A St George's Day parade through an inner-city area hit by race riots has been cancelled following police advice. Community groups had planned to stage the multi-cultural event in Bradford and 1,500 schoolchildren were due to take part. Many of the youngsters had already made flags of St George to carry on the parade on April 23, which was designed to boost community cohesion.
But last week police and council chiefs told the organisers that the event could not go ahead as planned for 'health and safety' reasons. At a meeting, police demanded a shorter route which avoided two streets at the centre of the race riots in 2001. As a result, organisers have decided to call off the event, which was due to attract more than 10,000 people.
Bradford City councillor Quasim Khan said: "We were told by the police at the meeting that the original route had not been risk assessed and if we wanted a march to go ahead on that date, St George's Day, we would have to accept a smaller, different route.
"The police officers were getting quite animated, saying things like 'look, this just isn't going to happen'." Police and council officials said they did not have sufficient warning of the event.
However, community leaders planning the parade said the event was blighted because of fears it could stoke up violence. They claimed a police inspector had actually begun the plans for the parade nine months ago. The Rev Tony Tooby, chairman of governors at St Philips primary school, which was due to take part, said: "We wanted the route to include where some of the riots had taken place to educate our young people... When multi-culturalism hits the brick wall of multi-barbarism.
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Counsel chiefs to the Cross of St. George parade organiziers: "We lack the political will to protect you from the muslims Asians in your community who will be offended by seeing the Cross of St. George displayed in public. Stated another way, our police force lacks the courage to protect non-muslims from parts of the community who might be offended by the non-muslim celebration."
Whatever happened to "keep your eyes on the road"? Really cool picture at the link.
As of today, we're taking bets to see how long it will take before people realize that "GPS" does not stand for "Auto Pilot." The latest "But the GPS told me to..." story is brought to you by a charter bus driver in The People's Republic of Seattle. Figures....
Piloting a coach through the Washington Arboretum -- as the GPS instructed him -- the driver ignored, or didn't see, or didn't believe (take your pick) the flashing lights and sign warning him that his 11-foot-high bus was too tall for the looming 9-foot concrete overpass. He vas just following orders....
You can see how the story ends. The overpass ended up with some superficial damage, the coach got a removable top, and the girls softball team inside received some minor injuries. Luckily, the 60-inch sewage pipe inside the overpass wasn't ruptured. Oh, sh**....
The driver was ticketed for $154. And in response to the charter company executive who remarked, "We just thought it would be a safe route because, why else would they have a selection for a bus?", a Garmin [GPS manufacturer] spokesman responded, "Stoplights aren't in our databases, either, but you're still expected to stop for stoplights." As one of the commenters on the site said, "Common sense really must be a superpower, considering so few people have it." :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/20/2008 12:58 ||
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#1
Well, hell - too bad I can't type.
Mods - any chance of some help with the title? :-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/20/2008 13:09 Comments ||
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Right, to achieve common sense, I always step into a phone booth and pull over my plain brown wrapper. It's phone booths that are becoming scarce.
Posted by: Regular Guy ||
04/20/2008 13:14 Comments ||
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Comment from the article....
Well, even if you were lazy and disregarded the fact that your vehicle was over 9 feet, I can tell you, since I live about 10 minutes from that picture, that they have over-height sensors that blink lights at you on either side of that bridge. So you'd have to trust the GPS, ignore your knowledge that the bus is over 9 feet, AND ignore the blinking lights over the sign that's labeled "Over-height Warning". That's just stupidity.
Judging by the pic the driver didn't even slow down and must have been going at a pretty good clip.
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Many years ago, I drove a school bus part-time. I was headed down a busy street one day when a Honda Accord decided to change lanes into the side of the bus. I stopped and checked on my passengers, who had barely felt the impact, then got out to check on the Honda. It had bounced off the bus, jumped the curb and spun around before coming to rest in a nearby parking lot. The first words out of the driver's mouth were the monumentally obvious, "I never saw you!"
I thought, gee, this bus is 46 feet long, 10 feet high, and painted bright yellow. I don't know what else we could do other than put strobe lights on it.
In the years since, some school bus operators have in fact started using strobe lights, arranged Christmas light fashion down the sides. Stupidity remains invincible however, and accidents still happen.
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who the hell builds an overpass with a nine foot clearance?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2008 17:50 Comments ||
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Frank, it is a left over from many year ago and is only a pedestrian o/p. I think that was its original intent, but the pix that we are seeing here are way funny; its anybody but the driver or teh bus company's fault.
Remember the guy with the rental car that followed the GPS mandate to turn, and turn he did right onto some train tracks only to meet a commuter train? and he was bitching about how he was on the hook for the car when it was the GPS's fault?
too bad these Morons didn't get Darwined; at least they wouldn't pass their particular stoopid gene on.....
#4
It is also a good week for animal researchers to have a few pit bulls patrolling the corridors of the facility at night. Pit bulls that hate ninjas or those dressed like them. With sharpened titanium teeth.
Attaboy to Greyhawk
From Greyhawk, about writing this review:
For what it's worth, their original request was for 750 words, and that seems to be the approximate length of any and all book reviews there. My first draft was about 1200 words, I cut til it hurt to submit 750. (I also made arrangements with Mike to include three of his photos in the review - thanks again, Mike.) The Post editors then realized it was too short (in fairness, they wanted more direct quotes, not more "me"). I expanded it significantly and after the editors finished working their magic the published version is.... about 1200 words. All this had to be accomplished during a tdy, late at night after dinners following full day "conferencing".
Bottom line: Not sure how common this is, but as far as I can tell, Mike's book gets double the normal space at the NY Post.
Those already familiar with Michael Yon's work might have one question regarding his book: Is it simply a printed version of his dispatches from Iraq published on his popular Web site (michaelyon-online.com)?
The answer: No.
The best of those stories are in the book, but they've been expanded with the passage of time and military details too sensitive to use immediately, and told in the same gripping style that can now truly be called page turning.
Early on you'll find yourself charging down an alley in Mosul on the heels of Lieutenant Colonel Erik Kurilla, a leader in every sense of the word: "LTC Kurilla began running in the direction of the shooting. He passed by me, and I chased, Kurilla leading the way. There was a quick and heavy volume of fire. And then LTC Kurilla was shot. Kurilla was running when he was hit - in three places, including his femur, which was shattered.
"The commander didn't seem to miss a stride. He did a crazy judo roll and came up shooting from a sitting position," Yon reports.
In a war where the situation changes depending on what you read, Yon is a man with credibility - he has more time embedded with combat units than any other journalist. Early in 2005, when I'd completed my first tour of duty in Iraq, I was searching the Internet for news when I found Yon's page. I was hooked. Yon was simultaneously one of us - the guys in the war - and not one of us. While we knew of Iraq in our corner of the battlespace, he could move throughout the country - and did so. That freedom of movement afforded him opportunities that few would take, and that he initially took reluctantly.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
