Cold, wet, windy and more than wobbly at the Castle this
morn, the furnace is firing nicely on fat teenagers and his Maj has discovered
the joy of hiding in the washing machine and then attacking when I pass by.
I’m orf to Tesco on the stale bread, gruel and pussy food
run when they finally open their doors, and after that a lot of cleaning of the
upstairs-that should make it snow...
Apparently while the plod is out hiding behind anything
large enough to disguise their nice warm BMW’s and Volvos, naughty persons are
raiding the empty nicks.
Hundreds of
thousands of pounds worth of equipment and personal belongings have been stolen
from police stations across Britain, it has been revealed.
Thefts in the past
five years include handcuffs, uniforms, speed guns, dogs, riot shields, and
even patrol cars.
The list was
revealed as a result of freedom of information requests by the Press
Association.
Greater Manchester
Police was the worst hit, with thieves taking a £10,000 patrol car and £30,000
private vehicle.
Among the more unusual stolen items were a small fridge from
Dunstable, CCTV footage and a TV from West Oxfordshire, a packet of crumpets
from Priory Road police station in Hull and a fern and plastic plant pot from
Lancashire Police.
A £20 mannequin was stolen from Essex Police's kennels at
Epping, a 20-pack of toilet rolls vanished from West Mercia, while at
Pontefract police station, in West Yorkshire, a thief made off with a £48 tea
float.
A terrier and a
lurcher were taken from a police station in Blackburn in Lancashire and on
Merseyside seized pit bulls were taken.
Amongst the
low-value items were coffee worth £2.50 from Byker police station in Newcastle,
a cap badge from an officer's hat in Widnes and a copy of an antiques guide
worth £5 from Basildon in Essex.
Six pints of
semi-skimmed milk were stolen from Cambridgeshire Police HQ in Huntington, and
a £1 cereal bowl and empty lunchbox worth £3 from Hucknall police station in
Nottinghamshire.
In Devon and
Cornwall, items included a betting slip, bail sheet, unwritten parking ticket
and a Peter Storm fleece jacket worth £60.
I’d check the boots of the nice warm BMWs and Volvos if I
were in charge.
It seems that the bestest Crimbo pressie is a gun.
According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on
customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal
Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six
days before Christmas.
On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making
it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history.
The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher
if individual customers took home more than one each.
Ah; the season of peace and goodwill, as long as you are
armed....
Recent studies have shown how easily the infamous cruise
ship bug, norovirus, can be transmitted on planes.
After a passenger puked on an Air
New Zealand flight, crew members tidied up then clocked out after the plane
landed. “Not only did the crew that cleaned up the mess get sick, but on every
successive flight at least one or more crew members got sick with typical
symptoms of norovirus.” Said David Freedman, of the University of
Alabama at Birmingham, at the recent meeting of the American
Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
In fact, almost half of all crew members that worked the
plane over the next five days picked up the virus. Planes aren’t scrubbed
thoroughly between flights, and norovirus can linger on surfaces for days. But
“in looking at the typical disinfectants that are used by airlines, none of the
routine disinfectants would be considered effective against norovirus.”
So, when travelling, wash
your hands often, keep your fingers and legs crossed, and keep a carrier
bag to hand.
In a sign of America's growing girth, dude ranches and
hunting camps in the Northern Rockies are adding heavyweight horses and
super-large saddles to seat swelling numbers of
outsized clients.
With the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that
a third of U.S. adults and 17 percent of children are obese, Western wranglers and outfitters say they are doing all
they can to accommodate the widening of waistlines and other anatomical areas.
"To put it bluntly,
we call them the big-butt saddles," said Lee
Hart, owner of Broken Hart Ranch in Montana. The
business near Yellowstone National Park seasonally
provides trail rides and guided hunting by horseback to nearly 2,000 people
from across the country.
Hart and others said the
18-plus-inch saddles they now stock were all but nonexistent 30 years ago, when
just 15 percent of American adults were considered obese. At that time, a
16.5-inch saddle would have been considered ample enough for a stout rider.
Guest ranches and
outfitting operations also are bulking up on riding stock crossbred with draft
horses -- weighing in at roughly 1,500 pounds -- to fit their super-sized
customers.
"We have to seat 400
fat people every summer," said B.J. Hill, co-owner of Swift Creek
Outfitters and Teton Horseback Adventures in Jackson
Hole, Wyoming.
The operation has established a weight limit of 275 pounds
for trail rides and pack trips in an effort to prevent injury to both horse and
rider.
The extra-large animals
and saddles come as other U.S. industries, including airlines and healthcare
companies, have in recent years adopted policies or retrofitted equipment to
address the rising ranks of plus-size people.
At least they are trying to get a bit of exercise....
Cooks from around
the world will head to Cornwall in March for the first World Pasty Championships.
The event will be
held at the Eden Project, St Austell, to celebrate the popular local delicacy,
which was given protected status under EU law earlier in 2011.
The Cornish Pasty
Association, which is backing the event, hopes people locally and across the
world will take part.
It will be held on
3 March, the Saturday before St Piran's Day.
Families in
Cornwall have passed down the recipe for a Cornish pasty through the
generations.
Phil Ugalde of the
Cornish Pasty Association said: "If you know anything about Cornwall, you
know that pasty-making is a very emotive subject.
"People feel
very proud of it - this was the original fast food."
Gaynor Coley, managing
director of the Eden Project, said: "The pasty is one of the great icons
of Cornwall and also one of its best exports, carried in the hands of all those
hardy mining families who left this coast and who took their skills - and their
favourite food - across the world."
Judges will be
looking for the best Cornish pasty made to the traditional recipe.
Yep. That’s the one I had last time I travelled on a chuff-chuff.
That’s it: I’m orf to deliver my mail.
And today’s thought:
Angus
