ANOTHER YEAR OVER

The 'Voice of the Resistance' explains why people hate the police: it's because the police don't like them blowing up speed cameras, apparently.

At least in the old days it was because everyone was being fitted up!

A few of the things police did this year, apart from trying to catch libertarian pyrotechnician speed freaks:

They were shot dead, stabbed to death, drowned when bridges collapsed, were killed as they put out 'diversion' signs at accident scenes.

Those who weren't killed were routinely spat at in the face, threatened with guns and attacked by mobs for asking teenagers to pick up litter.

They were 'hailed a hero' as they rugby tackled muggers while on holiday in New York, saved the lives of unconscious babies in Northumbria, jumped into rivers to save drowning men and kung fu kicked armed robbers after stumbling across post office raids while off duty, having only popped out for a pint of milk.

They recovered the bodies of suicides, old people who'd been lying dead in a pool of their own goo for a month or two, carried the bodies of toddlers from smashed up cars and kicked down the doors of houses where fathers had shot their four-year-old daughters, their ex-girlfriends and themselves. Nice.

All that, plus telling you the time of day and where the nearest Argos is.

Here's to a better 2010.

Gadget Gifts for the Photo & Video Lover

If you find yourself scrambling to find just the right thing for the photo & video lover, here are three gift ideas for enthusiasts that you might want to have a look at.

Colman Treacy and Peter Fahey: Two Sides Of The Sanity Coin

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Colman Treacy QC in action prosecuting an attempt murder in Birmingham. All I can say is you wouldn't have wanted to come up against him.

Today - now a judge - he has weighed off the killers of Craig Hodson-Walker for 34 years apiece.

It's not enough, but it's a damn sight better than most murderers get.

Of course, it will be appealed and reduced.

Meanwhile, the other big murder story of the day was the unspeakably tragic case of Katie Summers.

Miss Summers was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend Brian Taylor a while back. Taylor's Mad Judge®-imposed minimum recommendation was only 17.5 years - it sounds a lot, but for knifing to death a mother of four young children? Go figure.

The IPCC investigated the case after it was revealed that Miss Summers had called the cops loads of times but nothing much had happened to Taylor. This may not have been unrelated to the fact that she repeatedly refused to give evidence against him.

Victoria Derbyshire of BBC 5 Live had GMP Chief Constable Peter Fahey on this morning. She seemed to be suggesting that the police can prevent people from stabbing each other to death if only they do enough 'risk assessments'.

This seems unlikely.

Mr Fahey's favoured approach did include new, improved (ie longer) risk assessments, but also a new police injunction, whereby a superintendent could, on the basis of intelligence, ban a person from a given area. 'If he breached that injunction, he could be arrested and put in jail,' said Mr Fahey.

It's a genius idea - leaving aside the tricky question of which jail cells will be used to house these unconvicted men (and what the human rights lawyers will have to say about it).

But it seems to me that the Chief missed a trick. If you can prevent murders by creating injunctions which ban people from certain addresses, why not create injunctions which ban them from stabbing people?

FOXTROT OSCAR

RPGCast - Episode 107: "My Cat Just Leveled Up"

WoW's got a new patch, Yakuza 3 is coming out here, Mass Effect 2 has Worf, and we're back on the air! Oh, you were happier with us not on the air? Okay, I'll just be over crying in the corner...

FIFA Soccer 10

EA's FIFA titles are the type of sports games that keep on improving but don't necessarily do it by leaping forward in great lengths. FIFA Soccer 10 really does fall along those lines, but the incremental improvements put together by EA Canada combine to create a solid experience on the virtual pitch.

Jack

Jack was finally born at 41 weeks and 4 days on Monday 2 November, on the night of the full moon. His birth was spookily similar to Tadpole’s. I found myself in the same salle d’accouchement at the Maternité des Lilas where my daughter had been born six years earlier and, like his big sister, […]

RPGCast - Episode 104: "RPGCast: Origins"

RPGamer somehow managed to stop playing Dragon Age long enough to do a podcast. We talk about Star Trek and Zelda and Sakura Wars but mostly just want to get back to winning Morrigan's heart.