Canon can't, booze, mutual back-slapping, moving lights, and future plans.

Every so often you get some direct mail that makes you go "Huh" followed by a suppressed snort of laughter, I had one such piece of mail today from Canon for the Midlands. They were offering to assist me in improving the visual impact of the business, this was the very paragraph I was drawn to:No scanning tricks or post-processing that's how it came through; sorry if you want to help my visual impact you might want to start with your own first.

Okay so the news presenters have given up on electricity and have turned to drink, I know how they feel. In this case youngsters drinking, deliver up the usual large amounts of hand-wringing and "what can we do"s none of which are liable to solve any of the problems. Let's be honest here we're a nation of drunks, and we've always been a nation of drunks; it's been a well-commented feature of most visiting foreigners throughout history. A few poxy legislations or scary adverts are unlikely to change a thing, it's pretty much embedded in what passes for our national psyche.

One of the problems I think is Labour's continuing delusion that we're all going to be European, that if they allow us to drink whenever we like we're suddenly going to turn into France and be sipping wine and clear lagers at odd intervals rather then belting back the beer and spirits as if they were about to run out. Not going to happen and pretty much nothing that can be done about it bar legislating against under 18s from drinking at all. Nonetheless I'll go out on a limb and predict that some sort of legislation will be passed meaning that the parents of boozy teenagers will be liable to fines and prison in much the same vein as was done for truancy with probably the same level of results.

I've added the Wyre Forest Agenda to the blogroll a site which I must admit is something I've only recently discovered. It shows up a lot of information that often doesn't appear or at least appear prominently in the local paper. I've noted it more of a discussion then a blog as the comment to article ratio is biased heavily in that favour, no offence meant to the writer if he's noted the referral and is reading, just goes to show how widely read it is.

The traffic lights on the bridge have been pushed forward, noted it a couple of days ago when they were working on the town-side hole, but it looks to be permanent now as they've extended the dig in that direction. Not sure what that'll do for the intelligent sensors in the road, but the nice stop white lane they painted for it is now defunct after an entire 24 days. As this entire project is slated to continue until April 07 I believe, this example of forward-planning is a little worrying.

Well everything is started to turn golden brown, so much so that I've started humming California Dreaming as I travel about, hopefully if the weather is reasonable I'll take some more shots of Hartlebury Common this Saturday and maybe hop up to Burlish Top for some there too. Perhaps some more shots of Stourport while I'm passing through; so if you see a chap with a ponytail taking shots of apparently uninteresting things feel free to say hello.