LINKing Sleeping Policemen and the Conservative Convention in Birmingham

I went to Birmingham, England for the LINK Rotary weekend. Essentially, this is a weekend where all of the Rotary Scholars for all over the UK come together to worship Rotary. It’s a collective guilt trip, really. All of the Rotarians stand up and say how amazing Rotary is and describe the philanthropic activities they do and how, for some ungodly reason, they have chosen to give us a tonne of money instead of using it to, say, cure AIDS.

They go through a long list of what the money could have been spent on: like they could have bought 500,000 mosquito nets, given an African village access to clean water, or inoculated 10,000 children against various diseases; but instead gave the money to me so that I can chill in Scotland and complain about the weather. Basically, they make you feel like a horrible human being who has literally taken food out of the mouths of starving children and eaten it in front of them. Fortunately, I am extremely self-centred and know that it was much better to have spent the money on me so that I can gallivant around the UK and complain about the Rotary Club rather than giving an African farmer 3 mules so that he could afford to feed his family. I did, however, meet several asses at the conference and it really would have made sense to have given them to an African farmer so he could use them feed his family than send them to be educated in Europe.*

While in Birmingham, where they all sound about as intelligent as people from Alabama, I strayed in the home of a woman from India. When I walked into her house I was almost knocked down by the overpowering smell of curry. It was as if the smell lodged itself in my nostrils and refused to leave; much like Welliott’s nasal hair. I can not begin to describe how powerful this smell was. There could have been four decaying human corpses in the living room and I would never have known. If Scott Perterson had packed Laci in a bathtub full of curry, no one ever would have found the body. They would have simply walked up to use the facilities and decided it was best to hold it, even at the expense of their kidneys exploding under the pressure, than be in a bathroom that reeked or yellow curry. It would have been the perfect crime.

Despite what seems to be the latent left-leaning undertones of this blog, I was in Birmingham during the Tory Convention. The Tory Convention is very much like the Republican convention except that it is a much more lavish affair where the conservative politicians make impossible promises and vow to lower taxes for the upper classes and abolish the inheritance tax, or what they call ‘the death tax’. Unlike the American Conservative Party, which is the party of maverick forward thinkers, the Tories get together to collectively morn the loss of their last great politician, Margaret Thatcher, and say how their current leaders are just like her and will revitalize her spirit. Unfortunately, Lady Thatcher was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years after leaving office in 1989. Oh, wait, no she is a member of the House of Lords. I don’t know who I was thinking of. Sorry, that’s weird.

Because of the convention, the police were on high alert; which is to say they were standing around without even trying to look busy. It is hard to really describe the police here in the UK. I would say that they look a bit like bioluminescent jellyfish because of the bright green vests they wear and their gelatinous appearance; but it is not really a true analogy and is slightly unfair to jellyfish because jellyfish have a means to adequately defend themselves whereas police in the UK only have little sticks which they use to fend off any small children that may seem threatening to them. In addition to their reflective green vests, the police have helmets that are precariously perched on their heads. There is not a strap to keep them fastened to them if they were to chase after someone; I can only imagine that they must be meant to throw the helmet at an escaping fugitive in the hope that it might cause a few second’s delay. Of course, this is not the primary job of a policeman. They are here, as I was told, for our protection. It is not the job of a policeman to catch criminals, that is really only inadvertent. Their primary task, and I am not making this up, is to be viable in order to provide assistance.

This is a true story. When I was in Birmingham I went up to a particularly useless-looking police officer, which I have been told to do, and asked for directions. The officer didn’t know how to get to where I was going so he used a lifeline and phoned a friend. He got on his police radio and asked if anyone know how to get to the street I needed. Another police officer, no doubt one working for my protection, responded and gave directions; but no sooner had he finished than another officer who had been listening to the conversation while walking his beat came on the radio and suggested an alternate route. With this kind of crack force, one always feels safe in the dangerous cities. The British version of Law and Order, called Law and Order: Special British Intent, consists of four police officers sitting around a table drinking Ice T** and complaining about the number of hours they have to work.

The word in British for speed bump is ‘sleeping policeman’. I thought this was a strange phrase for those little curbs in the middle of the road that make motorists slow down so I had my staff do a little research on the etymology of the phrase and found that it dates back to a Sergeant Lloyns, who, whist taking his afternoon nap became the first British police officer to pre-emptively stop a crime. Sergent Lloyns is remembered every November 23rd.



* Note: this is my second reference to cannibalism in this blog. I must be really hungry.
** Third.

Later days,