Make your mind up Clegg: U-Turn Cam costs too much: Shrinking hotel: The “good” old days: Asbo Martin pram: and Mutant tadpoles.

Maximum lack of warm, minimum skywater, moderate atmospheric movement and less solar stuff than you could shake a bottle of suntan lotion at, at the Castle this morn, even later than usual I had to see my General Medic-blood pressure test and a nice blood test form, which meant going up to the Aldershot ‘Elf Centre, paying to park the Honda and sitting in the dungeon until my lucky ticket number came up.

 

And I am going to have to ban anonymous comments because I just don’t have the time sort them out, I have enough spam to take on Tesco in the meat dept.

 

Apparently what’s his name can’t decide whether “Lord” Rennard has been punched or bored

 

According to the Independent the deputy Prime Monster admitted that allegations of sexual harassment were a factor in the peer's decision to quit as the party's chief executive.

Which means that numb nuts Nick dramatically altered his explanation for Lord Rennard's surprise resignation in 2009 which had previously been blamed on ill health. His comments were rejected by the peer's friends, who said he had been warned by his doctors that he could be dead within a year unless he led a less stressful lifestyle.

 

Which seems to be a lucky break for his “Lordship”-or maybe not...

 

And the other half of the job at the top

U-Turn Cam is set to be dropped for this year's festivities in Witney after the bill for the 2012 event – which attracted 8,000 people – hit £45,000 pounds, including £2,300 for the Prime Monster’s security, Town councillors in the Prime Minister's constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire have drawn up plans to spread out the festivities, blaming rising costs and "dangerous" crowd levels.

The PM (T), who last year joined Father Christmas to switch on the seasonal lights, is now set to be dropped from the programme, with council officers looking for cheaper alternatives.

Witney mayor Councillor Eaglestone said: "My plan is to try to spread it over three days at different venues, but not have an official switch-on, no road closure and no David Cameron because it costs us a lot of money and we had criticism from the district council because of the number of people there.

 

Not even your own constituency wants you Dave....

  

East to the land of radiation proof stuff

Passers-by in the Japanese capital’s Akasaka district have witnessed the Grand Prince Hotel being demolished by construction company Taisei Corporation with a rather unique method.

Engineers reinforced the top floor with steel beams and then effectively lopped it off, keeping it in place to be used as an adjustable lid that can be lowered down the building on an external support frame.

Slowly but surely, and with none of the explosions or dust normally associated with the demolition of skyscrapers, the hotel is being torn down.

 

Shame that, they could have turned it into a prison....

 

According to someone the fifties was the bestest

In the USA that is, apparently growth was high, taxes were lower, there was less crime, better education, more spending power, more home ownership, lots of social mobility, oodles of optimism, falling debt and popularity was at a peak.

 

Great: that is if you ignore the racism and homophobia, organised crime and even more racism.

  

Back in “modern” Blighty

The "most exclusive pram in the world" is made with the same materials as Aston Martin's luxury car interiors.

Born from collaboration between Aston Martin and pram-makers Silver Cross, the limited edition pram is "designed to perfection with every detail considered".

The high-specification product boasts a leather-trimmed handle, air-ride suspension and is emblazoned with Aston Martin's iconic wings logo.

The pram's wheels are made from aluminium alloy and based on the wheels of Aston Martin One-77 car, though the automobile equivalent will set you back a cool £1.2m.

Described by Silver Cross as a "must-have for the most fast-paced lifestyle", and with just 800 being made, there is sure to be stiff competition among people who have money to burn.

 

And at £2,000 they can keep it...

 

And finally:

 

According to “researchers”

Eyes hooked up to the tail can help blinded tadpoles see, to learn more about the relationship between the body and the brain, researchers wanted to see how capable the brain was of interpreting sensory data from abnormal "ectopic" locations from which it normally does not receive signals.

Scientists experimented with 134 tadpoles of the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis, a common lab animal. They painstakingly grafted new eyes onto places such as their torsos and tails and then surgically removed their original eyes.

These experimental tadpoles then received a vision test the researchers first refined on normal tadpoles. The tadpoles were placed in a circular arena half illuminated with red light and half with blue light, with software regularly switching what colour light the areas received. When tadpoles entered places lit by red light, they received a tiny electric zap. A motion-tracking camera kept tabs on where the tadpoles were.

Remarkably, the scientists found that six tadpoles that had eyes implanted in their tails could apparently see, choosing to remain in the safer blue-light areas.

 

Time to test on “humans” then-preferably the researchers...

