It seems that some MPs are not happy bunnies about having to repay some of their expenses-tough.
First up:
Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is not a true translation of the Hebrew.
She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world -- and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.
She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".
The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"
According to Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the Earth out of nothing.
Not being religious it doesn’t really matter to me, it would be nice to think that there is a “divine intelligence”, but would the writers of the old testament be aware of terms such as ‘spatially separate’?
She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world -- and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.
She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".
The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"
According to Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the Earth out of nothing.
Not being religious it doesn’t really matter to me, it would be nice to think that there is a “divine intelligence”, but would the writers of the old testament be aware of terms such as ‘spatially separate’?
The fightback has begun, with a campaign by the Noise Abatement Society (NAS) to reduce the number and volume of messages that increasingly bombard people.
The society has seen a fivefold increase in complaints over the past two years about public address systems.
Some train services now broadcast messages at the rate of more than one every two minutes. The 80-minute South West Trains service from Reading to London Waterloo features 50 messages.
A growing number of shops and supermarkets are now also using PA systems to give customers messages.
Among the announcements that travellers find particularly irritating, according to the NAS, are those that do little more than state the obvious.
These include requests to keep the aisles free and reminders that travellers must have valid tickets. Passengers at King’s Cross in London are told regularly that they are not permitted to rollerblade in the station. Announcements in supermarkets advising “use the checkout with the shortest queue” have also provoked complaints.
The campaign, A Quiet Life, is calling on transport operators and retailers to reduce the volume and number of messages.
The society has seen a fivefold increase in complaints over the past two years about public address systems.
Some train services now broadcast messages at the rate of more than one every two minutes. The 80-minute South West Trains service from Reading to London Waterloo features 50 messages.
A growing number of shops and supermarkets are now also using PA systems to give customers messages.
Among the announcements that travellers find particularly irritating, according to the NAS, are those that do little more than state the obvious.
These include requests to keep the aisles free and reminders that travellers must have valid tickets. Passengers at King’s Cross in London are told regularly that they are not permitted to rollerblade in the station. Announcements in supermarkets advising “use the checkout with the shortest queue” have also provoked complaints.
The campaign, A Quiet Life, is calling on transport operators and retailers to reduce the volume and number of messages.
My local Tesco has a weird announcement which blares out every time I am shopping-“there is a lorry at the back door”, SO?
Fred Bowers, a break dancing pensioner who showed off his moves on Britain's Got Talent, has been told to pay back thousands of pounds in benefits.
Mr Bowers, 74, amazed the show's judges and millions of viewers with his body-popping routines, which included spinning on his head.
But the Department for Work and Pensions was less impressed - because he was still claiming 50 pounds a month in Motability allowance.
Earlier this year officials stopped the money, which was used to pay for his car, after deciding he no longer qualified for the pay-outs.
And now the former soldier, of Sutton Bonnington, near Loughborough, Leics, has been ordered to pay back a total of £3,000.
He denied that he had been "found out" by going on the show, insisting: "I was overpaid, but it was a mistake by the social.
"I'm not a benefits cheat - I would never do anything dishonest. There was just a mistake, and I was getting more than I should have done.
"I always said I would pay back anything I was found to owe. I was worried I would end up in court, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen."
Officials launched a probe into Mr Bowers, who claims he has a bad leg, after receiving an anonymous tip-off following his star turn on the show.
Their inquiry revealed he did not meet the criteria for Motability payments and his 70-pounds-a-week disability living allowance was too high.
He has now handed back his car and will have to pay back the excess he received out of his pension at a rate of 10.80 pounds a week.
Mr Bowers, who will take more than five years to clear his debt, said the loss of his car meant he would now have to cut back on his partying.
Mr Bowers, 74, amazed the show's judges and millions of viewers with his body-popping routines, which included spinning on his head.
But the Department for Work and Pensions was less impressed - because he was still claiming 50 pounds a month in Motability allowance.
Earlier this year officials stopped the money, which was used to pay for his car, after deciding he no longer qualified for the pay-outs.
And now the former soldier, of Sutton Bonnington, near Loughborough, Leics, has been ordered to pay back a total of £3,000.
He denied that he had been "found out" by going on the show, insisting: "I was overpaid, but it was a mistake by the social.
"I'm not a benefits cheat - I would never do anything dishonest. There was just a mistake, and I was getting more than I should have done.
"I always said I would pay back anything I was found to owe. I was worried I would end up in court, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen."
Officials launched a probe into Mr Bowers, who claims he has a bad leg, after receiving an anonymous tip-off following his star turn on the show.
