Manopause: Dead Fleas anyone? SnapChat Twatt-ess: Parking Pratt and Elevating Public Transport.

Nary a whimsy of atmospheric movement, even less skywater, oodles of solar stuff and Dawns crack is the widest I have seen at the castle this morn.

The garden has been gardened, the “racing green” French motor is being very European and his Maj is in fine fettle.

Poor old Angus has been to see his general medic (again) and after much taking of blood and insertion of digits into orifices it has been confirmed that he has used up most of his manly ‘ormones and is suffering from the “Manopause” which may explain the last year or more, or it may be that ageing is responsible and the “manopause” is just bollocks or bollocks related.

If you are interested symptoms are:

• decreased sex drive (libido)
• erection problems, especially loss of morning erections
• tiredness and a general loss of energy
• depression and/or mood swings
• weight gain, especially around the belly
• poor concentration
• short-term memory loss and 'brain fog'
• irritability
• increased sweating, including night sweats
• hot flushes

Manopausal Angus has nine of the ten symptoms (you can guess which ones yourself) and is orf to see a bloke at Grimly Dark about his endocrinology.

More exciting news to come-or not....

Meanwhile over on EBay

An Innisfil man will make several thousand dollars this weekend selling dead fleas on eBay.

The 10-day auction ends at midnight on Saturday. Current bid: $4,000.

The items up for sale are known as “Pulgas Vestidas,” or “Dressed Fleas,” a lost Mexican folk art known to have been produced between 1880 and 1926.



About time he got some new ones then.....

Left to the land of the brave and the home of the free

A 22-year-old woman has shot and injured herself while posing with a gun while using the messaging app Snapchat.

The woman in Deltona, Florida, had been posing with her uncle’s .40-calibre pistol on Sunday evening when she accidentally pulled the trigger, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

The woman told officers she had been “foolishly playing” with the gun when she accidentally shot her mobile phone, causing it to shatter and suffering lacerations to her thumb and index fingers,

The shot was heard by the woman’s aunt, who rushed to the scene and drove her niece to the Florida Hospital Fish Memorial.

Officers said the aunt threw the gun from her car while driving her niece to the hospital. The weapon has not yet been retrieved by police.



The good news is-she shot her phone....

Back in Brexit Blighty

This image shows a black Range Rover sticking half out of the space as it blocks other frustrated drivers attempting to shop at the Galleria in Hatfield.

A bemused fellow shopper Hayley Langton posted the image on Facebook alongside the caption "best parking ever!"

Speaking to Express.co.uk, she said: “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. How could somebody leave their car like that?



Easy- selfish, arrogant and unBritish....



And finally:

East to the land of two Olympics ago 

A Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) hit the roads in Qinhaungdao earlier this week.

Once fully operational the vehicle is expected to hit speeds of up to 60km/h.

It will run on rails instead of the road itself but link together with up to another four TEBs, the equivalent of 40 conventional buses.

Engineer Bai Zhiming told CCTV: ‘The TEB has the same functions as the subway, while the cost of construction is less than one fifth of the subway.’

No shit Sherlock maybe that’s because it isn’t a subway....

That’s it: I’m orf to search the moat for purple globes.

And today’s thought:

"You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself." 

~ Ethel Barrymore ~ 

Manopausal Angus

Still here: Homophobic explosion: Dickey gummy bear: Devil’s todger: Manhattan parking: Grassing on a thief: and something to do with Scotland.

Oodles of mist and mellow fruitfulness, just a whimsy of atmospheric movement, not a jot of skywater and bugger all solar stuff at the Castle this morn.

It’s been a bit of a “funny” last couple of months, two close members of the family have shuffled orf this mortal coil, my sister (expected) and “M”’s brother who decided to give up the ghost one day after the ninth anniversary of her exit (not expected).

On the way back from my sister’s thingy (400 mile round trip) the timing belt on the Honda also decided to expire and the engine blew up on the M4.

So I decided to go “European” and am now the owner of a Peugeot 206 in French “racing” green, not a bad motor, only done a handful of miles, it even has automatic lights and wipers (which behave like the French-they only seem to work in the mornings) and an “adaptive automatic gearbox” which is not bilingual.

