Showing posts with label Numpty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Numpty. Show all posts

Tuesday 8 November 2011

One million scroungers: Fornicating Harry: Elfandsafety Numpty: Sack a Santa: Dead loss in Spain: Pasty penny: and exploding toilets.


The usual meteorology at the Castle this morn-damp, dark, drear and a bit depressing, the study is filling up with suicidal thingamys and his (no nuts) Maj is busy chasing anything that moves-and doesn’t move around the garden.

James over at Nourishing Obscurity left an interesting comment on yesterday's post, "U-Turn Cam has said increasing UK contributions to the International Monetary Fund "does not put Britain's taxpayers' money at risk".

He assumes, quite rightly as it turns out, that people are thick as a brick, don't read and don't remember.

So he can get away with saying these things.

I agree 100%, what is the matter with us? Why are we willing to put up with a useless bunch of wankers in Parliament that are only interested in feathering their own nests at our expense?


Apparently almost one million people will be stripped of their incapacity benefit payments and forced to look for jobs under major reforms to the welfare system over the next three years, research has found.
The Coalition’s tougher rules on who can claim incapacity allowances will be felt most strongly in Labour’s heartlands of the north of England, Scotland and Wales, according to the study, which criticised the plan.
The report from Sheffield Hallam University, in the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s constituency, warned that that “vast numbers” of people will be impoverished and left in distress as a result of the reforms.
Over the next three years, major changes are being introduced to incapacity benefit, including a tougher medical test for claimants, the re-testing of existing recipients of payments, and a limit on the length of time individuals are entitled to non-means tested benefits.
Disabled groups and charities have claimed the new tests are stigmatising the disabled and mentally-ill as “scroungers” in order to save money from the welfare bill.
Ministers insist that the reforms are not an attempt to stop “scroungers” but will help more people currently deemed unable to work find jobs.


No comment...
 


The mayor of a US town where Prince Harry is staying during helicopter training has warned him to be on his best behaviour with its young women.
Harry has been moved to Gila Bend, in the Arizona desert, for the last stage of a weapons course he has been undergoing in the United States.
Ron Henry, mayor of the 1,700-strong town, has put the fun-loving royal on notice that dalliances with the town's daughters are unlikely to go down well among the staunchly-Christian community.
Mr Henry, 64, told the Daily Mail: "There are probably some fathers here who would go to extremes to protect their daughters.
"Some of the dads won't take too kindly to a Prince fornicating the night away."
 

Time will tell-in about nine months when a plethora of red headed babies wearing Nazi uniforms arrive on the scene,
 


Paul Cavanagh’s attempt to teach a group of employees how to use a ladder got off to bad start when he climbed up without his hard hat.
One of the group threw him the headgear as he stood on the ladder, which was leaning against a semi-detached house.
Mr Cavanagh, who was tethered to the ladder, took his hands off several times before his already shambolic demonstration took a turn for the worse.
He slipped around the ladder, which crashed sideways over a fence and into a neighbouring garden – with Mr Cavanagh still tied to it.
As he lay sprawled, one worker – who posted the footage on YouTube – said: ‘That proves the system doesn’t work.’
Mr Cavanagh has been suspended from his job at Morrison Facilities Services, which works on behalf of the Gateshead Housing Co to manage properties for the local council.

Chris Morgan, the company’s safety boss, said: ‘We are dismayed by this isolated event.



Ah, the old Elfandsafety “one orf” ploy.....



Faced with the difficult task of balancing a budget in austere times, officials in New York's Suffolk County said on Friday they had no choice: they had to sack Santa Claus.

The county executive said he could not justify carving out $660 from his $2.7 billion budget to pay David McKell, 83, a World War II veteran and former homicide detective, to don his Santa suit for the tenth year running and greet children on Long Island.
He said that some 750 county employees were facing layoffs as a result of budget restraints, including what he described as a $20 million cut in state aid to the county's health system.

"Let either the private sector come forward with a donation, or, better yet, let's tap the volunteers in the community," he said.

Levy was quickly called a Grinch by his opponents.

Nah; he’s not a Grinch, just another politician who cannot see that saving just a few bucks will cause misery to hundreds.




