SUNDAY SECTION

Very hot again last night, and I didn’t sleep much (again), and was woken at five by the sound of a couple of old birds having a fight, no not the neighbours but a pair of blackbirds.


The news seems a bit drab today, there is the story about village fetes being cancelled because of red tape, which apparently extend to as many as fifteen licenses, legal agreements, forms and certificates being required, including the 20 plus pages of the ‘premises license’ and of course the iniquitous ‘risk assessment’ forms from the insurance companies. Failure to adhere to the terms of the licenses can lead to a fine of up to £20,000 or six months in prison, or being sued if they fail to meet insurance requirements.

Oh to be in England now that the fete has been cancelled due to inane regulations.



Another ‘story’ is that we are a miserable load of Brits, it appears that “research” has shown us to be 74th in the ‘happiness’ table, being less satisfied with life than many in poorer countries and we use too many of the earth's resources.

The Happy Planet Index or HPI measures life expectancy, happiness and the environmental impact of different nations. The top ten countries are not the richest nations but middle income countries in Latin America, Asia or the Caribbean where there is a high level of life satisfaction and low carbon footprint.

The UK comes in at 74 out of 143 countries behind post-Soviet Georgia at 72, the military dictatorship Burma at 39 and Sri Lanka, which has been scarred by civil war, at 22. The highest ranking country in the EU was the Netherlands at 43 followed by France at 71 and Germany at 51. The United States was ranked at 114, Canada at 89 and Australia at 102. Zimbabwe and other poor African nations, where life expectancy and happiness is low, came bottom of the table.



Can you blame us? We have El Gordo and his gang who have managed to completely destroy the economy, our pension funds have disappeared, we will have to work until we are 150, our houses are worth less than the “duck house” of a certain MP, our salaries are being cut, there are millions unemployed and to top it all Andy Murray is out of Wimbledon.

But the good news (not) is that the Ashes start next week.


Across the pond Sarah Palin has decided that she is resigning her office this month and will probably put herself up for the 2012 the presidential nomination.

So?

I watched the program on the Da Vinci Turin Shroud, it was very believable, he managed it by using an early version of photography, the camera obscura after soaking the cloth in a silver solution and hanging it up, then a body or a statue was used and the head of Da Vinci was added afterwards, or so they say, but we will never be able to prove it because the shroud will not be released for further tests.

And finally:

A Bride wants divorce after airport loo stop a bride has demanded a divorce from her husband of just one week who left her at an airport after their romantic newlywed jaunt because she took long in the toilet.

The Daily Mail reports that only a week of married life, one couple's romance came to a dramatic end after the bridegroom decided his wife simply spent too long in the bathroom. His solution was simple. Get on the plane without her. The woman in question, a teacher, had gone to use the facilities at the airport before boarding a flight back in Saudi Arabia. Quite how long she stayed in the toilet remains unclear.

What is certain is that she emerged to discover her husband had vanished without trace.

The woman, who had paid for the holiday, began a desperate search of the airport and grew increasingly concerned that something terrible had happened to him.

It eventually emerged that he had in fact boarded a plane, according to the Saudi Gazette. When he arrived at his destination, he calmly told relatives his new wife was still in Malaysia. His bride was not so calm about his behaviour. She has demanded an immediate divorce.

Till flush do we part?


Angus

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