Showing posts with label smoking ban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smoking ban. Show all posts

Monday 2 November 2009

Make it snow; Boston witch hunt; Arrested for washing his hands; Ejecto-Numpty; and Big Balls





Bribble factor 8 during the dark thing, if you are unsure of “Bribble” you can catch up Here and if you want to know what I did yesterday you can find out Here.

I see that David Wilshire, the disgraced Tory MP is comparing the poor old MPs caught with their bank balances in the till to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Fine, lets up the penalties for stealing from the public by elected officials to being starved, gassing and medical experimentation, oh no I forgot, it would be MPs that would have to pass the law.

Wilshire, just bugger off and take all your “it was in the rules” mates with you.

And;

I don’t tend to do a lot of sports on this or any other blog but I feel that a mention is due for the Cycling team at the Track World Cup in Manchester.

British cyclists have racked up 10 gold medals over the three days of the competition in Manchester.

Team GB: Lizzie Armitstead, Steven Burke, Ed Clancy, Matt Crampton, David Daniell, Wendy Houvenaghel, Rebecca James, Jason Kenny, Chris Newton, Joanna Rowsell, Ben Swift, Andy Tennant, Geraint Thomas, Jess Varnish

Good one guys.



First up:





Seedy Snow


The Chinese government covered Beijing in snow on Sunday after meteorologists seeded clouds to bring winter weather to the capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought.

The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from Sunday morning and kept falling for half the day, helped by temperatures as low as minus 2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit) and strong winds from the north, Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides falling in the north-eastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the northern province of Hebei, the eastern port city of Tianjin also got its first snow of the autumn, the report said.

"We won’t miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought," the report quoted Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, as saying.

Chinese meteorologists have for years sought to make rain by injecting special chemicals into clouds.

Although the technique often gets results, a drought in the north of the country has continued for over a decade.

Besides the snow, which the Beijing Evening News said was the earliest to hit the capital in 10 years, the cold weather and strong winds also delayed air travel from Beijing's Capital Airport, while interrupting passenger shipping services off the coast of Shandong province in the east, Xinhua said.

Can you seed the clouds to make them go away-Pleeease!


From the home of the tea party: - Lighted cigarettes are a thing of the past at Pirone Park in Ayer.

Jason Mayo watched as a father pushed his child on a swing, cigarette clenched between his teeth. On every upswing, the child got a face full of exhaled smoke.

“We can’t tell people how to parent,’’ said Mayo, a member of the Ayer parks and recreation committee, which has banned smoking in the town’s recreation areas. “But all the other kids around him were inhaling that cigarette too.’’

As antismoking sentiment sweeps across the country, nonsmokers are taking back bars, restaurants, and workplaces, snuffing smoking out of its indoor havens. And now some of them are turning their sights on the great outdoors.

Holliston and Upton have enacted similar outdoor smoking bans. And in another example of the widespread public crackdown on smoking, Needham has outlawed the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies and Newton and Framingham are trying to do the same.

Ayer’s parks and recreation committee implemented its outdoor ban in August, and the panel may also pursue a bylaw at the spring Town Meeting. In a more sweeping stroke, the town’s Board of Health is pursuing a regulation that would apply the prohibition to all town-owned property and land and impose a $100 fine on offenders. The board has set a public hearing on the subject for January.

The outdoor smoking ban in Ayer, a town of about 3,000, covers public recreation areas, including Sandy Pond Beach and Pirone Park. During the past five years roughly 30
Communities have enacted such bans, according to Joan Hamlett, Ayer’s tobacco agent and director of the North Central-Franklin County Tobacco Control Alliance. Sharon was the first to do so in 1995.

Fags-R.I.P



Scott Wright was fixing the emergency brake on an old Cadillac in a parking lot near Willow Glen last year when the San Jose police rolled up. Within minutes, he had been shot with a Taser and beaten with batons, breaking his arm.

The cause of the trouble? Wright reached into his van to wash his greasy hands.

Police said they feared he was going for a weapon, but no weapon was found. Wright was charged with resisting arrest, but the district attorney dismissed the case before it got to trial.