A Spanish cemetery has begun placing stickers on thousands of burial sites whose leases are up as a warning to relatives or caretakers to pay up or face possible eviction.
Jose Abadia, deputy urban planning manager for northern Zaragoza city, said Monday the city's Torrero municipal graveyard had removed remains from some 420 crypts in recent months and removed them to a common burial ground.
Torrero, like many Spanish cemeteries, no longer allows people to buy grave sites. It instead leases them out for periods of five or 49 years.
Abadia said the cases involved graves whose leases had not been renewed for 15 years or more. He said Torrero currently had some 7,000 burial sites with lapsed leases out of a total of some 114,000.
He said leases generally lapsed because the relatives or caretakers had died or had moved house and failed to renew the contract. He said in other cases, with the passing of year’s family descendants sometimes no longer wanted to pay for further leases.

Maybe they could be buried in the land that the "authorities" have grabbed from people who have had their houses demolished...



Ian Jones, chief executive of Volunteer Cornwall says the county - where the Prince of Wales owns tens of thousands of acres as head of the Duchy of Cornwall - should adopt its own currency.
He said Cornwall should consider "radical ideas" to protect itself in the economic downturn.
The Cornwall currency could be modelled on local money schemes such as the Totnes and Lewes pounds which were created by the Transition Network movement, he said.
Several Cornish mining areas in the 19th century set up their own banks and issued their own banknotes.
In 1974 banknotes were issued by pressure group the Cornish Stannary Parliament partly "to raise money to aid it in the restitution of Cornwall's legal right to partially govern itself".


Wonder what the ooaar/sterling exchange rate will be?


And finally:



Exploding toilets injured two workers at a federal building in Washington D.C because of a plumbing malfunction that blasted out tiny shards of porcelain.
A woman from the General Services Administration (GSA) building was taken to a hospital with serious cuts to her leg from 'flying debris' caused by the toilet blast.

Another loo exploded within minutes of the first, injuring another employee using the bathroom at the same time.
Chuck White, vice-president of Technical and Code Services for the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association, said that while he's never seen an exploding toilet himself, it is something you read about in plumbing textbooks.
'If you're not careful about how you release pressure, the contents of that bowl will come up like old faithful,' White told the Huffington Post. 'Plus, you would have the surprise factors,' he added.
The explosion was because of a control system malfunction that caused a rise in pressure in the water storage tank, GSA spokesman William Marshall said. This in turn caused the plumbing system to 'malfunction' when flushed.
The 2,500 federal employees in the eight-storey building were sent a memo declaring bathrooms off-limits because the plumbing had malfunctioned and the situation was dangerous.


I have a lot of back pressure but have never exploded....



And today’s thought: How do men sort their laundry? "Filthy" and "Filthy but Wearable"


Angus

Saturday 22 October 2011

Flat battery: Aid loans: Armadillo attack: Crap alchemist: Big burger: and the Patterdale Blob.


Coldish, calmish and cloudyish at the Castle this morn, the study is devoid of all things broken and bollixed up and his Maj refuses to use the very expensive cat door installed in the rear exit so I sit here wrapped up in a blanket until the heating can go on. 

Inflicted even more vandalism on the garden yesterday, the trellis that the Virginia Creeper was growing on had rotted so it had to go, spent about an hour cutting the creeper back-a bit like unravelling spaghetti, and I made a fence out of the good bits which is just at the right height to put my feet up on while sitting on the folding chair.

The fifteen foot high Lilac “tree” was beginning to be infected with the same viral disease that killed the California Lilac and that went as well, I now can’t move my right elbow because of all the sawing-should have changed hands.......




Inmates at the first UK prison to be transferred to the private sector were locked in their cells for almost a full day after a set of keys fitting every cell door went missing.
Staff at Birmingham Prison, which houses 1,450 prisoners and was taken over by the private security firm G4S this month, noticed the keys were missing on Tuesday. It is not known if they have been found, or what action has been taken by the prison, but the firm insisted there was no risk to public safety.
A G4S spokeswoman said: "All prisons have well-established contingency plans to deal with incidents of this nature."  

Like locking all the guests up.......


