Showing posts with label monday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monday. Show all posts

Friday 24 July 2009

Killer Chipmunks, Strippers, Mondays, Constipation and Jezza

Weather still iffy, woke up sneezing this morning, have a head ache, temperature, a cough and feel tired, Oh MY God It must be Swine flu, I would ring the “hot line” but I can’t get through, I would go to the web site but it has crashed, what do I do now, I know, I’ll go to bed with some Paracetamol after all it’s only a Summer cold.



First up:







They are calling for pet shops to be banned from selling the Siberian chipmunk, a small Asian rodent, whose population has surged in France after being abandoned as family pets after being imported from Asia.

Thousands living in the wild in France are believed to be carrying a tick which can lead to Lyme disease.

The disease targets the nervous system and can ultimately prove deadly.

Experts warned the public to be alert to the threat posed by the chipmunks. While impossibly cute, and tempting for visitors to buy or simply pick up and take home, they pose a genuine threat to public health.

"There is a particular problem in the woods around Paris, attributed mainly to people who bought the animals as family pets then got rid of them," said Guy Bruel, a naturalist.

"This is just the behaviour that will lead to the chipmunk getting to Britain in huge numbers, possibly as early as this summer."


You have been warned, but they are nice barbequed with a side salad.




This is known as cutting off your nose to spite your face:

A group of Alloa women who got their kit off, in a charity-fundraising "Calendar Girls" style, are a little miffed that Scottish Women's Aid has declined to benefit from the proceeds.

Domestic abuse victim Morag Hill and business partner Katherine Cram decided to emulate the famous Rylstone Women's Institute 2000 calendar, which raised £2m for charity and spawned a movie in which Helen Mirren cemented her reputation as "least clothed British actress of all time".

Of the 11 women who appear in the "Hair Bares" initiative, "five have suffered domestic abuse", the Scotsman explains. However, when Hill approached Scottish Women's Aid offering £600, she got a bit of a shock.

She explained: "When I phoned... to tell them we had a calendar and I needed to know how we could get the cash to them, the woman on the end of the phone said they would not be associated with it.

"She said that they did not support women taking their clothes off to raise money and that they were a feminist movement. It made me feel really angry."

A spokeswoman for the charity Zero Tolerance, though, described such calendars as "not the right way to highlight feminist issues".

She elaborated: "We would not take money from a calendar like that. We should be showcasing women for their talents and aspirations. Anything that focuses on women's bodies is not helpful.

"We live in a culture where female nudity is everywhere and there is too much female nudity… and not enough celebration of women's brains. It undermines our work to achieve gender equality."

The Alloa Calendar Girls hope to ultimately sell 2,000 copies of their fundraising product, although who will now benefit from the proceeds is not noted


It is for CHARITY you tunnel- visioned NIMBY’s






Common beliefs about suicide being more likely on Mondays and during the winter aren't really true; according to new research from the University of California, Riverside — summer is the most common season and Wednesday the most likely day.

July and August are the most common months for suicide, followed by April and May, finds the analysis, online in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. It is based on data on almost 132,000 suicides from 2000-2005, from the U.S. Multiple Cause of Death Files, at the National Centre for Health Statistics. The researchers found that 24.6% of suicides were on Wednesdays, with Thursdays the least likely day at just 11.1%.

The analysis, co-authored by sociology professor Augustine Kposowa, will be in print in August.

Kposowa says the common wisdom used to be that suicides were more likely on Mondays because the weekend had ended; however, he says Wednesday is right in the middle of the work week when stress is highest and the weekend is still farther away.

"Thursday is lowest because usually people are in better moods because the weekend is near," he says.

He also says the folklore about more suicides in winter never really was true because much past research has shown that suicide was more likely in the spring.


With the summer we are having I am not surprised!



There’s this Romanian, and he has had a few to drink, and he hasn’t been to the toilet for a while, “I know” he slurs to himself, I'll shove a couple of hammer heads up my arse, that will cure it. So he did.

Later the the intoxicated 48-year-old turned up at his local hospital complaining of excruciating stomach pain.

Worried doctors, in Orlea, southern Romania, carried out scans and were knocked sideways to find he had not one but TWO hammerheads stuck in his rear end.

Hospital spokeswoman Dr Cristina Bontescu said: "He was a bit drunk and said he had been eating cherries that had left him badly constipated (lucky he wasn’t a badger) if you don’t get that it’s your own fault for not reading my blog on a “regular” basis.

