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This first item is not
from the papers, but I thought I would include it here.
Walking through the local town today I saw some
"Roadwork's" in the "Pedestrianised"
square. Dutifully the workmen had put up some signs
warning people to be careful, one of which read, "
Warning Pothole Patching in Progress." The only
point I would like to make was the sign was by a hole
where the road/pavement had given way due to a collapsed
water system containing an underground brook. The hole
to be "Patched" was about 40 feet by 10 feet
and 5 or 6 feet deep! Some "Pothole!"
 This
item is not really silly, but is more than a little mind
blowing if you are into computers. IBM has just
announced that it has developed new technology that will
make it possible to store 100 times more songs on an MP3
player using tiny magnetised tracks of material. However
some Glasgow chemists have gone just that little bit
further and developed a tiny molecular switch that will
give memory devices 100,000 their current density.
Silicon chips made up of transistors, have a limit on
just how small they can be made, because at microscopic
sizes the silicon will react with oxygen and decompose.
This limit is believed to be 10 nanometres (A human hair
is 100,000 nanometres across) However, scientists have
just made a truly nano sized transistor that is made of
only 10 atoms of carbon. This special material called
graphene has natural super-conducting properties as
well. The University of Utah is
experimenting with far infrared light to drive super
fast computers instead of electricity. Terahertz
radiation is the name given to this unexploited part of
electromagnetic spectrum. Star Trek here we come!
A church that
survived being bombed in the second world war may have
to be closed because of an attack by woodpeckers. The
1,000 year old Grade One Listed wooden spire has so many
holes in it made by dozens of woodpeckers it is in need
of about £30,000 worth of repairs. The male Great
Spotted Woodpeckers make the holes for nests to attract
a mate and unfortunately the holes then let in water and
insects that cause further damage.
It could only happen
in America. A suspect motorist was stopped for driving
erratically and when officers approached the car they
shone their torches into it and saw a real 6 Foot
alligator lying across the back shelf. The officers
decided to call in animal experts who removed the
alligator and then they arrested the driver who was
wanted for burglary.
 The
medical records in Wales have thrown up a slight
discrepancy because according to the number of patients
registered with GP's there are 3 million people living
there but the official population is only 2.9 million.
There are no prescription charges in Wales and it is
thought that English people living near the border are
registering to avoid charges.
A new type of
piracy. It is said that some coaches carrying foreigners
in Thailand are being looted by a new method. The smart,
modern coaches have air conditioning which is used to
pump sleeping gas throughout the coach. After the
passengers are sound asleep their valuables are stolen
and the people are then left stranded by the side of the
road.
Nearly 200 heroin
addicts have received £4,000 each compensation because
their human rights were infringed. They were forced to
go cold turkey (ie cured of their drug addiction) in
prison instead of being supplied with methadone at a
cost of nearly £15,000 a course.
Con men tried to
sell the Ritz Hotel to a businessman and actually got £1
million as a deposit for the deal out of an investor.
The two con men who were both unemployed lived the high
life on the proceeds before the fraud came to light.
A U.S. marine
recently had his appendix removed through his mouth. The
operation was performed by using a flexible tube and
then threading miniature instruments and cameras down it
into his stomach where a small incision was made in the
wall to allow the appendix to be cut, bagged and
removed. Incredibly the experimental operation cuts the
risk of a hernia, infections and also prevents scarring.
The patients recover time is far quicker as well.
After an all night
party two men stripped off and dived into the sea near
Folkstone to play with a female dolphin last year. They
said it was an amazing experience and said that the
dolphin seemed to be enjoying herself. If she hadn't she
could have simply swum away, but under the Wildlife and
Countryside Act of 1981 the two men were prosecuted, for
interfering with a dolphin, at a cost of £20,000 and
sentenced to 120 hours of community service.
 A
60 year old man made the mistake of his life by leaving
a violin on the train. The violin had just been valued
at £180,000 in London and the man was traveling back
home whilst trying not to attract attention to the
violin he was transporting. The 310 year old historic
violin had been placed in the luggage rack above the
mans head and when he got off the train with his
suitcase and coat he simply forgot it. A £10,00 reward
has been offered for its return, but after much
searching of trains by railway staff there is no sign of
it.
