Gutted.

Another bad decision Mr Home Secretary.

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Facebook is racist

Vaguely nationalistic Scottish users of Facebook have long been annoyed that there is no location option for Scottish towns and cities to be identified as in Scotland rather than the United Kingdom.

Unionists will have been OK with that, but Facebook have caused a right stooshie in God's own country as now any Scottish (and I'm led to believe Welsh) city or town is now listed as being in England.

Our American cousins often mistakenly call Great Britain, England, so it is to be expected.......

......... or has Gordon Broon (far are ye fae loon?) sold us off to the south to pay for Westminster's bathplugs and swimming pool repairs?

© MacNoddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Shake ups

Apparently, I was looking a little dated and I have been revamped for the digital age. I was particularly pleased to hear that "Noddy will also have some new vehicles at his disposal - including a helicopter and a monster truck - to help him get around Toy Town."

The Torygraph goes further and tells me that I will "get to have a few adventures down by the harbour." Anyone who lives in Toy Town™ will know that ain't exactly somewhere I should be adventuring. I'm apparently in line for a submarine too. I know it is alleged to be damp round these parts, but that is taking the p....

Meanwhile, Mr Plod drew this latest result of HMG brainstorming to my attention. He told me a little wee came out when he read it (it's an age thing), especially when he heard Liberty were endorsing it. He also suspects there may well be a little public disappointment at the sentencing.

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Freeloading

What with all sorts getting their media free of charge lately I thought I'd be of public service.

Don't know if you've discovered SPOTIFY.

Try it and see why I'm hooked.

If you want to lug in to the sharn I listen to you can click here once you have the software downloaded.

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Branded.

Those of you who make it to the bottom of my front page (so that would be no-one - ed.) will see that I post a link to the ever wonderful Being 5 comic strip.

Those of you old enough to appreciate the targeted wit involved in this treatise on the generation gap will also grasp the reference to one of Alf Garnett's catchphrases I have utilised as the post header.

The latest strip rightly deserves a top billing.

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Hacked off

A wee while back I posted about Gary McKinnon and suggested the US might overreact a tad.

The latest article from the Beeb suggests he could face up to 70 years in gaol. That's enough for me to suggest Mr Obama might want to reconsider when he comes to power in the New Year.

© Mr Plod
Published by Toy Town™ Times

So Emo

Go on tell me you didn't have a lump in your throat.

You can see/download the HQ version here.

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Criminal Negligence

"PA Consulting Group transforms the performance of organisations. Clients call on our independent, employee-owned, global firm when they want an innovative solution, a highly responsive approach, and delivery of hard results."

PA Consulting Group might want to reconsider this slogan.

A contractor working for the Home Office has lost a computer memory stick containing personal details about tens of thousands of criminals.

The lost data includes details about 10,000 prolific offenders as well as information on all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales.

The data on the stick also includes information from the Police National Computer of some 30,000 people with six or more convictions in the last year.

David Smith, Deputy Commissioner in the Information Commissioner's Office, said the latest loss showed that personal information could be a "toxic liability" if not handled properly.

"It is deeply worrying that after a number of major data losses and the publication of two government reports on high profile breaches of the Data Protection Act, more personal information has been reported lost," he said.

I was just thinking about the gravy train I've alluded to in the past and then I read on. Guess what? I wasn't the only one to think laterally.

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said there had been a "massive failure of duty".

He said: "What is more scandalous is that it is not the first time that the government has been shown to be completely incapable of protecting the integrity of highly sensitive data, rendering them unfit to be charged with protecting our safety.

"The British taxpayer will be absolutely outraged if they are made to pick up the bill for compensation to serious criminals."

So much for the tougher data laws.

Looking forward to Jacqui Spliff's views on this latest debacle, because someone has certainly lost their memory.

Update: Nice try at a body swerve Ms Teflon, but it is still your Department's responsibility to secure the data and physically prevent anyone downloading/transferring it against protocols. If it has been transferred as suggested, will she be prosecuting? Let's see.