Their inquiry revealed he did not meet the criteria for Motability payments and his 70-pounds-a-week disability living allowance was too high.
He has now handed back his car and will have to pay back the excess he received out of his pension at a rate of 10.80 pounds a week.
Mr Bowers, who will take more than five years to clear his debt, said the loss of his car meant he would now have to cut back on his partying.
Old age Numpty.
LONDON (Reuters) - A school in eastern England was ordered to pay 19,000 pounds Monday after a 16-year-old girl lost nearly all her fingers when she put her hands in a bucket of plaster of Paris during an art lesson.
The teen-ager was attempting to make a sculpture of her own hands during a lesson in January 2007 when the accident happened, Boston Magistrates' Court in Lincolnshire heard.
The plaster set around her hands and neither staff nor paramedics could get it off during the lesson at Giles School, in Boston.
The court was told that temperatures up to 60C can be generated in large quantities of plaster and the girl, who was not named in court, suffered terrible burns.
After a series of 12 operations, she was left with no fingers on one hand and just two on the other.
The school's governing body admitted breaching health and safety regulations and also failing to report the incident to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
The court was told the HSE was never informed by the school about what had happened and only found out six weeks after the accident from the girl's plastic surgeon.
The school was fined a total of 16,500 pounds and ordered to pay 2,500 pounds in legal costs, the Press Association reported.
The girl's lawyer Stephen Hill said outside court the injuries his client, now 18, had suffered were "truly horrific" and she also had severe scars all over her body where the plastic surgeons had taken skin for grafts.
However, Hill said she was now doing "remarkably well."
"She is a very determined, self sufficient character but she is now only left with one forefinger.
The teen-ager was attempting to make a sculpture of her own hands during a lesson in January 2007 when the accident happened, Boston Magistrates' Court in Lincolnshire heard.
The plaster set around her hands and neither staff nor paramedics could get it off during the lesson at Giles School, in Boston.
The court was told that temperatures up to 60C can be generated in large quantities of plaster and the girl, who was not named in court, suffered terrible burns.
After a series of 12 operations, she was left with no fingers on one hand and just two on the other.
The school's governing body admitted breaching health and safety regulations and also failing to report the incident to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
The court was told the HSE was never informed by the school about what had happened and only found out six weeks after the accident from the girl's plastic surgeon.
The school was fined a total of 16,500 pounds and ordered to pay 2,500 pounds in legal costs, the Press Association reported.
The girl's lawyer Stephen Hill said outside court the injuries his client, now 18, had suffered were "truly horrific" and she also had severe scars all over her body where the plastic surgeons had taken skin for grafts.
However, Hill said she was now doing "remarkably well."
"She is a very determined, self sufficient character but she is now only left with one forefinger.
So where was the teacher?
And finally:
A German man mooning at railway staff in a departing train got his trousers caught in a carriage door and ended up being dragged half-naked along the platform, out of the station and onto the tracks.
The 22-year-old journalism student shoved his backside against the window of a low-slung double-decker train when staff forced him off in Lauenbrueck for travelling without a ticket, a spokesman for police in the northern city of Bremen said.
"It's a miracle he wasn't badly hurt," the spokesman said. "This sort of thing can end up killing you."
Instead, dangling by his trousers, the man got pulled along for about 200 metres, all the while managing to keep his legs away from the wheels of the train.
The ordeal ended when a passenger pulled the emergency brake. Rescue services were called in, causing rail services between Bremen and Hamburg to be suspended for more than an hour, delaying 23 trains.
The man - unharmed except for cuts and bruises - now faces charges of dangerous interference in rail transport, insulting the train staff, and may face a sizeable compensation claim for the delays he caused, police said.
"He was full of remorse when I talked to him," the spokesman said. "And he advised others not to try the same thing."
What a chuffer.
The 22-year-old journalism student shoved his backside against the window of a low-slung double-decker train when staff forced him off in Lauenbrueck for travelling without a ticket, a spokesman for police in the northern city of Bremen said.
"It's a miracle he wasn't badly hurt," the spokesman said. "This sort of thing can end up killing you."
Instead, dangling by his trousers, the man got pulled along for about 200 metres, all the while managing to keep his legs away from the wheels of the train.
The ordeal ended when a passenger pulled the emergency brake. Rescue services were called in, causing rail services between Bremen and Hamburg to be suspended for more than an hour, delaying 23 trains.
The man - unharmed except for cuts and bruises - now faces charges of dangerous interference in rail transport, insulting the train staff, and may face a sizeable compensation claim for the delays he caused, police said.
"He was full of remorse when I talked to him," the spokesman said. "And he advised others not to try the same thing."
What a chuffer.