Anyway, "He said he had a few drinks to dull the pain and then came up with the idea of poking a hammerhead up his backside in the hope of sorting out the constipation.

"But the hammerhead got stuck and then he came up with the idea of using a second hammerhead in order to try and get out the first - but then he lost the second one as well."

Surgeons had to perform surgery to remove the offending objects.


Lucky he didn’t have access to power tools.
Jezza, the Hamster and Captain Slow are to recreate the “sewer escape” from the Italian job, in Belfast.

In the 1969 film starring Michael Caine, bank robber Charlie Croker and his gang make their getaway in three Mini-Coopers, tearing through the streets, buildings, rivers and drains of Turin with the police on their tail.

But the Top Gear stars have chosen to race their Minis through Belfast's six-mile sewer network instead.

A spokesman for the hit BBC show told the Daily Star they planned to film the race through the sewer network in the next few weeks.

Top Gear's recreation of one of the most iconic film car-chases of all time will be closer to the original than one might think. Although most of the The Italian Job was filmed in Italy, part of the famous car-chase was featuring Caine was actually shot in a sewer in Coventry.


So when we know the date, will all those in Belfast please flush at the same time.


Angus

Angus Dei politico

Angus Dei-NHS-THE OTHER SIDE






Monday 1 June 2009

Monday Monday


Strange weekend, it seemed to go on for ever, half of which I spent painting the fences and tidying up the garden (a bit), spoke to some friends, and got a phone call from a well known American news service re the NHS. Watch this space, you never know.

Slightly different format today, just a ramble on my warped view of the world.

SuBo as Susan Boyle is now known is under assessment in a private clinic regarding her mental health, not really surprised; the “official” diagnosis is exhaustion, my diagnosis would be exploitation.

Same with the little girl who cried on stage, what are we becoming? I had no interest at all in BGT and didn’t watch any of it apart from 10 minutes or so by accident, but the country and even the world seemed to focus on this second rate Butlins take off “talent” show, I half expected the red coats to appear, but instead we had Ant and the other one, another good reason not to watch it.



On to other things, I was listening to radio four this morning, they had Gord the Impaler on, who was trying to convince the world that he had been fighting for expenses reform since last year, but no one would listen to him, maybe that is why we should have a general election as soon as, because when Parliament ignores the Prime Minister it is time for a change, and I have an idea, why don’t parliament pass a law to make party manifestos legally binding, the when the politicos renege on their promises we have a means of forcing them to comply.


It seems that the Queen and her family are living in slums; Buck house and Windsor castle need £32 million spent on them, “A new roof at the palace will cost £16 million, new heating £2.4 million, and the replacement of the Victorian water mains at Windsor Castle £3 million.”
Maintenance work is now an average of six years behind schedule on the occupied palaces while the £3 million restoration of the Victoria and Albert mausoleum at Windsor should have been completed 14 years ago.

It seems that there are 360 properties that “support” the Queen, I am quite fond of the Royal family but now that the kids have grown up and left maybe they should think of downsizing.


Swine flu has raised it’s snout again, there are warnings by “Professor John Oxford, an expert in virology, said that even though only 229 cases of swine fu have been confirmed in the UK so far, he was certain of a flu pandemic which would take hold as autumn begins.”

Something to look forward to.


Heathrow's Terminal 5 has subsidence the wonderful luggage bermuda triangle is sinking, BAA - who own T5 - confirmed it was suffering from subsidence but insisted the problem was minor and nothing to worry about.

Tell that to the insurance company, just a thought, why don’t they build all the terminals underground, then they would be able to put a new runway in without destroying most of the uk.


And finally:

The most important story of the day-I have lost two socks, I now have a pair of odd uns, where do they go? And where do all the caps off of Biros go? Is there a place in the world that is crammed to the rafters with odd socks and pen caps? Where do tools disappear to? You put them down and ten seconds later thay are gone, along with letters, and that important piece of information you have just printed out with your pass words on, or that phone number you have spent fifteen minutes searching for in the phone book, you write it down pick up the phone to call and, it’s gone.

It was a strange weekend.


Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.” ~Bill Watterson

Angus

NHS Behind the headlines

Angus Dei politico

Angus Dei-NHS-THE OTHER SIDE