Time will tell...

 

Poor old Angus has a touch of Ginger’s brother Arthur in his left knee and whilst visiting my general medic he decided to take an inordinate amount of interest in my prostate and rear exit suggesting that he should insert his finger into said orifice to check it out. The second word uttered by poor old Angus was orf, so we settled on a blood test instead.

More to come....

 

East to the land of stuff and water

 

Apparently the annual floods have arrived in Pakistan causing many problems and lack of life, the solution was to blow up a couple of dykes.

 

How homophobic can you get.....?

 

Dahn Unda and right a bit

 

Inappropriately shaped lollies on sale exclusively in the South Island have been branded offensive and recalled from shops.

Barrie Aburn, of Dunedin, said his daughters Cadence (8), Rhianna (6) and Payton (5) bought a bag of Dragon Sweets from Moyles SuperValue in Green Island and gave it to him for his birthday.

Mr Aburn's partner, Jacqui Hawkins, said she randomly took a sweet from the bag and found it was shaped in the form of male genitals.

Another lolly in the bag was a gummy baby with a penis, she said.

''I don't find anything amusing about it at all. I find it disgusting,'' she said.

Dutch Rusk managing director Willem Van de Geest, of Nelson, said the Stoke confectionery company imported 7200 bags of mixed gummy lollies, called Dragon Sweets, from a Chinese manufacturer about six weeks ago.

The lollies were originally designed for sale in England and were not considered offensive in Asia.

In Asia, the shape was considered a sign of fertility and health, he said.

 

Too much whacky baccy Mr Geest?

 

West a lot and up a fair amount

 

The statue of a devil with an erect penis could be back up in Vancouver if the city caves to residents who started a petition after it was removed.

Municipal crews in Vancouver took the statue away Tuesday after it mysteriously appeared near a highway, atop a pedestal that used to have a commemorative statue of Christopher Columbus.

The life-size red devil has black horns, a forked tail and an anatomically faithful -- and naked -- physique.

Officials told Global News it wasn't commissioned by the city.

But plenty of people want the "Beelzebub-With-a-Boner" statue re-erected, according to a Change.org petition which had more than 1,500 signatures as of Thursday evening.

"(It) should be reinstalled as a piece of public art and serve as a reminder that art is in the eye of the beholder and nothing more," Darryl Greer, who started the petition, wrote.

Greer points out the statue cost the city nothing, unlike a "cartoonish" porcelain dog on Main Street that cost nearly $100,000.

 

The devils in the detail.....

 

Dahn a bit

 

A new development, 42 Crosby Street, is pushing the limits of New York City real estate to new heights with 10 underground parking spots that will cost more per square foot than the apartments being sold upstairs.

The million-dollar parking spots will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis to buyers at the 10-unit luxury apartment building being developed by Atlas Capital Group at Broome and Crosby Streets, itself the former site of a parking lot. At $250,000 a tire, the parking spaces in the underground garage cost more than four times the national median sales price for a home, which is $217,800, according to Zillow.

So instead of a 5,000-square-foot house with a wine cellar in Dallas or a 3,500-square-foot home with a sauna in Seattle, one could choose 150 square feet in the basement of 42 Crosby, a condominium designed by the architect Annabelle Selldorf.

 Bloody hell! I hope Grimly dark doesn’t hear about this....

 

Up Norf

 

Maureen McKenna, 58, was caught on CCTV cameras for 40 minutes nicking a lawn.

With an accomplice, she removed the front lawn at 5am and both were seen walking away with pieces of it.

They even stopped for a cigarette break in Skelmersdale, Lancs.

McKenna was arrested and charged with theft after the footage circulated in July.

Appearing at Ormskirk Magistrates Court, she was sentenced to three months prison.

 

Grassed up? 

 

And finally: 

Even further up Norf

Apparently there is going to be a vote in the land of noisy squashy bags and deep fried mars bars about whether the Scots want to remain part of the UK or not.

Good luck to them, if they vote yes then Hadrian’s Wall will have to be heightened and extended, many-many people will have to apply for a new passport, oodles of Scottish MPs will have to be deported and the blue will disappear from the Union flag thingy.

