FICTIONAL REALITY

I read an article recently on Yahoo News that has been lurking in the back of my mind ever since. The article was written about a group of scientists that had been researching the possibilities of making an Invisibility Cloak as per Harry Potter. The bottom line was that said scientists had taken the fictional prop penned by JK Rowling and made it a reality. As I read the article it was passing through my mind that well paid research scientists must have something better to do than try and bring a literary device off the page and into the real world. However, further reading revealed all. One day it could be used in a military capacity to hide military hardware on a battlefield.

I have to wonder whether any of the scientists involved in this project were part of the team that proved it was possible to teleport atoms from one side of a laboratory to the other, in much the same way that Gene Roddenberry had people teleported from the star ship Enterprise to the surface of whatever planet was in whatever episode of Star Trek. I am sure that one day US forces will find a way of teleporting in and out of whatever their hot spot of the week is, armed with copies of Luke Skywalker's lightsabre and Ripley's pulse rifle, hiding under their personal Harry Potter invisibility cloaks. Meanwhile tanks and aircraft will be hidden from view using a version of the Klingon cloaking device. It is very possible that George Bush Jr already has a Penseive like Professor Dumbledore's, because his head seems to be remarkably empty at times. It used to be said that "war was the mother of invention", but it seems that the roles are reversing and invention is becoming the mother of war. It wont be long at this rate before politicians start reading about fictional battles and start looking into the possibilities of taking them off the page and fighting them for real. Who needs Virtual Reality when you can have Fictional Reality.

WASTED MONEY AND NATIONAL PRIDE

I was somewhat astounded to see a policeman drive past me today in a brand spanking new 07 reg BMW X5. Police forces across the country are regularly complaining that budget constraints prevent them from doing their jobs and providing necessary resources yet Sussex Police have managed to add yet another luxury vehicle to their ever expanding fleet of luxury Sports saloons/estates and SUV's. An X5 is not a cheap vehicle in standard road trim and I shudder to think how much public money has been wasted on purchasing this bazza'd up Bavarian Land Rover rip-off. I suspect that it isn't the only X5 to have been added to the Sussex Police fleet either. I can understand that Sussex Police will have a need for a certain amount of off-road vehicles but they are already in possession of Land Rover Defenders for that kind of work. A BMW X5 is a symbol of how much money you've got to waste on a vehicle to go posing around the town, and Sussex Police don't have any money to waste.

I think it is fair to say right now that I have a problem with local authorities spending public money on over-priced, German-made vehicles. Call me jingoistic if you will but we had a national car manufacturer in the shape of MG Rover who built a car that was considered by the people in the "know" to be quite a good car, and that was the "75". The Touring estate was an ideal base for a general purpose emergency response vehicle that would have been usable by all three emergency services. To be fair to the Fire And Rescue, and the Ambulance Service, they both seem to run fleets of quite ordinary cars like Ford Mondeos and Vauxhall Vectras but the Plod seem to consider themselves special and have to have the most expensive luxury cars they can lay their bent hands on.

Central Government could have saved MG Rover if the Home Office had had control of the budgets for new police vehicles instead of allowing the umpteen police forces across the country to spunk money away like it doesn't matter. If you go to Germany you will find that the Polizei drive German-made vehicles, go to France and the Gendarmes drive French-made vehicles, go to Italy and the Polizia drive Fiats. Come to Great Britain and you will find we are not so great after all because the Plod drive round in cars made anywhere but Great Britain, and we don't have a national car manufacturer anymore. "And why not?" I hear you ask. Because our glorious leaders took what was left of our national motoring heritage and sold it down the river to a German rival, specifically BMW who asset-stripped MG Rover and left it to the wolves.

Just to finish up, I put the evening News on the television after I started writing this, just in time to see Mr Des Browne MP (Government Minister for Pathetic Excuses) climbing into the back of a nice new ministerial car. Surprisingly enough it was a BMW. It is not surprising that the people of this Country have very little national pride when even our egotistical Leaders don't have any.