Angus got a new motor: Her Maj’s award: Tanks a lot: De-Daw delay: Mines on a reef: and Hover Golf.

Masses of lack of warm, minimal solar stuff, multitudes of atmospheric movement and quite a lot of white fluffy stuff at the Castle this “summer” morn, after travelling Norf of Luton with the butler riding shotgun to ward orf the Apaches I have finally managed to update the Honda-with a Honda, I have gorn for the newer one (civic) with all the bells and whistles-but the best bit is the leather seats which are heated by leccy, pictures here and there if you are interested.

 

The elbow is getting worse, I had a nice early appointment with my general medic yestermorn to try to get it sorted out but when I arrived the electronic book in thingy refused to accept me and told me that my appointment was up at the Aldershot Centre for Elfs so with ten minutes to go I queued at the reception thingy for five minutes while the “staff” mumbled on the phones to obviously more important people so I dashed to the mentioned “Elf Centre”, arrived with a minute to spare, paid my parking ransom and managed to speak to the “receptionist” who told me that “no, your appointment is at the other surgery, but it doesn’t matter because the Doctor has gorn home sick, but another appointment has been made for you at 9.45” with a medic I have never heard of.

The second word I uttered was “orf”, so I went home and couldn’t be bovvered to post.

 

I see that her Maj has got a Bafta

 

For “supporting British film for a lifetime”, so have I, so where’s mine then?

 

East to the land of Russians

A soldier is facing a court marshal after being caught driving a tank into a lamp post while supposedly under the influence.

The incident was captured on the dashboard camera of a motorist who had stopped at a junction.

Footage shows a tank moving towards a crossroads before coming to an abrupt halt.

It sets off again before hitting a nearby lamppost with a dull thud, much to the amusement of the driver behind the camera, and the bemusement of the traffic officer who is seen watching the pissed idiot trying to park.

 

I’d like to see them clamp that.....

 

Over to foreign parks in Kent

 

Plans to build a £2billion theme park to rival Disneyland Paris have been halted – so a colony of extremely rare spiders can be re homed.

Bosses of the Paramount scheme hoped to have the resort – which will be twice the size of the Olympic Park, creating 27,000 jobs – up and running by 2019.

But environmentalists have found distinguished jumping spiders on the 872-acre brown field site at Swanscombe Peninsula, Kent.

The spiders are on a UK priority species list and are only found in one other place in the country, West Thurrock Marshes in Essex.

Unlike many other species, they like the soil, which is particularly alkaline due to previous industrial use.

 

Bet they don’t like rolled up newspapers though...

 

East or West to the Pacific

The commanding officer and three crewmembers aboard a U.S. Navy minesweeper have been relieved of their duties amid an investigation into how the $300 million ship got stuck on a reef near the Philippines and had to be scuttled.

The USS Guardian became stuck on a reef in the Tubbataha National Marine Park, a World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea some 400 miles southeast of Manila in January.

 

The Navy said in a statement that the officer and crewmembers were relieved because the ship’s grounding did not comply with its navigation procedures and accountability standards.

 

Oh ha-fucking-ha...

 

And finally:

 

Somewhere on a golf course

Bubba Watson who won the 2012 Masters tournament, has given his backing to the latest way of getting around the green - a cross between a buggy and a hovercraft.

The prototype machine allows golfers to glide across grass and launch across lakes, and is fitted with a noise reduction rotor to avoid disturbing those who prefer more conventional modes of transport.

The hovercraft, known as the BW1, features four seats and a roof from a typical golf buggy and has room for two golf caddies.

The machine is a joint project between Watson, Sportswear Company Oakley and Neoteric Hovercraft, the company which built it.

It is not known how much the BW1 cost to build, although Neoteric hovercraft sell for between $16,700 (£11,000) and $65,860 (£43,600) through the company's website.

