Bazza Mackenzie was nearly right.

This is a variant on my 'brickbats and bouquets" pages of my main blog.  With this blog I intend to give bouquets as and when they arise so this is going to be pretty much a kvetch page.

Background

Bazza Mackenzie is a cartoon character invented by Barry Humphries.  I am not sure he invented a two word phrase implying that most people from the UK are illegitimate but certainly used it a lot.  This post is devoted to those we find who deserve the appellation.

The UK Passport Office.

I believe they are now known as the Identity and Passport Office .  Whatever.  I had my UK passport effectively cancelled when I emigrated to ensure that I did my two years before leaving the country.  I found I could get an Australian one a year later, which saved me about $500 on a plane fare back to the UK, and have never revitalised my British one.   I have thought about it several times but on each occasion the rules and rubbish have been such that I have abandoned the project at early stages.

Low points in their past performances have been

• the introduction of charges to make a phone call to the establishment here; 
• moving the office out to the airport; and
• charging an arm and a leg.

Additional nadir inducing efforts are:

• anyone with an old passport (and my expired 37 years ago)  is treated as though they have never had a passport at all and thus have to produce a whole nunch of documents; and
• you have to be interviewed (presumably to check that you don't have any bad habits such as lying about WMDs); and
• the interview is done at a Post Office Shop.

Again I save myself time and about $200 by sticking with my Australian passport.

Mr Plod and friends

It will not be a surprise that this element is not about the friendly police person depicted by the nice Ms Blyton, nor the old codger from Dock Green who started Saturday evening on BBC in the 1960s.  This is about the current crop who seem to share personalities with Toby Meres frm Callan.

It appears from what I have read in the media (who never lie - stuff is on the internet so it must be true) that the UK has the highest level of video surveillance of anywhere in the world.  This seems to be exemplified by the presence - according to my AA Atlas - of 4,000 fixed speed cameras.   I feel a recording task coming on: how many speed cameras did we see today?

This task was made difficult by the appearance every few miles of a sign about speed cameras.  All this meant was that the forces of repression might use an annoyance in the area, not that they had one positioned waiting for our pleasure.  Judging by the number of people that zipped past us the devices were rare.  I think we saw 1 cop running  mobile unit during our trip.

In fact the only place we saw a lot of cops was the Norfolk Show.  Of course, there was absolutely no reason for them to be there at all: a better behaved crowd would be hard to imagine.

A taxonomy of pains in the back acre

While thinking about this trip I suddenly recalled a English folk(ish) song "Jobsworth".  This is devoted to low order public officials who do nothing but stp other people from doing things.  The refrain includes (repeatedly "Jobs worth, jobs worth, it's more than my job's worth".  This has led to a challenge on the trip to actually get someone to say "It's more than my job's worth."

Of more relevance to the heading of this section is that there are at least three types of interfering nuisances:

1. Mr Plod  (sworn in and, occasionally, sworn at);
2. Jobsworths (not sworn in but very often sworn at);
3. Private security guards (not sworn in and not sworn at, unless you have a very good relationship with a dentist).

I suspect there will ample opportunity to look at all three major types and possibly further develop the classification.

The Loony left

The following comes from the Australian newspaper (which would never ever tell a porky: it is owned by News Limited and if you can't trust them who can you trust?).  However, I have just noticed that this was published on 1/4/2010: come in sucker?

• A BRITISH grandmother has been heavily fined and electronically tagged for selling a goldfish to a child, triggering criticism of over-zealous use of animal protection laws.
• Pet shop owner Joan Higgins, 66, was fined £1000 ($1640) also given a dusk-to-dawn curfew for selling an animal to a person under the age of 16, but her 47-year-old son Mark - also ordered to do community service - slammed the ruling as a farce.
• The pair were prosecuted after the local council sent a 14-year-old boy to buy a goldfish in a "sting" operation following reports that their shop, Majors Pets, had sold a gerbil to a teenager with learning difficulties.
• The shopkeepers sold the fish without asking his age or how the fish would be cared for, prosecutors said.

 I foresee some interesting times ahead.  Perhaps I need a page for bizarre media stuff observed while over there?

British Birdtrack

Since I believe strongly that having had the privilege of seeing birds the information gained should be use for conservation purposes, and the British Trust for Ornithology had a stand at the RNS advertising their birdtrack website I decided to give it a go.  This was despite some communication with a British Bird Atlas person who convinced me that the whole exercise was unduly complicated.  (A reference from Sean Dooley in "Anoraks to Zitting Cisticola" seems appropriate: he defines ornithologists as people who call stamp collecting 'philately' and themselves "onanists".)

The first thing I found was this load of lawyerly garbage: "The BTO has published some health and safety information for volunteer fieldworkers. Please take a few minutes to read this leaflet which can be
found here: http://www.bto.org/survey/h&s_notes.htm  Following these simple The BTO has published some health and safety information for volunteer fieldworkers. Please take a few minutes to read this leaflet which can be found here: http://www.bto.org/survey/h&s_notes.htm Following these simple guidelines will help to ensure that your birdwatching activities are both safe and enjoyable."  One can feel the enjoyment draining away as one reads!

Then I found that everything was set up for repeated records by people who know the area well.  I tried to put in some data for an area of North Norfolk and found that I had to attest that it was all in an area shown in a Google earth image.  I didn't have a clue if it was all in that area, and I certainly wasn't going to repeat this exercise for the 15 or so other areas for which I had data. Pass, on helping them.