When Crime Might Pay -

Or It Might Not
For yes, I have been pondering on exactly how a world run by crime lords would function in real life, and I have to say it's a lot more problematic than you might think.  For practical reasons, you'd have to have an established planetary government, because trying to take over dozens if not hundreds of separate national governments would be a logistical nightmare.  I suppose the most famous example, and the one that got me thinking along these lines, is Tatooine, Luke Skywalker's old home planet.  Art?

Pretty bleak

     Now, on such a world you can't have an absence of law and order, or you'd just get utter anarchy and your profits would drop, which is a Bad Thing.  So you'd have a kind of police force, just not one that's the same as a normal police force.  For a start, drugs, pornography, prostitution and gambling are all now perfectly legal, having first been decriminalised; so any kind of police agency responsible for investigating vice or narcotics is long gone.  Big budget savings!

Mos Eisley: note absence of police

     Secondly, your attitude to crime is a rather lax one; you don't care if there are armed robberies, burglaries, large scale insurance frauds and similar crimes, because the money is going to go back into circulation anyway.  HOWEVER! if these crimes are committed by those outside your own criminal empire, you expect a 10% cut of the profits, or that strange police force will come gunning for them.
     Another thing you won't tolerate is violence against the person; you want your worker minions to keep living in order to make you money, which they can't do if they're dead or injured.  So those armed robberies had better not spill blood, or the police and your own people will be on the hunt.

Raffles - your robbery role model

     There is more to this subject, but I hope what I've written already goes to show that being a crime lord and running a planet is not quite the easy gig you imagined.
     Now, time to put the motley in a canoe and parachute it over the middle of the North Sea!*

A Racy Anecdote
No!  Get your base minds out of the septic sump they simmer in, this is nothing naughty because BOOJUM! is eminently safe for children to read.**
     I refer, of course, to motor cars and the sporty practice of whizzing them around at high speed for the delectation of an audience, both at a racetrack and on television.

CAUTION!  Do not try this at home.
(Nor in your car, either)

     Yes - I refer to James Garner, he of "The Rockford Files".  He did all his own driving stunts on the show, many of which were quite hairy to an observer, and one particular trick became known as "Doing a Rockford" (see above).  He was, by all accounts, an outstanding driver who could have turned professional, and one of his great joys was racing against Steve McQueen in their Mini Coopers.  Art?

At 6'2" I'm not sure how he managed to fit in one

"Abimelech"
Apologies for once again subjecting you to the mental flotsam that drifts ashore on the beaches of my consciousness - I say, that's frightfully poetic, isn't it?  However, since I hate all poetry - Apologies for dredging up a load of Who Knows What.
     This is one of those words that just pop up from time to time, making me search them out.  Art?

Totally rocking the 'Hairy and Hatty" look

     He turns out to be one of the kings of ancient Israel, and he was a right one and no mistake - he killed seventy of his brothers in order to be last man standing and inherit the crown.  Fractious to a point, he was always waging war - hey, everyone's entitled to a hobby! - and in a bitter irony had his brains bashed in by a stone hurled from a tower under siege, and said stone was hurled by a woman.***
Finally -
I am reading through the Observer's Basic Book of Aircraft, and came across a strange aerial item titled the "Fairey Gannet".  Art?

The wings are folded for storage - it doesn't fly like that!

     Fairey, incidentally, are responsible for the utterly disastrous flying coffin known as the "Fairey Battle" - which is another story entirely.
     Anyway, the Gannet was intended to serve aboard aircraft carriers, as an anti-submarine aircraft, stooging around for hours on end, looking for Sinister subs sneaking slyly in the Skaggerak.  Or something like that.

And with that, we are done.  Done!


*  Don't worry, motley's are very bouyant.
**  What they make of it is another matter altogether.
***  We refer you to yesterday's post "Getting Stoned"