 

Cheap at half the price-well it would be if it was.....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to enter a new realm of physics

 

And today’s thought:

Class Bollocks

 

 

Angus

Cough up your Airfix: Flying de-daws: “Racist” duck: Killer Seal: and the Tel Aviv rip-orf:

Visible drizzle, invisible lack of cold, risible atmospheric movement and sod all solar activity at the Castle this morn, after the saga of the hot water debacle a while ago it has gorn tits up again, so I had a nice cold wash and shave followed by a nice warm electric shower, luckily the fat, carbon neutral teenagers inserted into the furnace are keeping me nice and warm.

Why do these things always happen on a Sunday...?

 

All across build it Blighty

There are old farts holding onto Airfix models that they made back in the thirties, forties, fifties and beyond but now you can get a bit of use from them, the Royal Air Force Museum will chart the history of Airfix since the company began in 1939 and is due to feature kits, as well as artwork from the boxes.

However, the curators are struggling to locate several models, especially from the firm’s heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. They are seeking any toys, either still in their boxes, or fully built, from that period, either from the company’s military range, or some of its more diverse collections.

Among particular requests it has made are for: the first kit of a Massey Ferguson tractor; its first Spitfire; models from its historical figures range, which included Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell and Charles I; ships, including HMS Endeavour — Captain Cook’s vessel — and a Hawker P1127, a prototype of the Harrier jump jet.

Although most of the toys which the museum, in Hendon, north London, wants to display should be immaculately assembled and well decorated, it also wants to feature several less successful efforts, which may have been preserved.

Airfix was founded in 1939 by Nicholas Kove, a refugee from Hungary who originally manufactured rubber inflated toys. The name was chosen because part of the process involved fixing air into products and so the company would appear at the front of business directories.

After the Second World War he switched to producing plastic combs, before the company started to produce toy kits, with the first Spitfire appearing in 1953. By the mid-1970s, the firm was selling about 20 million kits a year. But fell into decline in the 1980s as computer games became more popular. However, the company — owned by the train set maker Hornby since 2006 — still sells about 3.5 million kits a year and features up to date kits from the current conflict in Afghanistan.

 

You can contact the museum HERE if you are so inclined.

 

I’m orf to the loft....

 

West to the land of pubic haircuts

 

The Brazilian town of Santo Antônio da Platina, spiders known as Anelosimus eximius were shot ( in the photographic sense) by Erick Reis as they showered the sky. Marta Fischer, a local biologist, is quoted as saying (translated), “…They are usually in trees during the day and in the late afternoon and early evening construct a sort of sheet webs, each makes his and then they come together. The goal is to capture insects.” She also says this phenomenon is normal.

 

Fuck that...more than a lot....

 

Up a fairway to the warm non-snowy bit of the Americas

 

Allegedly a second family in as little as a week has come forward with allegations that a Disneyland character snubbed them because they were black.

The White family said they took their son, Ryder, to Disneyland to celebrate his birthday in December.

The day was going well until Razzi White, 5, walked up to a performer in a Donald Duck costume at the park's Main Street.

'He was sitting there with his arms open, saying, 'Donald, Donald!' said mother Nastasia White.

Nastasia claims that rather than play with her son, Donald deliberately walked away from him to play with a white baby in a stroller.

The Whites said they waited patiently for their turn - long enough that even the baby's parents urged Donald to play with Razzi - but Donald ignored them.

Nastasia asked for picture, but says Donald instead went to a young white girl on a bench and hugged her.

 

Time to get the orange sauce out methinks....

 

East many-many imperial units and dahn just as much

Apparently a voracious cape fur seal has been boldly snacking on large sharks; as dozens of blue sharks gathered around and gorging on an enormous ball of bait fish.

Chris Fallows said: "There were eight guests aboard our vessel; many of them seasoned wildlife enthusiasts. None had ever seen anything like this as sharks of this size are certainly not usually considered food for seals.