 If they vote no then we will continue to be governed by plonkers with names like Cameron and Alexander, until next year anyway and all will calm dahn and Salmond will crawl back into his sporran and desist his ranting.

 

Or not.....

That’s it: I’m orf to get a Boris

 

And today’s thought:

There’s a shock.

 

Angus

Jezza CHunt and Nicholson: S’now parking: Useless machine: Cow shit air freshener: Higgs Boson +: and If you are dead stand up.

Drizzly amounts of skywater, doubtful amounts of lack of warm, draughty amounts of atmospheric movement and doubtful amounts of solar stuff at the Castle this morn, the ring of agony has finally subsided but the left elbow has flared up in retaliation and I am orf later to test out my old farts bus pass.

 

Jezza CHunt the Elf secretary has finally come clean-a bit

And reckons that “Sir” Dave Nicholson is “partly” to blame for the Mid Staffs massacre, speaking in the Commons during a debate on NHS accountability CHunt admitted that “Sir” David, the NHS chief executive, was partly at fault for the failings that led to Mid Staffs, where up to 1,200 patients died needlessly were killed.

Allegedly Jezza attempted to divert some of the attention away from Sir David by insisting the he does not bear "personal" responsibility for Mid Staffs and that the deaths there would have happened with or without the NHS chief overseeing the trust.

It comes after it emerged that senior Government figures are considering a plan for “Sir” David to “pre-announce” his retirement.

“Sir” David (otherwise known as Teflon Dave) would then step down later this year or early in 2014, having managed the NHS through the first months of major Coalition reforms starting next month.

 

Walking away with a nice fat pension and no responsibility-as usual...

 

East a bit to the land of laughter

 

Traffic wardens in Germany left a parking ticket - on a full-sized snow sculpture of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Pranksters had built the car overnight in a no-parking zone in Aachen, complete with outlines for its headlights, windscreens and even the distinctive VW badge on the bonnet.

But the prank has received a frosty reception from local police.

A spokesman said: "We can take a joke as well as the next person and it was a very convincing prank.

"But whether it was made of metal or snow it was still obstructing a road that should have been clear."

 

No sense of humour those Germans....

 

West to the home of technology and the land of stuff

 

A Regina man is gaining a name for himself as a builder of 'useless machines' — devices which serve no practical purpose but are enormously popular among fans of gadgets.

"The concept of a machine that turns itself off has been around a long time," Coulthard explained. "I saw a video online [and] I had to have one, so I made one."

His first version was made about three years ago using items found at a dollar-store.

He takes particular pride in noting his machine is actually turning itself off, pointing to a mechanical finger that flicks a toggle switch.

Coulthard went on to design a number of useless machines and his devices have become so popular that he devotes himself to making them, full-time, and selling them around the world.

Coulthard has been selling a plastic machine and is currently working on one made of wood.

He created a business, the Frivolous Engineering Company, to market his gadgets online.

"It turns out that on many different levels, it is a useful machine," Coulthard said, talking about the success he has enjoyed. "To me it really is the ultimate machine. It's going to sound corny but it's changed my life."

 

And it is even more useless when the battery dies...

 

East to the place where Indonesians live

 Dwi Nailul Izzah and Rintya Aprianti Miki won first prize in the country's Science Project Olympiad with their alternative and environmentally-friendly air freshener.

The air freshener is said to have a natural fragrance of herbs and is good for human health because it doesn't contain any harmful chemicals like other freshener products on the market.

The girls collected cow dung from a cattle farm in Lamongan regency of East Java and left it to ferment for three days.Secondly, they extracted water from the cow dung and mixed it with coconut water.

Then the liquid was distilled to remove any impurities; the end product is a liquid air freshener with a natural aroma of herbs from digested cow food.

 

Can’t wait for that....

 

Back over to what is left of Europe

With the recent confirmation of a Higgs Boson discovery, many physicists were at least a little disappointed. That's because all signs point to it confirming the Standard Model, the nearly 100-year-old theory that explains the tiny bits of matter that make up the universe.