 

That’s it: I’m orf to test my mechanical sausages 

And today’s thought:

Punched or bored-preferably punched

 

Angus

Cloggy Cleggy: Where’s your mobile?: But I don’t have a wooden car: Fore! Shark!: Mountie and the Moose: and a pussy nest.

Enormous amounts of lack of warm, not a whimsy of solar stuff, just as much atmospheric movement and oodles of ex skywater at the Castle this morn; spent yesterday clamped to the toilet with my head in a bucket (or was it the other way round? The old memory isn’t what it was), my own fault I entered the dreaded doctors surgery without my bio-suit, wellies and disposable gloves and staggered through the heaving piles of snotty nosed, vomiting brats to get my anti falling dahn and laying in vomit pills, but the good news is that my rear exit has cooled dahn to red hot and the world has stopped spinning.

 

And talking of rear ends

What’s his name, who apparently speaks five languages fluently, chose to conduct a recent meeting at the Cabinet Office with Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president, entirely in Dutch.

“Nick enjoys being able to talk Dutch,” the Liberal Democrat leader's spokesman tells Mandrake. “Similarly, when he meets leaders from France or Latin America, he’ll speak French and Spanish. It’s very much appreciated when he goes.

"Usually at these meetings, there’ll be an aide who can speak Dutch, too, but [this time] I don’t think there was a No 10 aide there at all.”  

Cloggy Cleggy’s mother is allegedly from the land of wacky baccy, which does explain a lot...

 

British website mobileinsurance has listed some of the most far-fetched claims it has received in the last 12 months

 

And here are the top seven or eight or nine or so.

One woman lost her Nokia when she baked it into a Victoria sponge cake intended for her daughter’s birthday party.

A couple on a cruise tried to photograph themselves re-enacting the 'I'm the king of the world' scene from the movie Titanic, but lost their phone over the side.

A Bristol woman in her twenties shamelessly told insurers that she'd worn out the vibrate function on her BlackBerry Bold 9900 by using it as an "adult toy".

One Liverpool girl in her twenties found out her boyfriend had been cheating on her and threw her HTC Desire X at him, but it hit the wall.

Another complained that her Samsung Galaxy was snatched by a rogue seagull while she was walking her dog on Barry Island in South Wales.

A construction worker put in a claim for a phone that he said he had dropped down the toilet.

A pyrotechnician suffered another workplace accident while putting on a show at the National Fireworks Championships in Plymouth. It was only as the smoke cleared that he realised he'd left his iPhone 3GS in the 'blast zone'.

A man who told his insurance company his iPhone had been stolen by monkeys at a Safari Park. He was trying to film the animals at the time.

Meanwhile a tight arsed fan wanted to go to a Blur concert in Hyde Park without paying for a ticket. He ended up dropping his new iPhone whilst trying to film it from a tree.

And:

A farmer claims to have lost his iPhone up the rear end of a cow while using it as a torch during calving.

Only the pyrotechnician and the Blur fan had their claims rejected by the company.


Now where did I put it?

 

East to the land of.....stuff

Featuring a body made exclusively from high-quality wood and decorated with intricate carvings, the Achilles has been turning heads on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City.

The one-of-a-kind vehicle was created by Le Nguyen Khang, owner of Binh Duong-based wood processing firm Le Lumber. He told reporters the idea of building a wooden car started off as a joke, while he was talking to an English friend who works in the travel business. One day, he jokingly asked Khang, “Working in the wood processing industry, can you make me a wooden car?”

So he did; the sketch for his unusual automobile was completed in April of 2011, and with the help of 11 of his best employees, he worked on it for 16 months. The Achilles was finally completed last month, and as soon as he started driving it around the city, people assaulted him with all kinds of questions and requests to have their pictures taken with it.

The entire body of the 4.6m-long and 1.8m-wide vehicle is made from imported wood like xylia xylocarpa, ash, and walnut, His company logo is carved on the front of the car, on the background of a dragon, while the two front sides are covered with the patterns of a dragon, unicorn, turtle, and phoenix, the four traditional sacred animals which represent power, beauty, and nobility.

Hope he has third party, fire and woodworm insurance…

 

Left to the land of a waste of a walk

 

A worker at San Juan Hills Golf Club found a 2lb leopard shark on the 12^th tee and put it into fresh water... before a colleague remembered it's a sea creature and mixed some salt into his water.

The shark had puncture wounds where it appeared a bird had snagged it from the Pacific Ocean, about five miles away.

A golf club employee rushed the shark to the ocean where it was very still for a few seconds before twisting around and speeding off.

