Extreme Pornography and Sex with a Squid

From This is Swansea

A Mumbles man has appeared in court charged with possessing an "extreme pornographic" image of someone having sex with a dead octopus or squid.

Andrew Charles Dymond, of Dunns Lane, is also alleged to have had images which showed a person performing sex acts with horses and dogs.

The 46-year-old, who faces a total of 25 porn charges, entered a unanimous no plea when he came before Swansea magistrates.

The charge involving the sea creature states the image was of someone "performing an act of intercourse with a dead animal, namely an octopus/squid, which was grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character".

Dymond is also alleged to have made 14 indecent photos of children, as well as possessing an additional 57 images.

Four of the allegations state he had images showing an act which would or was likely to result in "serious injury to a person's breasts".

A further charge makes the same allegation but in relation to someone's genitals.

Leigh Davies, defending Dymond, said: "This is a case that's probably better dealt with in the Crown Court".

Magistrates declined jurisdiction.

As perversions go, Dymond doesn’t seem to be prejudicial as to which he (allegedly) favours and it certainly promises to be an interesting case.  The relatively new provisions relating to extreme pornography are still somewhat controversial - particularly amongst civil libertarians - who feel that outside of child pornography, consenting adults should be broadly free to enter into and record their sexual antics for dissemination without restriction. 

Email Etiquette 101: Greetings and Closings

 

Over the past few months, the volume of email I have to manage has grown exponentially.  I actually have 3 work mailboxes – soon to be become 4 - plus there’s a bunch of mail-forwarding set up so I get pummelled by that too.  As well as shredding my nerves on a daily basis, this deluge of email has forced me to think more about how best to open and close emails, based primarily on some flagrant examples of ‘what not to do’ that I’ve witnessed.

 

Some of the options:

In my experience, intra-business email is often prefaced by a simple ‘Hi’ but inter-business email is definitely heading that way too.  

“Dear X” just seems a bit of an anachronistic opening.  “Hello X” often strikes me as a touch clumsy; “Hello” even more so.  Most business email now seem to start with “Hi X”.

“X”, can sound a tad curt and offhand – though it’s arguably the most common.
Closing emails brings about a similar bunch of problems.

“Best regards”, just doesn’t quite sit right, somehow, though I’m sure that’s just me as it seems to be heavily used.

“Best wishes”, sounds like a non-committal way of ending a birthday card to fairly distant relative/co-worker you couldn’t care less about.  To me, it just doesn’t seem right in an email.

“Yours sincerely/ Yours faithfully” – I refer you to my earlier comments in relation to starting emails with “Dear X”!  :p 

“Best” seemed to reach its peak of popularity about a year ago, given the potential for saved keystrokes, but quickly dropped out of favour when everybody suddenly realised it didn’t actually mean anything.  Which is obviously a problem in communication.

“Rgds” seems to pop up now and then and I guess makes sense if you're not in front of a regular querty keyboard; otherwise it seems more awkward not to type the vowels - at least to me.

I’ve always felt that no closing and just signing your name can come across as a bit curt at times, so I tend to avoid it.  Oh and adding a forward slash prior to you name doesn’t really change that!  ;-)

“Regards” is the standard, non-committal, business response, but it always seems to convey subtle undertones of lethargy on the part of the sender - which is probably doing them an injustice.  Oh well.

“Kind regards”, is another favourite and which I used to feel was a tad sickly.  That said, I’ve seen it work wonders in offsetting something in the email which might otherwise light the blue touch paper.  It’s amazing what you can get away with, if you end your email with ‘Kind regards’.  

Another thing I’ve noticed is that it seems to be increasingly common to use multiple closing phrases as a kind of ‘cover all the bases’ approach.  A guy I’ve exchanged emails with for work over the past few months opts for “many thanks, many regards” which always catches me off-guard - particularly in bright blue times new roman font!  

I recently encountered the following bit of OTT-ness, which I’ve come to think of as the ‘cheers sandwich’!  ;-)

“Thanks a lot.
  Cheers
  Kind regards”

And talking of “cheers”, it's shown an alarming increase in popularity of late.  It can come across a tad causal at times, but I suppose it’s OK for intra-business mail.   Seems to becoming a tad clichéd though.  :-\

For what it’s worth, I tend to use a mixture - I’m easily bored, after all - but for regular exchanges, I tend to opt for a simple “thanks”.  For inter-business email, I usually go for “Regards”, or “Kind regards”, depending on how enthused I feel about the recipient/subject and whether I’m on the scrounge!  ;-)

I’d be interested to discover what other learned members of the ‘sphere opt for.   There’s also a free bar of Choc-Actually up for grabs, no strings attached*, for the reader whose experienced the wackiest email closing!**  :-)

*If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.  Choc Actually doesn’t even exist! :p

**As judged by ‘The Michael’.

Skirt-ban-man breaches ASBO

From BBC News 06/05/10:

A man banned from wearing skirts or showing bare legs on school days has been found guilty of breaching an Asbo.

Peter Trigger, 60, from Farndon Close, Northampton, was given an anti-social behaviour order in December 2008.

He is forbidden from behaving in a manner which causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

Northampton Magistrates' Court found him guilty of harassing his neighbours but declined to activate a suspended prison sentence he also faced.

Trigger had been banned from wearing a skirt or showing bare legs on a school day between 0830 and 1000 and 1445 and 1600 GMT or BST, the court was told.

