Last night as I worked
the radio was playing its usual mix of interest and banal.
There was a discussion
about the use of the death penalty in British justice. Arguments were
made on both sides; pro and con. I can quite understand that the
death penalty is irreversible; in the cases of miscarriages of
justice (and there are quite a few) one cannot say sorry after the
event.
However would there be
many (or any) such miscarriages of justice? Would the death
penalty act as a deterrent? I don't know but I am reminded of a chap
I once knew who thought nothing of leaving his six-year old daughter
eating in a public restaurant whilst he nipped off on errands. When I
told him of the dangers of doing so he explained that where he came
from (mainland China) his village still had a public stocks in
which various criminals could be imprisoned and be pelted with all
manner of things. Mind you it didn't happen very often; the threat
was enough to make people behave themselves.
Consequently he came from
a much safer place. People really did think twice before performing
criminal acts.
There was another radio
discussion about the rate at which the human population is rocketing.
What with increasing birth rates and increasing life spans there are
seventy million more people every year on this planet. Various
fatuous windbags pontificated on the matter. The general consensus of
the fatuous windbags seemed to be that "the lower orders were
breeding like rats and decent people (like them) weren't". I
couldn't help but wonder if what was seen to be "decent
people" weren't the sort of people who would get the chance
to breed in the first place.
For myself I realise that
there are only so many people who will fit on this world. Having made
a conscious decision to stop breeding when I did (and having had
my nads cut) I would nevertheless have liked more children.
As well as death
penalties and overpopulation the night's radio featured quizzes,
plays and an expose on a chap in India who was publically killed by a
mob for eating beef. The radio was actually quite interesting for
once.
And having listened to
all sorts of stuff overnight I'd actually been looking forward to the
church service on the radio as I drove home. I was disappointed.
Billed as " a celebration of music" it was actually
rather awful howling. I turned it off.
Once home I checked
social media over brekkie. It would seem that as I slept yesterday
afternoon and worked last night so everyone else had had a whale of a
time. Those that hadn't been watching bands or karaoke-ing had been
out watching fireworks at various events.
"er indoors TM"
soon set off with "Furry Face TM"
on a geo-maintenance mission. "Geo-maintenance" is
one of life's really unneccessary things in the geo-world. People
hide geocaches; others go find them. Having found them, these others
then do the secret geo-thing and are supposed to put the caches back
how and where they found them.
In practice they don't.
They don't always close the things up properly. They don't always
hide them as they found them. And so a sandwich box which was hidden
only a few months ago is soon either waterlogged or missing (or
both). But (if nothing else) geo-maintenance is a walk for
my dog.
I then took myself off to
bed for the day; I would have slept much longer had I not recevied a
succession of phone calls and texts in the late afternoon. After the
umpttenth I gave up trying to sleep and got up.
The house is lonely when
my little dog is not here.
Off to work again...
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