Lately things have been a bit rushed. That is no excuse but, when you rush, errors can accumulate. Two recent stories had errors. The first was a story that gave an interesting spike to the readership. You are always interested in what makes one story more interesting that others. The story was about the order for the F-35 fighter aircraft. The second error was minor and was in the story about the current human rights case against the Babel police.
The F-35 story was tongue in cheek anyway. When it was written, we had forgotten that two of the Canadian Forces Airbus A-310 jet aircraft had been configured as strategic air-to-air fuel stations for the F-18 fighters Canada now has deployed. This came to light when we found that six of the F-18s were sent to Italy to go to war with Gadhafi. The first question asked was how the heck did those planes fly across the Atlantic? The answer was they took their flying fuel stations with them.
The story was not all that wrong. To attack the southern United States with 65 F-35 jets would require something like 24 of those fuel carriers. It was a silly suggestion. How would our Prime Minister, Cabinet Members and the Governor General get around if all the VIP Airbus A-310s’ had to be deployed as gas stations? And there is nothing stealthy about an A-310 loaded with jet fuel.
At least people seemed to have a good laugh about it.
Nobody was laughing at the story about the Babel police human rights case and the idea of the Whitby police investigating the Babel police. Both are fictional. It occurred to us when we first heard it that Whitby is part of Durham Region. We should have taken the few minutes needed to check. The town is policed by the Durham Regional Police; the Whitby Detachment representing some 17 per cent of the Durham personnel.
Mind you, we are still puzzled as to why Durham coppers have been selected to do the investigation of what is going on in Babel.
We slapped our own wrist for those boo-boos.
Babel’s all-wise civic leaders might just have a chat sometime with Simcoe County’s civic leaders. There were serious concerns about mounting policing costs at Monday evening’s Babel council meeting. There just might be an interesting case made to examine whether it would be cost efficient to have a county-based police force instead of the mix of services the county has today.
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