 

That could ruin your stroke…

 

Up a bit to the place where her Maj still rules

 

An officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was injured early on Thursday after being charged by a bull moose while driving on patrol in central British Columbia.

The officer was driving toward two moose at an intersection in the small community of Prince Rupert in an attempt to head off another vehicle approaching the same junction.

As the officer neared the animals, a bull moose charged his vehicle, breaking the front bumper as it jumped on the roof of the car. The moose began stomping and kicking, and a hoof broke the driver's side window, injuring the officer.

The moose then jumped on the trunk of the car and finally back on the road.

The officer suffered bruising on his left shoulder, but did not require medical attention. He finished his shift and went home to rest, the police said.

 I imagine the insurance claim read- I was proceeding in a westerly direction when a moose jumped out and jumped onto the car, it then jumped onto the roof, jumped up and down kicking in the side window, jumped off and ran away:-nah they’ll never believe that Sarge….

 

And finally:

 

Where do you keep your pussy?

 

Monsieur Louis Coulon, born in 1827 was the owner of a 3.3-meter-long beard, and the progenitor of the "Hirsute Kitten Cathedral Look."

Kept his little pussy in his facial fuzz.

 

That’s it: I’m orf to do a bit of alchemy

 

And today’s thought:

What do you mean it’s on vibrate?

 

 

Angus

Clegg needs a re-brand: Clegg and winter fuel payments: Lost Cobra: Tesco get ripped off: Kebab goes for a walk: and Sweet sixteen million.

Back to the dark morns at the Castle this Sunday, but at least it is “summer time” ha bloody ha.

I see that the “alternative” demo attracted a lot of people, it won’t make a blind bit of difference to the arrogant, useless, greedy Coalition, we are still fucked…..

Over in the land of the mushroom shaped rising cloud of radioactive material

 Wade Allison of Oxford University seems to think that “nuclear radiation at very high levels is dangerous, but the scale of concern that it evokes is misplaced. Nuclear technology cures countless cancer patients every day - and a radiation dose given for radiotherapy in hospital is no different in principle to a similar dose received in the environment.

So what of the radioactivity released at Fukushima? How does it compare with that at Chernobyl? Let's look at the measured count rates. The highest rate reported, at 1900 on 22 March, for any Japanese prefecture was 12 kBq per sq m (for the radioactive isotope of caesium, caesium-137).

Unfortunately, the Japanese seem to be repeating the mistake. On 23 March they advised that children should not drink tap water in Tokyo, where an activity of 200 Bq per litre had been measured the day before. Let's put this in perspective. The natural radioactivity in every human body is 50 Bq per litre - 200 Bq per litre is really not going to do much harm.

Some might ask whether I would accept it if it were buried 100 metres under my own house. My answer would be: "Yes, why not?" More generally, we should stop running away from radiation.”

Travel to Japan in twenty years or so Wade, and talk to the young people then…..

And across to Gadaffi land

Libyan rebels have pushed on westwards after recapturing the key oil town of Ajdabiya from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

Reports said they later seized the town of Brega, 70km (44 miles) away.

The eastern towns along the coast had been lost one-by-one to advancing pro-Gaddafi forces before coalition air strikes started last week.

Fresh air strikes have been reported at Sabha in central Libya.

Libyan state television said military and civilian areas had been hit, but there was no independent confirmation.

The interesting bit is “key oil town of Ajdabiya” but of course this isn’t about oil-is it?

Meanwhile Piss Poor Policies Dave C’s other missus

Nick Clegg has ordered a re-branding of the Liberal Democrats amid signs that he could face a challenge to his leadership if his party continues to slump in the polls.

The Deputy Prime Minister has commissioned a complete rethink of Lib Dem strategy amid rumblings about his stewardship at the highest level.

Insiders say senior party figures including Chris Huhne, a former leadership contender, have been jockeying for position behind the scenes.

Rumours about Mr Clegg's leadership have emerged after mounting discontent among party members in the country who are furious at the direction the party has been taking in government.

I’ve never mounted a discontent……..and the new “brand” of the LibDems?.....Tory.

Staying with Nick Cam

Nick Clegg has said he will write to a member of the public to "clarify" remarks he made about winter fuel payments, after appearing to be unaware of changes announced in the Budget.

Extra "top up" payments worth between £50 and £100 a year are being ended.

But when asked about it by two callers to a phone-in programme on BBC Radio Sheffield earlier, Mr Clegg initially dismissed their concerns.

Mr Clegg's spokesman insisted he was fully aware of the Budget's contents.

But, the aide added, the deputy prime minister's response could have been more clearly worded and he confirmed Mr Clegg would be writing to one of the callers to clear up any confusion.

