Because Unintended Consequences Are Merely Job Creation For Politicians

Yes, the tumbleweed has been having free run of the place of late, but I've been uncomfortably busy for reasons I partly explain here.

To be frank, I'm fair frazzled after days of picking through pages and pages of eye-watering, tax-funded, nuclear-tipped banality that is the modern day public sector 'invitation to tender'. Bank holiday Monday was spent drafting a Business Continuity Management Plan as ordered by Labour's Civil Contingency Act 2004, whilst the past two days have consisted of compiling method statements (as required under EU tendering directives) comprising in the region of 9,000 words of suffocatingly-absurd public sector office-speak.

I'm about a quarter of the way through.

Local authority staff may well talk of 'positive procurement strategies' and 'service satisfaction milestones' while buying cod and mushy peas from the chippy, but it's a vocabulary which is hard to learn for the rest of us who usually add to the economy rather that drain it.

I'm also off to Prague again on Friday for another vital reminder of what lifestyle freedom actually looks like. As such, apart from a much-needed blogroll update (something I hope to get around to tomorrow), and Saturday's link tank which is forming rather quickly this week, there won't be a lot posted here till Monday ... so those of you with a mischievous streak, please play nice in the comments while the place is unattended. No porn (unless it's excellent), no drugs, no smoking or drinking, no playing any games but conkers, and definitely no slagging off politicians without good cause (ie, if the day contains the letter 'Y').

Before that, though, I'd just like to point out that Anne Milton is possibly the most deranged person ever to have sailed under the Tory banner.

Yep, fresh from hiding cardboard boxes for the good of the nation, she has come up with another corker from the Ministry of Crappy Ideas.

Cars could be banned from residential roads to allow children to play out in the street, a heath minister has suggested.

During a debate in Westminster Hall, Mrs Milton said: "On Sundays, they close certain streets so that everybody can play in them. That is an outstanding idea."

Because there's nothing better than encouraging kids to feel safe when running out into a road without looking, now is there?

Good grief.

Previously in the 'what could possibly go wrong' category.