Calling home: Irish polar bears: Taping a brain: Naked theatre: and Elfandsafety sponges.

Damp, dingy and more than a tad dismal at the Castle this morn, the study is empty of all thingies, the hip is getting better, his Maj seems to think that I can control the weather and the bollards are still missing. 

I suppose I should mention the demise of the News of the doodah, don’t really give a marsupials mammaries, cynic I may be but it seems that the sacrifice has been made, which will allow the Millionaires Club Coalition to make the “right” decision later in the year over BSB.

Anyway if you can be bothered HERE is the full Murdoch statement.

The good news is that thousands of trees will be saved....or not.

I see that Santander is bringing its Indian call centres back to Blighty

Chief executive Ana Botin told the BBC customers had said it was "the most important factor in terms of the satisfaction with the bank".

It is taking on 500 staff for new phone centres and has 25 million customers and 1,300 branches in the UK.

The bank acquired Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and parts of Bradford & Bingley in 2008.

Commenting on the call centre move, Ms Botin said: "This is what our customers have told us is the most important factor in terms of the satisfaction with the bank, and we have listened to them and decided to bring all of our retail call centres back from India."

Allegedly there is a trend for banks and other companies to bring call centres back to the UK, although many are now moving administration work to cheaper countries instead.

 So instead of trying to translate foreign accents customers will have to decipher foreign “English”.

 I bank with Barclays-you can’t even ring your local branch....

According to scientists

The maternal ancestors of modern polar bears were from Ireland, Previously, it was believed that today's polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on islands off the coast of Alaska.

However, analysis of mitochondrial DNA - which is passed from mother to child - has shown the extinct Irish brown bears are the ancestors of all today's polar bears, the scientists said.

Their work provides evidence of the two species mating opportunistically during the past 100,000 years or more. 

Which explains why they choose to live in one of the coldest places on Earth.

East to the land of long stringy things

A 23 cm long tapeworm has been surgically removed from a Chinese woman's brain. Doctors in a Nanjing hospital removed the worm from the brain of 24-year-old Li Fang a week ago, Li said she was disgusted at the thought of the tapeworm living in her brain.

Li's husband Yang said she suffered her first seizure last December and she was taken to hospital where it was detected that there was something in her brain but doctors could not determine what it was.

The second seizure was in June. This time a scan showed a strange object in her brain and a decision to operate was taken.

Doctors found a roughly spherical mass that was pressing against her brain nerves. While removing it, they suddenly found a long worm attached to it.

It was a tapeworm -- alive and wriggling.

So it isn’t little people that live in my brain.........

 West a fair amount to the land of Plumbers

Street theatre actors were torn off a strip by police after they mingled naked with crowds at a music festival.

The Deuxime Groupe D'intervention performers had been invited from France to take part in Poland's Malta Festival in Poznan.

But the group, whose motto is 'Wake Up Your Sensitive Parts, ignored the stage and stripped naked as they mingled with festival-goers waiting for bands like Portishead and Fleet Foxes to start playing.

Police threw the entire cast in the cells on public indecency charges after shocked concert goers dialled 999.

"We didn't know they were performers. There was no stage or acting as such. We just thought they were very kinky nutcases," said one witness.

A police spokesman confirmed: "A group was detained for lewd conduct in a public place."

Theatre isn’t what it used to be.

 And finally:

 Up North

Carnival organisers banned a wet sponge throwing event - for health and safety reasons. They feared they sponges might get dirty and someone could end up with grit in their eye.

The event had been a traditional favourite as carnival-goers aimed sponges at unfortunate volunteers in the stocks in the Lake District town of Ulverston...

But Saturday’s spectacular went ahead with water pistols, not sponges.

Organiser Ralph Spours said: “We decided that, in the face of health and safety, it would make better sense to use super-soakers instead.

“We did note that sometimes when the sponges were landing on the ground, they were landing in dirt and grit, being put back in the water butts and thrown again and there was a danger that people could get grit in their eye.”  

Goggles anyone?

That’s it: After doing a Clarkson on India, Ireland, Poland  and other foreign countries I’m orf to search for the Dorset Pliosaur in the moat. 

And today’s thought: If tin whistles are made out of tin, what do they make fog horns out of?

 Angus