The DUD strikes back

On the day: 

28/08/2012 

On the way: 

There are machines at the corner of the road, a plume of smoke, a rattling sound of iron battering the surface. It can mean only one thing - the Department of Urban Disruption. 

Men at work, three of them, always in threes (usually) a bit like Sith lords. Except that with Sith lords there are always two, and they tend towards a more menacing end of the sartorial spectrum than dayglo when it comes to getting dressed in the morning. 

You don't see Vader swaggering through the blasted portal into the mayhem of the captured rebel blockade runner Tantive IV - the twisted bodies, the torn metal - and instructing his minions to bring him the princess alive, with his cybernetically reconstructed belly hanging out over bright orange overalls stripped to the waist and tied off by the arms. And that wheezing - less creepy with a white plastic helmet perched on top of his fleshy, bloated head. 

Round the corner they stand, Darth Loiter, Darth Slouch and Darth In't Bovvered. 

One has his hands in the pockets of his lumo-lime green overalls. Another is taking the weight off and transferring it to one of the posts that supports the cage that holds the hard-labouring droid bashing resolutely at the unresponsive road. And the third holds forth from his seat on some resident's garden wall: "Sa'ah fought I migh' as well go back to work." 

Admirable as his evident dedication to his cause may be, it pales in comparison to that of, say, Maul in his energetic and acrobatic efforts to bag himself Jedi scalps. 

Then again, with a work ethic like that, they're unlikely to blow up Alderaan. 

On the pod: 

Mediterranean - Duran Duran 

On the front page: 

NHS scorecards to keep doctors up to the mark (The Times)

On the subject: http://andhisthoughtsarefullofstrangers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/agents-of-entropy.html