Meanwhile:



A government plan to make 2011 "the year the electric car took off" appears to have stalled, with uptake of a scheme to promote sales of environmentally friendly vehicles falling dramatically.
The "plug-in car grant", conceived under Labour and launched by Philip Hammond in January when he was Transport Secretary, offered an incentive of up to £5,000 to buy an electric car.
The number of vehicles sold through the scheme has dropped significantly since its launch, with only 106 being bought in the third quarter of 2011, down from 465 in the first quarter of this year, and 215 in the second. Despite an increase in the total number of electric cars being sold in Britain – from 167 in 2010 to 940 in 2011 according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders – environmental campaigners have criticised a lack of infrastructure for its failure.


Or maybe it’s because NOBODY HAS ANY BLOODY MONEY!

 And: 


The Government is to begin phasing out aid to India and gradually replace it with loans to small businesses in some of the country's poorest areas.
Details of the pilot scheme, which is being pioneered in India by the Department for International Development, emerged on Friday amid continuing questions over why Britain gives any aid to the world's second fastest growing economy. India is currently growing at up to eight per cent while Britain's growth forecasts have fallen below one per cent.
The decision to use India as a test case for replacing donor aid with recoverable loans was taken after Andrew Mitchell, the international development minister, voiced doubts earlier this year that British aid to India would continue "for very much longer." The Indian government has been indifferent at best to Britain's aid contribution and increasingly sees itself as an aid donor – it has pledged to give more than $500 million in aid to Afghanistan and is set to launch its own international aid agency.
 


Wonder what Andrew Mitchell has got on Dave?



Dallas police are on the hunt for a man who is accused of attacking a woman with a frozen armadillo. The Sept. 29 altercation occurred in the parking lot of an apartment complex, where the 57-year-old was buying the carcass from the suspect so that she could eat it. An argument over the price led to the man allegedly throwing the dead animal at the woman—not once, but twice, MyFox Austin reports. She was reportedly bruised when it struck her in the leg and chest, and the man could face assault charges if located.


Is that the way to Armadillo?



A man from Northern Ireland has been jailed after an experiment in which he attempted to turn his own faeces into gold went wrong and started a fire in a block of flats.
Yahoo news reported that Paul Moran will now serve three months in jail and a further 12 months on license after the failed experiment caused a fire at his Housing Executive home in Derrin Park, Enniskillen.

Moran admitted arson and endangering the lives of others in the fire, which reportedly caused over £3,000 worth of damage.

It is thought that as part of the bizarre experiment Moran left his faeces, along with other waste products such as fertiliser, on a heater.

In his ruling Judge McFarland told Moran: “Rather bizarrely you were attempting to make gold from human faeces and waste products.

“It was an interesting experiment to fulfil the alchemist’s dream, but wasn’t going to succeed.”

Moran’s barrister mentioned that his client was a man of ‘considerable intellectual ability’.


And the IQ of a turd....
 
 


A Detroit-area restaurant has cooked up another giant burger.
The Detroit News reports that Mallie's Sports Grill & Bar in Southgate made a 338-pound "Absolutely Ridiculous Burger" on Thursday. A crowd of people gathered to salivate over the unveiling of the massive $2,000 menu item.
The 3-foot-high sandwich packs 540,000 calories and takes 22 hours to cook. Manager Jason Jones says it comes with fries and a drink.
Over the years, Mallie's has drawn attention for cooking up monstrous burgers. In 2008, the restaurant produced a 134-pound burger. Six months later it made one weighing 164 pounds. In 2009, it built 186-pound burger and in January it created one that topped the scales at 319 pounds.
 

Hope Eric Pickles doesn’t hear about it.



Up in the Lake District walkers have been left baffled by a quivering, translucent mass, nicknamed Star Jelly because it reputedly fell to Earth from meteors.

The latest bizarre sightings were on hills and pastures in Patterdale, Cumbria, where holiday-cottage owner Rob Shephard said: “I came across about 10 blobs floating on top of some puddles.
"They were the size of my foot. I didn’t touch the jelly, I just took some snaps.”
Village store owner Tom Driscoll, 53, has also been left perplexed, saying: “I was walking with my partner when we came across six or eight piles of the stuff.
“My initial thought was that it could be frog spawn, but when I had a closer look I realised this was not the case.
“I touched it and it had the consistency of frog spawn but some of the pieces were as big as a person’s foot and I didn’t think it was anything that a human or animal could make.”
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh algae expert Dr Hans Sluiman investigated a 2009 sighting in Scotland, which was linked to stags’ rutting season.
He said: “I did discover the jelly is made up almost entirely of water but was not able to find out exactly what it was. It may be toxic frogs that have been eaten by other animals and then spat out. But nobody knows for sure.”



