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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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From the Daily Mail this week:
 
Carry a knife and you'll go to jail, David Cameron warns
Anyone carrying a knife on Britain's streets would automatically face jail under the next Conservative government, David Cameron warned today. Under the new plans, everyone carrying a blade without a reasonable excuse will be prosecuted and those convicted will get a custodial sentence.
 
Current sentencing guidelines, which allow some offenders to escape with a fine or caution, will be scrapped. The Tories' Knife Crime Action Plan stops short of a mandatory jail term but makes clear the presumption should be that offenders will go to jail. The minimum sentence will be a community penalty with the offender wearing a high visibility uniform.
 
Gordon Brown has already said that he wants to create a new "presumption to prosecute" for anyone found carrying a blade longer than three inches. But Mr Cameron wants to go further. "The Government should say not just there is a presumption you will be prosecuted if you carry a knife, but that there will be a presumption that you will go to jail," he said. "It is not a minor offence. There is no excuse for carrying a knife when you walk out of your door."

 
All very tough and no-nonsense, Mr.Cameron. But it's also a load of total garbage. What do you mean exactly, "There is no excuse for carrying a knife when you walk out of your door"?
 
There are dozens of reasons why this is a completely normal thing to do.
 
Suppose you're a chef on the way to work? You might well be carrying not one knife but a whole set. Or you might just be a housewife who's been to the shops and bought herself a new kitchen knife.
 

Clearly a menace. Lock 'er up!

 
Yachtsmen habitually carry knives because they sometimes need to cut rope. The GOS has a boat, and he carries a chunky stainless-steel folding knife with a blade at one end and a shackle-key at the other. Yacht chandlers recently have started selling special knives with no point to the blade at all, because it's well-known that many sailors have injured themselves on their own knives when tossed around in bad weather. I believe the same sort of knife is available for divers, whose need to carry a knife is even greater - getting tangled in a fishing net fifteen fathoms down is no laughing matter.
 
There must be many other trades that require possession of a knife, often a very sharp one. Shoe-repairer, fish-monger, butcher, leather-worker, carpet-fitter … any of these might need a knife on a daily basis, and will sometimes need to carry it to or from work - in other words, on the street.
 
And don't try telling us, Mr.Cameron, that you only mean young people. The GOS is in no danger of being mistaken for a hoodie, but carpet-fitters are often young, and whatever your trade you have to start young and you have to possess the tools for the job.
 
Nor can we expect the police to exercise discretion - because they just don't, do they? Remember Tom Foulkes MBA, BSc, CEng, FICE, FIMechE, MioD, Director General of the Institution of Civil Engineers, who was hauled off a Paris-bound train at Waterloo, locked up for four hours, photographed, forced to give his fingerprints and a DNA sample, and entered in the police national database of criminals for carrying a two-inch pen-knife?
 
No, face it, Mr.Cameron, if you make a law, sooner or later some tosser will use it. Some police constable with a target to make will arrest an innocent old codger on his way to a day's fishing because he's got a pen-knife in his tackle-box, some jobsworth in the CPS will look at it and say "Well, this is silly but the law is perfectly clear, and the stupid old git can't deny he broke it, so we're bound to get a conviction", and then some supine magistrate will think "I don't want to do this, but the law is the law and it's more than my job's worth …" and so on. Bingo, another martyr.
 
Now here's an idea, Mr.Cameron. It's a bit off the wall, I know, but let's just send it up your trouser-leg and see if it bites your balls … why not prosecute and punish people for what they do with their knives, rather than for the knives themselves? You know, next time some feral little scroat from Peckham sticks a knife in someone, don't let him off with a caution if he promises not to do it again, don't give him a pat on the back and community service because the prisons are full, don't give him a social worker and try to help him because he's disadvantaged … send him down and throw away the key: fifteen years, no remission, no treatment, no excuses. Get rid of him. For fifteen years at least, the rest of us will breathe a little easier and feel a little safer.
 
And the cost of his imprisonment?
 
Who cares? We're worth it.
 
Or perhaps you don't think we are …?
 

 
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