boredom - is it bad?

[Greta]

Boredom in itself isn't always fun but having the opportunity to be bored is a wonderful thing! A lot of animals in the wild wouldn't mind the chance to be bored, as opposed to keeping an eye out for predators 24/7.

[Obvious Leo]

Boredom in itself isn't always fun but having the opportunity to be bored is a wonderful thing! A lot of animals in the wild wouldn't mind the chance to be bored, as opposed to keeping an eye out for predators 24/7.

Like Bob the Baptist. Life's never dull when the world's full of arseholes who are just out to get you.

[Skip]

We didn't. (Actually, the moon landing wasn't broadcast at all behind the iron curtain. Some newspaper stories, days later said: The US claims to have, etc.) They always knew, just as we always knew what they were lying about, but there is a pact of mutual denial among spy agencies.
Haven't you been watching MI5?

[Hobbes' Choice]

Don't worry I sent them there to keep a look out for Bob the Baptist who is sworn to kill us all.

He won't get in the country with his guns but if the dog lets him through the gate I'll give him a beer and try and talk some sense into him. Do you reckon that might be a waste of time?

Speaking about dogs, it seems Jonny Depp tried to smuggle Bob into Oz in a dog cage - hence the men in the black van.

[Obvious Leo]

Speaking about dogs, it seems Jonny Depp tried to smuggle Bob into Oz in a dog cage - hence the men in the black van.

The Johnny Depp incident created quite a stir in the media for a little while. It seems to have been completely beyond his grasp that in this country even Hollywood celebrities are answerable to the law of the land. He was suitably outraged at not being treated with the reverence which he felt he deserved but to his credit he soon got over it and apologised for his arrogant contempt for our highly important quarantine restrictions. When you live on an island you tend to take biology pretty seriously so naturally Bob would need to spend some time in a decontamination facility before he could be let loose into our fragile ecosystem.

Perhaps if I went out and explained all this to the blokes in the black van they might piss off and scare the crap out of some other poor bastard. Unfortunately they don't look very friendly and even the dog isn't game to go near them.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Speaking about dogs, it seems Jonny Depp tried to smuggle Bob into Oz in a dog cage - hence the men in the black van.

The Johnny Depp incident created quite a stir in the media for a little while. It seems to have been completely beyond his grasp that in this country even Hollywood celebrities are answerable to the law of the land. He was suitably outraged at not being treated with the reverence which he felt he deserved but to his credit he soon got over it and apologised for his arrogant contempt for our highly important quarantine restrictions. When you live on an island you tend to take biology pretty seriously so naturally Bob would need to spend some time in a decontamination facility before he could be let loose into our fragile ecosystem.

Perhaps if I went out and explained all this to the blokes in the black van they might piss off and scare the crap out of some other poor bastard. Unfortunately they don't look very friendly and even the dog isn't game to go near them.

1) Was Depp an arrogant p**** to ignore the law, yes.
2) Is that law that prevents a domestic dig entering OZ a cock of shit, yes.

Oz has more to fear from the possible pathogens carried by Depp himself, than his little lap-dogs.

[Obvious Leo]

Hobbes. There is no law which prevents a domestic dog from entering this country. There are simply quarantine protocols which must be observed in order to so legally. The same applies to all living tissue except for that which is constituted within a human being. This particular variety of organic matter is deemed to be too logistically difficult to exercise biological control over.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Hobbes. There is no law which prevents a domestic dog from entering this country. There are simply quarantine protocols which must be observed in order to so legally. The same applies to all living tissue except for that which is constituted within a human being. This particular variety of organic matter is deemed to be too logistically difficult to exercise biological control over.

Would a domestic dig have to wait quarentine, or is a examination and certification enough?

[Obvious Leo]

Hobbes. There is no law which prevents a domestic dog from entering this country. There are simply quarantine protocols which must be observed in order to so legally. The same applies to all living tissue except for that which is constituted within a human being. This particular variety of organic matter is deemed to be too logistically difficult to exercise biological control over.

