"Get a Grip!"

"For God's sake get a grip and take responsibility for your own actions! You voted for the bastards - what did you think was going to happen?" I found myself screaming at the local BBC news programme the other night. What prompted this uncharacteristically intemperate outburst, I hear you ask. Well, it was an item about one of the local police forces in Sussex or Surrey, or somewhere else beginning with an 'S', I don't really remember, closing down local police stations and replacing them with a 'mobile station'. Like a mobile library, but with an orange stripe down the side and charge sheets instead of books. Anyway, all these twee local people - old biddies, retired Majors, bank managers and all the other assorted middle class tossers you get in such places - were whining on about how terrible it was that their communities were no longer being protected. Except on alternate Thursdays when the mobile police station turned up.

What galled me was that all of these moaners had undoubtedly voted Tory at the last election, (or, even worse, Lib Dem), thereby saddling us with this unholy Frankenstein monster of a government, cobbled together from the most unspeakable ideas left over from its constituent parties' manifestos. Why do they think the police are closing these stations? To save money as a result of Osborne's ideologically motivated cuts in public spending. Oh, but I Forgot, it's all the fault of the last labour government for destroying the economy. Nothing to do with Cameron and Osborne's banker pals, then? Unfortunately, these idiots are typical of too many people in this country - they seem incapable of grasping the connection between their own actions and their real-world consequences. If you don't want your community's public facilities cut, don't vote Tory, (or faux-Tory). Alternatively, if they really want to keep their local police stations open, maybe all those nice middle class villagers should try committing more crimes? If there was a sudden increase in the number of flashing incidents on the local cricket pitch, or a a spike in the number of bull buggerings, then the police would have no choice but to rethink their closure plans.