Splendiferous start to the morn at the Castle this light thing, sunny, calm, warmish and dry, did some fettling in the garden yesterday, his Maj was out there from six of the am to nine of the pm, and there are no new broken additions to the empty study, looks like I may get a holiday after all.
I see that the land of the debt and the home of the needy is having problems sorting out its deficit.
Apparently the US risks default on its $14.3tn (£8.7tn) debt without a deal to raise the borrowing limit before 2 August.
At this point the US Treasury could run out of money to pay all of its bills - which could lead to interest rate rises, threaten the US economic recovery and in turn the global recovery.
Here we go again-what is a “trillion”?
And the Pilchards in the House of un-Commons have finally found out that Atos is a load of old crap.
Atos is responsible for carrying out the government's drive to assess everyone claiming incapacity benefit, to decide whether they may actually be well enough to work. Atos staff are testing around 11,000 benefit claimants a week, to determine how ill they really are and whether they are eligible for benefit payments.
Since the last government launched a campaign to cut the number of sickness benefits claimants, the process has been controversial, with charities and politicians warning that vulnerable people have wrongly had vital payments removed.
On Tuesday a select committee will publish a detailed and critical report on the way the Department for Work and Pensions policy has been implemented, looking in part at the way Atos has carried out its contract to assess claimants. The work and pensions committee launched its investigation this year after many complaints about the testing process.
More than 400,000 appeals have been lodged against decisions not to grant the benefit since it was launched in October 2008, and 39% have been successful. The tribunal’s service has been forced to double the number of staff handling appeals, to accommodate the huge volume of complaints. The cost of tribunals is estimated at well over £30m a year.
Atos, a Paris-based IT company, is being paid £100m a year to carry out the work capability assessments (WCAs), allowing the government to phase out incapacity benefit and replace it with the employment and support allowance (ESA).
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, the man who is doing such a spiffing job bollixing up the NHS has now turned his attention to public service pensions.
Mr Lansley warns that the reforms outlined last month will not meet the Coalition’s “commitment to maintain gold standard pensions”.
He says the proposals are set to prompt public sector workers to stop contributing to their pensions which “would increase pressure on the social security budget” as people rely on state benefits to fund their retirement.
The Health Secretary describes parts of the reform proposals as “inappropriate” and “unrealistic” and warns they will hit women health workers particularly hard.
Says the man who has a nice “gold plated” pension stowed away....
NT News photographer Katrina Bridgeford took this amazing photograph of Brutus, a 5.5m saltwater croc on the Adelaide River, just over 100km south of Darwin, last week.
Ms Bridgeford was on the cruise with sons Jordan, 14, and Dylan Woodward, 11, of Sydney, NSW, four-year-old niece Skye Bridgeford and boyfriend Daniel Wilson.
Son Dylan had only two words when the massive man-eater rose out of the water in front of the group: "Holy crap!''
Ms Bridgeford was on the cruise with sons Jordan, 14, and Dylan Woodward, 11, of Sydney, NSW, four-year-old niece Skye Bridgeford and boyfriend Daniel Wilson.
Son Dylan had only two words when the massive man-eater rose out of the water in front of the group: "Holy crap!''
Bet some poo came out.....
Police say a man angry that a New Hampshire car dealer wouldn't take back the van he bought returned to the dealership and deliberately crashed into six other vehicles.
David Cross of Salisbury, Mass. is facing six counts of criminal mischief. He's been released on personal recognizance.
Police say Cross bought the van from the Portsmouth Used Car Superstore on Monday. After a mechanic found it had a host of problems, he tried to return it on Tuesday, but was spurned by the dealer. The 42-year-old allegedly drove back to the dealership just before midnight Tuesday and rammed the van into the other vehicles, causing about $20,000 in damages.
Cross tells The Portsmouth Herald the van was a "lemon" and he was driven by anger.
If it was that bad how come he managed to drive it from Massachusetts to New Hampshire?
Researchers hoping to photograph great white sharks got what they wished for when a 500 kilogram beast flew through the air and landed in their boat.
The Oceans Research group were in Mossel Bay, South Africa, on Monday, putting fish oil and bait in the water to attract sharks so they could take photographs of their fins for identification.
"Usually when we do that we get a certain amount of sharks around the boat, which happened on Monday," team leader Dorien Schroder told the BBC.
"Until I heard a splash and I looked back to see a white shark pretty much mid-air hovering above one of my interns”
"Until I heard a splash and I looked back to see a white shark pretty much mid-air hovering above one of my interns”
"Luckily the intern stepped towards me ... so I grabbed her by her shirt and pulled her on to a platform that we have at the stern of the boat.
"[The shark] was panicking because it did not intend to land on the boat; it thought it would land back into the water.
The shark's heavy landing cut the fuel lines, so the research team called for help from another boat and the crew came to help pull the shark back into the water.
When that failed, the boat was towed into a harbour, while researchers poured water on the shark's gills to keep it alive, and the animal was lifted into the water using a crane.
A California man got stuck headfirst in a manhole for about 40 minutes when he tried to retrieve his wallet, police say.
Ceres police officers found Jared Medeiros, 21, of Ceres stuck waist deep in a manhole Friday, Sacramento's KCRA-TV reported. When they arrived, his legs were flailing in the air.
The fire department had to be called in to help pull out Medeiros after he couldn't be budged. He was stuck for about 40 minutes.
Police said Medeiros only suffered some minor scrapes and contusions. They also found that he was intoxicated, but not impaired, the TV station said.
Numpty....
2 comments:
I love the way they keep referring to global recovery as if it's actually one of the options.
Oh for the good old days James-smog, jobs, cheap houses and goverments that didn't balls everything up:)
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