But some physicists still hold out hope for results that could provide a bigger shake-up, looking for the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to reveal other hidden particles lurking in the universe. From gravitons to winos, here are five bizarre things that may exist beyond the Higgs. 

If a theory called supersymmetry is true, there could more than a dozen particles out there awaiting discovery. The theory holds that every particle discovered so far has a hidden counterpart.

In the Standard Model, there are two types of particles: bosons, which carry force and include gluons and gravitons; and fermions, which make up matter and include quarks, electrons and neutrinos, according to Indiana University physicist Pauline Gagnon's blog Quantum Diaries.

In supersymmetry, each fermion would be paired with a boson, and vice versa. So gluons (a type of boson) would have gluinos (a type of fermion), W particles would have winos, photons would have photinos, and the Higgs would have a counterpart called the Higgsino.

 

Will it ever bleedin end.....

 

And finally:

 

Dahn Unda

 

Dead people would be buried standing up under a city council plan to make better use of space at cemeteries.

Darwin City Council has asked the NT Government's Local Government Department to investigate if people can be buried feet first, The NT News reports.

"Vertical positioning of the body in the ground is a good use of space," Alderman Gary Lambert said.

The council also wants to see if up to three people can be buried in a grave in a "horizontal stack".

 

Does that mean that all coffins would have to have a “this way up” sign attached?

That’s it: I’m orf to dig up the car park-just in case

 

And today’s thought:

Shove a ticket on that you misery.

 

 

Angus

‘Orse balls: Sea ‘Orse Tuna: Russian terminator: Topless tobogganing: U.S UFO: and Really, really bad parking.

Usual lack of warm, unusual amounts of skywater, unnoticeable atmospheric movement and bugger all solar stuff (as usual) at the Castle this morn, the butler is fuelling the furnace with oodles of fat, carbon neutral teenagers and his Maj has left a nice trail of muddy paw prints right across my nice steam cleaned kitchen floor.

The Honda is in for its MOT early tomorrow and depending on the outcome there may be a post-or not.

 

Apparently IKEA makes ‘Orseballs

 

I didn’t know that, I thought they only did cheap and nasty “furniture” with funny names, but it seems that that they have begun withdrawing all meatballs from sale in stores in the UK and more than 20 other European countries after tests by authorities in the Czech Republic found traces of horsemeat in its Kottbullar line.

The company operates in 26 European countries and 44 in all, with annual sales of £23.6bn.

 

Not for much longer-probably...is it me or do they actually look like ‘Orseballs?

 

And west the home of the mackerel and the land of the not so smug

It appears that across the States that are United most Tuna isn’t; a new study confirms that so-called “white tuna” is one of the most frequently substituted seafood products across the country.

It found consumers usually end up with a species of mackerel; one that researchers said can cause severe digestive problems.

The latest national study by the non-profit Oceana Foundation found just how bad the problem is in Miami and across the country. The foundation concluded that, with 38% of the seafood tested around South Florida, consumers are being served something other than what they ordered.

Southern California tested at 52%, while Seattle came out the best at about 18%. In Boston, the number was 48% while New York was 39%.

 

Nah nah nah nah nah....

 

East to the land of Russians

 

Alexei Volkov is a bus driver from Zelenograd. And he's not a happy man, especially when drivers cut him off on the roads.

So, he's taken the law into his own hands. And, as a result, he's become a folk hero in Russia.

He is known as "the Punisher" after the ruthless comic vigilante who dispenses brutal justice.

Volkov has been in more than 100 traffic “accidents” he's caused most of them with his in your rear-end - driving style.

If someone cuts him off, Volkov just smashes into them.

To ram home his point, he then posts the dash cam video of his exploits online.

 

Wonder what job he has now....

 

Left a bit to cold pointy things

Thousands of spectators turned out to cheer on hardy competitors in a topless sledging contest in Germany.

Both men and women took part in the topless toboggan races down a 100 metre course in Altenberg.

They braved sub-zero temperatures wearing next to nothing in the hope of winning the £1,000 first prize.

Former male model Nico Schwanz came first in the men's section while Annett Schnadelbach, 30, sloped off with the women's trophy.

"It was freezing out there and you feel like you're going very, very fast because of the wind whistling through every bit of your body," said Ms Schnadelbach. 

