Safety first!

I watched a woman on the bus with what I presume where her two grandchildren. The younger of the two was a charming little girl, probably just under a year old, sitting up and smiling and interacting with the passengers on the bus. The grandmother didn't seem to know how to put a brake on the buggy. She held it precariously still by jamming her foot against a wheel. The child was strapped in around her waist. There were straps for her arms to go through but these were just dangling empty. I wanted to tell the grandmother that if the bus lurched there was a strong possibility that the buggy could be tipped over and the delightful child tipped out sideways onto her head. Of course I didn't do any such thing! The older child, by the way, probably four or five, had secured himself with the strap intended to hold wheelchairs safely on the bus.

Also, sitting in a cafe this morning, I watched an elderly person trundle past on a mobility scooter, laden with parcels. The scooter was being driven on the ROAD, amongst all the traffic. So people on bicycles feel they need and, indeed, have the right to travel on the pavement while someone on a mobility scooter rides on the road!! The cyclists usually go much faster than mobility scooter riders. And I'm pretty sure that riding in the midst of traffic exhaust fumes can't help whatever condition makes the rider need a mobility scooter in the first place.

The world is more than a little crazy.
JJ
A journalist declared that the white van is becoming the weapon of choice. This after yet another terrorist attack involving driving a vehicle into crowds of pedestrian. At least thirteen dead and a hundred injured in Barcelona. And then not long afterwards another similar attack in Cambrils, about sixty or seventy miles from Barcelona.

And President Trump is reported to have responded by tweeting and retelling an already discredited story of terrorists being executed with bullets dipped in pigs' blood. This is supposed to be a method of persuading the terrorists to desist?

However he has received criticism for not condemning strongly enough the driver (not a terrorist? someone prepared to copy terrorists though!) who drove his car into anti-republican protesters in Charlottesville. And I read this morning that a Democrat is taking steps to demand the impeachment of the president for just that failure to condemn the Charlottesville car driver. Where will that get to, I wonder!

On the good news front, Malalia Youzasfai has achieved the A grades she needed at A-Level to win her a place at Oxford. Life takes odd twists and turns at times. Had she not been shot for demanding an education, would she have ended up studying at Oxford?

Mind you, somehow, I think she might still have brought herself to the world's attention one way or another.