Christmas poll

I hope that you all had nice Christmases if you do Christmas. I quite enjoyed myself. I got to play my new version of Trivial Pursuit (deluxe, where you have an "abbot" that goes round the edge and gets you new skills, and different levels of difficulty for each question), and Bananagrams, which rocks. I am now back in Lancaster being a bit ill and enjoying my Christmas presents. Also I bought a hat.

For people who also do Christmas in the present getting sense:

[Poll #1113612]

I do realise that this poll doesn't allow for people not having had stockings. This is as it should be. I don't want to know of such deprivations.

silly wimminz, guns are for boys!

There's been a news story in England about a police officer being shot, though not fatally. This is obviously pretty nasty,

However, I am angry with the press coverage of the incident, and especially the reported comments of Lancashire's Acting Assistant Chief Constable, Jerry Graham. Yahoo! (I check my mail there, I don't rely on them for news, thankfully) quote him as saying:

"It troubles me greatly that at a close confrontation level, someone is shooting not only a police officer but a female one who was clearly identified."

What the fuck? Why on earth would he think that shooting a female police officer is worse than a male one? Is it interfering with their strategy of throwing women at (male, of course) criminals and hoping that their famous chivalrous instincts kick in and they put down their weapons to catch her? That's probably the only way in which the quote makes the vaguest sense.

The BBC don't quote this in their (shorter) story, but have headlined it "Armed robber blasts woman officer". In a follow-up story, "Arrest after woman officer shot", they end with this:

Pc Johnson is the latest female officer to have been shot while on duty.

In November 2005, Sharon Beshenivsky, 38, was shot dead as she tried to stop an armed robbery on a travel agency in Bradford.

Three months later, trainee officer Rachael Bown needed emergency surgery after being shot in the abdomen while attempting to apprehend a suspected burglar in Nottingham.

Women just aren't cut out for police work, poor lambs, as they aren't equipped with a penis with which to deflect bullets. Seriously, what on earth is the point of that? To imply that only women get shot? Or that when men get shot it doesn't really matter? Unfortunately, the answer is fairly obviously that the point is to reinforce the idea that real police officers are men.