"In more than 2,000 expeditions working with sharks over the last 21 years, this is the only time I have ever seen a seal kill several sharks and I can find no record of such an event happening elsewhere."

The seal consumed the stomach and livers of the first two sharks, before killing three others.

And the moral-don’t mess with the seal.

 

And finally:

 

Norf a bit and East a bit

 

Road workers have been caught on camera towing a car away in Tel Aviv - after painting a disabled parking space around the vehicle.

Hila Ben Baruch was ordered to pay £170, plus towing costs, after being accused of illegally parking in the Israeli city.

The angry motorist, who had parked near her apartment, later uncovered surveillance footage of the shocking incident and posted it on Facebook.

"You just see it and can't believe it," she wrote on the social network where the video received hundreds of likes.

"Within five minutes they turned me into a criminal. But who cares? The important thing is that Tel Aviv sucked some more blood."

Ms Ben Baruch has since received an apology from the local city hall who waived the fine after admitting it was a 'serious error'.

But that was not enough to satisfy Ms Ben Baruch who is now threatening legal proceedings.

"I don't plan to keep quiet, not even for a moment" she insisted.

 

As U-Turn Cam would say “calm dahn dear”.....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to check out my anti-virus

 

Today’s thought:

Oh shit that’s not the bloke from Tesco is it?

 

 

And today’s mellow melody

A bit of moon lute

 

 

Angus

Royal Norks-allegedly: Taking the piss: still taking the piss: El Sluggo: Funnel Web hunters wanted: Dead end voting: and Plane daft.

Loads of atmospheric movement, not a lot of lack of cold, even less solar stuff and much less skywater at the Castle this morn.

I think I may have to give up this blogging thing, the old brain cell is seriously on the blink, can’t remember words, forget to do the spell check, forget to add labels, forget what I was going to ramble about, forget to reply to comments, forget to visit/comment on other bloggers and sometimes I forget to blog at all...

 Now what was I saying?

Allegedly while in French France

And even more allegedly Will’s bird got her headlights out on the terrace of a guest house during a brief holiday she enjoyed with the tall bald bloke in France last week.

The couple were staying in Provence at a chateau owned by Lord Linley, the Queen's nephew, ahead of their Diamond Jubilee tour of south-east Asia and the South Pacific on behalf of the Queen.

And surprise, surprise it seems that a naughty person with a camera snapped the royal norks-allegedly.

The magazine's French website showed an image of its new front cover with a heavily pixilated image of a woman with dark hair, it claims is the Duchess, in a bikini apparently about to remove her top.

William and Kate were told about the allegations this morning before they visited they Assyakirin Mosque and had also looked at the images on the website.

Speaking about the royal couple a source said: "They're saddened their privacy has been breached - if it has been breached."

The source stressed it could not confirm if the pictures were of Kate as they appeared to have been taken with a long lens and were pixilated.

 

So what’s all the bleedin fuss about then?

 

What price education?

Apparently the Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition has managed to splurge £500 million on private schools for the orfspring of diplomats and military personnel in the last three years.

Ministers last year backed down on plans to scrap the allowance, which costs the taxpayer more than £21,000 per child, as part of public sector spending cuts. Instead they promised to cut the bill through "efficiencies". But research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed that the cost of the perk has increased by nearly ten per cent since 2009 and last year stood at £203m across three departments.

The privilege, known as the Continuity of Education Allowance (CEA), exists to support children whose parents work for the government overseas. It covers the costs of schooling abroad and in the UK, but the majority, at least £99m each year, is spent on fees for expensive British boarding schools.

Public schools where the state has subsidised places include Marlborough College, Tony Blair's old school Fettes College and Roedean.

By far the biggest bill for private schooling comes from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which funded more than £189m of school fees last year. All ranks are eligible for the perk but, because families have to make a contribution of a least 10 per cent, it is overwhelmingly taken up by officers.