A 93 year old man
had his first accident after 76 years, and some half a
million miles, of blemish free driving in his life, but
as they say if you are going to do something you might
as well do it properly. The mans £600 Ford Fiesta
wrecked two Porsches causing £60,000 of damage outside
a showroom next to his home. After the accident the
retired church minister was found hanging upside down by
his seatbelt without a scratch on him.
Illegal Immigrants
wanting to come into this country will succeed in their
entry attempts best if they enter the country on the
weekends in the future, because the new UK Border
Agency’s Customs and Immigration Staff will not be
allowed to work on weekends. Although the force will
contain 25,000 officers there is a shortage of funds
before it even starts operating. The cash shortage is so
great that weekend staffing levels have been cut with no
overtime being permitted. This means that only a
skeleton service with can operate on weekends with no
pro-active action being taken to stop illegal
immigrants.
 A
burglar who had been convicted and given a 3 ½ year
sentence in prison was forced to use a chamber pot in
his cell at nights and he is claiming £50,000 in
compensation for the breach of his Human Rights under
the European Convention saying, that having to use a
plastic chamber pot was inhuman and degrading.
People might laugh
at the fact that a man died of a heart attack while
visiting two prostitutes, specially when they are told
that the ladies were stimulating the man with ecstasy
and an electric shock device, but the mans wife is suing
the ladies for £1 million in courts in Amsterdam.
The Earl Of
Spencer’s teenage daughter had two tickets to go to
Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge football ground to watch a
match. Unfortunately the taxi taking her and her friend
there went to the wrong Stamford Bridge due to his Sat
Nav device which sent them to the village of Stamford
Bridge in Yorkshire some 229 miles from their
destination. A spokesman said there had been no charge
for the taxi fare.
Two men crashed
their car and left the scene of the accident, but police
had no problem identifying them. Passers-by had helped
release the tycoon businessman and his passenger from
the burning car but they had fled before police arrived
at the scene. The passenger had been dressed as Superman
with the driver dressed in Roman fancy dress, in red
tunic, breastplate armour, skirt, sandals and had his
face blacked up. Also, his hair had been singed by the
fire in the car and his face further blackened with
smoke.
 After
a ruling last year by the High Court, stating that the
sex discrimination laws were not strong enough, Miss
Harriet Harmon has pushed through new regulations
concerning sexual harassment. The rules now mean that as
from Sunday any female member of bar staff who is called
"Love" or "Darling" by male
customers can sue the owner/manager for not preventing
the sexual harassment. Even customers telling sexual
jokes in the pub could result in a member of bar staff
suing the Landlord. I wonder if it works the other way
when an old female harridan behind the bar says to an
innocent young lad "There you go my love," as
she hands him his change and embarrasses him in front of
his mates?
Prince al-Walid bin Talal
has plans to have constructed the tallest skyscraper in
the world. If it goes to plan, at 5,200 feet the £5
Billion tower will be about twice as high as anything
currently built or even under construction. The tower is
going to be built in a new city near the Red Sea port of
Jeddah in the Middle East. It is so high that
helicopters will be used during construction for much of
the lifting. The Dubai Tower was expected to be the
tallest building in the World and is still being built,
but at only 2,300 feet will be less than half the height
of this new skyscraper. (Canary Wharf is a mere 773
Feet.)
The latest idea to help
people to become taller is slightly bizarre to say the
least. Women have had silicone breast implants to make
their breasts look bigger for many years and now a
surgeon has come up with the idea of putting silicone
implants onto the top of peoples skulls between the
skull and the scalp. This will increase their height by
up to 2 inches which seems a ridiculous length to go to
to make yourself taller, but there is interest in the
technique as one woman was able to get a job as an
airline stewardess that she had always dreamed of. Other
jobs sometimes require people to be certain heights and
this may be the solution for some people. The operations
are only being carried out at a clinic in Madrid at the
moment, but who knows, perhaps the idea will catch on as
the only other permanent way of making people taller by
operation involves very complicated and unpleasant
surgery on the legs to lengthen them.
 In
these days when even major airlines are starting to push
green issues it is amazing that one cut price airline
has just put on extra flights to Dublin in order to meet
it's quota for passengers using it's planes. The flights
were scheduled to carry extra passengers before the
deadline on Monday and if they met their targets the
airline would receive a £280,000 rebate. The really
crazy thing is that in order to meet their targets for
passenger numbers the airline actually advertised for
film and TV Extras who would travel backwards and
forwards to Dublin all day and be paid £82 per day to
fill the seats!
