Apparently police in New Zealand aren't allowed to publish photographs of those wanted in connection with crimes if they are under sixteen. So what do you do if you know your suspect bears a passing resemblance to a famous British actor? Obvious really, you show a photo of the actor instead.
The full story as told by the Register.
Congratulations to the police's thinking outside of the box. I wonder what Robbie Coltrane thinks of it?
A birthday treat for my younger brother Stephen saw him, my other brother Peter and me, travelling to Armourgeddon's Tank Paintball course near Husbands Boswoth, Leceistershire, not far from where Richard of York gave battle in vain and lost the crown to Henry VII.
The two hour session consists of each team member doing two laps of the practice course, one driving with one's head sticking out of the turret and one with the hatch down using the periscope. The experience was a bit scary, claustrophobic really, and makes one grateful that it's not a real battle. At the same time it's exciting and a lot of fun.
Then follows firing practice, a ping-pong ball sized lump of paint at a stationary lorry. This requires one member operating the siting gear and one loading the gun and pressing the fire button. Finally a fairly regimented duel against another tank where you need to manoeuvre and fire eight shells at the opposition.
All-in-all a great experience although not cheap at £75 per head.
We finished off the evening by staying at a local hotel in Lutterworth and trying five of the local pubs and Cheikos, an excellent Italian restaurant with an Arabic twist to some dishes.
I was struck by a headline in this morning's newspaper, well the Metro actually, but let's not split hairs.
A PC in Every School
it said. That can't be right I thought, my mind drifting back to my time at school some thirty years ago. Then it was still unusual for a school to own even one computer. I rented time on the mainframe at Wolverhampton Polytechnic to satisfy my cravings. £2 an hour was a lot more than I could afford, still I resisted the temptations that addicts everywhere often succumb to in order to feed their habits, mugging, burglary and theft. Anyway, back to the headline, it was of course propounding the idea that each school in Britain should have its own police constable in an effort to crack down on criminal behaviour by the students, especially violence and knife related crime. Sad but true.
Just to counteract the notion that I'm always moaning about stuff in this blog, two instances of interactions with government departments where they have performed well.
Firstly I needed to renew my two children's passports. Although it was quite expensive we sent off the forms and photographs and received the new ones in about a week, much quicker than has happened previously.
Secondly I needed to change my driving licence from the old paper one to the newer plastic version. Again this took only about a week.
Just to keep with tradition though, one complaint; why is it necessary to carry the paper form along with the plastic licence? Surely nowadays the information regarding endorsements could be stored on the licence and anyone needing this information would be able to access it via a standard card reader?
If you're running Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1) on your PC and are having problems Microsoft is now offering free support, in many instances via email as well as telephone.
Microsoft has had a lot of bad press over Vista although I'm coming to like it, if the UAC and the Run as Administrator had a remember checkbox I'd be even happier. Anyway this seems like an effort to address some of the problems, it will be interesting to see how much take-up they get.
I spend a fair bit of times on newsgroups, there are plenty of people who are happy to help with a virtually infinite range of problems from computer troubles and gardening to physics and philosophy.
To get a response to a question it's advisable to give it a good subject, not I need help etc. and clearly define your question and, if appropriate, what you have tries already. Most people who respond, especially to topics such as computer programming, are happy to help but don't like to feel they are doing someone's work for them or even worse completing their homework.
As an example of the antithesis to the good post I came across this gem in the microsoft.public.xml group today:
Hello, i need software.
Please, contact me with price list. Thanks.
J.Tomas
Don't expect many useful responses Mr. Tomas.
If you want to investigate the world of newsgroups there are instructions here. I use Windows Live Mail as a reader but Outlook Express is a reasonable reader too. Many are also available via a web interface but these tend to be klunky if you're an answerer rather than an enquirer. For Microsoft technical questions there are hundreds of groups covering different topics on msnews.microsoft.com and I also use Motzarella's service for other groups.
It must have been terrifying for Oxford graduate Nzube Udezue who was greeted at Bournemouth railway station by a posse of armed police, made at gun point to lie on the floor and was then handcuffed and taken away to be searched whilst all the time he was a completely innocent and unsuspecting party. Although it's easy to criticise the police, and I'm normally the first to do so, it's hard to see where they went wrong in their actual handling of Nzube.
They had received reports saying a black man wearing a dark t-shirt with orange lettering had been causing a disturbance and was possibly armed. He had been seen boarding the Bournemouth train at Basingstoke. Unfortunately Mr. Udezue fitted the bill.
The one question which no one seems to have asked is, What happened to the real suspect?
Why did the police have to set every available man on the first poor sod matching the vague description? Couldn't a few at least have monitored the other passengers disembarking? Seems like it was too tempting for them, they couldn't wait to whip out their weapons.
As we're now on the home stretch to Christmas I'll add this gadget to my list. It's a USB wine dispenser that enables you to pour the perfect glass of wine from the 'comfort' of your office chair. Just choose you wine from the online selection and click to pour.
Well one can dream...
In a similar vein to recent posts it was revealed last week that the safest place to be on a plane, should the worst happen, is near the emergency exit, now they tell me.
Readers who are astounded by this news will no doubt also be surprised to hear that children's food at theme parks is extremely unhealthy. In the words of Victor Meldrew, I don't believe it! I was sure all those chips, burgers and deep fried chicken pieces were going to turn out to be low in fat and salt.
I've just started reading The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker the noted cognitive scientist and linguistic expert. I've read most of his other books, some more thoroughly than others, and this one has re-awakened a longtime interest in language, I might even say it's his best yet.
The early part concentrates on whether humans have an innate sense of what things mean or is it acquired, the old nature versus nurture argument. That's not to say they are born knowing a specific vocabulary but do they have a sort of internal concept of words that is mapped onto the language that they actual learn in their first few years?
Later topics explore why children's names go in and out of fashion and why swearing involves sex, bodily functions and religious entities.
He explores in depth why you hear:
The dog bit John on the leg
but not
The dog bit the table on the leg
I am really finding it hard to put down, I could have been found reading it at 5:00am this morning, sad eh?
Anyway, as you can tell, I highly recommend it - a real bargain at about £5 from Amazon, and it assures Mr. Pinker of an invite to my hypothetical dinner party of interesting guests.
Two serious posts on the trot, I really must get out more.