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

To ebay or not to ebay

I don't use the internet car boot sale that is ebay.

If you do, then you have been warned.

I won't comment further since there's a live appeal ongoing.

I suppose I should offer a hat tip to the Evening Express too.

© Mr Plod
Published by Toy Town™ Times

WiiPlayer

Nintendo News - BBC iPlayer to be made available on the Wii.

Great - you'll be able to keep up to date with items like this, which I (and others) previously posted about, in between manically manoeuvring Mario.

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Searching for filth

Oh go on yersel, try a search at Woolies for 'duster'.

Methinks they need to clean up their search engine!

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Wiki'd

I can assure my readers I do not have any helpers expurgating MY Wikipedia page.

However, a certain Sir, masquerading as Big Ears, ain't so laissez-faire.

Well at least he is in good company.

© Noddy
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Don't Panic

I'm very humbled that certain folk have missed me and others have worried that the rubber heelers have sussed me out.

The simple fact is that there have been a number of unrelated reasons why this blog has not figured high in my priorities of late.

Firstly, I have recently changed ISP, upgraded my PC's memory and added a DVD rewriter and oh how I like playing with my new toys! Speaking of which there's now a Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii to enjoy as well. I should grow up and yesterday I did. OK, I will forgive all of you for forgetting to wish me well.

Secondly, I have changed beat and as Gazza will confirm, WOW, quelle difference. Having suffered the PAIN of patrolling the very hub of Toytown™, I now look after a morass of sink estates and bizarrely this has proved so much more fun and a tonic to my weary body.

I now have time to breathe between calls and (apologies for the boss speak) am so much more pro-active. My intel stats and performance measured activities have sky-rocketed and YOU know how important that is these days.

I come home with a smile and go to work actually looking forward to a shift (well as much as anyone loves going to work!) Long may it continue.

This has had the effect of me being considerably less stressed at work and at home.

Accordingly, I have become a human again (well as human as a Copper ever can) and humans do more than sit in front of the internet grumbling about their job being shafted by Politicos. I think it is no coincidence then that the best (or most consistent) bloggers are fellow response officers, who are suffering the result of incessant tampering with the way the job is approached. You should therefore logically be able to measure my level of stress by the quantity of posts I submit. Please tell me how I'm getting on if you start to worry!

I'm not one to kiss and tell when it comes to calls I attend, well not until a fair bit of dust has settled, but my return to the wonders of policing cooncil estates has encouraged me to spill the beans on one I went to on the last set of Nights.

I received a hurried point to point from one of my female colleagues advising things were 'a little heated' at her call. She was with another female colleague at a flat trying to extricate a teenaged quine from her father on the instructions of the equally overstretched and thus absent SWD.

Big Daddy (see below) wasn't having any of it. My male colleague and I blued and two'd it down to their locus and ran up the stairs to see a doppelgänger for 'five bellies' yelling the usual bravado at us including the fact that he would, "spik to youse quines, but I'm nae spikin to yon twa fucking cunts." I retorted with a, "Nice to meet you too Sir."

He went on to advise us that it would take more than me and my colleagues to remove the wean. I took this to mean he would stand sideways in the corridor and effectively block any light with his belly, but apparently he was ready for a fight according to my colleagues as their fingers were itching over their CS sprays. I am such an optimist! Anyway, using God's best weapon we gobshited our way out of the hovel masquerading as a house with the wean, who incidentally was nearly awarded an Oscar for her panic attack scene.

Now all this took place well past bedtime (about 3.30 am) and in all the accompanying yelling and wailing (mainly from me, because my refreshment was chilling in the Microwave where I'd hurriedly left it) WE had woken an upstairs resident, who in wonderfully feminine and erudite language advised us WE had woken two of her precious wee darlings and wished the "fucking pigs" an early death and questioned our parentage from a now widely opened and surprisingly intact window of the close's top landing.

It's great to be appreciated for all the work we do.

