Why Did I Bother?

Like many of you I went out to vote today as the Police & Crime Commissioner for Wiltshire needs to see what £70k p.a. will buy him over the next few years.

Thus far the barrage of information has been underwhelming, apparently according to my parents there was a time when candidates knocked on your door to speak to you personally. Now it only seems they do this for TV cameras and mainly because the uncertainty of knocking on a door that is then answered by somebody like my wife is something they would want to avoid. Not that she is violent or abusive, far from it, she just uses her super-power which she honed over years culminating in her winning the National Young Farmers Debating Competition. I have been privileged to see her in action and it is the verbal equivalent of seeing a lioness taking out a herd of wildebeest - they never stood a chance. That also is why we never have rows and I also have a shed to hide in.

Getting back to the lack of info on the candidates - yes it was all on line, but does this help 80yr old Mr Nugent Dirt who doesn't go anywhere near a computer? Does it buggery!!! All we had delivered was a rather ropey pamphlet with the retired, corpulent, pin-stripe ridden Tory candidates (and current PCC) toad like visage on the cover - the same face that shut quite a lot of police stations I might add and left Salisbury with something that is nothing more than a manned policebox hidden up a back-street (Mon-Fri, office hours only - please don't commit any crime outside these hours). Add to this the nearest custody suite is 90mins and 46miles away in Malmesbury. What a work of genius, he is obviously holding out for a title from Dave for all the good work.

Having looked at the four candidates online I was dismayed as they were the same old bag of nobodies:

1. Conservative: Angus Stuart 'Hang The Poor' Macpherson - judging by the name obviously a local!
2. Labour: Kevin 'Anything But' Small - judging by the size of him he's never walked around knocking on doors.
3. UKIP: John Fairlamb 'I'm F**king Potty' Short - Please don't get me started about this bunch of nutters.
4. LibDems: Brian 'They Made Me Stand' Mathew - Only there because he lost the arm-wrestle with the other LibDem.

All statements were the usual lot of party approved bullshit and with this in mind I made the long lonely trudge to the polling station with the following thoughts going through my head:

1. Before 1918 ordinary people like me were not allowed to vote, not to mention women.
2. So WWI did achieve something? That is at least 750,000 reason to vote for a start.
3. My Gran (born 1904) always voted for the aforementioned reasons above.
4. Do any politicians REALLY realise this and if not why not?
5. Isn't this lark just a way of politicising the police, who frankly were moribund before this came in.

On getting to the polling station (ironically in the Memorial Hall - memorial to the war dead I might add). I looked at the card and there were sadly no additional candidates to at least give me some hope that partaking in the democratic process is not just reserved for the political equivalent of processed cheese. No such luck, so being very British about it I decided not to spoil the paper and put a cross in a box as instructed.

I only voted for the last lot of reason above and not for a political party.

What a Bunch Of Chancers.

You dear reader like me are already bored to death with the ‘In/Out’ debacle and have now already incorporated into any training regime the ‘Scramble for the TV Remote’ on hearing the words ‘And now a party political broadcast by……………’ In fact it could be for ‘The Big Loving’s From Little Doggies Party.’ But let’s we really cannot take that chance as it would be akin to taking up somebodies offer to pump raw sewage into your living room.

I’ll be honest I was very much in the Out camp (by that I mean out of Europe as now using the words Out and Camp together these days are more a declaration of a sexual preference than a political opinion). I have my reasons for this choice mainly along the lines of ‘I don’t like the way this EU lark is going.’ Yes there have been somethings like workers rights that have improved as a result, but it is too mixed a bag.

However we then get to those fronting the respective campaigns. Oh, my f***ing gawd! Would you seriously buy a car of any of these people, frankly if I shook them by the hand I’d be checking after to see if I still had the same number of fingers and thumbs! For me not one of them irrespective of side does not smack of the words ‘Opportunist’ ‘Chancer’ or ‘I Drown Kittens.’

As to either side putting any credible argument for their campaign one lot uses scare tactics whilst the other blusters some form of incoherent rebuttal – and that’s not just BoJo! It is nothing more than a name calling contest paid for by us poor sods.

Sadly in the end the decision most of the electorate make will be based thus:

‘Which Bunch Of Chancers and Opportunists Are Lying the Most? If You Think You Know Vote For The Other Bunch Of Chancers and Opportunists.’

In fact that should be the question on the ballot paper.

End of the Line - Through the Medium of Interpretive Dance

There are days when the wonderful travelling public make you wonder how in God's name the human race has survived this long. Frankly on the performances I see so often I think we have until the end of the decade until the cats take over - this might be shorter if Trump ends up as president.

However the three separate instances of stupidity I am about to relate took place on just one trip from Salisbury to Waterloo and back to Salisbury.

The first one started as I pulled in to Andover when I saw two Asian (am I allowed to say that?) men staggering around the platform. Knowing full well that alcohol, humans and railways don't make a good combo I slowed down when one of them walked right to the edge of the platform to crane his neck out to look at the train. I blew the horn uttered some swear words from the Train Drivers Handbook and thanked every deity real or imagined that at least one part of his brain had not been pickled with booze and he got the hell out of the way.

These were not the first piss artist we'd let on the train as one had got on at the station before with a dog. My guard pointed this out to me as said person got out and my comment was 'I really hope no harm comes to the dog.'

