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

AnglishLit

Angus Dei-NHS-THE OTHER SIDE

Angus Dei politico

The Sunday Section

Undercover Fags: Berlusconi Battles on; Who makes the Law? Goldman Sachs Goldmine and Prince Philip





If you want the weather look to the left of the post, because it is too dark to tell.

Bit of a long winded post today, but persevere, you never know.

It seems that Gord may have shot himself in the foot over expenses; it also seems that 325 other MPs will face further inquiries over their extravagances.

Shame.

I am not a fan of ‘Boy Bands’ but the news today is that Stephen Gately has died while on holiday in Majorca, at 33 years old that is a tragedy for his family.



First up:

Would you like that in a ‘Brown’ paper bag sir?

Thousands of newsagents are threatening to boycott the Labour Party at the General Election if legislation is passed banning them from openly displaying cigarettes.

They believe the move - due to be debated by MPs this week - would drive hundreds of small retailers out of business.

A spokesman for the National Federation of Retail Newsagents told the BBC's Politics Show: "No-one wants to see youngsters smoking, but there is absolutely no evidence from the three other countries in the world that have introduced a display ban that it stops underage smoking.

"If the vote on Monday goes against newsagents - our 18,000 members - then they will vote with their feet. This will be very bad news for Gordon Brown."

Retailers say it will cost more than £250 million to implement the ban, because shops will have to be refitted after removing the displays.

The move is part of the Government's Health Bill, which was given its second reading in the Commons in June.

Ministers and health campaigners insist that putting cigarettes on open view encourages young people to buy them.

Daft idea, daft Government.

Berlusconi-Time for Porridge?

Now his get-out-of-jail card has been snatched from him, many think it's only a matter of time before he's finally nailed.

The reality, however, will be very different. The Italian judicial system works with all the speed of a snail and it's unlikely ever to catch up with an escapologist like Berlusconi. No case will come to court for months or, more probably, years, and even if he were found guilty there would then be two more levels of appeals to go through. It will be like watching a Sumo wrestler trying to catch a rabbit: intriguing for the first few minutes, but not much of a contest. Not least because Berlusconi has many other defences in his armour beyond immunity. He has proved himself a dab hand at side-stepping sentences by other means in the past - the statute of limitations was lowered, meaning crimes were past their "crime-by" date; certain offences were decriminalised - and he'll doubtless do so again.

To many it seems incredible that, with all these scandals and accusations, Berlusconi is still in power. But the truth is that, paradoxically, in some ways those scandals and accusations help keep him there. They allow him to play the role of the poor, persecuted victim. The more Italian judges, and us foreign journalists, accuse him of this or that, the more he is able to play a role with which many Italians truly identify: the hard-working man in the street who is humiliated by elitists and foreigners. With these looming trials, Berlusconi the multi-billionaire is, incredibly, able to present himself as an underdog, a role that - even more than that of the great seducer or the passionate football fan - endears him to the majority of the electorate.


Tobias Jones is author of The Dark Heart of Italy, Travels Through Time and Space Across Italy

The Human Rights act-taking away our human rights

An investigation has uncovered scores of cases where offenders from overseas, including killers and sex attackers, have been able to stay in Britain despite strenuous attempts by the Government to deport them.

The findings demonstrate how criminals are using the 1998 Human Rights Act to avoid being sent back to their homelands – despite a pledge by Gordon Brown to remove any foreigner who breaks the law.

In cases thought to have cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds, immigration judges have overturned attempts by the Home Office to remove at least 50 foreign criminals from the country in the past 12 months, after lawyers argued that deporting them would breach their human rights.

In July 2007, shortly after becoming prime minister, Mr Brown told foreign nationals to "play by the rules or face the consequences", warning: "If you commit a crime you will be deported from our country."

Yet in several cases, criminals were allowed to remain in the UK despite courts acknowledging that they pose a danger to the public.

Foreign offenders who have won the right to stay in Britain include:

Mark Cadle from Belize, jailed for having sex with a 14-year-old girl, who judges said would have his human rights infringed if deported because his family live in Britain.

Rohail Spall, a Pakistani businessman man jailed for attempting to spike a woman's drink so he could rape her, but allowed to stay because deporting him would breach his right to family life.

A Pakistani man in his forties who indecently assaulted a friend's six-year-old daughter at a cinema. He was jailed for two years, but on release was allowed to remain in the UK on family grounds. He arrived in Britain as an adult but has several children who were born here.

A Somali with convictions including manslaughter and robbery, who the court said would be "at serious risk of persecution" if returned because he is from a minority clan.

The 50 cases, which were all rigorously opposed by the Home Office in court, include 15 criminals with convictions for violent crime, four sex offenders and 13 with drug convictions.

The total is likely to represent only the tip of the iceberg because they were all heard at the second tier of appeal, and many more criminals could have won the right to remain here at the lower level. Official figures are not available, according to the Home Office and the courts.

We are powerless in our own country, and even if we did deport them their countries would invoke the human rights act, saying it was against their human rights to accept murderers and rapists.

Bonuses are back

Goldman Sachs is set to unveil huge profits this week, putting the Wall Street bank on track to award as much as $22bn (£13.7bn) in pay and bonuses at the end of the year.

The profits, which could be as much as three times the level of last year, are the result of better business conditions but the size of the rewards – from which top bankers could receive multi-million pound packages – will set Goldman on a collision course with governments on both sides of the Atlantic.

Goldman will lead a series of bank results that defy the recession. JP Morgan, Citigroup and Bank of America are also set to unveil bumper results this week which could also convert to big payouts.

Goldman is expected to announce pre-tax profits of $3.5bn on revenues of $12bn for the three months of business up until the end of September. Nearly half of the revenues, around $6bn, will be put towards the annual remuneration package to be divided among staff, 5,500 of whom work in London.

Glad somebody is doing well-NOT.





And finally:

Prince Phil on remotes, and some quotes

Prince Philip says he is baffled by modern television remote controls and ends up lying on the floor by the set to operate it instead.

"I think people are very tolerant, the way they go on tolerating these ghastly things," the 88-year-old said, before laying into television set design.

"You used to put it on the floor and then they put the controls on the bottom so you had to lie on the floor. And then if you wanted to record something, the recorder was underneath.

"So you ended up lying on the floor with a torch in your teeth, a magnifying glass and an instruction book.

"Either that or you had to employ a grandson of age 10 to do it for you."

Some “Phil” quotes:

Are you Indian or Pakistani? I can never tell the difference between you chaps.

At Washington Embassy reception for Commonwealth members.

British women can't cook. They are very good at decorating food and making it attractive. But they have an inability to cook.

Addressing mainly female audience at Scottish Rural Women's Institute Display in 1966.

Do you still throw spears at each other?

To Australian Aborigines, during a visit to Queensland, 2002.

How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test.

To Scottish driving instructor, 1995.

If it has got four legs and is not a chair, if it has two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.

Commenting on Chinese eating habits to World Wildlife Fund conference in 1986.

If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed.

To British students in China during Royal visit there in 1986.

People usually say that after a fire it's the water damage that's the worst. We're STILL trying to dry out Windsor castle.

To grieving residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, during a 1993 visit after a plane exploded and crashed into the town, killing everyone on board and several people on the ground (and shortly after a fire swept through one wing of Windsor Castle).

The bastards murdered half my family.

In room full of press agents, commenting on Russians in 1967, having been asked whether he would consider a visit there.

Love him or hate him?


Angus

AnglishLit

Angus Dei-NHS-THE OTHER SIDE

Angus Dei politico