Despite promises to make savings on the scheme the total bill has actually risen by £16m since 2008/9 – in part caused by new tax arrangements. It comes at the same time as the Army is in the process of axing 20,000 posts because of budget cuts.

 

Greedy, arrogant, self centred bastards....

 

Up in the cabinet office part of the Smoke

A council chief criticised by ministers for collecting an "unacceptable" £420,000 pay-off has been awarded a senior new job cutting waste in Whitehall.

Katherine Kerswell was last night accused of riding the government "job merry-go-round"; after it emerged she is the new director-general of civil service reform at the Cabinet Office.

Her salary will be £142,000 for the role, which ministers have struggled to fill since April 2011.

The 49-year-old was awarded the new job almost a year after leaving Kent County Council with a £589,000 pay package, including her salary and the hefty pay-off. She had been in the job just 16 months before taking redundancy.

Francis Maude, the cabinet office minister, said she would be leading the Coalition’s plan to improve the civil service set out in June.

“I want to see a Civil Service that is flatter, faster, more digital, more unified, with better capabilities and performance management, focused on outcomes not process, with modern terms and conditions, and which is more enjoyable to work for,” he said.

 No wonder she is fucking laughing...

 

All across beleaguered Blighty

The Spanish slug, that can grow up to 15cm long, is thought to have arrived in salads during the summer – and has already spread as far west as Wales

Giant Spanish slugs that invaded Britain are mating with native ones to create a mutant super slug capable of wreaking crop havoc.

They are also threatening to wipe out local species with new diseases and ­parasites or by simply devouring them

Sylvia Locke, 72, from the Amman Valley in Wales, has seen several in her garden. She said: “We caught them eating snails. It was gruesome.

“Our dog caught one it was so big I thought it was a mouse.”

 

Saw one meself yestermorn but I managed to deal with it by hitting it with half a brick-cheaper than slug poison.

 

Dahn Unda

The Australian Reptile Park wants new recruits in the hunt for funnel web spiders.

The tourist attraction has sent out an SOS to residents across the coast for funnel webs, particularly males, which are milked for their venom used to create anti-venom.

"Usually at this time of year we have been inundated with people bringing in funnel webs, because we have experienced that warmer weather mixed with spring showers which is what they like, but it's been quite dry for the last few weeks so sightings are down," Australian Reptile Park operations manager Tim Faulkner said.

The spiders are milked once a week and it takes about 70 milkings to create a single dose of anti-venom.

If you see a funnel web and want to catch it, Mr Faulkner said it's best to use a glass container.

"We tell people if they feel comfortable collecting them either use a stick or a utensil to help scoop them up and into the glass container, and don't panic ... they won't chase you," he laughed.

 

Sod that....

 

Left to the home of administration and the land of elections

 

Apparently officials in Texas are sending out about 1,800 letters marked "VERIFICATION OF VOTER STATUS."

What you're supposed to do, within 30 days is contact county elections officials and tell them you are not dead.

According to Rich Parsons, director of communications for the Texas Secretary of State's office.

More than 13 million people are registered to vote in Texas, and 76,990 of them were found to be on the "potentially deceased" list. The total includes strong matches (meaning the registered voters name, Social Security number and date of birth were exactly the same as a potentially deceased person) and weak matches (in which some but not all of the elements paired up, maybe a few digits of the Social Security numbers were off).

All of the names were sent to voter registrars across the state. Tarrant County Elections Administrator Steve Raborn says about 4,000 of them came to his office.

Raborn says people in his office searched the list, eliminated many of the weak matches, removed clearly identifiable strong matches from the voter registration rolls and last week mailed letters to about 1,800 people whose life-or-death status was uncertain.

By law, those who don't respond within 30 days will be removed from the voter rolls, although if they show up to vote in the Nov. 6 election they'll still be allowed to cast a ballot and their votes will be counted.

My brain hurts...