He said Mr Clegg was correct to say that the main winter fuel payment would not be cut.

Under plans contained in the Budget, increases in winter fuel allowance for England, Wales and Scotland introduced by Labour in 2008-9 - but which the government says were regarded as temporary - are to be discontinued.

As a result, the annual tax-free payment to help people pay for their heating over the winter months will fall from £250 to £200 for the over 60s and from £400 to £300 for the over 80s in 2011-12.

So it’s not a cut then……

Over to the left a lot

Officials have closed the Reptile House at New York's Bronx Zoo after a poisonous Egyptian cobra disappeared from an enclosure that's separate from the animal exhibits.

Zoo officials say the building was immediately closed and secured after staff learned that the adolescent snake was missing Friday afternoon.

The zoo released a statement Saturday saying it's confident the 20-inch-long snake is in an area of the building that's not accessible to the public. Snakes usually seek closed-in spaces and aren't comfortable in open areas.

Officials say they are informing the public out of an "abundance of caution and will continue to take whatever steps necessary to ensure public safety."

Shan’t be going there then.

Back in the land of the pointless demos

Tesco has been left back-tracking after customers used a price promise to cash in — some effectively ending up with free food and money to spare.

The supermarket promised to give its 20 million customers a voucher worth double the difference between its price and Asda's in the "unlikely event" that products were cheaper when bought from their rival.

However, customers have been taking full advantage of the deal, with several getting hold of vouchers worth more than £100 after searching for the items with the biggest price gap solely to claim twice the money back.

One man claimed on a Manchester United web forum that he outsmarted the system - scooping a huge £600 from the Price Check pledge.

According to the Daily Mail, one ­­shopper splashed out on two bottles of Chardonnay, two bottles of Magners pear cider, two Nivea rich body moisturisers and a pack of mature cheddar after comparing items using Tesco's Price Check website.

The total bill came to £17.48 at Asda and £38.46 at Tesco — a difference of £20.98, which meant that Tesco was required to pay out a shopping voucher equivalent to £41.96.

Another customer spent £126 on a shop that would have cost £81 at Asda, and claimed back a £90 voucher.

The company promised: "We'll check the price of your comparable grocery shopping versus Asda and then send you an email when we have your results. Of course we're confident you will find your shopping cheaper at Tesco, but if not, we'll refund double the difference."

But the story has changed since then, with a spokesman for Tesco telling Yahoo! Finance: "The vast majority of our customers who use Price Check find that Tesco is cheaper than Asda.

"A very small number of people have used Price Check just to seek out products which a competitor has on promotion and to make some money out of our guarantee.

"We commend their ingenuity, but this isn't why we set up the guarantee. So we've introduced a £20 limit."

Tesco added that less than one in 5,000 customers have been awarded vouchers worth more than £20.

Whoops…..

Still in Blighty

Thieves have stolen an 18kg (40lb) frozen kebab from a takeaway outlet at Trowbridge railway station.

The massive block of meat, with a metal skewer running through the centre, was taken from La Capricciosa between 0230 GMT and 1400 GMT on Saturday.

The haul, valued at about £400, included bags of frozen chips and onion rings and 500 polystyrene kebab trays.

Anyone offered kebab meat in suspicious circumstances is asked to contact British Transport police.

Det Sgt Jon Rawson said: "If you are aware of anyone who has recently come into possession of kebab meat, or may perhaps be offering kebabs for sale when they are not usually in that line of business, we would appreciate your call."

Mainly because the local plod has gone into withdrawal…

And finally:

Back over to the ex colonies

An Ohio man saw his credit card declined when attempting to pay for access to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, because his credit card couldn't handle the $16 million bill.

Lt. Daniel DeVirgilio, an engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, received the letter informing him of the problem on Wednesday, from Time-Warner Cable the letter informed him that his credit card payment had been rejected for non-sufficient funds, for a bill of $16,409,107.

Time Warner Cable Southwest Ohio officials on Thursday attributed the $16.4 million mis-charge to simple human error. An employee typed in the wrong number, which caused the TWC’s automated system to generate the rejection letter.

DeVirgilio didn’t receive a bill for $16.4 million, and that amount wasn’t charged to his credit card, a Time Warner spokesman said. However, DeVirgilio was concerned that it would affect his credit rating or cause his cable service to be cut off.

The TWC spokesman added, “We apologize for the inconvenience that it caused. We are going to work with the customer to get this resolved.”

Ah… the old “computer says no” excuse.

That’s it: I’m orf to touch up my pics

And today’s thought: If you can't be a good example . . . you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

Angus