Royal read my post: Money for nothing: The door now landing in Washington: Tanks for the accident: Shotgun golf: and a really, really ugly piece of “art”.

Heaps of solar stuff, not a lot of lack of cold stuff, not even a promise of atmospheric movement and even less wet stuff at the Castle this morn.

I threw caution to the wind yestermorn and perpetrated a vast amount of vandalism on the garden, the hedges have been hedged, the borders bordered, the pots potted, the shrubs reduced in vertical distance and the moss mowed, unfortunately the wind returned the favour and now I can hardly move-ain’t gardening fun?

 

All across data protected Blighty

Allegedly if you are unfortunate enough to have to claim the pittance handed out to the not so well orf you should be prepared for your local postman Pat to open and sort your application.

According to the Independent confidential medical information from sick and disabled people applying for welfare benefits is opened and sorted by Royal Mail staff on behalf of the Government without the claimant's knowledge or consent.

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) routinely uses Royal Mail to process the thousands of benefits claims, including health data, it receives every day.

For example, people applying for sickness benefits such as employment support allowance (ESA) must first complete a detailed medical questionnaire explaining their conditions, prescribed medication and therapies, and the names and addresses of their doctors and nurses.

The form, which also includes highly sensitive questions about addictions and mental illness, is then posted in a pre-addressed envelope to the DWP or Atos Healthcare – the Paralympics sponsor paid by the Government to carry out controversial assessments of claimants' capacity to work.

However, it has emerged that these envelopes are routinely opened and the contents sorted by the Royal Mail, unless the envelope is specifically marked "private and confidential". In those cases they are sent to Atos unopened, according to the DWP.

The DWP said security measures were in place to minimise the risk of any data breaches, including CCTV in sorting rooms and procedures that mean at least two people open the mail together.

 

Which doubles the chance of your “confidential” information escaping the net....

 

And keeping the Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition in the sniper sight

It seems that the reshuffle of the above’s sideboard will cost the taxpayer more than £250,000 in tax-free redundancy pay-outs.

The ministers will receive thousands of pounds each because of the decision by U-Turn Cam and what’s his name’s decision to over-haul the Cabinet two and a half years into the life of the Coalition.

Under the 1991 Ministerial and Other Pensions and Salaries Act, ministers are entitled to three months of their ministerial salary when they are forced out of office.

In the reshuffle 28 paid ministers and one unpaid minister lost their jobs – about one in four of the Government.

The payments are triggered if a minister has not found another role in Whitehall three weeks after leaving.

They range according to seniority, from £17,207 for a secretary of state to £5,924 for a Parliamentary under Secretary, the lowest paid ministerial role in Government.

The money will be paid tax-free because it is less than £30,000, the level at which at which tax starts to be paid on redundancy pay-outs.

Calculations by The Daily Telegraph suggest the pay outs to ministers will total £249,027 – excluding payments to special advisers who have lost jobs with their ministers.

 

But don’t forget-well, you know the rest...and I thought that redundancy payments could only be made on proper jobs...

 

Left quite a lot to the home of the plane and the land of a new president

The US Federal Aviation Administration has confirmed that a piece of metal that fell to the ground in a Kent, Washington, neighbourhood was part of a Boeing 767's landing gear door.

Witnesses said the refrigerator-size panel hit the ground and skipped about 30 feet before stopping in a street.
No one in the neighbourhood about 15 miles south of Seattle was hurt.

Neighbours said a cargo jet flew low over the area at about the same time the part came down.

Photos on news station KOMO's website show part of an identification plate on the object that has the word "aircraft" along with a serial number.

FAA officials are not saying if they have located the plane that the part came from.

 

Should be easy enough to find....

 

Right to the place where multi function knives are rife

A Swiss van driver had an amazing escape - when he survived a collision with an army tank.

Soldiers on military exercises in Unterrealta, Switzerland, had been controlling traffic to allow a column of tanks to pass through a junction safely.

But they failed to see the mini truck speeding through - straight into the path of a 15 tonne tank.

"He hit the tank and bounced off and rolled over three or four times before coming to a halt. It was a heck of a whack," said one eye witness.

Police say the driver and two passengers are recovering in hospital.

"Three men were injured. The military were in full control of the junction," said a police spokesman.

 

Or not.....

 

Left a fairway again to a fairway

 

Jeff Fleming, 53, of Reno is accused of opening fire with a shotgun on a golfing twosome, hitting one man who was treated at a hospital and released, police said on Friday.

Fleming was taken into custody at a local attorney's office where he fled following the shooting, Reno police said in a statement.

Fleming was booked into the Washoe County jail on suspicion of battery and assault with a deadly weapon late on Thursday and later released on bail.

Police say he opened fire at the 16th hole of Reno's Lakeridge Golf Course after one of the golfers shattered a window of his house with a ball. Fleming, whose home overlooks the course, had a verbal argument with the golfers before the shooting, police said.

 

Moral-if you don’t want golf balls through your windows; don’t buy a bleedin house next to a golf course....

 

And finally:

 

Back in conservation Blighty

 

A futuristic house which won the Royal Academy of Arts' prestigious architecture prize has been ridiculed by neighbours who claim it looks like a UFO and is still not finished after six years.

Residents living in Wood Lane in Highgate, north London, say work on the house has been going on since 2006 and that it still looks like a 'scrap yard'.

They are fed up that the house - which they say looks like a 'giant spaceship.....complete with UFO-style elevated gangway' - is making the street 'a mess' and forcing property prices down.

The house, which is in a conservation area surrounded by homes built in the late 18th century, was designed by architects Birds Portchmouth Russum (BPR) and is owned by partner in the firm Mike Russum.

Last year the design won the Architecture Prize at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, which described the posh pad as a 'four-storey house (which) maximises the potential of a narrow infill site'.

But neighbours have this week slammed the house - saying it makes the prestigious road look a 'total and utter mess' with its fenced off entrance, scattered traffic cones and blue tarpaulin.

They are now demanding to know when the house - which is wedged between two existing homes - will be finished, six years since construction work began.

Neighbour Judith Steiner, who has lived on Wood Lane since 1970, said this week: "I originally supported the idea of having a home for the 21st century on the street.

"But work has been going on for years and now it just looks like a scrap yard surrounded by a chain link fence - it looks like something from War of the Worlds."

Another neighbour, who has lived in the street for the past 10 years but who did not want to be named, said: "It looks like a giant UFO just about to land.

Owner Mike Russum blamed planning laws, which he says delayed the completion of the house.

 

Should be finished really quickly now then...still bloody ugly though....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to prick the Heisenberg uncertainty principle

 

And today’s thought:

 

No she went to Vegas on her own....

 

Angus