Brennig Jones (and friends)

Here are two contrasting situations I’ve spent some time mulling over…

1. On Thursday this week, one year will have passed since Ian Tomlinson died after a police assault at the G20 protests in London.

No charges have been brought against the police; no one has been punished.

Despite 300 official complaints about the policing of the protests, and plenty of video and photographic evidence to back up the complaints, no officer has faced serious disciplinary proceedings.

Those police officers who removed their identification numbers, beat up peaceful protesters and bystanders and then repeatedly lied about what had happened remain untroubled, either by the law, their consciences or their superior officers.

There has been no apology to Ian Tomlinson’s family.

2. In June last year a Nottinghamshire police officer directly caused two deaths. As soon as it happened, the police reported themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and launched their own investigation.

A chief superintendent told the press: “We will certainly take any lessons we can get from this process and make sure we put them in place so this sort of thing never happens again. It has caused immense sadness and immense shock.”

The papers carried pictures of officers paying tribute to the deceased, saluting the flowers left outside police headquarters.

There was no cover-up, no botched post-mortem, no lies about the victims or their families.

The officer responsible was quickly charged and, though his victims had died as a result of his neglect not an assault, last month he was convicted over the deaths.

There’s a significant difference between the two cases.

The two deceased Nottinghamshire victims were dogs.

The officer had locked the two police dogs in his car in +30c heat, and forgot about them while he completed some paperwork.

Judging by their response to these two tragedies, both police and prosecutors appear to care more about dogs than human beings.

Or, to look at it the difference between these two unfortunate events another way, the police and prosecutors care more about police dogs than civilian human beings.

What do you think?

Original reportage provided by George Monbiot

Up early because of the time difference; Tea and toast were taken back to bed and the Melbourne Grand Prix was (mostly) watched.

Dozeage may have occurred.

Ablutions and a second breakfast were satisfactorily completed, a trip to Gatcombe Horse Trials followed.

Hot chocolate was partaken, a brisk walk around the mile-and-a-quarter Intermediate cross-country course followed.

A fried egg bap with lashings of brown sauce may have occurred.

Another hot chocolate and a chocolate fudge brownie vanished from one of the trade stands.

Show-jumping was watched from the ring-side seat of the car.

Satisfied, slightly tired and a little drowsy we headed home where I changed and made for the yard.

Tom was quickly groomed, tacked up and heading up the track where we rode the gallops twice.

While Tom cooled off I had a brief chat with Sammi to plan our erm, plan of action (cross-country tomorrow, schooling Tuesday and Wednesday, show-jumping at Cooksons on Thursday, schooling Friday and Saturday, show-jumping at Allenshill on Sunday, cross-country on Monday).

Groomed Tom, rugged him up and let him have tea.

Home.

The evening stretches before us with perhaps a film or a couple of episodes of Buffy and a bite to eat on the menu.

Brilliant.

This is Tom at home yesterday. I am doing the laughing, Sammi is sitting on.

From time to time I get surveys from YouGov. The surveys can be on anything, politics, economics, environment – you name it.

I’m currently working with a survey on ‘ethical and environmental issues’, which, I thought, could be thought-provoking and interesting.

Unfortunately, this particular survey is so shockingly-worded, the only thought-provoking going on in my head is just how rubbish the analyst who prepared the questions is at his/her job.

Many of the questions have no ‘opt out’ or ‘does not apply’ option which is stupid. That means that I have to choose the least incorrect answer, instead of saying ‘Well actually, this question does not apply to me’.

A large number of the questions contain no qualifying data – such as the one: ‘I’m trying to cut down on unnecessary car journeys’ where I have to score an answer in the range Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. My only opt-out is ‘Don’t Know’.

Where’s the button that says ‘Who the fuck makes unnecessary car journeys in the first place?’, that’s what I want to know?

Here’s another one: ‘I drive an eco-friendly car’, which I have to score in the same range: Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree or Don’t Know.

You might know that I drive a 1.9TDCI-engined saloon which, some might say, is not an eco-friendly car.

But you might also know that I regularly – REGULARLY – get a return of 40-45mpg from it and last week (and again this week) easily achieved trips of over 54mpg.

Now to me that really *is* an eco-friendly car. Those figures are tremendously more ‘eco-friendly’ than the Pious.

Sorry, Prius.

And yet, if I tick the box for having an eco-friendly car I will be giving false information – and there’s enough false information coming out of Westminster alone, without me adding to the ever-increasing mountain of bullshit.

