Saturday Snippets

Hypnocops; Choo choo burglar; Battered Berlusconi dolls; Big apple ride; and a lawyer’s pound of flesh.




Still freezing, the snow now has a nice covering of ice and I can’t even get into the car because the doors are frozen shut, and even if I could I can’t go anywhere because none of the roads around the Angus castle have been gritted.








But at least I can still sit in front of the fire unlike the poor sods that took the Eurostar yesterday and spent hours sitting in the cold and dark because of the wrong type of temperature.


And:







The Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen party ended with a fizzle, which is probably no surprise to many people, The five-nation deal promised to deliver $30bn (£18.5bn) of aid for developing nations over the next three years, and outlined a goal of providing $100bn a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change.

President Obama said the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa had "agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2C and, importantly, to take action to meet this objective".

He added: "We are confident that we are moving in the direction of a significant accord."

The only thing I am confident of is that it will cost us a lot of money in return for not a lot of return.



First up:

You are feeling talkative

Police officers are being sent on hypnosis courses, as part of the "new frontier in UK policing".

Officers are being encouraged to sign up to a course by Tom Silver, who is better known as a 'celebrity hypnotherapist' on American chat shows, in an attempt to gain more information from suspects.

Mr Silver, who has appeared on the Montel Williams and Ricki Lake chat shows on US TV, where he gave a guest an "orgasmic handshake", normally charges £1,000-a-day for courses in his home country.

PC Mark Hughes, an investigative skills trainer with Cheshire Constabulary, personally organised Mr Silver's trip to the university in June next year.

He said that 'forensic hypnosis' is a the 'next logical step' for investigators to use when other 'more traditional methods' fail and said officers interested in new techniques should sign up to the course - despite its cost.

PC Hughes told Police Review: "Putting people in a receptive brainwave state makes it likelier that the truth would come out.

"Forensic hypnosis is a scientific approach as helmets monitor brain activity and anyone who is lying would have wide-awake brainwave patterns.

"Forensic hypnosis does not prove guilt but it can give new lines of enquiry when traditional methods have failed.


The mind police cometh.

IQ test needed

Four year old Hayden Wright was found wandering his neighbourhood in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the middle of the night with a beer in his hand. He was wearing a little girl's dress taken from under his neighbor's tree.

His mother April Wright, 21, woke at 1.45am. And realised he was missing.

She found him outside in the street, drinking a 12-ounce can of beer, she said.

Hayden was taken to hospital and treated for alcohol consumption.

His mother said: "My biggest concern was him being out there, getting kidnapped, getting run over, the alcohol, having to have his stomach pumped."

She said Hayden runs away, trying to find his father, who is in prison. Miss Wright is currently divorcing him.


The boy had managed to get through a child-proof door and get a can of beer out of a cooler behind the house, she said.

He then got into the neighbour's house through an unlocked door and stole five Christmas presents.

"He wants to get in trouble so he can go to jail because that's where his Daddy is," she said.

And the IQ test? For the mother of course.

Profit from adversity

An artist is hoping to cash in on the misfortune of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with a mocking figurine depicting his injuries.

Marco Ferrigno designed the £45 miniature showing the PM with a bloody nose and head bandage after the 73-year-old was attacked with a marble and metal statuette on Sunday.

The artist has even put a mini-Berlusconi centre stage in a nativity scene on display in his shop in Naples.

Mr Berlusconi has now left hospital after being treated for a fractured nose and broken teeth.

The Prime Minister's injuries have stirred public sympathy in Italy, but several groups praising his alleged attacker Massimo Tartaglia have been created on Facebook.


No comment.

New York Naked cyclists

At first glance this seems amusing but, as in many cases it comes down to religion: The polar bear dare is the latest in an ongoing row between Hasidic Jews against Williamsburg hipsters.

The "Freedom Ride" is designed to protest against the removal of a bike lane in Williamsburg, a long-time Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood that has in recent years been taken over by young artists.

The activists intend to go topless in front of Hasidic residents who "can't handle scantily clad women" on wheels, Heather Loop, a bike messenger, told a local newspaper earlier this week.

The newspaper, The Brooklyn Paper, suggested the scantily clad protesters might roll into the neighbourhood at sundown on Saturday - just as families leave synagogue services on the Sabbath.

Cycling advocates claim Mayor Michael Bloomberg erased the bike lane because conservative residents objected to seeing scantily clad riding through the neighbourhood every day.

Members of the Satmar branch of Judaism "don't want to see women in shorts," said Baruch Herzfeld, who runs a bike-sharing programme in a community where Jewish women wear modest long skirts and blouses with long sleeves and men heavy coats and hats, even in the hot NY summer.

The biggest challenge for the topless riders, however, might not be the law - it's legal to go topless in New York in public - but the weather: forecasters are predicting as much as 10 inches of snow and brisk winds.



That’ll teach em.





And finally:

He nose you know

A Memphis attorney bit off part of a man's nose during a fight in a restaurant bathroom.

A lawsuit filed by Greg Herbers claims attorney Mark Lambert attacked him last June after Herbers asked two men in a bathroom stall to get out so that he could use it.

The suit states that Lambert was at a urinal and had been carrying on a conversation with the men in the stall. Herbers claims Lambert pushed and grabbed him and bit off and swallowed part of his nose.

Lambert told WMC-TV he did bite off part of Herbers' nose, but spit it out. He claims he acted in self defense after Herbers assaulted him.

The police report said Herbers entire left nostril was missing. Herbers claims he suffered permanent disfigurement and will need plastic surgery and possibly a prosthetic nose.

Herbers is asking for $5 million in damages.

I know some lawyers are called vampires but that is bit of a no no.....se.



That’s it for now, and I even managed some mammaries for certain people, I’m off to the car with the hairdryer to unfreeze the doors.



Angus

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