What about lunch periods though?  Some schoolchildren return home for lunch and what kid deserves to be subjected to that sight, lurking about on the pavement?  Anyone seeing Trigger bending over awkwardly, supposedly fiddling with his shoe-laces while dressed in his school-girl get-up, would surely lose their appetite or require several hundred hours of counselling.  Or both.

Magistrates found him guilty of breaching the Asbo by deliberately bending over in front of his neighbours early in the morning on 16 December last year, causing them harassment, alarm and distress.

I should think it did!

Trigger was given the Asbo, which runs until 2013, in December 2008 after parents complained he was waiting near a primary school in the town dressed in clothes similar to school uniform.

He also has a 12-week suspended prison sentence for exposure imposed last year.

Bending over, using the the ‘tying shoe laces’ or ‘picking up debris’ excuse like that was never going to wash in court, though.  The judge spared Trigger a jail term, justifying it on the basis that he’s a carer for his elderly mother.  He might be a devoted son, but I think Trigger would better benefit from therapy rather than being slapped with a ASBO.  And as for him being required to pay court costs, £100 fine and, brace yourselves, £15 to his victims is a touch futile, quite honestly.

“You have the human right to dress as you wish...” [but arguably not as a schoolgirl - at least not in public].

Final thought: I wonder if he shaves his legs?  :-/

Dirty Legal Tactics

From DirtyLawndry 23/03/09:

“For quite a few months now, someone’s lunch has gone missing at least a couple times a week. It gets annoying when you bring your lunch from home only to have to buy lunch when you’re trying to save money. Apparently, one of the attorneys here has had this happen to him one time too many. He brought in a decoy lunch and laced it with laxatives in an attempt to catch the lunch bag thief. Once, we heard groaning from the mens’ room, we knew that his plan worked. We are now rid of the lunch bag thief.“

This particularly caught my eye as there have been a couple of instances in the last few weeks of lunch-theft which has understandably generated a fair amount of bitching in the office. Bizarrely, it’s involved frozen pizza and some kind of frozen fish pie – not exactly the items you can grab, gobble and go. Maybe we should each take a dummy lunch in, laced with nasties – and pray there isn’t a mix-up!

Women’s Magazine Cover Recipe

Stumbled across this gem via Digg earlier:

“One part Cosmo, one part Vogue, one part Glamour, mix with two parts “Hate yourself and your body”, and VOILA.”

Love it!!!  :D

Travel + Jury Service

I’ve got a bunch of business travel coming up later this month/early next but I’ve also a spell of train-ing up, down and across the country for the next week or so.  I’m nipping up to London tomorrow morning on a work-related event and then I’m travelling down to Cornwall on Thursday evening for a few days to see my somewhat neglected parents. Cornwall being Cornwall, the weather’s not looking exactly brilliant but who knows: it might pick up!!  I will be blogging, albeit later in the week but I’m going to be keeping a low profile for the next couple of days.

And in other news, my girlfriend has a stint of jury service starting on Monday which she’s actually quite pleased about (the silly girl) - at least she’s getting out of work. Sometimes I feel a touch cheated that, as a law graduate, I’m exempt from sampling that particular adventure.  Oh well.  Now jury service is a veritable free-for-all, (and seemingly has been since 2004 – Christ, how the freaking hell did I miss that one?!?) I’m itching to have a go!! Me next!!!  Me next!!!  PLEASE!!!!!!

A Fishy Problem

From BBC News 22/04/10:

A fish and chip shop owner has been fined after his business passed a cheaper fish off as cod.

Trading standards officers analysed "cod" purchased at C'or Blimey in Bourton-on-the-Water, after a tip off from a member of the public in 2009.

They found the flesh was from panga - a cheaper, tropical fish.

Shop owner Neil Amsingh, 49, of Coventry was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £1,000 court costs by Cheltenham Magistrates. He admitted the offence.

Naughty, Naughty!

The head of Gloucestershire County Council's Trading Standards, Eddie Coventry, said: "Panga sells for half the price of cod at market, but in some chip shops, customers are being charged the same price as cod, leading to a tidy profit for the unscrupulous chip shop owner.

"There is no reason why panga cannot be sold, but it must be described accurately so that customers get what they ask for at the counter."

Pangas are small salt-water fish, commonly caught off the coast of Southern Africa.

Mr Ambsingh could have perhaps tried a rather fanciful line of argument by claiming that him deceiving consumers in selling them cod when it was in fact Panga, was helping to preserve the rapidly dwindling (read: soon to be extinct) cod stocks. In other words, he was acting for the greater good of the planet which arguably should outweigh the financial welfare of a few gluttonous citizens who continue to gorge themselves on cod, despite the broad public awareness that the species is really ‘on the rocks’*.

If customers knew it wasn't cod they were buying, it’s likely they wouldn’t be as keen and if Mr Amsingh had charged a substantially lower price for it (i.e. passing the cost-saving on to the customers) they would almost certainly have grown suspicious.  Also, while the taste might be comparable, many customers simply have no sense of adventure in sampling other species with their portion of chips and might fear of being seen as a ‘cheap-skate’*.

But, nah... I wouldn’t have rated his chances very highly of successfully arguing that either. Would have been interesting to try though!  Also, it’s possible Mr Amsingh simply admitted his guilt after feeing such a ‘Panga’* of guilt!! ;-)

* I’m just on fire today!! ;-)   *Sigh* ……… I'm here all week, folks!  :p