Here’s another example of laziness, the question is: ‘Please tell us which of the following you either do or have at home?’, which is scored against the answers: Already do/have; Will do in the next 12 months; Don’t do; Definitely will not do; Don’t know/Not applicable.

That last response troubles me before I’ve even started looking at the questions, but I battle on.

Q. Use a water butt for the garden. I want to put ‘Not applicable’ but if I tick that box the person analysing the response might think I’m saying ‘Don’t know’. Hmm.

Q. Install cavity wall insulation. I want to put ‘Already got it’ but do I tick the ‘Not Applicable’ box and have my answer potentially counted as a ‘Don’t know’?

Q. Install double glazing. I want to put ‘Already got it throughout the house’, but again I’m faced with only being able to tick a box which opens the answer up to misinterpretation.

Here’s another: ‘Which of the following are you already doing or would/would not consider doing?’

Bearing in mind the context of the survey, the question ‘Taking fewer baths’ leaps out at me because, in this house, we probably draw one bath a month. But, to go back to context again, the reason we take so few baths is because we shower every day – we prefer showers though, it’s nothing to do with environmental concerns. I have two (occasionally three) showers a day, and not because of any of the focusses of this survey.

So again, I’m forced to giving the least incorrect answer. More laziness from the analyst who set the questions.

The question ‘Keeping a compost heap’ similarly allows me only to give an incorrect answer; ‘Does not apply’ isn’t there for me to put as my answer. I can say ‘Don’t know’ which, frankly, is utter nonsense.

Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy.

It’s a simple fact that a survey has to engage with its audience. If it doesn’t engage, the respondent will lose the connection and will either give up, or will just tick boxes at random.

And that’s where my head has gone.

I’m now reduced to selecting the least wrong answer in almost every section, and all because someone behind the scenes at YouGov lacked the ability to think straight.

this is not good

For the second time this week I have been forced awake by an increasingly severe abdominal pain.

The first time – Sunday night/Monday morning – things got so severe that I was admitted to the local hospital by the out-of-hours GP.

I was poked, prodded and generally looked at, then sent home with some serious painkillers, and instructions to go and see my GP if it happened again.

At just after midnight this morning it happened again.

The pain isn’t so bad now, two hours later; the super-dooper painkillers are (presumably) doing their job. I’m going to try for sleep again in a couple of minutes.

An hour ago I – foolishly – googled my symptoms, successfully scaring the living crap out of myself in the process.

Sometimes the internet is Not Good.

I like driving.

I have spent many hours behind the wheel of my car in the last 24, most of these hours were on the British motorway system.

One of the reasons for liking driving is that it gives me an opportunity to sit down and listen to many of the tracks that have been sent in as submissions to the podcast.

Another reason for enjoying driving is that it enables me to sit and think creatively.

And a further reason for revelling in motorway driving is that it gives me a brilliant opportunity to gaze through the windscreen and study the appallingly awful standard of driving that a large number of motorists think is acceptable.

At some point earlier, at an unremarkable place on the M1, it occurred to me that, with a General Election about to be called here in the UK, what we need (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘The British Public’) is a non-political manifesto.

The non-political manifesto should be signed up to by every member of every registered/recognised political party.

the non-political manifesto is, as the name implies, not a political document. It is a document built on a platform of common sense.

To ensure the non-political nature of the manifesto, all manifesto items would be non-negotiable.

I’ve started writing it.

So far I have five headings with one topic under each heading. Writing it is proving cathartic, but the scary thing is that I see so many items that need addressing that are, to me, outstanding issues/problems that should be corrected through the application of simple common sense.

Who was it that said the thing about common sense is that it isn’t very common?

really long post…

Saturday’s BE went according to plan. Except for the dressage, the show-jumping and the cross-country.

The weather broke on Friday and the sky began throwing heavy rain down while I was walking the show-jumping and cross-country tracks in the afternoon.

The rain continued overnight and in to Saturday morning.

We arrived at the venue at 6.20am, I got changed in to dressage clothes, went off to find the secretary to get my hat tagged and pick up my numbers. Then, in the still pouring rain, I unloaded Tom, tacked up, put studs in his hind shoes, mounted up and hacked over to the dressage ‘working in’ area.

We warmed up for an hour in the pouring rain, Tom became more fractious with every minute, but I don’t think that was weather-related.

By the time we were called in for our test it felt as if I was sitting on a bomb.