What happened to Wright is no isolated event. Hundreds of times a year interactions between San Jose police and residents where no serious crime has occurred escalate into violence.

Many times the reason for the encounter is as innocuous as jaywalking, missing bike head lamps, or failing to signal a turn. But often, as the incidents develop, police determine the suspect is uncooperative and potentially violent and strike the first blow.

While many of those incidents raise questions about whether the police response was excessive, the department almost always dismisses such complaints about its behaviour and limits public scrutiny of the cases, moves that tend to heighten distrust of the department, particularly in minority communities.

Police officials say their officers use force only when they must, to protect themselves and others in complex situations that can quickly turn violent. They say that their internal reviews establish that San Jose police act with restraint, and cite the low number of citizen complaints about excessive force. And police captain Gary Kirby told a City Council committee this year that after reviewing more than 100 resisting arrest cases from the past two years, he came to a clear conclusion: There is no problem.

Tell that to the guy who was tasered and had his arm broken.


A civilian passenger in an air force display plane accidentally activated the ejector seat while reaching for something to steady himself during a mid-air manoeuvre.

The novice flier instantly shot through the jet's Perspex canopy and was blasted 100 metres into the sky by the rocket-powered emergency chair.

Experts said the man was lucky to escape unharmed following the bizarre incident, which happened on Wednesday in South Africa.

It is thought he activated the ejector seat after lurching forward during an aerobatic manoeuvre and accidentally pulling on the black and yellow emergency handle between his legs.

The lever is fitted as standard in the Pilatus PC-7 Mk II jets to allow pilots and their passengers to eject from the aircraft in the event of an emergency.

As soon as it was activated, the ejection sequence activated two rockets attached to the back of his chair.

The man, who has not been named, later floated back down to Earth on a parachute which opened automatically.

South African Airforce bosses scrambled a helicopter to pick up the passenger after the blunder near Langebaanweg airfield, 80 miles north of Cape Town.

The incident happened shortly after he took off for a joyride with an experienced pilot from South Africa's Silver Falcons air display team.

Maybe he was trying to grab hold of his veggies in self preservation.



And finally:

From over the whatsit: - CONCORD, N.H. - The bouncing mega-meatball record has landed in the East Coast.

Matthew Mitnitsky, owner of Nonni's Italian Eatery in Concord, said Sunday that a 222.5-pound (101-kilogram) meatball was authenticated as the world's largest after being weighed by state weights and measures officials.

A Guinness Book of World Records official confirmed the big meatball as a record breaker and presented Mitnitsky with a plaque.

The old record of 198.6 pounds (90 kilograms) was set just over a month ago after Los Angeles-based talk show host Jimmy Kimmel vowed to beat a record set in Mexico. That record - 109 pounds (50 kilograms) - was set in August.

Mitnitsky said he got involved "to bring the meatball back to the East Coast because that's where it originated."

Saturday 10 October 2009

Saturday Snippets

Slug pellet curry: Fag end fine; Stripy donkeys; Burnley scribble and a Tennis racquet



It seems that there will be weather all day today, at least that is what I am told, talking of weather; the sun seems to shine out of the lower orifice of Barak Obama, who has been awarded the Nobel peace prize for upping the number of troops in the Afghanistan war.

Odd that.





While up in London the git bags at the Department for work and pensions disability “service” have taken away ten year old Devon Taverner’s disability living allowance because she is coping too well with her prosthetic leg.

Read the story it will make you proud to be British.








First up:







A gay man has admitted he gave his lesbian neighbours curry laced with slug pellets after he was accused of kidnapping their three-legged cat.

According to the Daily Mail, Gary Stewart, 37, and Beverley Sales and Marie Walton had enjoyed cordial relations when they first became neighbours in Denton, Manchester. Over a period of years, though, things turned sour, leading Stewart to wage an "apparent hate campaign" against the couple.

He even allegedly "kidnapped" the pair's three-legged cat, Amber, and "dumped her in a village miles away". Amber was eventually recovered following a poster campaign.