Would a domestic dig have to wait quarentine, or is a examination and certification enough?

I'm not sure of the details but I think a veterinary examination and certification that the dog has been suitably vaccinated is enough in most cases. However this may depend on which canine diseases are of concern in the country of origin, in which case a period of restrictive quarantine may be required. This is certainly the case with horses, which are brought here all the time to win our most lucrative races. In any event it strikes me as ignorant beyond comprehension that somebody would simply assume that livestock of any sort could be transported across an international border without observing any sort of biological safety protocols. I know as a certainty that no plant material can be legally brought into this country, even from New Zealand, without adhering to quite rigorous safeguards and I'm completely in support of this restriction.

I completely understand how similar restrictions would be impossible in Europe but neither are the potential risks comparable.

[Skip]

Travelling with pets between Canada and the US, all you need is a certificate of standard vaccinations. It would be useless to try quarantines, since wild animals migrate freely across the border, carrying whatever their fleas and ticks are carrying. This also means that immunities and resistance are developed evenly over the continent: you get the benefits as well as the dangers.
Nevertheless, they regulate the importation of plants and seeds: a mutant or virus from Florida wouldn't make it naturally to British Columbia, but a tourist can fly it in and ruin the whole next year's crop of strawberries.
I suppose the same conditions apply to continental Europe.

Island nations do have to make different arrangements, since nothing travels through their borders naturally... though it did seem a bit extreme for England to keep French dogs in quarantine for six months, many years after canine rabies had been eliminated on the continent; that was just stick-in-the-mudness.

[Obvious Leo]

Skip. A neat summary of the different issues to be considered when speaking of the effectiveness of quarantine regulations which need to be applied to island nations and those countries which share land borders. Not only are there limits to what is pragmatic and possible there is also a considerable difference in what is actually necessary. There's no such thing as a perfect safeguard so by and large such decisions are generally made according to the level of risk associated with a possible biological pathogen. No doubt there will be occasions when the rules are an over-reaction to a minor hazard, just as there will be occasions when they are an under-reaction to a major one. Biology is not an exact science.

[Hobbes' Choice]

There was for decades a proscription on the traffic of dogs into the UK. This was due to an hysteria about an almost non existent threat of rabies, which was recently lifted. Any domestic cat or dog was doomed to suffer six months in a cage for quarantine purposes.

http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2012/08 ... the-1970s/

[Obvious Leo]

There was for decades a proscription on the traffic of dogs into the UK. This was due to an hysteria about an almost non existent threat of rabies, which was recently lifted. Any domestic cat or dog was doomed to suffer six months in a cage for quarantine purposes.

http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2012/08 ... the-1970s/

I knew about this proscription from long ago but I had no idea that it went on for so long. Being the natural cynic that I am I can only conclude that this policy must have been a good earner for somebody.

[Hobbes' Choice]

There was for decades a proscription on the traffic of dogs into the UK. This was due to an hysteria about an almost non existent threat of rabies, which was recently lifted. Any domestic cat or dog was doomed to suffer six months in a cage for quarantine purposes.

http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2012/08 ... the-1970s/

I knew about this proscription from long ago but I had no idea that it went on for so long. Being the natural cynic that I am I can only conclude that this policy must have been a good earner for somebody.

I think it had more to do with initial hysteria - Rabies is an ugly and evil killer - caused by one or two outbreaks in the countryside that shocked the nation with the media coverage. armed with the British xenophobia of greasy Europtypes, the ban was easy enough to introduce through 'gesture politics', hanging tuff!
Then the sluggish inertia of government, the proscription went on and on with no one taking the courage to end the ban, until long after it was deemed idiotic.

[Obvious Leo]

Very likely right, I'd say. In general when we need to choose between a fuck-up and a conspiracy it's best to go for the fuck-up every time.