‘Argumentative’ would be a good word to describe how things went. Tom gawped at everything, lacked attention, offered the movements no significant or consistent concentration and, as a result, we failed to achieve any of the softness and suppleness we have built up over the last four or five months.

In fact we bronked our way around the arena in the pouring rain, it was very exciting. I thought our first canter transition was going to be acceptable, based on the previous movement, but Tom had other ideas. On the canter transition he fired in a really big buck and pinged me so far in to the air that when I looked down I could see his whole shape beneath me – I must have been a good two feet out of the saddle.

And that sums up our dressage test, it was all pretty much like that. Argumentative.

Back at the lorry I switched Tom’s saddle from dressage to jumping, changed his Bit, put his martingale, brushing and over-reach boots on and hacked up to the show-jumping warming up.

Actually, we worked in nicely; I didn’t over-jump him, it was still pouring with rain and although the ground in the show-jumping warming up was holding up, I didn’t want to risk slipping or skidding. We jumped just enough to make sure that we were forward-going, had a nice jumping rhythm and a set of brakes.

The minute we rode in to the arena though, all this changed.

Tom wouldn’t go near the sponsor’s banner that we had to pass, so I leg-yielded him forward until we were clear and he would go in a straight line.

We transitioned to canter, pushed on forwards and turned to fence 1.

Tom stopped.

Three strides out he started slowing to a halt and that was us with a refusal at the first fence. He stopped because he just wasn’t looking, didn’t have his mind on the job at all and was gawping at the fences, the decorations and the flags.

I wheeled him away, represented and we zipped over and then we hit our stride. Our ‘stride’ though, felt much too quick, Tom was in the driving seat and he wouldn’t give me the soft bouncing show-jumping canter that we’ve achieved in recent months. No matter how much weight I put in to the saddle and tried to collect his front end, he wouldn’t hear of it.

After fence 8 we had another issue where he spooked and stopped because we had to pass close to a petrol generator that one of the catering tradestands was using. I was able to re-collect, get our pace together again and we flew over 9 and 10.

Unfortunately I was defensive at fence 10 because a) it was an enormous spread and b) we were flying at it. But we finished the show-jumping with 10 time and 12 show-jumping penalties.

The time penalties were to be expected after the refusal at fence 1 and the dicking around after fence 8. The jumping penalties we picked up were because he wouldn’t give me the show-jumping canter, so instead, we flew over everything too fast and too flat and, inevitably when going like that, we hit a few fences down.

Back at the lorry I changed out of my soaking show-jumping jacket and in to cross-country colours.

The cross-country working-in area was wet and boggy. We were held in the collecting ring for 45 minutes while we waited for the Air Ambulance to arrive, pick up a poor, unfortunate casualty and medevac them to hospital.

Because of the ‘hold’ on the course our start times didn’t apply so we had to rely on the good will of the cross-country stewards to let us go asap. Unfortunately asap didn’t happen and we were told that we could go ‘in 4 horses time’.

We were told that three times, with five minutes between each telling. I’m not whining about this. The accident happened and, as a result, the organised system of times gets thrown out.

But, unfortunately, when we were called out to the start box the persistent rain and the seeping cold had even worked their way through my body protector and Tom had gone off the boil.

I hadn’t wanted to keep working in over the cross-country practice fences because the take-off and landing surfaces had, by now, been well dug up!

When the starter said ‘Go’ we rode out of the start box but Tom didn’t have the customary forward-doing keenness about him, showed a hitherto unexplored ability to go sideways and he refused at fence 1.

We represented and cleared it and went on to fence 2 where, despite me riding him quite hard, he stopped again. We represented and cleared it but as soon as we rode down the long, steep hill to fence 3 I could feel him backing off again.

So I took the pragmatic approach, I called it a day and we retired from the competition at that point.

Yesterday, over tea and biscuits in the tack-room, we had an inquest over the performances of all four of the horses from our yard that had competed on Saturday. The fifth horse had been due to compete on Sunday, but the organisers had abandoned the event due to flooding on Saturday evening which had made the course unsafe.

Our dressage sheet will make interesting reading when it arrives, but it won’t tell me anything that I don’t already know: Tom went in to hyperdrive, wouldn’t listen and was disobedient for almost the entire test.

The show-jumping could have been better, but we have a cunning plan to help sharpen Tom’s concentration. We’re going to adopt French Blinkers, a device that Tom’s previous owner, James, used. Hopefully the French Blinkers will sharpen Tom’s concentration on what’s in front of him and reduce the opportunity for him to spook at things.