The latest cooker from
Electrolux priced at about £1,000 is supposed to take
all the guesswork out of cooking. The intelligent oven
will cook your roast beef to perfection without any
complicated settings or indeed even regular inspection
to see if it is cooked. All you have to do is put in the
joint and select rare, medium, or well done and leave
the rest to the oven. It does not matter if it is
frozen, large or small because sensors in the cooker
will regulate the cooking to perfection. The automatic
self regulating cooker will supposedly cook all manner
of things including eternally difficult items such as
soufflés.
Drug dealers have
traditionally chosen fast cars to run their drugs in so
that they can escape police pursuits, but no more it
seems. Police say that dealers are now adopting disabled
mobility scooters to carry their drugs. Apparently they
are better at making an escape in heavy traffic in built
up areas as they are so small and can also drive on the
pavements. With number plate recognition systems being
installed in towns all over the place there is another
advantage because the scooters don't have number plates
and so, are more difficult to identify. Sometimes the
crooks give themselves away though by adding "Bling"
to their scooters in the form of lots of mirrors, loud
fancy horns, fancy paint jobs, etc.
 After
a year long campaign by the Topless Front in Copenhagen,
ladies will be allowed to bathe topless in public
swimming pools in future. During the campaign protesters
staged several full frontal nude marches and a
spokeswoman said that the ladies want to be able to take
off their shirts at football matches the same as men do.
In Copenhagen yesterday the city's Culture and Leisure
Committee voted overwhelmingly to allow topless bathing.
The only real objection came from the city's Life Guards
who said they did not know what to hold when rescuing
lady swimmers who got into difficulty!
A new Police Station in
Grantham that only opened in November is undergoing
redecoration. Part of the reason given is because the
arrows, painted on the ceilings of the prison cells,
that are supposed to point to Mecca so that Muslim
prisoners can face the right way when they pray, are
facing the wrong direction.
A middle aged couple had
the misfortune to get their million pound house flooded
some months ago and during the renovation workmen went
to clear a blocked drain that had been part of the
problem. In the process of clearing the flooded area
round the drain a pair of newts were discovered. The
Council immediately stopped any further work as newts
are a protected species and the couple were told the
newts could not be moved until after June when the
breeding season was over. It is unlikely that the newts
were there before the flooding, but that does not matter
to the do-gooders and the renovation work on the house
has had to be halted until after June at the earliest.
Even then it could be some time before the unlucky
couple can move back in.
 Banks
are generally thought of as being fairly well protected
with security systems and kept locked up tight to
prevent robbers running off with all their money,
however, a 5 year old boy was out with his mum and dad
who were using the cash-point, when he wondered off for
a little exploration. After exploring he went back and
told his dad that the bank was open. Being a weekend his
dad did not believe him until the lad led him inside the
unlocked bank and up to the safe. Fortunately the staff
at the bank had locked up the safe at closing time the
previous Friday afternoon, but someone had forgotten to
lock the door to the branch of the H.S.B.C. The
surprised man said that there was thousands of pounds
worth of computers and equipment just lying around for
anybody to pick up and no alarms went off while he and
his son wondered round exploring. When the man phoned
the police to advise them that the bank was unlocked
they said that they had received no other notification
from silent alarms, so it seems that someone forgot to
turn on the alarms as well when they forgot to lock up
the bank.
A study was conducted in
Holland on long term health care costs and it came to
some rather silly conclusions. The research reported
that over the course of a persons life, slim relatively
healthy individuals were more of an expense to the
medical system than either heavy smokers or people that
were clinically obese. The reason given was simply that
healthy people live much longer into old age and that
brings a high proportion of healthcare problems, the
longer they live the more the need for healthcare.
Unhealthy young people simply die so young that
they don't reach old age and the problems that it
brings, so although their lives may be very short they
only need care for a few years until they die early!
Talk about crazy logic!
 A
21 year old heroin addict who had 8 convictions for
break-ins, broke into a football club and was in such a
state that he phoned the police and asked them to come
and arrest him. Unfortunately they said they were too
busy to spare the time to arrest him, so two hours later
he broke into the nearby conservative club causing £2,500
worth of damage. This time another drunken man, believed
to be the addict's accomplice phoned the police and had
more success as the police duly arrived and arrested the
pair. If at first you fail try again!
A controversial new
prison policy which comes into force in April will mean
that prisoners who have been convicted of rape and
murder will be locked in their cells in the afternoon on
a Friday instead of being locked up later at night. The
idea is to cut costs because less staff will be needed.
