John Bull Profile picture
Feb 14 6 tweets 2 min read
Personally my interview questions for a new Met Commissioner would just be throwing a bunch of Commander Vimes quotes at them and asking them if they agree.

With Vimes, Pratchett showed he perfectly understood both the complexity and correct way of policing a large city.
Vimes/Pratchett on consent policing:

"When we break down, it all breaks down. That’s just how it works. You can bend it, and if you make it hot enough you can bend it in a circle, but you can’t break it. When you break it, it all breaks down until there’s nothing unbroken."
Vimes/Pratchett on the application of the law:

"The common people? They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit."
Vimes:

What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and badge? They tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit. Once policemen stopped being civilians, the only other thing they could be was soldiers
Vimes/Pratchett:

"Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear"
As a sidebar this whole thread has made me realise that the main character in my next book is basically just Vimes if she were 26 and gave up a career in the Met to solve supernatural crimes on the London Underground.

Not sure if that's a good or bad thing. Guess we'll see.

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More from @garius

Feb 14
Also actual LOLs at the Met Police Federation thinking most Londoners are going to side with them vs the Mayor.

Even the racists here would quite like a police force that gave a shit at a senior level about investigating/dealing with base level crime like burglary and theft.
You can only get away with being a racist/misogynistic police force if you at least take care of the Little Englanders when they report low-level crime like burglary/theft.

Kicking in doors in high-vis and walking out waving a few baggies only impresses Home Secretaries.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 9
I'm still amazed how fast we've moved from "don't ever touch me!" to "scritches required at all times pls" with Little Stray Kitty.

Hopefully a good sign that he'll come back once the door is open.

No firm ETA on that at the moment due to my tooth drama. But soon.
I should say that we'd have already opened the downstairs doors if it wasn't clear that he's pretty satisfied with life right now.

Still yowls at cats through the window occasionally, but is so much more relaxed in himself and discovering new experiences like duvet deep snoozes. Black kitty utterly sparko, sprawled out on duvet.
He's got a deep, quiet rumble of a purr. I still remember him almost jumping out of his skin the first time he did it. As if he had no idea he could make that noise.

Now he does it all the time.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 8
Our first @CrusaderKings DLC run will give a good look at the features, but also pose me a challenge.

We'll be doing an 'Arthurian' run:

1) Reconquer Britain as a Roman character from Brittany
2) Revive Hellenism WITHOUT hacks

And we'll talk real post-Roman history on the way!
@CrusaderKings Stream will kick off when the DLC drops, about 5pm UK time.

Excited for the new culture features, and been planning this run as a way to show them off for a while.

Plus it gives us an awesome opportunity to talk about real Roman Britain, and how cultures merge/Empires retreat
@CrusaderKings So you'll be able to tune in live for lots of gameplay discovery and historical natter (plus some proper Roman mythbusting if people cash in their histofacts) from about 5pm via the link below.

Or catch the replay on my Youtube channel later this week twitch.tv/gariusthebrit
Read 4 tweets
Feb 4
I have a strange fascination with watching Rishi Sunak manoeuvre for power, as I think he's going to be terrible at it.

It's all very Carlito's Way. He's the young mob lawyer who has fallen in love with his own legend a bit and thinks he's now a gangster.
Both Eat Out and his current energy bill scheme have shown that he's terribly good at coming up with ideas that sound clever to a bunch of earnest young SPADs. But that don't really survive their encounter with actual real-world society and economics.
Normally someone like Rishi would get to cut his teeth on stuff like that (and make those mistakes) somewhere like Transport (see: Phil Hammond).

Rishi is doing it as Chancellor, and may very soon be doing it as PM.
Read 8 tweets
Feb 1
One day I am going to write a comedy set in local Labour Party meetings on Zoom.
I'm not even going to make anything up. It'll be stuff I've seen happen in them over the years.

I'm just going to change people's names.
It'll even have a part written in it for Robert Lindsay, to resume his 'Wolfie Smith' role. He'll play the elder Trot who got his foot in the Momentum door early.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 26
I see Cosplay Thatcher is now trying to do an actual Thatcher voice as well.
Compare with classic Liz, pre-Thatcher Senpai stage.

She's been coached to talk lower, slower and less expressively.

I presume in part by the old "move your mouth less" trick (I use it doing voice overs where I need to sound like a senior army officer).
I presume the next step on the Cosplay Thatcher plan is to start doing more severe or boufed hair.

Whoever is coaching her is going with the old "don't change too much at once or people will notice" routine.
Read 4 tweets

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