Oh, the irony...en deux parts

[Lindorm]

On a rail worker's forum I sometimes frequent, I stumbled upon a post about a truly stupid and somewhat ironic event. It seems that a group of ghost hunters had decided to gather at a certain railway trestle bridge in North Carolina, on the anniversary of a derailment, to look for signs of reputed ghostly activities.

They gathered on the bridge, set up their IR cameras, parabolic microphones and other sundry equipment, and waited. And sure enough, just around midnight, the train came.

Unfortunately, it was not an ethereal train, but rather a thoroughly corporeal and solid train, which ran over all the ghost hunter's equipment, forced some of them to jump from the bridge, others to run for their lives, and unfortunately ran over an killed one of the ghost hunters.

Now, for the next level of stupidity, i suppose another group of ghost hunters will come back in ten years or so, to investigate the alleged hauntings of a ghost hunter's ghost that stalks the bridge... 

http://www.wistv.com/global/story.asp?s=13055036

Meanwhile, here in Sweden, former Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström has shown his staunch commitment on serious issues again. Mr. Bodström is, by the way, a ex-soccer player turned lawyer and then minister in the last Social Democratic government. Considering that he has all the ideological convictions and spine of a amoeba, he fit very nicely in with their New Labour/Anthony Giddens-influenced style of politics.

During his career, mr Bodström tried to score some political and populist points by taking a Mr Tough-On-Crime stance, including ramming through the building of a horrendously expensive maximum security prison that not even the police knew what to do with, and now stands mostly empty due to lack of customers. He also took a strong stance on the Drug Menace (said with suitably grave and trembling voice), advocating zero-tolerance policies, stricter punishment, and tons of drug testing, both random and otherwise. Interestingly enough, according to the gossip mill, Mr Bodström was apparently quite fond of powdering his nose with colombian white powder during his sportive days, but that was of course just malicious and idle talk.

Now, Sweden is heading for a general election this autumn, and of course political journalists are conducting lots of interviews. One group from a radio programme interviewed mr Bodström about his views on the current conservative-led government and their policies on crime and the legal system. After some discussion, they came upon the subject of drug testing, which Mr. Bodström again proclaimed himself to be a staunch supporter of.

To which the journalist replied, "Oh, good! My assistant here is actually a registered nurse from one of the big companies that do random drug testing, and we would like to do one of these on you, right now!".  At first, Mr Bodström was under the impression that he would only have to do a breathalyzer test, to which he consented. But when he realized that he was also going to be tested for opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, bensodiazepines and other substances -in fact, a standard drug test, he suddenly declined and refused on the grounds of "personal integrity"

Indeed...




And I am getting a strong urge to 

[Darlica]

I don't have words for this...

Fortunately I have a picture.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Interestingly enough, according to the gossip mill, Mr Bodström was apparently quite fond of powdering his nose with colombian white powder during his sportive days, but that was of course just malicious and idle talk.

As a Colombian I have to take issue with that statement, it could have been produced in Perú, or Bolivia, or lately in certain parts of Venezuela...


_{In all fairness a fair amount of coca leave production does indeed happen in Perú and Bolivia, although the large majority of industrial processing happens in Colombia...}
---
Nice catching the guy on the hypocrisy. The more things change the more they stay the same...

[Lindorm]

Interestingly enough, according to the gossip mill, Mr Bodström was apparently quite fond of powdering his nose with colombian white powder during his sportive days, but that was of course just malicious and idle talk.

As a Colombian I have to take issue with that statement, it could have been produced in Perú, or Bolivia, or lately in certain parts of Venezuela...


_{In all fairness a fair amount of coca leave production does indeed happen in Perú and Bolivia, although the large majority of industrial processing happens in Colombia...}

You do have a point, but on the other hand, I must admit that I am not totally au fait with the latest developments in the wild & wacky world of international narcotics production and logistics. Sometimes, i can't even get around the logistics chains of my own company, and they mostly relate to such relatively non-intoxicating substances as peat pellets and construction steel.    There is a tenous connection, though -we have recently started running empty coca-cola cans to their plant outside Stockholm! 

Nice catching the guy on the hypocrisy. The more things change the more they stay the same...

Unfortunately, the conservative-liberal-social conservative coalition that is the other choice isn't any better. When they came to power, the tried to appoint aminister who, among her other illustrious exploits, had hired illegal immigrants to work as housemaids for her and paid them under the table, and then tried to explain it away as an act of of civil disobedience in protest against the high taxes in Sweden. More recently, the minister of the labour department, Sven-Otto Littorin was forced to resign over a nice little scandal where it emerged that he had among other things, had phone sex with a prostitute, but despite claiming not to remember a single thing about the whole affair, was adamantly sure that he had never met that woman in person and had sex with her.  Oh, and he tried to resign before this little matter became public knowledge, with a very emotional and tear-filled press conference, where he explained his resignation with his desire to protect his children from being abused by unscrupolous journalists in a witch-hunt against him.   

And in a triple irony, Mr Littorin, who has been a champion of the thesis that "unemployed are just lazy people" and leading the charge for slashing of unemployment benefits, will himself collect a nice little severance package, including a five-figure monthly salary for over a year.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Your politicians are so similar to the ones at this side of the Atlantic (both North & South)...

Perhaps the Mayans were right and the end is really coming... 

[pieces o nine]

Here in the States, refusal to take a random drug test is viewed as implicit admission of guilt and punished immediately. No severance package, either.

[Swatopluk]

Here in the States, refusal to take a random drug test is viewed as implicit admission of guilt and punished immediately. No severance package, either.

But I guess it must be authorized. Would you trust a journalist, even with a nurse attached? 
Btw, the German writer Gisbert Haefs came up with an anti-power-abuse solution in one of his novels: the ruler is bled at any use of power (amount probably depending on seriousness). That way the ruler will either interfere only when a thing is really important or he will not be very long-lived. Another country in that novel is ruled by the State Slave*. After his year in office he is exiled with a fixed amount of money and will be killed should he ever return.

*the slavery system has some similarity to that described by Pratchett in Pyramids.