The prisoners would normally have to be supervised in
the afternoons while they carry out work on mail bags
etc. The prisoners would have been paid for this work,
so to prevent upsetting the murderers and rapists the
government is going to pay the prisoners what they would
have earned if they had been able to work!
 A
new type of vasectomy may become available shortly,
after undergoing further trials. The revolutionary
method involves inserting tiny valves the size of a
grain of rice into the sperm carrying tubes in a man.
The valves are so small that they can be inserted by an
injection so there is no need for a painful operation
and they are made from silicon to prevent rejection by
the body. The valves can be opened and closed by a
transmitter built into something like a car key fob and
would be coded in the same way to prevent two fobs from
giving the same identification signal. Before sex the
man could open or close the valves at the press of a
button on his fob depending whether he wants to release
sperm or not to get the lady pregnant. Everything is
radio controlled at the push of a button these days!
Blackpool is famed
for it's dance halls and one particular beautiful
Parquet wooden dance floor has been used for over 30
years without any accidents, but is now being covered
with carpet because the Health and Safety inspectors in
Blackpool have been at it again. They have decreed that
all the dance floors in 16 community centres should be
carpeted over, in case the dance groups that meet there
regularly, might slip and hurt themselves on the hard
wooden floors! A friend of mine said "What are
they going to do about the slippery ice skating rinks,
are they going to grit them?"
A traditional
pancake race in the Cathedral City of Ripon in North
Yorkshire on Shrove Tuesday, has been halted because the
risks of someone hurting themselves while running with
pancakes meant that insurance fees to cover the event
were too high.
New guidelines have
been draw up, by the homosexual pressure group Stonewall
on behalf of the government, for classrooms and
surprise, surprise, they have suggested that teachers
and pupils should stop using the words "Mum"
and "Dad" in case they offend pupils from
single sex families! Teachers should also stop telling
boys to be a "Man" when they are upset, or
from saying a group of lads are like "A bunch of
old women."
The department of
Works and Pensions have new rules concerning payments
for certain religious groups where men have more than
one wife in this country. Claimants are permitted to
claim additional payments of £33.65 each for up to 3
more wives, over and above the normal one. The fact that
it is illegal in this country under English law to have
more than one wife seems to have escaped them!
Laura Pye recently
became Britain’s youngest ever female councillor at 18
years old and this weekend has made the news for all the
wrong reasons. She made a photo album of her antics in
pubs and clubs which has been posted on the networking
web-site called Facebook. As you can see the pictures
are a little over the top, but only what we have come to
expect from a lot of our drunken teenagers. She is quite
open about her behaviour and says she is entitled to her
fun just like any other 19 year old. But, should
councillors, however old, really be seen cavorting about
semi-paralytic, in bra and knickers dancing around a
pole in a club in Henley, Oxfordshire?
   
The internet seems
to be invading all aspects of modern life even where
infidelity is concerned. People have advertised for
lovers on the net for some time, but one American Lady
went to new extremes and advertised for a Hit Man to
bump off her lovers wife. She used the American
networking site called Craigslist and asked for someone
to perform a “Freelance” job. The hired
“Assassin” would be paid £13,000 for the job. The
F.B.I. were advised of the advert and Linscott from
Grand Rapids, Michigan was arrested.
  A
play area designed specifically for pensioners has been
designed and built at a cost of £15,000 on the Dam Head
Estate in Blackley in a park in north Manchester. The
equipment is intended to give older people the important
type of gentle exercise that they need to strengthen
their failing joints and muscles. It was tested by local
residents over the age of 70 and houses 6 pieces of
"Kit" next to the under fives play area. one
resident said "it was great fun" and
"that you're never too old to play." Will
there be an age restriction on it as there is with
children's play areas? Equipment not to be played with
by people under 65 Years old, perhaps?
 Martin
Brook was morbidly obese and had a serious problem with
type 2 diabetes which is often associated with being
excessively overweight. To try and alleviate his weight
problems and force him to lose weight he had a gastric
bypass. This operation reduces the size of the stomach
and also bypasses part of the intestines. The net result
is that the patient is forced to eat less and absorbs
fewer calories of what they do eat. The weight loss
takes time to happen, but Martin who had been on 130
units of insulin a day found that the next day he only
needed 15 units. Then he was able to take tablets to
control his condition and after 3 weeks stopped all
medication. He was in effect cured of diabetes
altogether. Doctors admit that they don’t really
understand the reasons why it happens, but believe the
operation somehow resets the metabolism and kick starts
the Pancreas into producing more Insulin. The effect has
been recorded before, but doctors say the operation is
so serious and has so many potential problems that it is
not used as a treatment for the problem of type 2
diabetes.