Obviously Pickles didn’t have a hanky to hand......



And today’s thought: I went into McDonald's yesterday and said, "I'd like some fries." And the girl behind the counter says, "Would you like fries with that?"


Angus




Thursday 13 October 2011

Lack of care: My blackberry is out of juice: Pompey Pensioners orf sex: Automatic Numpty: Fine bit of skidding: and a pilfered Pelican.


‘tis warm, calm and sunny at the Castle this morn, there was a massive ingress of broken adding machines into the study yestermorn, already been down to Tesco on the stale bread, gruel and pussy food run, last week I splashed out on sic crusty rolls-70p, this week I thought I would do the same-75p, thieving b’stards.....
 


Elderly patients in half of NHS hospitals are not being properly fed or cared for because of a lack of “kindness and compassion”, the health watchdog warns today.
The Care Quality Commission says that too often staff pay more attention to paperwork than those they are looking after.
Unacceptable care has become standard in some trusts, with doctors and nurses talking down to patients, ignoring their calls for assistance and failing to help them eat, drink or wash.


It isn’t just older patients that receive piss poor care.....and don’t listen to all the excuses-not enough staff, not enough money, not enough time or too many managers.




Angry BlackBerry users have called for compensation as the internet outage that has crippled their smart phones continued through Wednesday and spread to North America and Asia.
In a statement, RIM, which makes BlackBerry devices, said: "BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning"
The firm faced growing calls for compensation from users all over the world. European, Middle Eastern and African BlackBerry owners have now endured three working days without mobile internet access, including email and instant messaging.
RIM made no comment on the whether it would offer any money back as it battled to restore services. Users bombarded its Twitter accounts with demands for compensation on Wednesday afternoon.  

Run the video above, and all will be revealed.




It seems the pensioners of Portsmouth are simply not interested in sex, after a sexual health workshop for the over 60s failed to receive any interest.
Given the title Generation Sex, the workshop aimed to explore 'the realities of sex in the 21 century', encouraging the practice of safer sex among older people.
A spokesman for the event described it as having the potential to be 'frank, fun and factual' - however the event was cancelled due to lack of interest.
Portsmouth City Council's annual 60+ festival was to feature the workshop as a means of breaking down the taboo of people over 60 indulging in sex.
A spokesperson for the Council explained: 'The background was the risk of sexually-transmitted diseases in older people and the need to practice safer sex.
'It was decided to cancel the event because too few people booked places.'
Studies have shown that there has been a rise in STIs among over-45s, with a growing number of men and women over 60 becoming infected.


Given half a chance would be nice.....




A BMW driver ended up plunging through a multi-storey car park wall after he put his automatic car into the wrong gear and then put his foot down.
Markus Barosch, 78, went plunging through the car park wall and was trapped for nearly an hour until firemen arrived to set him free.

The rescuers had to stop the car toppling backwards and prop up the demolished wall before they could rescue the trapped pensioner from Rathenau, Germany.

He escaped with a minor bruise but the car was a write off and will have to be scrapped, the Austrian Times reported.



Forward, reverse, it’s all in the box somewhere.



A biker is in trouble after being caught speeding - while sliding along the ground without his motorcycle.
Police in Switzerland say Boris Maier, 38, from Bern, set off a speed camera while careering helplessly at 67mph in a 50mph zone.
The speed camera failed to record what speed the bike was travelling as it slid down the road in a shower of sparks - focusing instead on the unlucky biker.
Traffic police believe he would have been going a great deal faster when he first saw the camera.
A police spokesman said: "It appears that he suddenly saw the traffic control measure ahead and lost control as he tried to slow down."
Police say the motorcyclist, who was wearing protective leathers, was unhurt apart from minor cuts and bruises.
He faces a fine and a police spokesman said he was lucky not only in surviving unhurt but also as he would have lost his licence if he had been going a fraction faster.
The incident happened between the towns of Cibourg and La Chaux-de-fonds, close to Bern and the French border.

 On skid row?


