Eideard

A ”belligerent” clamper placed clamps on two unmarked police cars which were providing security for a visit by the Queen and refused to remove them despite an officer showing his warrant card, a trial heard.

Gareth Andrews, 39, of Fareham, Hampshire, denies a charge of wilfully obstructing a police constable in the execution of his duty.

Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court was told that the Queen had made an unannounced visit to Portsmouth, Hampshire, on Wednesday, May 25. Colin Shackel, prosecuting, said that Pc Mark Cox and a second officer, both in plain clothes, had parked their unmarked cars at the Gunwharf Quays marina retail complex that the monarch was visiting…

Mr Shackel said that the parking spaces allocated for the officers were temporarily being used by a delivery lorry so, after consulting security staff, they placed their vehicles in adjacent spaces, the court heard.

Mr Shackel said that one of the police officers had gone to consult colleagues and, while Pc Cox was talking to security staff, two clamping vehicles arrived. He described how Andrews and his colleagues then clamped the two vehicles, an Audi and a BMW, and he refused to remove them when confronted by Pc Cox.

The court heard that the two cars had been parked for about 15 minutes in the restricted spaces enforced by Shoal Enforcement.

Mr Shackel said: ”It’s not just a plain clothes officer speaking to the defendant, there’s uniformed security guards from Gunwharf, other officers arrived and identified themselves, even then Mr Andrews said he didn’t believe he was dealing with real police officers.

”By the time you have been shown a warrant card and security guards are involved, it would be clear to anyone that it was real officers who weren’t just trying to avoid a clamping charge and had duties to perform.”

Petty punks with a public service job – who think they are little tin gods – should be required to spend time training to be a thoughtful human being. Or at least thoughtful.

A senior minister has accidentally revealed a UK government briefing document “welcoming” the departure of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell was photographed clutching the note as he left No 10. It said the UK should “publicly and privately” approve Mr Karzai’s decision not to seek a third term in 2014.

In response, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the memo was “pretty low level”, adding “these things happen”.

These things happen – like clicking a link in a phishing email or giving your credit card info to someone who just rang you up from Nigeria.

Mr Mitchell was photographed leaving Downing Street following a meeting of the National Security Council – in which ministers discussed Libya, Afghanistan and a range of other issues.

The document says: “Note that Karzai has publicly stated his intention to step down at the end of his second term as per the constitution. This is very important. It improves Afghanistan’s political prospects very significantly. We should welcome Karzai’s announcement in private and in public…”

It goes on to say: “Afghan perceptions of violence are very important for their confidence in their future, and for their readiness to work for the Afghan government.

“Have we got the strategic communications on levels of violence right?…”

“They would have had a national security level marking of ‘restricted’ or ‘confidential’ if they contained anything of significant sensitivity,” a spokesman said.

Not that the Brits have the market cornered on incompetent security. Still, they should add another level of secure classification. In addition to Top Secret, Restricted or Confidential, they might consider Don’t Do Anything Stupid!

New laptops that boot up in 30 seconds? Too slow for me. Five seconds? Better. But what I want is a machine that is ready in about a second, just like my smartphone.

I’m fully aware that expressing any impatience with a computer’s boot time invites derision. When the entire globe is engulfed in an economic crisis, measuring the seconds required to start different computers may seem the most trivial of concerns.

Still, I’m not alone. Unhappiness with boot times, which commonly run from 45 seconds to 60 seconds, is shared by many computer users, as reflected in much online discussion of the issue.

I’ve come to believe that the unhappiness does not illustrate impatience. Rather, it reflects an important shift in computing, as we increasingly rely on our laptops not as machines that we use for long stretches at a time, but as machines for using the Internet, often and briefly, and not much else. We don’t tolerate, and have never tolerated, long wait times that are disproportionate to the activity that follows them. If we need to spend only a few seconds looking up something on the Web, it’s only natural that we want the preparatory time to be as close to zero as possible. It’s not impatience, just proportionality.

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