A magnetic hip
replacement is undergoing trials that will last up to 30
years or more compared to the usual 10 year life
expectancy of current models. The problem that exists is
that wear on the artificial joint causes bits of metal
to flake off and embed themselves in the joint. Over
years this causes damage and the joint has to be
replaced. A second operation is always less successful
causing more problems and doesn’t last very long. The
new magnetic hip attracts the bits of metal to a
designated spot where no damage can be done and so lasts
longer. Although the magnetic is supposed to be very
strong a spokesman said that people will not be
magnetized to passing lamp posts and the magnet should
last over 1,000 years so should not need replacing!
 An
11 year old boy who had been deaf in one ear since the
age of 2 suddenly regained perfect hearing when a cotton
bud popped out of his ear while he was playing pool with
his friends in a church hall. The boy had struggled at
school for years because of his poor hearing and had
been seen by many doctors and specialists who claimed
that the problem was simply due to large build ups of
wax in his ears. His father is demanding to know why
something so large and obvious as a cotton bud was not
found earlier.
A young 27 year old
mother went on trial a few days ago in Dayton, Ohio,
America, for
killing her baby by cooking it in a micro-wave oven. The
woman who pleaded not guilty to the murder in August
2005 could face the death penalty. She had been out
drinking earlier in the evening before
"warming" the baby’s “bottle” in the
microwave at 2-30 am to give it a feed.
 Computer
games have always been blamed for modern kids not
getting enough exercise, but some bright spark has
decided that children playing with the new “Wii”
console actually get quite a bit of exercise. Playing
tennis, baseball, basketball and the like can involve a
lot of arm swinging and jumping about with the "Wii"
console. Tests were carried out on groups of pupils
monitoring heart rates etc and they found that the
children did get a proper workout. However, a British
Medical Council spokesman said that no computer games
were a real substitute for taking part in proper sports
competitions.
Dr Barr needed a
sweat sample from a wild Hippopotamus to carry out some
important medical research concerning it’s antiseptic
qualities. However, his method of obtaining the sample
was not the wisest of methods and involved wearing a
“Hippo suit” weighing about 14 stone to camouflage
him, so he could get near enough to get a sample.
Bearing in mind that hippo’s weigh over 2 tons, are
about the most aggressive large animal on the planet and
love to wallow in thick mud creeping up on them in a
very heavy “Hippo’ Suit” was asking for trouble.
Needless to say the idiot was close enough to almost get
his sample when he realised that the heavy suit had
weighed him down so much that he was well and truly
stuck in the mud only a few feet from a real hippo’.
Fortunately for the Doctor the hippo simply wandered off
leaving him to get out of the mud with the help of
rangers.
On the Sussex coast
a ship recently sank carrying thousands of tons of
wooden planking which has washed up on the beaches.
Machinery has been used to clear the beaches and the
timber is likely to be used for low grade products due
it’s soaking in the sea. However, several local
councils have had to close the beaches now that the
planks have been removed because of the mass of
splinters that have been left behind by the rough
handling of the timber by the machines. Collecting the
splinters can only be done by hand and it could take
months to make the beaches safe again according to one
council. Surely it would have been better to remove the
timber by hand and then it wouldn’t have been smashed
up so much and won’t the splinters float away in the
sea at high tide anyway if the sand is gently
agitated/raked?
The Leaning Tower of
Pisa leans by about 6 degrees and that is thought to be
a dangerous angle for such a large building, but it is
to be far surpassed by the construction of a new
Television Centre in China that is being built with a
deliberate angle off vertical of 10 degrees. The new £400
million building has two towers that lean towards each
other and are joined by a sky-bridge that juts out at
right angles. Unbelievably, because of the construction
strength of the building it is claimed that it will
withstand an earthquake that reaches a massive 8 points
on the Richter Scale.