And finally:
 


Authorities in the San Francisco Bay area town of Novato are in a flap about the theft of a park statue—a 700-pound bronze pelican.
The Marin Independent Journal says the statue, titled "Omay"—a Miwok Indian word for pelican—apparently was stolen over the weekend from a park near Scottsdale Pond.
The statue was commissioned by the city council in 2007 at a cost of $27,500. It is 9 feet tall with a 10-foot wingspan.
Novato police say it may have been stolen for its metal but the motive isn't clear yet. They're offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the thieves.


Melted down Pelican....




And today’s thought: Learn from your parents' mistakes . . . use birth control.


Angus




Thursday 6 October 2011

Tesco Law: Well- F##k you Boris: Grand price of energy: Lego of Star Wars: and Swiss Numpty.



Sunnyish, unwarmish and windyish at the Castle this morn, the study is overflowing with broken one eyed monsters, his Maj has decided that it is too cold to venture out and the Honda is up to 157 miles on twenty sqids worth of go juice.


I see that my favourite retailer will soon be able to sell consumer legal services in England and Wales for the first time following a change in law.
The government says the new Legal Services Act will offer more choice and better value for the public.
It says it also means law firms will benefit from investment and allow them to explore new markets.


Yeah right.....


 And:


Boris has decided that action will be taken so that police can arrest members of the public for swearing at them, Boris Johnson has promised.
The London mayor attacked police guidance advising officers not to try to arrest those who verbally attacked them on the basis that police should have thicker skins.
"I reckon we need to get back to where we were before some judge given law of 1988 and be clear that if people swear at the police, they must understand they will be arrested," Mr Johnson said.


I reckon that Boris should leave the alternative universe he seems to live in and join the real world.

 And:


The cheapest annual gas and electricity deal for UK households has hit £1,000 for the first time after above inflation price rises by energy companies.
The record energy bills come as three in 10 Britons admit that they are struggling to afford their energy bills.
Eight in 10 householders say they will be forced to start rationing their energy use by going without adequate heating, according to a survey of 2,300 people.
“Britain is on the brink of an affordability crisis when it comes to household energy,” said Uswitch.com, the price comparison site which carried out the survey.
The milestone of the £1,000 bill was reached earlier this week when Scottish Power pulled a £990 ‘dual fuel’ tariff from the market.
Mark Todd, a director at Energyhelpline.com, which released the findings about the £1,000 bills, said: “The cheapest energy tariffs keep getting axed and now there are no tariffs costing under £1,000 a year for an average home.”
 “This is the first time that has been the case and emphasises in stark terms how bills are reaching historic levels,” he said.


No shit........



A Star Wars fan spent six months and 30,000 Lego bricks recreating a scene from one of the movies.
Jay Hoff spent £1,500 on piecing together the moment the Emperor arrives to inspect a new Death Star in Return Of The Jedi.
Mr Hogg, a teacher, created the 6ft by 6ft model for his school's annual Science Discovery Day in Miami, Florida.
Pupils are expected to bring in a small Lego creation to display so he decided to join in to show his young charges how it's done.
He said: "The kids went absolutely crazy about it, which made it all worthwhile.
"I only got to display the model for one day and I still haven't had the heart to take it apart yet!"


Star Wars-science? And this guy is a teacher......


And finally: 


A drink driver tried to park his car in a river after mistaking a slipway for an underground car park ramp in heavy fog.
Peter Thaler, 42, abandoned the car and walked home when he realised he'd almost ended up in the Ruess river in Sins, Switzerland.
But he was arrested the next morning when he returned to collect it while police were retrieving it and was still so drunk he failed an alcohol breath test.
"He was confused because of the fog but mostly because of the drink," said a police spokesman.
"He lost his licence and will be fined and will have to pay all the costs of the recovery of his car."


Didn’t have GPS then......




And today’s thought: I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good, either.


Angus

Friday 26 August 2011

Arse about face Blighty: Pippa who?: Foxy conveyor: A hairy dilemma: Cool motor: and the Naked rambler gets nicked-again.


Not a nice start to the day at the Castle this morn, wet, coolish and dismal, his Maj has the hump because he can’t go out, the study is nice and empty and the Bank holiday weekend starts here. 