Back soonish.

p.s.

There was a third reason for not posting i.e. there's been a lot of footie on the telly, but I will not be spurred on to elucidate on that!

© Mr Plod
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Dutch web designer goes potty

I like to think I've put a little effort into how this web page looks, but clearly I need to consider a trip to Amsterdam and a little recreation to inspire me at my work.

Flash or what?

© Chill Bill
Published by Toy Town™ Times

Advertisement

Planet Police = One Stop Cop Shop. It's a top notch Police Blogs aggregator.

If you haven't visited - you should. Makes life easy. The author should be commended on his/her initiative. Obviously not from a SMT!

Click here for the RSS.

While I'm at it, check out the newbie from Toy Town™.

© Mr Plod
Published by Toy Town™ Times

ayePod

I've posted on Apple's ubiquitous gadget afore, but here's just fit yer average weegie needs!

Ah ken fit tae dae noo - Burberry would look affy nice!

Damn, someone has got there first.

iPeed iSelf

Looking forward to the court case on this latest gizmo inspired by Apple's iPod. Should be a headline writer's godsend!

Tony is a Spammer

As I suspected in my previous blog, Tony would be spammed when he sent out his reply to us 1.7 million plus folk who signed the E.Petition.

AOL dumped (sic) his reply to me, but here it is just in case you didn't get one or it was spammed into the ether....

E-petition: Response from the Prime Minister

The e-petition asking the Prime Minister to "Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy" has now closed. This is a response from the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Thank you for taking the time to register your views about road pricing on the Downing Street website.

This petition was posted shortly before we published the Eddington Study, an independent review of Britain's transport network. This study set out long-term challenges and options for our transport network.

It made clear that congestion is a major problem to which there is no easy answer. One aspect of the study was highlighting how road pricing could provide a solution to these problems and that advances in technology put these plans within our reach. Of course it would be ten years or more before any national scheme was technologically, never mind politically, feasible.

That is the backdrop to this issue. As my response makes clear, this is not about imposing "stealth taxes" or introducing "Big Brother" surveillance. This is a complex subject, which cannot be resolved without a thorough investigation of all the options, combined with a full and frank debate about the choices we face at a local and national level. That's why I hope this detailed response will address your concerns and set out how we intend to take this issue forward. I see this email as the beginning, not the end of the debate, and the links below provide an opportunity for you to take it further.

But let me be clear straight away: we have not made any decision about national road pricing. Indeed we are simply not yet in a position to do so. We are, for now, working with some local authorities that are interested in establishing local schemes to help address local congestion problems. Pricing is not being forced on any area, but any schemes would teach us more about how road pricing would work and inform decisions on a national scheme. And funds raised from these local schemes will be used to improve transport in those areas.

One thing I suspect we can all agree is that congestion is bad. It's bad for business because it disrupts the delivery of goods and services. It affects people's quality of life. And it is bad for the environment. That is why tackling congestion is a key priority for any Government.

Congestion is predicted to increase by 25% by 2015. This is being driven by economic prosperity. There are 6 million more vehicles on the road now than in 1997, and predictions are that this trend will continue.

Part of the solution is to improve public transport, and to make the most of the existing road network. We have more than doubled investment since 1997, spending £2.5 billion this year on buses and over £4 billion on trains - helping to explain why more people are using them than for decades. And we're committed to sustaining this investment, with over £140 billion of investment planned between now and 2015. We're also putting a great deal of effort into improving traffic flows - for example, over 1000 Highways Agency Traffic Officers now help to keep motorway traffic moving.

But all the evidence shows that improving public transport and tackling traffic bottlenecks will not by themselves prevent congestion getting worse. So we have a difficult choice to make about how we tackle the expected increase in congestion. This is a challenge that all political leaders have to face up to, and not just in the UK. For example, road pricing schemes are already in operation in Italy, Norway and Singapore, and others, such as the Netherlands, are developing schemes. Towns and cities across the world are looking at road pricing as a means of addressing congestion.