 Jeremy
Clarkson is not known for discretion and has put his
foot in it several times with his comments, but he
excelled himself with one recent remark about the
Governments loss of CD's containing the banking details
of thousands of members of the public. He stated that
the details lost were nothing more confidential than
could be found on anybody's cheques. To emphasize the
point he even published his own bank account number,
sort code, etc in his newspaper column. He was perhaps
tempting fate as some enterprising do-gooder set up a
direct debit for £500 to take money out of his account
and pay it directly to the British Diabetic Association.
Because of the Data Protection Act his bank will not
disclose the details of the prankster and say that they
cannot stop it from happening again. Clarkson said that
his comments about the triviality of the information
lost on the Government discs were wrong and he had been
punished for his mistake. He then added that, "We
must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick
cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for
mercy."
Certain towns and
suburbs are trying to improve their image and possibly
inflate their property prices by altering their names.
We have seen this occur in villages near to where I
live. There are two large villages next to each other
called Great Haywood and Little Haywood which the locals
are trying to rename "The Haywoods," but in
the district of Barnet the locals have gone further and
repainted road signs adding an acute accent to the é as
in French to make it sound like Barnay which is very
reminiscent of Hyacinth Bucket. Scores of signs are
being altered and then repainted by the council only to
be altered again in a a matter of hours. A campaign has
even been set up on the Web-site Facebook to make the
attempted change official. Someone pointed out that the
town of Barnet is twinned with the French town of
Chaville and perhaps they should change this to Chav
Ville.
An R.A.C. van
driver was highly embarrassed when he had to call for a
rescue vehicle after filling up with the wrong type of
fuel, but he was mortified when the rescue truck arrived
up and turned out to be a specialist A.A. vehicle. The
incident was witnessed in Derby at a B.P. filling
station. An A.A. spokesman said it happens to the best
of us and such problems with mis-fueling are becoming
more common. Diesel nozzles are too big to go into a
petrol tank, but the smaller petrol nozzles will fit a
diesel tank. It is hoped that in the not too distant
future the fuel tank entry on vehicles will be changed
to make it impossible to make the mistake as it can cost
many thousands of pounds to rectify if the engine is
switched on.
A coach driver
booked to take 50 Christmas shoppers to Lille in France
used the infamous Sat Nav to get to his destination.
Leaving from Cheltenham the Sat Nav gave him two choices
in Europe for Lille and for some reason known only to
himself he picked the wrong one and ended up in Lille in
central Belgium. The trippers had paid £150 a head for
their shopping extravaganza, but with the 4 hour detour
only had 2 hours to buy anything before the shops closed
when they finally got there.
 David
Leggat, a 55 year old retired teacher, was
attending a bowling match in Aberdeen at the
Kittybrewster and Woodside Bowling Club when he decided
to pop inside to the gents. As he was trying to leave,
the handle stuck. He shouted for help to no avail and
with no mobile phone he had to wait for rescue. There
was very little light because the tiny skylight
was 12 feet up and there was no heating. Dressed only in
normal clothes with no outdoor coat he had to run a
basin full of hot water occasionally to warm his feet
and get some heat into his body. He had no food but
water was not a problem. FOUR DAYS LATER he was rescued
when a cleaner arrived to get some equipment out of the
facility. Mr Leggat said that he, "Regretted that
he didn't get trapped behind the bar, but at least he
had a toilet."
In Iowa a man out
hunting was badly shot in his leg by a gun dog. The 37
year old man had laid his loaded gun on the ground to
pick up a pheasant when one of the pack of dogs with the
hunt trod on the gun catching the trigger and causing it
to fire. The unlucky hunter had 120 pellets removed from
his leg.
49 year old Indian
tycoon Mukesh Ambani has passed Bill Gates as the
richest man in the world with an estimated fortune of
nearly 31 billion pounds. He is planning to build a new
"House" in Bombay that will be 60 stories high
although it will only have 27 floors to allow his living
space to have super high ceilings. His "House"
will be home to 600 personal servants and staff as well
as his wife and 3 children.
 The
West Midlands Safari Park proudly showed off their
elephant that seems to be mastering the art of painting
on canvas today on the local TV news station. The keeper
described the colourful daubs as belonging to the
"Impressionist" school of art. The bright reds
and yellows reflected the bright colours of the berries
ripening in the hedges and bushes around the elephants
enclosure. Then some bright spark spoilt the moment by
pointing out that elephants are colour blind!