"But it was certainly fun warming up again afterwards."

 

My problem would be the wind whistling out of every bit of my body, and the walnut effect....

 

Left again to the home of U and the land of FO’s

 

A Canadian aviation firm began developing a disc-shaped aircraft for the U.S. military in the mid-1950s, and, though the details were secret, the project itself was not unknown. Popular mechanics mentioned the Air Force’s “vertical-rising, high-speed” craft in 1956 and published a photo in 1960. In the decades since the program was cancelled in 1961, aviation buffs and UFO researchers have unearthed technical papers written near the end of America’s flying saucer experiment, but the document that originally convinced the government to invest in a military flying disc has languished in the NDC under the SECRET designation. This recently discovered report describes in previously unknown detail how aviation engineers tried to harness what were then cutting-edge aerodynamic concepts to make their improbable creation fly. Although Avro’s saucer never completed a successful flight, some of the most sophisticated aircraft flying today adopted many of the same technologies.

In 2001, U.S. Air Force personnel cleared the document cache for public release, according to Neil Carmichael, director of the declassification review division at the NDC, which is run by the National Archives and Records Administration. But it took 11 years to crack open the boxes in College Park and glimpse the saucer secrets within—the stuff is buried in a backlog of nearly 2 billion pages of declassified material, some of it dating to World War II. “These records probably have been classified since their creation,” Carmichael says. “It’s like somebody emptied out a filing cabinet, stuck it in a box, sealed it, and sent it off to the federal records centre.”

 

You think....

 And finally:

 

Dahn a bit to the State that has only one star

 

A speeding car launched into the air and landed upside down on the roof of a house.

Police say the early morning crash in Houston, Texas, happened when the driver was speeding and failed to take a bend in the road.

The crash triggered Susan Mistini's house alarm system and she thought someone was breaking into her home until a neighbour told her what happened.

Ms Mistini said: "He said, 'hurry up there's a car on your roof'. A car on my roof? And he said, 'yes a car on your roof'."

Harris County Sheriff's Assistant Chief John Laine said: "(The car) inverted and somersaulted and landed on the roof upside down."

The driver was taken to hospital and is in stable condition.

Investigators have not determined whether or not alcohol was a factor in the accident.

 

Anyone taking bets....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to see if there are any Robo-sparrows in the garden, just in case

 

And today’s thought:

Cook those IKEA...

 

Angus

Flight of fancy: How to make a star: Musical note: Mars Mountain: Polly vs. Kiddlies: and where not to leave your motor.

Usual atmospheric conditions at the Castle this morn-wet, cold, calm and crappy,  the garden is in need of more than a smidge of fettling, I am thinking of putting outriggers on the Honda and his Maj is still bringing me frogs.

 

Dahn ‘ere in ‘Ampshire

And just a couple of imperial units up the road aviation enthusiasts have launched a campaign to erect a statue in memory of the first person to make a powered flight in Britain.

Farnborough Air Sciences Trust (FAST) (which used to be the Royal Aircraft Establishment before “someone” sold it orf) hopes to unveil the memorial to Samuel Cody in Farnborough, Hampshire, where his historic flight took place.

Cody died 99 years ago when the aircraft he was flying broke in half.

FAST plans to unveil a £100,000 statue on the centenary of his death next year and are fundraising to pay for it.

The group have already secured £10,000 from Hampshire County Council and Rushmoor Borough Council. 

Really pleased to see that my bleedin Council Tax is going towards such a good cause.

If you want to know more about the place where I was an apprentice way back in 1967 click HERE.

Recipe for a star

1. Take a hollow, spherical plastic capsule about two millimetres in diameter (about the size of a small pea.)

 2. Fill it with 150 micrograms (less than one-millionth of a pound) of a mixture of deuterium and tritium, the two heavy isotopes of hydrogen.

 3. Take a laser that for about 20 billionths of a second can generate 500 trillion watts – the equivalent of five million, million watts. 

4. Focus all that laser power onto the surface of the capsule.

 5. Wait ten billionths of a second.


Result: one miniature star.

