Is this a nightmare to end all nightmares?

Mike's Pith & Wind - The Bill
Dick affects surprise, tinged with undisguised disdain, when I tell him that I regularly watch that old BBC TV stalwart, The Bill. While it’s demonstrably evolved over the years, it’s still the same old British cop show we watched all those years ago, although ‘original’ cast members are becoming very thin on the ground.
But it’s not the cast members, (and the occasional grisly ends they come to as they move on to other TV series), nor is it the fairly predictable plot lines that fascinate me. It’s not even the fact that, unlike most other contemporary British cop shows, nobody swears or even comes close to swearing, although, in some scarily old-fashioned way, I rather appreciate that.
No, what fascinates - enthralls me even - is how, in every episode, The Bill demonstrates what a controlled society England has become – in fact, what a police state England has become.
There is not an episode goes by without some wrongdoer‘s movements being seamlessly tracked on CCTV with scarcely a break, apart from the odd vandalised camera. It’s quite astonishing and not a little breathtaking when I compare it to the London I knew ever-so briefly in the ‘70s, or even if I compare it to Melbourne in the here and now. There, I suspect, but for one terrorist bomb, go we.
And all of this surveillance has been effected with the tacit, if not explicit, approval of the bulk of the English populace. (I dunno – was there a vote or a referendum on the issue? I don’t think there was). read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Gin
Let us start with Gin, for no better reason that I am writing this with a Gin and Tonic very proximate to my left hand. It is still quite warm – although not as hot as the all-too-recent 45 degree days, replete, as they were, with buckling train lines and the general meltdown of civilisation as we know it.
In fact, it is an almost balmy 34 degrees, but still nothing which is not yet dead, is conspicuously dying wreathed in brown and desiccated leaves. I am using Beefeater’s gin and Schweppes tonic water – the first for reasons of cost and the second for reasons of taste. I could have used Bombay Sapphire, but it’s mid week and I am drinking for effect not style.
Gin was accidentally discovered by the good Doctor Sylvius at the University of Leyden in the 17th Century, where it quickly.. read more