AUSTRALIA paints itself as a pretty liberal place, but it was shown to be a police state akin to Nazi Germany this week as a Northern Territory man who filmed himself wanking at the wheel of his drug-laden car while driving at 150km/h ended up in court.
Brendon Alan Erhardt’s perfectly reasonable claim his act was “not dangerous” as the “only person he could hurt was himself” was rejected for some bizarre reason and Darwin Magistrates Court unbelievably went through with the prosecution.
After stopping him for speeding, police noticed he was “visibly agitated” and a search of his Holden SV6 revealed 4.96kg of cannabis hidden in a blue esky in the boot, two cannabis plants on the back seat, two drug pipes and a loaded .22 rifle.
What’s wrong with that you cry? Especially when you hear the perfectly reasonable explanation that he “found” the drugs at a rest stop 100km from Coober Pedy and intended to smoke all $250,000 of it at his Noonamah home. He claimed he’d used the rifle to shoot “kangaroos from the vehicle whilst driving north”.
Fair enough. From personal experience the last thing you want when you are trying to film yourself bashing one out at 150km/h on the highway is to collide with a kangeroo.
Why he was banned from driving and bailed on charges of being a drug courier we will never be able to understand.
CHRIST is there nothing you can do in this country without the police getting all righteous on your ass? The busy-body boys in blue are now on the hunt for a man accused of breaking into a sex shop and romping with three different blow up dolls.
The intruder blew the dolls up, had his way with three members of the Jungle Jane range, then dumped them in a nearby alley.
“It’s totally bizarre. It’s a real concern that someone like that is out on the street,” said an owner of the adult sex shop in Cairns.
It’s not the first time someone known as Jungle has been robbed, blown and dumped in an alley, but our therapists have told us to move on from that sorry episode back in 1998.
HOWEVER, it’s not just Down Under that people are stopped from having fun by the law, as police stopped two Germans from eloping to Africa on New Year’s Day to get married.
But we can sort of understand their reasoning, the couple were five and six years old respectively.
The childhood sweethearts “were determined to tie the knot under the African sun after seeing a nature documentary together”, said a police spokesman in Hanover.
Mika and Anna-Lena hatched the plan for the destination wedding as their families celebrated New Year’s Eve together.
The following morning, as their parents slept, the two, accompanied by the would-be bride’s seven-year-old sister, packed their bags with swimming costumes and sunglasses and set off for the airport.
As the first dawn of 2009 broke, they left their house in the suburbs of Hanover and walked two-thirds of a mile up the road to a tram stop, where they caught a tram to the central station.
But their plan fell apart as they waited for a train to the airport. A spoilsport guard, obviously a bitter divorcee, concerned to see the three young children waiting on their own called the police.
Two officers then managed to convince the trio that they would struggle to get to Africa without money or a plane ticket.
Cher, Chrissie Hynde, Neneh Cherry and Eric Clapton obviously never released Love Can Build A Bridge in Germany then.
GERMAN police have even taken to threatening law abiding citizens with arrest for the crime of seeking help with a crossword.
For some reason the angry officer in Grevenbroich who answered the 999 call didn’t take too kindly to being asked the answer to five down, and spelled out that clueless caller Petra Hirsch would be facing a charge of wasting police time if she didn’t clear the line.
Hirsch said: “I had finished the crossword except for this one answer and I was totally stumped. I had looked all over the internet and asked friends. It was really bothering me.
“The clue was for the full name of a police border protection unit so I thought they would not mind helping and I called the hotline – but they were really rude. All I wanted was a bit of help and it would only have taken them a second to tell me the answer but instead I got told to get off the line.”
A police spokesman said: “It is called an emergency number for a reason – to deal with emergencies. Crossword solutions
are not an emergency.”
So, in summary, they exchanged cross words over crosswords.
AMID all this police brutality there was one feel good story this week as a 31-stone German, stranded for a week after breaking a leg falling out of bed, was saved by his mates from the pub.
Ulrich Beike was too heavy to pull himself off the floor and lay there helpless for seven days, unable to even reach the phone.
But regulars at his local in Mannheim realised he hadn’t turned up for their usual weekly binge and headed to his flat.
The good news is that his leg is recovering well, and the fat bastard probably lost about a stone in the process.