Luckily this technology is available at the National Ignition Facility more than a lot over to the left in Livermore California where Leccy is a lot cheaper than here in Blighty.

East oodles of do-dahs to the land which has never been irradiated

The Otamatone DX, a new electronic instrument from Japan, is becoming quite a hit on the Internet. Shaped like a musical note, it can be played easily by anybody.

It’s as simple as this: Just slide your finger up and down the stem and squeeze its cheek to produce your own music!

I can do the same thing with my arse.....

Millions and millions of space units away

And billions and billions of dollars later NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity has beamed back an image of its surroundings, showing a clear view of the enormous mountain that it will clamber up in the next few years.

Mount Sharp is a giant Martian peak that rises 3 miles (5 kilometres) from the centre of Gale Crater. The mountain's many geological layers are particularly intriguing to mission scientists, as they could hold a record of how the Red Planet has changed over time.

In the newly released image, Mount Sharp is clearly visible in the background.

  

Worth every penny....

According to scientists

African grey parrots are smarter than your average two-year-old; apparently researchers claim to have found that human children only do as well as the parrots from about the age of three.

No other animals apart from great apes match the birds' ability to understand noise-related causal connections.

Researchers tested six African greys housed in a parrot rescue centre in Vienna, Austria.

During a series of experiments, the birds were asked to choose between two closed boxes, one of which held a piece of walnut and rattled when shaken. The other, empty container could be shaken without making a noise.

The parrots showed they knew how to detect hidden food rattling in a shaken box.

But much more impressively they also worked out - almost instantly - that if a box was shaken and made no noise, the food must be in the other container.

Choices were made by a parrot walking over to a box and turning it over with its beak.

In similar tests, most animals - and even small children - get confused about the way shaking and noise relate to the presence or absence of a hidden reward.

I know some seventeen year olds that are still not as smart as a Parrot....

And finally:

Where to park you motor if you don’t want it back

That’s it: I’m orf to give the sheep text messaging

And today’s thought:

Unemployable get free tickets-Olympics.

Angus

Windows Vista and 7 gadgets threat fix: Park and taken for a ride: Chinese day at the beach: Nice pair of melons: and the Goat Man.

Yet another wet/dry, cold/cold, windy/calm start to the day at the Castle this morn, but it looks as if I may be able to do a bit of vandalism in the garden later.

Orf out early tomorrow so no post, and the interweb thingy is still behaving like a spoilt child and his Maj keeps bringing me frogs...

Some useful information:

Microsoft has issued an urgent security warning to all Windows 7 & Vista users: apparently you must disable the Desktop Gadgets feature immediately.

It turns out that hackers have discovered a security flaw in the Desktop Gadgets subsystem, which can allow them to take over your PC, if you install an infected Gadget.

Gadgets, in case you aren't sure, are the small desktop tools which display the weather forecast, large clock and so on  your desktop. In Windows Vista, these Gadgets sit in the desktop sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen. Windows 7 has no sidebar, so the Gadgets 'float' on the desktop.


You can add and remove Gadgets via the Control Panel

The attack allows a malicious Gadget to run with the same privileges as your logged in user account, so if you are an administrator they can take over the whole machine. According to Microsoft, "Gadgets installed from untrusted sources can harm your computer and can access your computer’s files, show you objectionable content, or change their behaviour at any time".

Microsoft originally intended the system to be expanded by third-party developers, so that, for example, Facebook could provide a gadget that allowed you to keep an eye on your status. But, because of the threat posed by this attack, Microsoft has now closed down their site that allows you to find and install third-party gadgets.


To prevent this type of attack, you need to disable the feature in the registry. Before applying a registry fix, first create a backup of your registry by following the steps here:

Press [Windows Key] + [R], type REGEDIT and click OK.

Go to file on the top of the registry, click on export and save somewhere you can find it again.

Next, apply the fix as follows:

Press [Windows Key] + [R], type REGEDIT and click OK.

Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, expand SOFTWARE, expand Microsoft, expand Windows, expand CurrentVersion, and then expand Policies.

Right click on Policies, select New, select Key, and then type Windows as the key name.

Right click on Windows, select New, select Key, and then type Sidebar as the key name.