 

And finally:

 

Still in the place which thinks it is Dahn Unda

 

A US man is trying to sell his damaged plane online - after landing it upside down in a storm.

The seller, named only as Jim on the Craigslist, wants the equivalent of £10,000 for the 1968 Cessna 172 H.

In the listing, Jim explains in his own way how the plane came to look like a turtle flipped on its back.

"It started out as a bad hair day, ya know kinda windy, got called out to plow, course here in DV (Death Valley) we plow gravel off the road, anyway must have had a twister come thru so I spent the afternoon flipping my plane," he admitted.

Jim goes on to list the extensive list of damaged parts that potential buyers may wish to consider before lodging a bid.

They may be consoled that the plane, currently at Furnace Creek airport in Death Valley, California, has at least now been turned the right way up. 

Must be worth £10, 001 by now then...

 

That’s it: I’m orf to decipher Climate Shuffles

 

And today’s thought:

Worth £21,000 of anyone’s money

 

 

Angus

Dave’s mate: Windy Chancellor: Citadel Numptys: Arachnid invasion: Holy ice lolly: and Luxury Dahn Unda.

Freezing cold and pissing dahn at the Castle this bank holiday morn, took a day orf yesterday, unplugged the TV and managed to avoid all “news” of that thing happening in the Smoke, sadly it is still going on today.

The Honda is now a nice selection of red and yellow, the butler is back to shoving carbon neutral teenagers into the furnace and his Maj has discovered the joy of ambush from the Tesco “bag for life”.

 

Up in the Palace of holidays

It seems that when the overpaid, piss poor MPs return on the 11^th of June U-Turn Cam may be in for an “interesting” time.

After the Prime Monster launched an impassioned defence of Jeremy CHunt Labour and Some senior Liberal Democrat MPs are expected to vote on Wednesday next week to recommend that Mr CHunt faces censure of his handling of News Corp's £8bn bid for BSkyB.

According to Dave "The advice I was given was that what mattered was not what Jeremy Hunt had said publicly or privately but how he was going to conduct himself during the bid," he told the BBC. "That's how I think we should judge him: did he adjudicate this bid wisely and fairly?

"And he did. He took legal advice at every stage, and he followed that legal advice and he did many things that were not in the interests of the Murdochs or BSkyB and that side of things."

 

Yeah right...

Still in the place where no one is home

Son of a B.......aronet and alien reptile in disguise George (where’s my invite to the picnic today) Osborne has decided that he wants to cut subsidies for wind farms by a quarter, the Department for Energy and Climate Change confirmed that subsidy levels are set to fall.

Cutting subsidies would be popular among Conservative MPs. More than 100 MPs wrote to David Cameron earlier this year calling on the Prime Monster to limit the growth of onshore wind generation.

Allegedly George has seen his reputation damaged by his Budget in March, and is looking to rebuild support with his party.

At the moment there are just over 3,000 wind turbines onshore and more than 500 offshore in the UK.

What’s his name-the Deputy Prime Minister, has clashed repeatedly with Mr Osborne in Cabinet meetings over environmental issues, reminding the Chancellor that the Coalition is committed to being “the greenest government ever”.

  

Until personal ambition gets in the way.....

Over to the non-Jubilee place way over to the left

An existing computer virus, called Citadel, has been repurposed as scam-ware, which notifies users that they've been caught looking at child porn and must pay a $100 fine to get off the hook.

Users are lured into going to a URL for a "drive-by download" website, which installs a Trojan (called Reveton) onto their machine using the Citadel platform. This Trojan then freezes their computer and displays a warning screen (pictured above) notifying the user that "the user's IP address was identified by the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section as visiting child pornography and other illegal content." And they have to pay $100 to the Federal Government, via credit card or wire transfer, to clear their record.

This warning comes from the Internet Complaint Crime Centre (IC3), which is made up of the FBI and other agencies. The alert warns:

In addition to the ransomware, the Citadel malware continues to operate on the compromised computer and can be used to commit online banking and credit card fraud.... This is an attempt to extort money with the additional possibility of the victim's computer being used to participate in online bank fraud. If you have received this or something similar do not follow payment instructions.