A failed asylum seeker who committed more than 25 crimes within six years of arriving in the UK is in line for "substantial" damages after a judge ruled he had been unlawfully detained by immigration authorities.
Amin Sino is set to receive damages from public funds running into tens of thousands of pounds while taxpayers will also pick up the bill for his legal costs estimated at up to £50,000.
Deputy High Court Judge John Howell QC accepted that the public would be "outraged" by the ruling in favour of Sino, who deliberately misled officials about his identity in a bid to thwart deportation to his native Algeria, and had proved to be a "risk to the community".
But, in a written ruling following a hearing in London, he said that an immigrant's failure to cooperate with authorities was not a justification for detention.

 Bollocks.



It seems the Americans aren't very taken with Kate's younger sister.

According to a survey by Vanity Fair magazine, the majority of Americans have no clue who Pippa Middleton even is.

When asked 'Who is Pippa Middleton?' 32 per cent correctly identified her as a 'British socialite' while 52 per cent didn't know as six per cent thought she was a children's book heroine.

Finally two per cent though Pippa was an adult film star.

 Fame is such a fleeting thing.



A Fox with a sense of fun uses all his wiles to turn a derelict quarry conveyor belt into a makeshift slide.
The four-month-old cub even appears to grin with delight as he speeds down the chute before climbing up to have another go.
His escapade was caught by British cameraman Duncan Usher at a disused gravel pit in Bursfelde, Germany. Mr Usher, 56, said: “The fox sat on the belt and, after a few seconds, started to slide down using its front paws to drag itself forwards.


Or maybe he has the worst case of worms in the world....


Research has shown that one in three women leave the shower running while they shave their legs, wasting around 50 billion litres of water a year.
Thames Water, which commissioned the study, said the amount wasted would be enough to supply the whole of London for 25 days.
The research also found that one in four people leave the sink tap running while they brush their teeth, which accounts for around 120 billion litres of water wasted per year.
A spokesman for Thames Water said yesterday: “It may seem like it’s always raining, but we’ve had below average rainfall across our region for nine of the past 12 months. 

Another excuse for putting prices up...



Police were called to a parking lot in Richmond, B.C., earlier this month where they found a man trying to load a full-sized fridge into the trunk of a four-door sedan.
"The fridge was one-third in the trunk while the remainder teetered over the edge of the car's bumper," Const. Justin Stewart said in a release. "The fridge was secured to the vehicle using rope and the seatbelts from the car."
Stewart said the driver told him he thought what he was doing was OK and apologized after he was told that the load was unsafe for transport.
He then removed the fridge from the trunk of his car and arranged for a less precarious mode of transportation, police said.  

Numpty


 And finally:


The so-called Naked Rambler is back behind bars after stripping off less than a minute after being released from prison.
Stephen Gough, 52, was arrested outside Perth Prison almost immediately after he was released from his previous 21-month sentence.
He has now been jailed for another 21 months after turning up naked for his trial at Perth Sheriff Court, reports the BBC.
The hearing was initially held up while court staff found a sheet of brown paper for him to sit on "for hygiene reasons".
Gough appeared naked in the court dock and was found guilty of breaching the peace and being in contempt of court.
Sheriff Fletcher told him: "The court expects people to come here in a decent state of dress."

Gough earned the title Naked Rambler by walking unclothed from Lands End to John O'Groats after quitting his job as a lorry driver.
The former Royal Marine, from Eastleigh in Hampshire, has been behind bars in Scotland for much of the past decade.
He has been repeatedly arrested in the street outside Perth Prison by police waiting for him to be released at the end of each sentence.
He claims that arresting him for walking around naked is a breach of his human rights and his right to freedom of expression.
 

Naked Numpty. 


 And today’s thought: Lead me not into temptation . . . I can find my own way there.
 

Angus

Monday 25 July 2011

Testing times: Lansley takes on pensions: Croc of a tour: New Hampshire lemon: Be careful what you wish for: and Down your Manhole.

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).

 No mates “Doctors” being paid by a French company and funded by the UK Gov...No wonder it doesn’t bloody work.


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!''
 

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”
"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.

 Bet a lot of poo came out....

 And finally:


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....


 And today’s thought: "It's all right leaping about the stage when you're 20 but when you get to 25 it gets a bit embarrassing - Bill Wyman, The Rolling Stones, 1967.


Angus