A famous
Australian cricketer had divorced from his wife, but was
in the middle of a reconciliation attempt and they were
hoping to get back together. He had promised to end his
affairs and be faithful, so she was going to give him
another chance. Unfortunately the cricketer decided to
send an amorous text message to his lover. The problem
was he sent it by mistake to his wife who was more than
a little annoyed when she saw it.
So much for the
local "Bobby" going green and getting back on
his bike to patrol the streets. The Health and Safety
people have been to greater Manchester and now the
Greater Manchester police authorities have told their
officers not to ride their bicycles in case they fall
off and hurt themselves!
P.S. The latest news on
this is that the Cheshire Authorities have told their
Police Officers that they must take, a "Cycling
Proficiency Test," before they will be allowed to
ride their bikes.
 Court
cases get sillier and sillier with some criminals
getting away with all sorts and other people being
prosecuted for the most trivial of things at great
expense to the legal system. One of the most ridiculous
recently was when a 16 year old boy was dragged through
the courts for criminal damage to a plastic bag. The
judge asked the value of the damage and was told
"One pence." The cost of the court case was
about £5,000. The boy was ordered to be on probation
for 6 months.
At a hospital near
Congleton in Cheshire it has been the practice of many
visitors and patients to borrow knitting needles from a
box to while away some time by knitting squares that are
then turned into blankets for local charities. However,
the Health And Safety brigade have been round and
ordered the "Hazardous" equipment to be kept
behind the reception counter so that no one can be hurt
by the dangerous knitting needles. As someone commented,
"When was the last time you heard of a spate of
knitting needle accidents?"
A 29 year old man
who lectures in law had difficulties with the call
centre for his bank. Several times he had tried to
access details for his account via a call centre
operator and was unsuccessful. Finally his account was
suspended and he was told to go into his branch. The
staff told him that his account would be reactivated,
but the next time he tried to use the phone service his
account was suspended again. He was told by his branch
that a woman had been trying to access his account over
the phone and he eventually twigged that it was because
he was gay and had a high pitched voice. The bank
operator thought that as the account was a mans and the
voice sounded more like a woman's there was doubt as to
the authenticity of the caller. The Hallifax apologized
and said that it was trying to prevent the mix up
happening again. The customer is threatening to sue them
for sexual discrimination.
 A
British Transport Police Inspector was charged with
"Misconduct in a public office" after having
sex with a woman he had met on an internet site that
specialized in people in uniform. The inspector had
arranged to meet the woman, at a railway station in his
uniform, the next day after contacting her and he
traveled to the tryst in his marked police car. After
having full sex he returned to work and was arrested two
days later. In his defense he said that he kept in his
radio earpiece during the sex and could have responded
to an emergency immediately. The inspector was found not
guilty but will face a disciplinary hearing.
This
was a letter seen in the Daily Mail.---Using cannabis as
a teenager can cause psychosis in middle-age. The
dictionary defines psychosis as “any form of severe
mental disorder in which the individual's contact with
reality becomes highly distorted.” With so many MPs
and Cabinet ministers having confessed to using cannabis
during their teens, this explains a lot.
A 16 year old boy
had quite a surprise when he bought a second hand Play
Station and 2 games on e-Bay for £95. The parcel
arrived and the teenager excitedly opened it only to
find the 2 games missing. In their place was £44,000 in
notes. The boy told his parents and informed the police
who duly took away the money. However, the boy was told
that if the owner of the money could not be traced and
it was decided that the money was not the proceeds of a
crime he may be allowed to keep it under the
"Police Property Act."
During a rugby
match in Brisbane, Australia nearly 4 months ago two
players collided which resulted in one of them losing
several teeth. The other player received a bad cut above
his eye that refused to heal up. Eventually he went to
the Doctor who re-examined the wound and found a tooth
still embedded in the wound in his head just above his
eye. The doctor said the man was lucky it had not
festered because teeth carry a lot of germs.
 An
author who was having difficulty in getting his work
published decided to see if publishers could recognize
real talent when they saw it or if it was just pure luck
that a book got published. So, he typed out the opening
chapters of 3 Jane Austen novels, Northanger Abbey,
Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion. All he changed
were the character's names and the titles. Then he
sent them off to 18 publishers including Penguin,
Bloomsbury, Harper & Collins and Hodder &
Stoughton. Only one actually recognized the works with
rejections from all the others. He said he knew getting
a book published was difficult but he had no idea
of the rejection Jane must have suffered. (It's no
wonder that some works are plagiarized though.)