The cross-country was nothing more than unfortunate. Being held in the collecting ring for such a long period of time could not have been avoided, and the very soft going that made me not want to risk jumping the cross-country practice fences too much, was just one of those things.

However, the use of French Blinkers for the cross-country phase will also help sharpen Tom’s concentration and focus his mind on the job in hand.

We’re also going to change Tom’s feed. Normally I can get inside his head without any difficulty, but on Saturday the atmosphere at the One Day Event scrambled his brain and all I could get from him was static. Reducing some of the more ‘active’ components in his feed will hopefully help him to calm down.

And we’re considering swapping his nosesband from a ‘flash’ to a ‘grackle’.

Yes, I’m disappointed at our performance. The dressage was dire (50.5 penalties, when I’d been expecting – based on our recent performances – something in the 29-33 range).

The show-jumping could be improved, but there actually weren’t too many things wrong with how we went.

The cross-country was the biggest disappointment, knowing Tom’s enjoyment for cross-country fences.

I could say all kinds of things in mitigation: our first One Day Event together, the first One Day Event of the season, the weather was awful, the ground was unpleasant, we were cold, we were wet…

But the truth is I do have higher expectations of us than the performance we turned in on Saturday.

In a few weeks time we go all the way down to Wiltshire to do it all over again.

Here’s hoping it won’t be as bad as this!:

dicking around

Nine o’clock Saturday evening and welcome to the House of Fun. As you will have noticed we are both in our bathrobes.

Sorry about the sleepy state we’re in; we haven’t been out of bed very long.

By the time Tom and I got back to the stables from the one-day event, I’d taken care of him, cleared out the lorry and put it away and – got home with about five loads of washing, it was 2.30pm.

A long hot shower was quickly followed by bed and almost instant unconsciousness.

Tea was the remains of last night’s pizza and half a tin of baked beans – I really know top quality cooking, don’t I?

This evening I released this weekend’s podcast: a four-band gig review, a look at the new Matt Damon/Jason Isaacs film ‘Green Zone’ and a smattering of random conversation (plus a live telephone call to New Zealand almost took place).

I’ll write about the one-day event soon, but for now I’m completely tapped out, have barely got the ability to string coherent thoughts together.

We are currently watching Heroes.

It is utter shit.

That is all.

published…

Saturday’s pony party British Eventing One Day Event calls us for:

This means a horribly early start.

• Allow an hour for travel to the ODE = 07.18
• Allow another hour for working-in = 06.18
• Allow another hour for putting travel boots/bandages on, loading up. And then at the other end, checking in, tacking up, getting changed = 05.30 leave the yard.
• Allow another 45 minutes to get up, eat, shower, dress and drive to the yard = 04.45.

So that’s a 4am alarm then.

I’ve told Soph that she can stay in bed, I wouldn’t expect her to turn out for all that – although she has said she’d like to be there for all three phases.

Memo to self: get the camera tripod out and put it with the video camera.

Today we schooled on grass – for the first time this year – and schooled around white dressage markers, to simulate the first phase.

Tomorrow morning we’ll pop around an eight-element show-jumping track in the outdoor arena and then go for a hack.

In the afternoon Tom’s being prettied up (again!) and having his mane plaited.

While that’s going on I will drive up to the Event venue to walk the show-jumping and cross-country tracks; as you can see from my times, I won’t have time to do these things on Saturday!

What fun!

What is it with travelling? How can it take massively longer to do the outward leg of a journey than the return leg?

I left home at 6.30am and got to my destination, 200.45 miles away at 11.10. The return leg took exactly 3hrs 15min.

Admittedly I had two ‘toilet break’ stops on the way up but they were five minute affairs – out, wee, coffee, in, go (drink on the go), whereas the return trip had no stops.

But four and a half hours vs 3 and a quarter hours?

Anyway, because I am slightly geeky nerdy bloke (why did you chortle over the word ‘slightly’?), I just wanted to share my mileage with you:

• 400.9 miles, round trip
• 33.56 litres/diesel expended, equals
• 54.41 miles per gallon (or if you’re from the United States, 65.34 mpg), at a
• £/mile cost of £0.10p
• Driving style: as per my advanced motorbike instruction – very hard/fast acceleration up to the speed limit, then sit there at 30/40/50/70 (or whatever).

Smugness abounds here, oh yes, there is much smug in this house tonight.