and people would be getting ticket$. Or better yet, rather than wasting time and money waving at motorists like my noble self, they could install the speed bumps the place clearly desperately needs.
Which of course would leave the prodnoses and curtain-twitchers with nothing to do on weekday mornings. Except maybe raise a petition to get a serious police force into town.
posted by Metro @ 8:18 am
3 Comments:
Bonjour mon Ami Metro
Salve
mmmm
Peut-etre Monsieur n'a pas un enfant
Peut-etre Monsieur n'a pas squashé un Eleve
mmmm
BUT perhaps the Arithmagics might prompt even an Incorrigible Evolutionizeer to re-consider his (or her, in these enLightened Times) WeltUndLebensAnschauUng in the lights of the Facts
mph=kph Child hit by Car
23 = 37 } = Probably Alive
30 = 48 } ?? shaken/broken bones
40 = 64 } = Child Dead
} Driver miserabilized
Here in Inglaterra, we have a Government [may they rule for ever] which is making Criminals of Us All, even for legitimate activities
- Filing your Tax Return one day late => tax fines, even when no tax is underpaid
- SchMoking in Pub => Criminal
- Hunting Foxes => Criminal
- Parking in previously free parking space => Criminal, if parking ticket runs out by 5 minutes (Councils use this as an easy way to screw money out of their Citizens - it is not to control parking for too numerous cars)
- Giving a Bloke [or a Blokess] un job, disregarding the legislation about disability, age, sex, religious, sexual orientation, race etc, etc discrimination => civic, legal penalties + social disApprobium
- Driving safely without an accident at 32 mph in a wide, empty road, without any cars or pedestrians to be seen => criminal [enforced by ever multiplying speed cameras]
Certainly, Driving through a School Zone at 20 or 30 or 50 or 60 miles an hour, without an "incident", may leave an illusion of safe-driving for the Roadster
BUT, in a School Zone with many Children about, peut-etre these Geriatric Meddlers have un point (or is it une pointe)
Recently, in our School Zone, without looking, Child springs into path of Car (relative speed = 30 mph)
.... Child survives, having misplaced some teeth - somewhat shaken, she will be more cautious in der Zukunft [the Future]
If the Roadster had been proceeding at 40 mph, she would have been Deed [Schottisch for "Dead"]
This has prompted some reduction in the speed at which your obedient but anti-Soviet Servant careers through School Zones ...
I have the honour to remain your obedient servant and
Tot siens et
Vale
G Eagle
Herr EaGle:
Welcome back to our shores ... you have been missed, rather.
Your point is well taken. And it is for precisely that reason that I suggested that "sleeping policemen" (as ThEy say in T'Ingle-Erra) or indeed actual police officers be employed to do the thing these seniors have taken it upon themselves to do.
However, I also note in my later post above that I have perhaps not given these people sufficient credit. They are, after all, eAglEs with nests and chicks of their own, no doubt.
"Never any thing can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it," eh?
Close enough.
On an unrelated note, the Government of Canada fined Mme some $7 for late filing of taxes. Normally this would be applied only as a surcharge upon tax owed.
However, this year I erroneously thought Mme owed twice as much as she did, and sent a cheque in that amount.
The government:
1) Cashed the cheque
2) Corrected my faulty calculation
3) Returned the difference, minus the fine.
I find it comforting to see that the bean-counters appear to be on the ball.
Oh, and I'm a more moderate driver these days than I was at seventeen.
But it doesn't always help.
http://metroblog.blogspot.com/2004/03/not-sure-im-ready-to-do-this.html
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