Black and white Blighty: Post a crime: Abreast of Venus de Milo: Rubbish old fart: Smurfs and fags: and Garlic smuggling.

Minimal lack of warm, maximum lack of skywater, middling atmospheric movement and murky amounts of solar stuff at the Castle this morn, just returned from the stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s food run dahn Tesco, and now I know why their profits are up over the Crimbo thingy-a loaf of bread now costs £1.45, a bag of what used to be £1 fruit is now £1.99, my deodorant has gorn up 50p almost everything else costs more than it did before the “C” period.

The only good news is that all the electronics in the go-Juice bit have gorn tits up and they have had to close it until him/her upstairs decides that they deserve to keep trading.

 

Still having to use HMTL to insert pics into posts, I know what I would like to insert into the tossers at Blogger.

According to Auntie

 

 

More than 13,000 households across the UK are still using black-and-white television sets, London had the highest number of monochrome licences, at 2,715, followed by Birmingham and Manchester, it said.

The number of licences issued each year has dwindled from 212,000 in 2000. A total of 13,202 monochrome licences were in force at the start of 2013.

A black-and-white TV licence costs £49 a year, a colour licence costs £145.50.

TV Licensing spokesman Stephen Farmer said: "It's remarkable that with the digital switchover complete, 41% of UK households owning HDTVs and Britons leading the world in accessing TV content over the internet, more than 13,000 households still watch their favourite programmes on a black-and-white telly."

 

Oh no it isn’t-look at the price difference plonker....

Up in the Smoke

 

 

Victims could report crimes at the Post Office as 65 front desks in police stations across the capital are closed amid sweeping budget cuts of more than £500 million.

Stephen Greenhalgh, the deputy mayor of London, said post offices could be used to replace the “underused” counters as staff were typically security-cleared, used to taking cash and often had secure rooms as well.

The Metropolitan Police, Britain’s biggest force, is looking for more than 200 contact points in supermarkets, community centres and libraries where members of the public could access police services as stations close and is in the early stages of planning a trial with the Post Office.

 

Oh fucking great, now we will have to wait even fucking longer in the queue while some blood soaked mugger’s victim tells his story...

 

Dahn Unda

 

Stonemasonry boss Tom Finlay, 48, was standing 50m from his voluptuous hand-carved Venus de Milo when a flash of white light and an "almighty kaboom" sent stone flying through the air.

Mr Finlay said he was amazed her 30kg breasts had survived the phenomenon.

"There was a clap of thunder and the sculpture blew up like a rocket-launcher had hit it," he said.

"The lightning looked like a serpent.

"Everything disintegrated but the breasts - all that's left is what's under her hips," he added.

The 1.5m high sculpture, made of local porcelanite, was perched on a 6m steel reinforced column.

Shattered stone was strewn about the small courtyard at Finlay's Stonemasonry - near the Stuart Hwy, at Yarrawonga - where the top half of the headless Venus was obliterated about 2.45pm on Friday.

But her breasts withstood the 8m drop on to the stone mural below. Only one nipple was damaged.

Mr Finlay said he had not yet decided the fate of the surviving breasts "I might mount the breasts and hang them in my office." He said.

 

Whatever floats your boat cobber...

Back up a long way to the land below sea level 

 

A 76-year-old man trapped himself in an underground waste paper container in Amsterdam after he clambered in to hunt for a lottery ticket.

Police said in a statement the elderly man managed to open the container and climb in Thursday because he feared he had tossed out a lottery ticket along with other used paper.

Passers-by heard him calling for help and alerted the police who freed him with the help of fire-fighters.

 

Methinks the daft old fart has been visiting too many wacky baccy cafes.

 

Back Dahn Unda

 

Four men who were dressed as Smurfs when they were allegedly involved in an assault at a 7-Eleven have handed themselves into police.

Police said a 37-year-old Pascoe Vale man had been buying cigarettes at a 7-Eleven store, on the corner of West and Pascoe streets, when he was approached by a man painted blue and dressed as a character from the 1980s cartoon, about 1am on December 16.

The Smurf-dressed man asked for a cigarette and was offered one, but demanded the man light it before handing it over.

The man refused and was later assaulted.

A police spokeswoman said the alleged victim passed out in the car park, only realising he had been assaulted when he woke up.

Earlier today, police appealed for the smoking Smurf and his three Smurf mates to come forward.

Two 19-year-old Broadmeadows men, a 19-year-old Greenvale man and an 18-year-old Jacana man handed themselves into police after the appeal.

They are expected to be charged with assault-related offences, police said.

 

Smokin Smurfs....

 

And finally:

 

Way up to the land of ABBA and Volvos 

 

Swedish prosecutors have issued international arrest warrants for two Britons suspected of masterminding a smuggling ring involving over a ton of Chinese garlic.

The men first shipped the garlic to Norway by boat, where it entered the country duty-free since it was considered to be in transit, prosecutor Thomas Ahlstrand said Wednesday. They then drove the approximately 1.2 tons of garlic across the expansive Norwegian-Swedish border, avoiding customs checks and thus Swedish import duties.

Ahlstrand said the men avoided more than $13.1 million in Swedish taxes through the scheme. A lengthy police investigation led to the identification of the two Britons allegedly behind the Swedish operation, which took place in 2009-10.

It was not the first time smugglers had shown a preference for garlic from China, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of world output and is often significantly cheaper than local varieties.

In 2010, Polish authorities seized six containers with 144 tons of Chinese garlic that had been smuggled into the country via the Netherlands.