One option would be to allow congestion to grow unchecked. Given the forecast growth in traffic, doing nothing would mean that journeys within and between cities would take longer, and be less reliable. I think that would be bad for businesses, individuals and the environment. And the costs on us all will be real - congestion could cost an extra £22 billion in wasted time in England by 2025, of which £10-12 billion would be the direct cost on businesses.

A second option would be to try to build our way out of congestion. We could, of course, add new lanes to our motorways, widen roads in our congested city centres, and build new routes across the countryside. Certainly in some places new capacity will be part of the story. That is why we are widening the M25, M1 and M62. But I think people agree that we cannot simply build more and more roads, particularly when the evidence suggests that traffic quickly grows to fill any new capacity.

Tackling congestion in this way would also be extremely costly, requiring substantial sums to be diverted from other services such as education and health, or increases in taxes. If I tell you that one mile of new motorway costs as much as £30m, you'll have an idea of the sums this approach would entail.

That is why I believe that at least we need to explore the contribution road pricing can make to tackling congestion. It would not be in anyone's interests, especially those of motorists, to slam the door shut on road pricing without exploring it further.

It has been calculated that a national scheme - as part of a wider package of measures - could cut congestion significantly through small changes in our overall travel patterns. But any technology used would have to give definite guarantees about privacy being protected - as it should be. Existing technologies, such as mobile phones and pay-as-you-drive insurance schemes, may well be able to play a role here, by ensuring that the Government doesn't hold information about where vehicles have been. But there may also be opportunities presented by developments in new technology. Just as new medical technology is changing the NHS, so there will be changes in the transport sector. Our aim is to relieve traffic jams, not create a "Big Brother" society.

I know many people's biggest worry about road pricing is that it will be a "stealth tax" on motorists. It won't. Road pricing is about tackling congestion.

Clearly if we decided to move towards a system of national road pricing, there could be a case for moving away from the current system of motoring taxation. This could mean that those who use their car less, or can travel at less congested times, in less congested areas, for example in rural areas, would benefit from lower motoring costs overall. Those who travel longer distances at peak times and in more congested areas would pay more. But those are decisions for the future. At this stage, when no firm decision has been taken as to whether we will move towards a national scheme, stories about possible costs are simply not credible, since they depend on so many variables yet to be investigated, never mind decided.

Before we take any decisions about a national pricing scheme, we know that we have to have a system that works. A system that respects our privacy as individuals. A system that is fair. I fully accept that we don't have all the answers yet. That is why we are not rushing headlong into a national road pricing scheme. Before we take any decisions there would be further consultations. The public will, of course, have their say, as will Parliament.

We want to continue this debate, so that we can build a consensus around the best way to reduce congestion, protect the environment and support our businesses. If you want to find out more, please visit the attached links to more detailed information, and which also give opportunities to engage in further debate.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Blair

Further information

Both the 10 Downing Street and Department for Transport websites offer much more information about road pricing.

This includes a range of independent viewpoints, both for and against.

You can also read the Eddington Report in full.

You can reply to this email by posting a question to Roads Minister Dr. Stephen Ladyman in a webchat on the No 10 website this Thursday.

There will be further opportunities in the coming months to get involved in the debate. You will receive one final e-mail from Downing Street to update you in due course.

If you would like to opt out of receiving further mail on this or any other petitions you signed, please email optout@petitions.pm.gov.uk

I have no idea what's going on here

Does Bill Gates know what's going on here?

Battery Low

Well it's that time of year when you parcel up all the new gizmo's for the weans. iPods are all the craze and Foamy gives a seasonal warning here for all those poor folk who absolutely, like, just must have the kewlest of all mp3 players. Personally, for all the reasons he states, I'd recommend the Sandisk Sansa e280 if you've time to get one, it's cheaper, replacement batteries are available at a tenner and you get video playback to boot!

Having said all that, you can now see Foamy's episodes as Podcasts here.

Merry Christmas from all the Toy Town residents.