On 22 September Stewart appeared to offer an olive branch in the form of curry, claiming he'd over-ordered from the takeaway. When Sales and Walton tucked in, they found the food laced with slug pellets. They called in the cops and Stewart was arrested.

He subsequently appeared before magistrates in Manchester where he "admitted attempting to poison the two women". He will appear again before the court at a later date.


Everybody needs good neighbours.









Over in Canada a truck driver has been fined for smoking in his vehicle because it is considered his workplace, a police spokeswoman said on Friday.

A police officer saw the 48-year-old trucker driving on a highway in south-western Ontario with a cigarette in his mouth on Wednesday, and gave him a C$305 (184 pound) ticket.

The Smoke-Free Ontario Act, adopted in 2006, prohibits smoking in an enclosed workplace or enclosed public area, and that extends to work vehicles, said Constable Shawna Coulter of the Ontario Provincial Police in Essex County.

"We enforce the legislation and this truck driver was in violation of that," she said.
($1=$1.04 Canadian)


Is it enclosed if the windows are open?







A zoo in Gaza has got around animal import restrictions by dyeing stripes on donkeys to make 'zebras'.

The owner of the Marah Land zoo in Gaza City said he had used masking tape and black hair dye, applied with a paint-brush, to disguise the white females.

Mohammed Bargouthi said it would have cost him more than £25,000 to bring in a real zebra via smuggling tunnels.

"The first time we used paint but it didn't look good," said Mr Bargouthi.

"The children don't know, so they call them zebras and they are happy to see something new."

All the real animals at the zoo, including monkeys and a tigress, had been smuggled under the border at great expense, he said.

Two genuine zebras died of starvation earlier this year during the Israeli military offensive, he added.


The animal restrictions are part of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, imposed in an attempt to reduce rocket attacks and weaken the leadership of Hamas.



I’ve got a cat that is really a lion, any takers?















A town has spent £5,000 on a new logo which resembles a child’s crayon scribble.

The “visual expression” consisting of a computer-generated, three-dimensional image of dozens of multi-coloured, tangled circles is aim to revamp and improve Burnley’s image. And council bosses are so impressed with the design; they have paid an addition £400 to trademark the logo - preventing other towns from using it.

The design was produced by Burnley Vision Board after it secured a £300,000 grant from North West Development Agency (NWDA). The cash will be used to completely re-brand the Lancashire town.

Critics say the logo resembles a deformed insect, while others believe a three-year-old could have produced the same design.

Burnley Vision Board consists of representatives from organisations within the town, including the council, football club, college and various businesses. The different coloured circles in the emblem are intended to display different aspects of the town. The red bands represent the urban aspect of the town, while the green symbolises the rural areas.

Coun Gordon Birtwistle, leader of Burnley Council, believes it is money well spent, saying the logo signifies Burnley’s intertwining qualities. He said that the council had to act swiftly to trademark the logo as other towns were keen to use it.

A spokesman for Burnley Vision Board said a lot of effort and thought had gone into the logo’s design.

Last year, neighbour Blackburn spent £60,000 on a new logo which was almost identical to one promoting another town.

The council unveiled a heart-shaped letter “B” only to discover later that Barrow, in Cumbria, had the same design to promote the town.


Numptys.




And finally:








A unique new tennis racquet, which inventors say could revolutionise the game and even eliminate backhand for ambidextrous players, has been launched with two handles at the base.

Dann and Brian Battistone are both professional tennis players, but 36-year-old Brian and Dann, 34, are also ambidextrous.

Now with the help of the unique new type of racquet they may never have to play a backhand again.

American Brian said that for him the backhand might not be necessary anymore thanks to the new racquet.
Brian, who trains in Naples, Italy, said: "I've always been ambidextrous, like my little brother Dann, but we had difficulty in taking advantage of this on the court.
"I think this could revolutionise the sport.

"We met a racquet artisan called Lionel Burt who said he had just invented this special two-handled device for playing tennis.

"Aside from the possibility of always using the forehand, the easiest stroke by definition and also more classic, the basic reason for the invention was to suit players just like us.


Sort of defeats the object doesn’t it.



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