One born every minute...

East to the land of many, many people and big arachnoids

Over two weeks ago, an army of eight-legged sods invaded Jintu Gogoi's neighbourhood in Sadiya, Upper Assam.

On May 8. Most of the inhabitants of Chaulkhowa Nagaon village had been to a Bihu function. When the programme drew to a close, swarms of spiders suddenly descended from nowhere and started biting the people.

Over the next few days’ scores of people arrived in the Sadiya civil hospital with spider bites, some even carrying their tormentors to the hospital.

An alert was made across Tinsukia district and people were asked to stay indoors at night—the time the eight legged buggers would swarm all over the place.

Dibrugarh University has, meanwhile, sent spider specimens to Indian Society of Arachnology, Maharashtra, for identification.

Shan’t be going there for my hols then.....

Back in the Smoke

The Icecreamists shop in London's Covent Garden has come up with a new product-a gun-shaped Vice Lolly made up of one part 80% alcohol absinthe and three parts Holy water from Lourdes.

Priced at £18.58 after the year 1858 - when spring water from Lourdes was declared Holy by the Catholic Church after a 14-year-old girl saw the Virgin Mary in a vision there.

Icecreamists owner Matt O'Connor, 45 said "Being born into a Catholic family I wanted to make a statement about religion," "I have a source in France that bought the holy water for me in plastic bottles. After it was shipped over I spent a lot of time tasting it with absinthe and sugar to get the taste and balance just right.

"It tastes alcoholic with a touch of sweetness. After about three of these the average drinker would certainly be feeling the effects."

 

And then be damned to hell for eternity...

And finally:

Dahn Unda

Apparently Aussies have ditched the Lara Bingle-style bikini babe and Paul Hogan-esque Aussie larrikin and gone upmarket for their new $250 million marketing campaign.

The 90 second commercial launched in China today showcases some of the country's most luxurious - and expensive - travel experiences.

It includes scenes of a woman getting a massage at Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa in the NSW Blue Mountains where Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke wed Kyly Boldy last month, a couple playing chess at the high-end Saffire in Tasmania and five-star dining at Uluru in the Northern Territory.

Australia's natural beauty is also on display, with sweeping images of the Bungle Bungles in Western Australia's Kimberley region, diving on the Great Barrier Reef, a glittering Sydney Harbour and gum trees blowing in the wind.

In another scene, indigenous and non-indigenous children are seen swimming together in a waterhole in the Northern Territory and playing with crabs on the beach.

Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson launched the latest phase of the There's Nothing Like Australia campaign in Shanghai today. China is Australia's fastest-growing and most valuable tourism market.

It also includes a new, interactive tablet app and hub on its website www.australia.com to give people more information on the locations featured in the ad.

Hello and Hooroo Dahn Unda

That’s it I’m orf to purchase a non-glowing Russian sheep

And today’s thought:

Australian

Angus

Bus pass grab: the Naked Sledging World Cup: Are you a Hyperpolyglot: Space elevator: Bog standard desk: and Big de-daws.

Warm, non wettish and much less wobbly at the Castle this morn, the butler has turned orf the furnace-until tomorrow, and I managed to venture into the garden to try plan “P” on the mock orange “tree”; it’s still there....

But there are a few flowers enjoying the lack of cold.

According to The Social Market Foundation

The best way to get bankrupt Blighty back on the straight and narrow is to take away pensioners bus passes because they are a low-priority item of spending that did nothing to improve the economy and should be scrapped.

Other “ideas” are taking away winter fuel payments and free television licences from wealthier pensioners.

And another £1 billion could be found by preventing savers from keeping any more than £15,000 in tax-free ISAs and £2.4 billion from means testing child benefit payments.

