Dull, dingy, damp, dismal and not a lot of lack of cold
stuff at the Castle this morn, his Maj has a new “toy” a feather which only
seems to work when I perform my duties and the Honda is covered in yellow
stuff-again.
And the skywater is affecting the interweb thingy-again
It seems that we are owed over £11.1 million by EU students who
are apparently entitled to low interest loans to cover their tuition fees at
British universities.
Allegedly 42% of EU students who owe money borrowed to put
them through their courses are either in arrears or "not currently
repaying", a newspaper reported.
The total outstanding debt owed by EU students has more than
doubled from £49.2 million in 2009/10 to £111.1 million in 2010/11.
A Department of Business spokesman said: "The majority
of overseas borrowers are honest and want to repay their loans. However all
borrowers need to know they cannot evade their obligation to repay simply by
moving overseas.
"We actively trace those in arrears and will obtain
court orders in other jurisdictions to require repayment if necessary.
UK universities have seen a rise of 56% in the number of EU
undergraduates in a decade, compared with a 14% rise in the number of UK
undergraduates.
Chuff-chuff ransoms are due to be issued today with some commuters set to see rises of more
than double the rate of inflation.
The latest Retail
Price Index inflation figure - expected to remain at 2.8% - will be used to
calculate the increase.
In England fares
will rise by inflation plus 3%, while in Scotland they will go up by inflation
plus 1%. Wales has yet to set a figure for its increase.
It seems that commuters
across the country routinely spend between 5% and 10% of their salary getting
to work. In some towns in south-east England they spent up to 15%.
The extra money is
helping to fund huge investment across the network.
Har-bloody-har, for
“investment” read shareholders dividends, top knobs bonuses and nice big
pensions.
ScotlandsDNA, a
project designed to analyse the genetic background of Scots, discovered there
was a huge rise in the population in around 3,000BC.
According to
Alastair Moffat, the author of The Scots: A Genetic Journey, the reason
ancient Scots women were able to give birth to more children was the discovery
of porridge.
In hunter-gatherer
societies the rate of population growth was low because mothers suckled their
children for as long as five years until their teeth were strong enough to consume the diet of meat and
roots, fruits and fungi harvested. During the period in which women were
breastfeeding their children they were often infertile.
However, when farming techniques arrived in Scotland in
around 3000BC, cereals were grown and were then mashed into a nourishing
porridge which did not need to be chewed and so could be easily fed to infants,
this in turn allowed women to stop breastfeeding a lot sooner.
And then along came deep fried mars bars....
A 17ft 7in (5.18m) snake
weighing 164lb (74kg) was found in Everglades National Park, the University of
Florida announced.
The python - now
dead - was pregnant with 87 eggs, also believed to be a record.
After scientific
investigation, the snake will be exhibited at the museum on the University of
Florida campus for five years before being returned to the Everglades National
Park.
Where it will be
used as a flagpole...
To the land of
Engrish, a Chinese hotel has built what might just be the world's
scariest swimming pool.
The glass-bottomed
pool, at the Holiday Inn Shanghai Pudong Kangqiao, partly hangs over a
24-storey drop.
Offering a
birds-eye view to the street below, the cantilever pool is designed to make
guests feel they are swimming in the sky.
The 30 metre-long
and 6m-wide pool was designed by Singaporean company Chan Sau Yan Associates
and is the first of its kind in China.
"We wanted to
provide our guests a unique swimming experience, and let them feel they're
vacationing even in a bustling city," a hotel spokesperson said.
And up to NY a
Boy Scout leader from New York who was attacked by a rabid beaver while
swimming in the Delaware River is recovering.
The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that 51-year-old Normand Brousseau, of Pine Plains, was swimming in eastern Pennsylvania on Aug. 2 when a beaver swam through his legs and bit him in the chest.
The animal then bit him in the leg, buttocks, arm, hand and
torso before he managed to grab it and hold its jaw closed.
One Boy Scout pulled Brousseau to shore, where he tossed the
beaver away from him. The Scouts then used rocks to kill the animal.
A doctor confirmed the beaver had rabies a day after the
attack.
Dutchess County health officials say a rabid beaver attack
is unusual.
And today’s thought:
Biting the Beaver.
Angus