The live Earth
concert was to raise public awareness on environmental
issues and to that end facilities used during the
concert were made as environmentally friendly as
possible. Many of the vehicles used to ferry people
about ran on Bio-diesel and the packaging boxes that the
Burgers were sold in during the concert were made from
Sugar Cane fibres. One of the older and more cynical
darts players always used to say that burgers as a food
were rubbish and there was more nourishment in the boxes
that they were sold in. Perhaps he was right after all!
A woman considered
herself a dab hand at making cakes so she entered a cake
into a competition at her local fete. When she
discovered she had come second she was delighted.
However a friend laughed when she told her that she had
been the only entry in the competition. The Judges had
thought the cake was very good but did not deserve to
carry the distinction of being awarded first prize. The
competitor said afterwards that it was not the first
time something like that had happened, because 11 years
earlier she had entered some scones in another
competition and come third, again she had been the only
competitor then!
 R.A.F
pilots have been in the habit of decorating their
bombers and fighting planes with risqué pictures of
attractive young ladies since the Second World War but
they have just been instructed to scrub off the pictures
in case they offend the Afghans or Muslims in the
Countries that they are bombing.
An
anti A.I.D.S. drug has just been withdrawn because
prolonged use might cause cancer. (If you have A.I.D.S.
you are unlikely to be worried by the fact that the
medication keeping you alive might give you cancer in 10
or 20 years.)
A
Vietnamese woman married an Englishman in South Africa
and had a daughter. His job has brought him back into
Great Britain. He is English, the daughter has a UK
passport but the wife has been refused an entry visa 3
times in case it was a marriage of convenience. They
have been married 19 years.
A
young lady had a party at her flat and as it was a warm
night the party moved out onto the flat roof of the
building to get some of the night air. In her drunken
state the young women stepped onto a glass skylight and
fell through onto the floor below hurting herself. She
is suing her Landlord for not warning her that it was
dangerous to walk on the glass skylight on the roof.
A
90 year old woman had an expensive flat in the centre of
Paris and was friendly with a well to do solicitor. He
wanted a flat in Paris so she gave it to him on the
understanding that he would pay her a pension as long as
she lived. As she was 90 he must have thought he was on
to a good thing, but she outlived him. He died 30 years
later and she lived another 32 years to die as the
oldest woman at 122 years of age.
A
man has just set a new record for being the oldest
person to ever take out a mortgage. He is 102 years old
and has been given a 25 year mortgage. Nothing like
being hopeful is there.
The
Israeli consulate in New York is trying to persuade
American men to visit their country by issuing photos of
female Israeli ex-soldiers in bikinis to be published in
a men's magazine with the headline, "They're drop
dead gorgeous and can take an Uzi apart in
seconds." Talk about cynical blatant use of sex to
get a message across. What next, the Gaza Strip?
Is
the Millennium Dome still jinxed? A new concert arena
has been constructed in the Dome along with other new
concepts in a attempt to breathe life into it. An event
was organized and 12,000 local people were invited for a
trial run to test the arena for problems. They found one
immediately- technicians could not locate the light
switch and the arena was stuck in darkness for 20
minutes.
Police
"arrested" a scarecrow for impersonating a
Police Officer. A village called Mickle Trafford held a
competition to make the best scarecrow recently and one
enterprising individual made a scarecrow from straw,
dressed it up in an old fluorescent jacket with Police
on it, black trousers and gave it a "Speed
Gun" made from an old hair drier. A motorist
complained to the Police saying that it was causing
drivers to brake when they saw it as they thought it was
a real officer and this might cause an accident. (If
they weren't speeding they would not break anyway?)
Police investigated and threatened to arrest the
"Artist," for impersonating a Police Officer,
if he did not remove the scarecrow.
A
young Lady moved out of a block of 6 flats and asked for
meter readings of gas, electric and so on to finalize
her occupancy. The bills were paid and she moved out.
Some time later the gas company hounded her for an
unpaid bill saying that she owed £20 due to an
incorrect reading and threatened her with court action.
She disputed the claim saying that she oversaw the
reading and it had been correct. Eventually because all
6 meters belonging to the flats were next to each other
tests were carried out to identify which meter belonged
to which flat. It was discovered
that the meter she thought was hers and which she had
been billed on since she had moved in, in fact belonged
to someone else altogether. She received a new bill when
the mess was sorted out and a refund of £242 that she
had been over charged.
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