That’ll work-stopping pensioners from being able to get to the town to spend what is left of their pittance will really boost the economy....

Right a bit to the land of BMW boxes

Porn actress Mia Magma is a big winner as 25,000 packed a German village to watch the 'nude winter Olympics’

Organisers said 25-year-old was "too naked and too fast for everyone else" as she conquered the 291-foot course in temperatures just above zero. 

One way to make a point-or two...

Back in multi lingual Blighty

Ray Gillon speaks 18 languages. To be precise, he only speaks eight fluently. His grasp on the other 10 is merely conversational.

Throw anything at him in Portuguese, Thai, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Bulgarian or Mandarin and he will banter back.

In the UK, where there has been a growing anxiety over the failure to learn additional languages, Gillon might seem to be a bit of an anomaly. More and more children have been giving up languages since the last government made learning foreign languages optional in England from the age of 14.

Apparently;

Up to 7,000 different languages are estimated to be spoken around the world.

Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French are world's most widely spoken languages, according to UNESCO

English is related to German and Dutch, and all are part of Indo-European family of languages

2,200 of the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260

 

I ‘ave enough trouble with English, but who says you can’t learn anyfing on this blog.....

East to the land of things that glow

A Japanese construction firm claimed Wednesday it could execute an out-of-this-world plan to put tourists in space within 40 years by building an elevator that stretches a quarter of the way to the moon.

Obayashi Corp claims it could use carbon nanotube technology, which is more than 20 times stronger than steel, to build a lift shaft 96,000 kilometres (roughly 60,000 miles) above the Earth.

The company said it would carry up to 30 passengers at a time and travel at a speed of 200 kilometres per hour for a week, stopping off at a station at 36,000 kilometres.

That’s one way to get away from the radiation...

Up a bit and left a whimsy

One inventor believes he has found the perfect way to salvage unwanted toilets - by turning them into desks for local schoolchildren.

Loo manufacturer Gao Jianguo discovered a way to transform these bog standard unused toilets into fully functional desks by turning one lavatory's cistern lid into portable lap desks.

Alternatively students can sit on top of the toilet seat backwards and work from a fixed position.

Gao, from Shijiazhuang, northern China, has now donated hundreds of the wacky toilet desks to local schools in the area.

Flushed with success-still it might do away with toilet breaks....

And finally: 

Apparently according to Journal of Anxiety Disorders

The more you fear a spider the bigger it will appear to be, according to new research.

A study of arachnophobes found the worse their condition the larger they estimated the creepy crawlies size.

The irrational fear of spiders is believed to affect as many as half of women and girls, and up to one in six males.

And the latest findings explain why many sufferers hold out their arms shrieking "it was that big" when the reality of the situation turns out to be much less scary.

Psychologist Professor Michael Vasey, of Ohio State University, said: "If one is afraid of spiders, and by virtue of being afraid of spiders one tends to perceive spiders as bigger than they really are, that may feed the fear, foster that fear, and make it difficult to overcome."

“One” always has a rolled up newspaper to hand....... 

That’s it: I’m orf to sort out the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Racking Apparatus’s wiring.

And today’s thought:

Non nude sledding.

  

Angus

Fig-ure this: Dept of tax avoidance: You are what you eat: The knobs on the bus: Time to slow down: and the Dunollie Castle de-daws.

Sort of non atmospheric conditions at the Castle this morn-warmish, calm and dry with an iota of opaque wet stuff in the air, orf to Tesco on the stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s food run and I spent a couple of hours at my lovely young ladies (who trims my locks) house sorting out her computers yestermorn, nice to feel useful again...

Up in the Smoke

In the atrium of the £235 million portcullis house stand twelve weeping fig trees, they were rented from Plant Care UK for £32,500 a year, including maintenance and have so far cost us £400,000 in total.

 

Are they taking the piss or what....?

