Billy The Kid Gets $2.3m

In his biggest ever score, 'Billy The Kid' finally made a big hit of $2.3m .... many times more than all the money he took by crime (which was probably only a few thousand dollars in total).

Sadly for him, this wasn't in his lifetime, and it was only when his likeness on a tintype photograph taken in 1879/80 at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, was sold at the specialist Brian Lebel's Annual Old West Show & Auction that such a large sum was realised.


Billy The Kidd 1879

 Better late than never, eh, Billy?

For the purposes of this blog I tidied up the picture, which in truth is actually rather tatty, but in case you want to see the original and the full story of the sale its on this link.

NB: That's not a 'gunman's stare', its a result of the magnesium powder (flash powder) used to light the subject when taking their pictures in those days.

Urban Myths Strike Again

There are urban legends that take generations to develop, and then there are flash myths .... our new digital lifestyles mean that word of mouth is faster than ever and this is what struck the car salesman of Afghanistan (talking of tuff jobs) ...... an urban legend has sprung up that caused the local car buyers to develop a curious aversion for registration plates containing the number 39.

For some unexplained reason the number 39 is suddenly held as a mark of great shame by Afghan's, but no one knows why anymore, or what the cause of this dislike is. One explanation given is that the taboo started because a pimp had '39' on his number plate, but in which case what about the other numbers on the pimp plate? Another explanation is that it stems from an old way of calculating numbers from letters and numbers into letters called "Abjad" ... but why 39 would be an issue isn't covered by that explanation either.

Tuff Jobs - But Someone Has To Do Them

When we think of old World War II bombs being uncovered, we automatically think of German bombs in the UK, and not ever about the Allied  bombs in Germany. Of course by the end of the war we had dropped more than 3.4 million tons of bombs on Germany, far more than the Germans had managed to drop here.

So when you think of it, there must be more old unexploded bombs there, then here. In Berlin alone, its estimated that 465,000 tons of allied explosives hit the ground, and about one in eight bombs did not explode*.


Manuel Kunzendorf, Ralf Kirschnick und Horst Reinhardt

So someone has to clean them up when they turn up .... this is where the rather brave Ralf Kirschnick comes to the fore, he is Berlins lead bomb disposal expert. With all the rebuilding of the German capital following reunification and the relocation of government back there following reunification, he's and his equally brave team are busy men as bombs are being uncovered.

Rather counter intuitively he does not wear protective clothing because he says it would do nothing to protect him from an exploding bomb (I hear what he's saying but .....), and of course rusty bombs are inherently unstable, so its something of a miracle that he's here to tell us about his job. I suspect he would rather just be killed cleanly, rather than be left seriously maimed, but I am only guessing at that.

Anyway, a salute to all the bomb disposal teams around the world .... mad as hatters the lot of them, but very brave.

* The reason for high proportion of unexploded ordinance is that the British and Americans tested their bombs in a part of Scotland with particularly hard ground. When they tried them out on the softer earth of Berlin, they sank into the ground .... so now they are lying there waiting to go off or be uncovered.
     

A Balanced Budget

With the imminent collapse of the Euro, because a number of the member states such as Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland had not been running a balanced *budget, then the news that California has finally found the way in which to force the politicians, with their noses in the trough, to behave, might be good news.

They brought in a law (Proposition 25), last year, to stop the California legislature from constantly missing its annual budget deadline, and to concentrate the minds of their greedy masters, they added a provision that the politicians will not be paid until the state budget balances ....

Of course politicians being politicians, they still squabbled about the budget, and were happily trying to overspend with a dodgy budget agreed, when the law suddenly came into effect ..... they are now no longer being paid, after the state State Controller John Chiang, agreed with Governor Gerry Browns determination that the budget they had approved was not in fact 'balanced' as the law required, and was in fact $1.8bn overspent.

Budget Hero or Villain?

This decision means all 120 elected members of the State Assembly and Senate will not be paid their wages, or their living allowances, until they pass a balanced budget. At the moment there is stalemate, but its believed by observers, that when they see their first empty pay cheques arrived (or rather fail to arrive), then the politicos will suddenly make the necessary compromises and balance the books

This seems a likely way forward for all those bent politicos in Europe as well .... budgets must be balanced from now on.

*It should be noted that Britain under the Gordon Brown economic stewardship also racked up a massive budget deficit  

The Wrong Arm Of The Law

A gang of four male intruders, with balaclavas and kitted for violence tried to break in to a house where two men (a father and son) and the boys girlfriend were residing. There was a fight, the two men fought off the intruders and in the process one of the burglars was killed (or rather died of a stab wound) after being stabbed .... as usual the police turned up well after the event despite getting a 999 call during the attempt to break in, and promptly arrested the householder his son and the girl.

The police chief, superintendent Kevin Mulligan even expressed his shock at the 'tragic' incident resulting in the death of the (scumbag) burglar. It truly makes you despair of Britain .... and all this after the current Prime Minister declared that he was going to reinforce the law to protect homeowners defending their property. "We will put beyond doubt that homeowners and small shopkeepers who use reasonable force to defend themselves or their properties will not be prosecuted." .... weasel words, when the police and courts continue to interpret 'reasonable force' as meaning any force. The police officer in this case for example said "Within the existing legal framework, you can use reasonable force to protect yourself - the emphasis on reasonable."

Can you imagine the terror of having four men in balaclava's trying to break in to your house? They are not cat burglars, or chancers (who would have run away when challenged), no this is four men who don't care that there are people in the house, and therefore most certainly intend to harm the occupants .... and all this useless arm of the law can say is that  "the emphasis" is "on reasonable" while they try to defend their lives and their property .... he even added that he "didn't believe that members of the public are at risk."

Well that must come as a reassurance to those who this policeman considers are 'members of the public', but for the rest of us, like people who live in houses being burgled for example, it must be a grave concern that this man is the police officer protecting them.

In fact he seems to have a stock response to every death on his patch of socialist paradise .... after a fatal shooting on his beat, he suggested that "One firearm incident, especially one this tragic, is one too many". Then there was that time that there was another fatal stabbing on his beat in Salford ... "This is a tragic incident and we understand how this can cause alarm to the community. However, I would like to reassure residents that there is no general threat to them as a result of what happened". Or then there was yet another death by stabbing, which he said was a "tragic incident". Mr Mulligan apparently stressed that such incidents were "rare" ..... well, obviously not that 'rare'.

The last word on this should perhaps go to the father of the dead burglar, Mr Garry Bennell ....who when asked about the incident, is reported as saying that: “Householders are entitled to protect their own properties from burglars. I would hope to have the guts to protect my property, though obviously I wouldn't want to kill anybody”.