Fine weather and dog madness

The few days of recent fine weather have brought out the dog walkers, however now there are hundreds of loose dogs on my local beach, the real problem is many of these poor dogs haven't been outside the house for weeks with all the wind and rain.   The dogs are now so excited they are going for each other and attacking pretty much anything going past. 
Now common sense would suggest the owners put the leads back on, but oh no!,  that's too easy.  No the moron owners just run and grab the collar and pull the dog away, wait about 3 seconds and let go... Yep you guessed it, the dogs are fighting again in about 4 seconds (great fun to watch the owners trying to catch their dogs) 
There is a serious issue here though, theres young children playing on the beach too, sooner or later someone going to get badly hurt.  I'm sorry but dogs really do need to be kept on proper leads all the time (not 3 miles of nearly invisible string either) so they are under control.
Talking of long silly string leads a few days ago I watched a young couple with a large dog being dragged along the pavement, unfortunately the dog on the end of about 30 foot of string was walking down the middle of a busy road.  The couple seemed unwilling or unable to get the dog back on the pavement (they were not trying when I watched them)  but even if they wanted to those thin leads are really hard to pull back in, the strings so thin you can't grip it properly.  Another good reason to ban the dangerous things.

Strange world we live in.

It's been fine here for 3 days and now we have grass fires, I'm expecting a hosepipe ban any minute, how the hell the crass can actually catch fire is baffling, I went for a walk yesterday evening and ground that's normally bone dry was soaking and flooded in places, in 60 years I've never seen it that wet..... maybe waters spontaneously combustion now.... ?

The Malaysian jets that's been missing for 4 days now is still missing. You would think in this digital age when everything is monitored that something the size of a passenger aircraft would be easy to find (especially as it's route is known) 
Now this plane was fairly close to land, how hard would it be if the plane had vanished over the middle of the Atlantic ocean?   Perhaps all aircraft should have some sort of self deploying beacon in case of crashing over water ( or land for that matter).  One thing that puzzled me is the so called 'black boxes' (actually bright orange) have a pinger so sonar can find them, it's supposed to last for around 30 days.  Now a half decent submarine can 'hear' another sub from miles and miles away, and they are trying to be really quiet, they should hear the pinger for a heck of a distance. 

Missing Malaysian jet a mystery

Missing Malaysian jet a mystery says Malaysia's civil aviation chief Mr Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.  You mean to say without finding the plane or wreckage you don't know what happened to it? 
What a stupid comment to make, he goes on to say we haven't ruled out a hijacking, of course you bloody haven't, you haven't the foggiest idea whats happened so you can't rule anything out.. 

Arty farty adverts

Recently theres been some very clever 'arty' adverts on telly, some would put a feature film to shame on special effects.   Sadly many suffer from what I call product-itus (they are so clever they forgot what they are trying to sell.
Theres one with a little girl singing with a singing cat in her bicycle basket, I've seen it a few times now, very cleverly done, the thing is I haven't a clue what it's trying to sell, so massive fail!
Theres another clever one that has absolutely bugger all to do with the product it's trying to sell (can't remember what it's supposed to be at the moment, so again it's just confusing the potential customer.
Another has little furry animals popping out of biscuit packets, great ad, but I don't know what it's trying to sell.
My favorite this week, is one for smoothies, the company is giving 10% of the price to an overseas charity.... So what they are saying really is we overcharge our customers so we can give the money away abroad and save tax, charming!  Maybe customers should have the option to op out, or better yet select their own charity.

Manhunt tv series

Manhunt is a series in which an ex-Navy SEAL Joel Lambert, has to evade various army units around the world.  
Kind of a cross from Bear Grylls and the fugitive the series is basically a remake of the far superior 2003 BBC tv series hunting Chris Ryan.
What can I say, Joel Lambert must be the most unfit ex seal ever, the only man I know who gets out of breath sleeping (ok I'm kidding a bit)  but watch the series and listen to him huff and puff, the guy has a serious health issue to be that out of breath all the time, the people chasing him are nothing like as out of breath.  And come on lighting fires on escape and evasion when the enemy are less that 300m away? WTF!  It's just not done, the guy leaves tracks everywhere, a sheep could track him.
Please, pretty please, get Bear Grylls to show you how it's really done.

A few pics.

Top gear cycling safety videos

This week the top gear team made their own irreverent style cycling safety videos, the trouble was they actually got some of it right, despite the fact it was meant as a mickey take.
You see many of the point they made were valid, lots of cycling accidents are caused by the cyclists themselves jumping red lights, having bikes in poor condition (bad brakes etc) but by far the  biggest cause isn't car drives at all, it's the heavy vehicles, buses and lorries. 
The fact is bus and lorry drivers simply don't care about other road uses (well a lot of them anyway) they are safe and insulated in big heavy vehicles, unless they hit another bus or lorry in most cases the other poor sods come off far worse in a collision.
Lorries are particularly bad they just pull out of junctions, roundabouts etc without a care, they know they have the weight and other motorists have no choice but to give way, even if they get hit they suffer little damage or injury.
The poor cyclist has no chance against these, I myself was run off the road some years back while cycling by a lorry being driven like a madman through a narrow country lane, insane! if I hadn't gone off road I'd be dead, there was no way he could stop, and he made no attempt to stop or slow down anyway, God help if it had been a car going the other way, they would have nowhere to go.
If the govenment really want to cut down cycling deaths maybe they should take a good look and buses and lorries, clamp down hard on bad driving, unmarked police on bikes filming what they do and car back-up should work. .