It was not immediately clear whether the Polish smuggling was linked to the Swedish case.

 

You would have thought that they smelt them coming.

 

That’s it: I’m orf to have a butchers at Mingus

 

And today’s thought:

Police Post 

 

Angus

Old age U-Turn Cam: Bed ridden NHS: Pachyderm prevention: Flight of the Canaries: Squatters pigging out on Nazca lines: and Smurfs invade the Smoke.

Bit of this, bit of that and none of the other at the Castle this morn, it seems that the Wevver is doing a U-Turn just like “Dave”.

Just returned from the stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s food run dahn Tesco, prices still on the up; but only another few months until Morrisons opens.

And talking of the Prime Monster

Himself, what’s his name and the rest of the Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition have done yet another 180, this time over “care for the old”.

The amount of money that people will have to pay towards the cost of their care in old age is to be capped by the Government after a dramatic policy rethink by U-Turn Cam.

Andrew Lansley, the Elf Secretary, announced that ministers were shelving recommendations to limit the individual cost of social care to £35,000 per person because of the £2bn cost to the Treasury. But The Independent has been told by senior sources within both Coalition parties that the plans have now been revived. They will be formally announced in the autumn as part of a Coalition relaunch and will be included in the Care and Support Bill.

The Dilnot commission recommended that the "asset threshold" over which people would have to contribute to the cost of their care in old age should rise dramatically, from £23,350 to £100,000.

There would also be a £35,000 "lifetime cap" on costs, after which the state would pick up the bill for care. This would allow individuals to buy insurance to cover the £35,000 initial outlay and save them from having to sell assets, such as their house, to pay for care costs.

Allegedly shit for brains Cameron's rethink came just a week after the Government announced it was not going ahead with the Dilnot commission's recommendations.

Confused? I am... But not surprised.

 

All over aging, accident prone Blighty

It seems that tens of thousands of NHS patients waited up to 12 hours for a hospital trolley in accident and emergency departments before getting a bed, official figures show.

Almost 67,000 patients during the first half of this year endured long waits for emergency beds, an increase of nearly a third, according to the government statistics.

While campaigners condemned the findings as “startling”, the Department of Health insisted that A&E departments were already offering an improved service.

Over a six-month period to June, 66,845 patients were found to have waited for between four and 12 hours for a bed once doctors decided they needed to be admitted.

During the same period the previous year, nearly 51,000 patients endured similar waiting times, the equivalent of a 31 per cent rise, according to the DoH. 

And that is just the first six months of this O’limp dick year....still, “they" don’t have to worry, “they” have all got BUPA.

 

Right thousand of do-dahs

And dahn to Sarf Africa, a province which is home to thousands of elephants is planning a birth control campaign for the pachyderms to prevent a population explosion that could threaten plants and wildlife.

Unlike other parts of Africa where elephant stocks have dwindled to dangerously low levels due to poaching and a loss of habitat, South Africa has seen its populations steadily grow through conservation, with the country pressed for room to house the massive animals with hefty diets.

KwaZulu-Natal province, in the southeast, is looking to expand a project running for more than a decade where elephants’ populations have been controlled by injecting cows with a vaccine that triggers an immune system response to block sperm reception. 

It was either that or six foot long condoms...shouldn’t they have injected the elephants instead?

West to the home of the bird and the land of the feathered

Police are looking for two people they say stole more than 500 canaries from the home of an 87-year-old Florida man.

Police say the men entered Manuel Sanchez's home on May 27 and took the birds. The next day, they sold the birds to at least three pet shops.

The canaries are valued at $30 each, which means the thefts were worth about $15,000 in all.

Police on Wednesday asked the public for help in identifying the suspects. Authorities say images of the suspects selling the birds were captured by video surveillance cameras.

Police were able to recover about 150 birds.


The rest of them disguised themselves as budgies and evaded capture...

Dahn more than a Peruvian mile or two

Squatters have started raising pigs on the site of Peru's Nazca lines - the giant designs best seen from an airplane that were mysteriously etched into the desert more than 1,500 years ago.

The squatters have destroyed a Nazca-era cemetery and the 50 shacks they have built border Nazca figures, said Blanca Alva, a director at Peru's culture ministry.

She said the squatters, the latest in a succession of encroachments over the years into the protected Nazca area, invaded the site during the Easter holidays in April and that Peruvian laws designed to protect the poor and landless have thwarted efforts to remove them.

In Peru, squatters who occupy land for more than a day have the right to a judicial process before eviction, which Alva said can take two to three years.

The Nazca lines known as geoglyphs, declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1994, were produced over a period of a thousand years on a 200 square mile (500 square km) stretch of coastal desert.

They include enormous birds, monkeys and other geometric shapes. The culture ministry evicted a separate batch of squatters in January from near a sprawling design known as the Solar Clock, only to
face down a new group months later.


Good job that it didn’t happen in Blighty, they would have had Elfandsafety on them by now...

And finally:

Back to the Smoke

Apparently Scores of Hartlepool United fans dressed as Smurfs on an away-day trip to London have become an online sensation.

The supporters – in white overalls, blue tops, white beards, blue faces and white hats – travelled down for their side’s final match of the season against Charlton on Saturday.

A picture posted on Twitter of the Smurfs descending an escalator to get on the underground at London’s King’s Cross station was viewed 13,500 times in 24 hours. 

Well, I suppose if you support Hartlepool you have to have something to look forward to...

That’s it: I’m orf to cancel my order for the Waverider and then back to the bunker....

And today’s thought:

I don’t know...women pilots.....

Angus