LONDON (Reuters) – A 12-year-old British boy appeared in court Wednesday charged with assault for throwing a sausage at a pensioner, police said.

The boy’s mother described the decision to charge her son as “an absolute joke,” although police said they had no choice.

The youth, who can’t be named, was arrested after a 74-year-old man reported him to police for throwing a stone in Manchester, northern England.

The object turned out to be a cocktail sausage.

“Charging was the only option because the boy had previously been issued with three reprimands on separate occasions,” a Greater Manchester Police spokeswoman said.

Police and prosecutors have launched a joint review of the case after a judge at Manchester Youth Court reportedly urged them to reconsider.

“If he has done what was suggested it is very bad behavior,” District Judge Tim Devas was reported as saying in the Manchester Evening News. “But is it in the public interest to prosecute a 12-year-old boy who threw a sausage?”

The boy’s mother said her son was worried he might be sent to prison.

Web link

I always wondered what the end of the world would look like. Now I know. Let’s face it – we’re doomed. Each time I pick up a paper or catch a bulletin, the news is 15% worse than before. Seriously, if I switched on the TV and they were showing live footage of an army of fire-breathing pterodactyls machine-gunning people to death on the streets of London right outside my door, I’d be horrified, but not entirely surprised, nor any more scared than I already am. I’d probably just shrug and wait for them to smash the door down.

We’re so screwed, I don’t even know what to worry about first. Terrorist extremists? Yeah, they’re frightening – but what about those North Korean nukes? Or global warming, come to think of it? I need a personal bloody organiser to sort it out – a gizmo that’ll set me a “timetable of concern” just so I can break down my overall sense of creeping dread into manageable, bite-sized flurries of panic. Otherwise, I’m in danger of forgetting to worry about some things – like bird flu, for instance. I haven’t seriously crapped myself about that since, ooh, February? Whenever it was, a top-up’s long overdue.

I’m not the only one. I was reading a George Monbiot piece about climate change on the Guardian website the other day, and it painted such a bleak vision of our potential future, I swear I physically felt my will to live draining through the soles of my feet, as though it were being flushed out of me and replaced with a sort of heavy, porridge-like despair.

Below the article, in the comments section, a passer-by remarked, “I have two pieces of advice for anyone reading this: 1) Keep an overdose-sized supply of sleeping pills stashed away that is sufficient for yourself, your family and anyone else you care about. 2) When things start getting bad, use them.” And this was one of the cheerier entries.

Still, the news isn’t always violently upsetting. No. Sometimes the bad headlines turn out to be a false alarm – like the other day, when early reports of a second 9/11 happening RIGHT NOW turned out to be a comparatively minor accident involving a light aircraft. Can’t be much fun being one of the victims, of course – for one thing, you’ve just been killed, and for another, your death was announced by an anchorman mopping his brow, and drowned out by a worldwide sigh of relief – but for the rest of us, it was the closest we’ve come to hearing good news in ages.

With this in mind, perhaps news journalists everywhere would like to make our lives a little more bearable by running several deliberately petrifying and utterly fabricated stories a week, just so the genuine terrifying stuff feels a bit less terrifying by comparison. And at the end of the week, simply reveal which stories were true, and which were fake. That way, we’ll spend our last few years on Earth feeling like we’ve lived through a string of lucky escapes, rather than a protracted, dispiriting meltdown.

Start with the pterodactyl example. A week later, invent a health scare – some new hyper-contagious disease that makes your eyes boil and burst and run down your cheeks. The gorier the better. Then invent some bogus knuckle-whitening bullshit about a maniac on the Korean peninsula who’s got hold of a nuclear bomb and … Oh. Oh bugger.

- Charlie Brooker

Back from England. I did some stuff. some pics can be seen here. More pics are on another camera that is still in England. Lots of things were seen that are not in the photos. Windsor Castle, Bodium Castle, Guilford, Cobham, Woking, Leeds Castle, Dorking String Quartet Concert, Tate Museum, the Tower of London that we did not enter, the Milenium Bridge, London Bridge, Spitalfields Market, tea and crumpets, fresh baked bread, milk delivery people, super thin roads that have cars driving both directions at great speeds, ate banjos (aka: ralphs) with UT Hooligan, ate at pubs (the Barley Mow for example)………..

I was in a PC Game shop in Dundee today selling my old Tomb Raider stuff and we got around to developers and game designers as we chatted. Turns out that a lot of game design is done here in Dundee. Imagine my surprise when they said Grand Theft Auto was mostly designed here. We then talked about how they had created a London version so why not a Dundee version? Well it didnt take long before we concluded that it would have to be “Grand Theft Auto Dundee, Revenge of the Drug Zombies” which would be an instant hit but be banned as it would be too gruesome even for this twisted world…

And on a side chat we also decided that games consoles would be phased out as a lot of people are playing on their pc’s.

I watched the torture that is the suits voting for which city would host the 2012 games. Its down to London and Paris with the results revealed later today. I like the system.. its a good one but in the hands of the doddering crats it is excruciating to watch. Please folks.. pick a number and hit valid.. plz.. just do it !!!! Even Piffle, my hamster, (yes he’s still alive..) could do it. I watched people making loads of money by doing something easy made to look complicated..

G8 comments next up.. pull up a sandbag…

[Edit] London wins! Hurrah for us! And now the Tube blows up and its probably a good thing; get it sorted you have 7 years… no pressure..

Yet another [Edit] Ive just heard its terrorists..anyone else bored of people who only know how to kill to get what they want?

Nice to have you back as well UT!

I suppose everyone is wondering where the next terrorist atrocity will be. Hmm. My guess is Japan because if they hit London or Paris they will be in danger of…

1. Killing their members
2. Killing their families or
3. Killing their sponsors… never a good idea.

WR

Meanwhile in a non-military area (UK) we have yet another tv program to vote on. Restoration is all about saving an historical building from certain doom. We started out with 30 worthy candidates and are now down to just 10 and we have to vote for the one most worthy of our dosh. (If you are truly stuck vote for Poltimore House… its a time warp place and its not in London…)

I wonder how the vote in Sweden is going. Even if the Yes to Europe candidate is bumped off a sympathy vote is ridiculous. If somebody shot our Prime Minister I still wouldn’t vote for Labour…

The whole Yasser Arafat deal continues. Are we being prepared for something so it wont come as a shock when it does actually happen? And haven’t they really lost the element of surprise?

WR

I am still here, it’s just that I have got nothing to write about welllllll,

My parents tell me that immigrants are being moved up to their city so that they get taken off the streets of London. They are going into accomodation complete with gubbins (tv, microwave etc) and cash to boot. Of course the homeless British residents there are not happy…

Has my sweet little nation been so beaten by the few who control us we feel we just can’t complain anymore? That there is no point? And if you did go to a church for help all you would find was…….?

God hates tradition, He really does. He is the only one who can do the miraculous.

(Rosie (who is currently looking for a house) )