WTF??!!??!?!? moments...

Family of lawyer Mark Saunders, shot dead by police, go to court

“In the aftermath, Mr Saunders' family questioned why the barrister was shot when, they say, he was not posing a lethal threat.”

The man was taking pot shots at all and sundry – not just at the police – with a shotgun (though, admittedly, legally owned) through a window of his house in which he had barricaded himself. With a shotgun, folks! What exactly would his grieving family have considered a lethal threat? A bazooka?

Ok, Mr Saunders didn’t kill anybody but that was probably more due to their luck than his judgment. Had he not been shot, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have potted a neighbour or a police officer or some passing pedestrian? If he had harmed somebody, people would have been up in arms (forgive the unintended and feeble pun) condemning the cops for not shooting him.

Yes, a deranged lawyer died… but at least nobody else did.

*****************

Lembit Opik gets on his scooter to argue for change of law

Segways look like fun and I’d love to try one out (or own one), but to say that they would be perfect to ease congestion in London is ridiculous! Has anyone thought about what the footpaths are like in London? Not exactly smooth, not exactly wide, not exactly obstruction-free… heck, the only things narrower than the footpaths are probably the roads (I exaggerate a bit, but not by much). Will two Segways be able to go side-by-side on the footpath without inconveniencing pedestrians who DON’T have a Segway? There will inevitably be the sort of a**holes who will overtake those who are traveling slower than them - what if they bump into a pedestrian? The Segways look sturdy enough to injure somebody in a collision, and 12 mph is pretty damn quick compared to someone who is strolling or walking along. Oh, and if they’re “virtually silent”, do you, as a Segway user, say “Beep beep, coming through” all the time that you’re on the move?

Segways would be great fun in villages and suburbs which are comparatively quiet. I rather wish I had one myself. Maybe I’ll give Santa baby a little hint…

********************

Skeleton in Britney Spears' family closet

“…details emerged of a secret scandal buried in her family history that would have overshadowed even her well-publicised personal troubles.”

Oh. My. GOD! What a scandal – Britney Spears’s great-grandparents were living in – *gasp* – sin in the 1920s. Perhaps that accounts for Britney's “loose morals” and carelessness with her baby (driving with the baby in her lap – what a scandal, way worse than people who break babies’ spines, and so on) and generally erratic behaviour.

Isnt that right, editor of The Times? What could possibly be more scandalous than the news of Britney Spears’ great-grandparents’ supposed “life in sin” in the 1920s!

Actually, the most frustrating part is that the newspaper had to make the more “scandalous” news prominent when those long-dead folks could just as easily NOT have been living in sin. What’s the difference between a two-bit gossip rag and a newspaper nowadays? Just the size of the sheet, then?