We got to Waterloo without any further incident. I got out of the cab and walked to the other end of the train only to find my guard now trying to rouse these two drunks. I decided to help as my guard was a young woman and I didn't want to see any harm come to her. I walked into the coach and asked her whether she wanted me to help, she did - I shook the first one with a genial 'Excuse me sir we've reached the end of the line, you need to get off.' He stirred grunted a few words, shook his fellow sot and prepared to get up. Job done or so I thought and I went down the other end.

After sorting the cab out the other end I decided to spend a penny (yes I am not afraid to use the toilets on a train - it's either that or go in bottle or cup). I walked back only to find this pair of ambassadors for the effects of Tiger Beer sparko again. So I wake the first one again, he comes to again. I think he wants to know where he is - as it transpires that he does not speak a word of English, my knowledge of dialects of the Sub-Continent are limited to the contents of a Balti House menu and I think that shouting Gobi Aloo repeatedly is going to do much for the Commonwealth! We both are at a loss, then he mutters 'End of line?' He must understand English to some degree - he must have ordered at least one round of drinks to get him like this?

OK I'll go for that old tried and tested method of communicating with foreigners that we the British have made famous the world over - SHOUT!!! 'YES! END OF LINE - YOU (pointing) OFF!!!!!!  It worked, he grabs his hoppo and they stumble the hell off my train out to cause more mayhem on the concourse at Waterloo (like it needs any more help in that area.)

So now we trot off back to Salisbury where the train terminates. I do the decent think and walk through the train to help the platform staff. I walk into the carriage to find a pair of legs draped across the aisle. Here we go again - there he is slumped across the seat dead to the world. I go through the usual routine only to get the blank stare of a junkie - 'You need to get off mate' He shuts his eyes. 'Oi!!! Thicky McThickface! Get off this train!' Not a glimmer! 'Oh sod, you!' I go an tell our platform attendant about this (a true gentle giant if ever there was one). He was then persuading another sot that he needed to get off.

In the end these pillocks were got off the train and pointed to the taxi-rank as they had missed their stations, namely Basingstoke and Woking - oh how I laughed as this was the last train!!!!!

Southwest Trains BIG Weekend For The Stupid.

It all began on the morning of Friday 19th at Earlsfield when a member of the public got down onto the track to retrieve her phone. She was then hit by a train. Earlsfield is between Wimbledon and Clapham Junction, as you can imagine being here and at peak time it was busier than it would be at 3am.

Thankfully for her the train was slowing down for the station and she was not rent asunder and now has the rest of her life to be thankful that she got her phone back whilst she sits/lays paralysed, now being fed by a straw and having tubes up her unmentionables to deal with the other end of the operation. Sadly her condition now stops her from taking selfies from her hospital bed, but at least she might get somebody to show her all those friends on Facebook who have posted sad emoji's on her wall.

Also she was denied the misery that hundreds of thousands of other passengers had to undergo that day for the ten hours that trains were disrupted whilst the police investigated the incident and made a pile of overtime on the side - every cloud and all that!!!! She could have read about it all on Twitter on her phone, now she is #EarlsfieldTrainVegetable.

Then along came Saturday, all was quiet across the SWT network, Salisbury was it's usual charming self up until about 6:30pm when an escaped psychiatric patient climbed onto the roof of at train at the east end of the station and refused to come down, the police were called. Now I have been told that in a situation like this the people you should not ask to deal with this are the police - I was told this by a policeman, the reason for this was to become all too apparent. They would have been better advised to call Sooty & Sweep, the police were beyond inept, the got the Network Rail people who brought some ladders and we all waited for somebody to climb up and speak to the man on the roof. Nope! These ladders were for display purposes only and were left against the wall, we were not even treated to the clueless comedy cops doing the old 'Turn round with the ladder over your shoulder whilst everyone ducks routine.' All we got was some modern performance art that involved a lot of hi-viz clothing and pointing at things until we became part of the act and were moved back down the platform.

To add a bit of further drama a train was allowed into the station (as all trains were stopped) with all six coaches full of drunk Portsmouth football supporters with a grand total of one diminutive female officer to deal with this lot - the phrase 'Pissing in the wind' sprang to mind. Thankfully they sent her reinforcements in the form of an officer who was just hanging on for his pension, so presumably the plan was for her to hold the drunken horde off whilst he trundled off on his police mobility scooter (complete with flashing light and siren) for help. As three of this six coaches came out of service I was the lucky driver who had to uncouple it and take it away. I have never seen a train in such a foul mess, drink and goodness knows what everywhere and it ponged like a urinal in summer. Now am a biased as I hate football and everything to do with it, but after walking through that train I reached previously undiscovered dimensions of hatred that would make the Third Reich look a bit lame and liberal.

Needless to say this part of the train did not move as I had to take my break (as enshrined in law BTW following the Clapham crash) and duly got the hell away from this.

Within half an hour the man had been talked down off the roof of the train. This is now where truth is stranger than fantasy and highlights for me that the police are nothing more than security guards in fancy dress. He was talked down by one of our drivers, who brought him a coffee and with a few well chosen words diffused the situation. I have no idea what those words were - they could have been anything from 'Have you ever seen a grown man naked' to 'You think you've got problems, you should see the meds I'm on and they still let me drive a train!!!' The laughable part is that the police mistook him for a member of Network Rail staff and just waved him through to do it. Thankfully it worked, I shudder to think what would have happened if it hadn't.

So the trains got running again, albeit delayed. However three hours later people from the psychiatric unit he had escaped from came to the station asking if we had seen him - where in Salisbury is this institution? Adjacent to the railway station!

Well, the weekend is not yet over so we have yet to see what unalloyed pile of shite today is going to drop on us!