Right click on Sidebar, select New, select DWORD (32-bit) Value, and the type TurnOffSidebar as the name.

Right click on TurnOffSidebar, select Modify and then change Value data: to 1 and click OK.

Reboot your system to apply the fix.

With the fix in place, you will of course no longer be able to use the Desktop Gadgets you have installed, but this is a small price to pay for the security the fix will bring you.

Microsoft has removed the Gadgets feature completely from Windows 8, so if you are using a test version of that operating system you don't need to worry about the problem.

Simples-ish, sort of.......I did the “fix” above and the interweb thingy seems to have sorted itself out?

.

All over pay for everything Blighty

It seems that Councils made more than half a billion pounds profit from parking last year, despite warnings that they should not treat motorists as “cash cows”.

Authorities in England and Wales saw their surplus from parking rise to £511.6 million in 2010-11 from £489.4 million a year earlier, according to an analysis of local authority accounts by the RAC Foundation.

Town halls are supposed to use their powers to control parking to improve traffic flow and prevent gridlock on their streets.

They are prohibited from using these powers to bolster their income. However, many councils seek to get round this by earmarking the cash raised for other transport projects.

Currently motorists can be fined up £130 in London and £70 outside the capital for parking offences. Ministers are considering a plea from councils to increase the fines. The RAC Foundation figures show that the Tory-run Westminster council in central London made a £38 million profit from parking. Drivers now have to pay £4.80 an hour to park on the street in prime spots, such as near Oxford Street.

Outside London, Brighton, where motorists can wait more than a year for a residential parking permit, racked up a £12.7 million surplus, with drivers in the centre of the city now paying £3.50 an hour. Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “Local authorities need to be transparent about how they spend these 'profits’ and demonstrate to drivers that the money raised is being used to make their lives easier, not more difficult.”

Peter Box, chairman of the Local Government Association’s economy and transport board, defended councils.

“Parking charges and fines are an essential part of keeping traffic flowing, pedestrians and motorists safe and deterring irresponsible drivers,” he said.

 

Yeah right....robbing bastards.

 

East to the place where space is at a premium

Although we on our more than slightly damp island have only managed about one day this year to meander to the seaside over in China it seems that the pastime is quite popular.

Dahn a bit to the land that doesn’t have a problem with nuclear stuff

Fruit has always been one of the higher-priced commodities in Japan. A single apple, for example, can cost 1,000 yen (£8). A package of 20 cherries will run you 8,000 yen (£64).

However, it seems that the value of melons has gone down this season.

Yubari, a city in the north famous for its enticing, wonderful melons, has started a bit of a craze.

In the most recent harvest, two particular melons caught the attention of everyone, for their perfectly circular form and an evenly patterned rind. The set of melons, weighing 4 kg, were auctioned at a relatively lower price than the highest paid melons ever, reflecting the still unstable economic climate.

In 2008, the most expensive pair of melons was sold at a whopping price of 2.5 million yen (£19,000).

 

That’s nearly as dear as my favourite retailer...

And finally:
 

Left oodles of distance

Allegedly A man spotted dressed in a goat suit among a herd of wild goats in the mountains of northern Utah has wildlife officials worried he could be in danger as hunting season approaches.

Douglass said a man hiking Sunday along Ben Lomond peak in the mountains above Ogden, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, spotted the person dressed like a goat among a herd of real goats. The person provided some blurry photographs to Douglass, who said they did not appear to have been altered.

Coty Creighton spotted the goat man Sunday during his hike. He said he came across the herd, but noticed something odd about one goat that was trailing behind the rest.

"I thought it was a deformed goat," Creighton told the Standard-Examiner of Ogden. "It was clumsy, not nimble."

He said he pulled out binoculars to get a closer look at the herd about 200 yards away and was shocked. The man appeared to be acting like a goat while wearing the crudely made costume, which had fake horns and a cloth mask with cut-out eye holes, Creighton said.

"He was on his hands and knees, crawling along the mountainside," he said. "Something was definitely off with that guy."

No shit....

That’s it: I’m orf to do a bit of Iron Fertilisation in the moat

And today’s thought:

Solo Tantric sex Olympics#3

Angus