Still in iceberg infested Whitehall

Allegedly more than 25 senior Department of Health officials, some earning more than £250,000 a year, have had their salaries paid to limited companies, enabling them to reduce their tax bill, it has emerged.

Despite many of them being employed by the department for a number of years and in “very senior positions”, officials denied they were “civil servants".

The “problem” emerged when Ed Lester, the chief executive of the Student Loans Company, was able to avoid tens of thousands of pounds in income tax by having £182,000 a year paid to his private company.

According to leaked internal documents, the health staff earned almost £4.2 million in one year for their work with the department.

One contractor is said to have earned £273,375, while a further 19 officials were paid more than £100,000.

The majority of the “limited companies” are registered as business and management consultancies.

One Whitehall source said: “We cannot defend these arrangements, but it may be it is very common in Whitehall and this is just the tip of an iceberg.”

A “full audit” is now being conducted by the Treasury into the arrangements.

Don’t hold your breath...”all in this together”.

Left to the city of many lights

One Las Vegas man has painfully discovered that what you eat can have a big impact on your health.

The man was dining on a "triple bypass burger" in the The Heart Attack Grill in downtown Las Vegas when he suffered an apparent heart attack.

According to ‘Nurse’ Bridgett who was working at the restaurant when the man in his 40s began experiencing chest pains "He was having the sweats and shaking,"

The restaurant is known for not holding back on the food it serves. Signs around the business glorify bad eating habits and the menu includes items like Flatliner Fries, and Butterfat Milkshakes.

The "quadruple bypass burger" can easily exceed 8,000 calories.

Karma...my what big burgers that young lady has...

East to the land of more than enough people and not enough busses

A Route 815 public bus near the Beijing Guomao area was jam-packed. With the bus doors blocked by passengers, some passengers struggled to climb into the bus through the windows.

A traffic officer on the side tried to keep order without effect, and could only help stuff the passengers one by one into the bus. 15 minutes later, this severely overloaded Route 815 public bus finally set off.

Reminds me of my commuting to London days…

Back over to the land of the automobile and the home of the speed limit

Greg Smith noticed an unusual school zone speed sign in White Lake about three weeks ago.

“You practically have to come to a stop to read it,” said Smith, who lives nearby.

The sign lists six different times when drivers need to slow from 45 mph to 25 mph on about a mile of Bogie Lake Road near three schools.

“I’m thinking of printing out the speeds and attaching it to my dashboard.”

The sign — installed Jan. 12 — tells drivers that on school days, they need to slow down to 25 between 6:49-7:15, 7:52-8:22 and 8:37-9:07 during the mornings and 2:03-2:33, 3:04-3:34 and 3:59-4:29 during afternoons.

Bogie Lake Road: no it’s snot a joke....

And finally:

North to the nearly autonomous still part of Blighty bit

One of Scotland’s most romantic and historic ruins is to undergo a £1 million restoration programme – without disturbing the residents.

Dunollie Castle, which sits on a rocky crag above Oban Bay, is the iconic spot where the kings of Dalriada ruled the Western Isles in the seventh and eighth centuries and which later became a Clan MacDougall stronghold.

It is now home to an unusual colony of European cave spiders, which have made their nest in an opening in the eight-foot thick medieval castle walls.

The MacDougall of Dunollie Preservation Trust says its £1.1 million project to save Dunollie from the elements and the ravages of recent vandalism will make sure that the spider colony is protected.

Project director Catherine Gillies said: “We are going to have an ecologist with us and we need to decide what we do about our cave spiders. They are one of the largest spiders in the UK and are living inside a window opening, in the seven to eight feet thick castle walls. We hope we can leave them in peace.”

European cave spiders are shiny satin black to reddish brown in colour with adults reaching roughly a five centimetre leg span and 15 millimetre body length. They usually live in caves and tunnels away from the light.

Not in this Castle they won’t...

That’s it: I’m orf to cancel my Twitter account.

And today’s thought:

Angus