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

Sport or supermarkets: Useless inept Doctors: Blurry women: It’s OK to steal: Ice cold noodles: and Tanks for the memory.

More than a smidge cooler at the Castle this morn, it is a mere 76f in the kitchen and a nice cool 84f in the master bedroom, no atmospheric movement and not a white fluffy thing in sight which means that I will be staggering about with the watering can to moisten the pots, hanging baskets and wall boxes this pre-noon. 

As the big sporty thing up in the smoke grinds to a halt

And U-Turn Cam is vomiting his usual spin doctor sound bites about how much the Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition is doing for the not very healthy kiddlies by selling orf oodles of school playing fields he may like to take a look at what is happening up Norf in Leeds.

Where  an area of what is now scrubland, an abandoned swimming pool and sports centre – left to crumble behind a high security fence when fee-paying Leeds Girls' High School upped sticks and joined the middle-class flight to the city's northern fringes to merge with the boys' establishment in 2008.

If developers get their way the site could become the home of a new supermarket-owned convenience store and 25 houses.

The plan has been signalled for approval by Leeds City Council officers next week

But Martin Hamilton, a local councillor, said young people in his ward needed all the help they could get. "It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth when you are having all this success in the Olympics and you are stopping all these kids from less privileged backgrounds from playing sport," he said.

A spokeswoman for Leeds City Council said the development would not give rise to any unacceptable consequences for the environment, community or other public interests.

Yeah right, strange thing is Leeds council has a Labour majority....

And all across Olympic Blighty

Allegedly Doctors are failing to record accurately the cause of up to a quarter of hospital deaths, a study suggests.

A pilot scheme designed to prevent a repeat of the Harold Shipman murders found that one in 10 death certificates did not even have the correct category of disease.

It also means that families are often told the wrong cause of a loved-one’s death.

Dr Alan Fletcher, a consultant at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, was appointed Britain’s first “Medical Examiner” to check the accuracy of death certificates as part of a move to tighten up procedures in the wake of the Shipman case.

He checked 8,000 death certificates from the Sheffield area against detailed medical notes and case histories but found inaccuracies in about 2,000 of them.

Often doctors had listed the immediate trigger for a patient’s death, rather than the root cause.

Examples included patients with terminal cancer who were classed as dying from pneumonia as that was the condition which caused their final deterioration.

In about 40 per cent of those – or a tenth of the overall total – the cause of death given on the certificate was a different category of disease.

For example a patient who was bed-bound with severe dementia which led to pneumonia was classed as dying as a result of respiratory illness rather than a neurological condition.

He said doctors were failing to read the “story” set out in patients’ records.

"I don't believe there is someone of murderous intent patrolling hospital corridors,” he told The Guardian.

Well he would wouldn’t he-being a Doctor.....

East to the land that has been fought over for many, many centuries

The latest prescription for extreme ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who shun contact with the opposite sex: Glasses that blur their vision, so they don't have to see women they consider to be immodestly dressed.

In an effort to maintain their strictly devout lifestyle, the ultra-Orthodox have separated the sexes on buses, sidewalks and other public spaces in their neighbourhoods. Their interpretation of Jewish law forbids contact between men and women who are not married.

Walls in their neighbourhoods feature signs exhorting women to wear closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts. Extremists have accosted women they consider to have flouted the code.

The ultra-Orthodox community's unofficial "modesty patrols" are selling glasses with special blur-inducing stickers on their lenses. The glasses provide clear vision for up to a few meters so as not to impede movement, but anything beyond that gets blurry - including women. It's not known how many have been sold.

For men forced to venture outside their insular communities, hoods and shields that block peripheral vision are also being offered.

The glasses are going for the "modest" price of $6.

Obviously didn’t go to Specsavers



Over to the Sub-Continent

Apparently a minister in India's most populous and politically crucial state, Uttar Pradesh, has said bureaucrats can steal a little as long as they work hard - sparking national outcry in a country whose ruling class has long been mired in corruption scandals.

"If you work hard, and put your heart and soul into it ... then you are allowed to steal some," Shivpal Singh Yadav told a gathering of local officials in comments caught on camera. "But don't be a bandit."

Uttar Pradesh, which is bigger than Brazil by population, was earlier governed by 'Dalit Queen' Mayawati. She has been criticized for spending millions of rupees on building statues of herself and buying diamond jewellery despite widespread malnutrition and poverty in her state.

Now why does that sound so familiar?-you got to pick a pocket or two.....

Still in the right hand side of the world where no one is affected by nuclear stuff

Nissin, famous worldwide for it Cup Noodle products, will be introducing an interesting new product: cold instant noodles.

This new product is prepared by mixing ice into the noodles, giving you a whole new instant noodle experience.

The noodles are a bit chewier and the usual salty flavour is lessened.

The release is supposed to be in response to the summer season and recent electricity problem Japan faces.

Cold instant noodles are an alternative way to cool down. Instead of using air conditioning, one can simply eat and at the same time beat the heat.

Or you could have a cold nice glass of glowing water...

And finally: 

Right quite a lot of linear units

Folks having a summer dip and catching some rays on a beach near Kaliningrad, Russia got a bit more than sunburn when a convoy of military tanks hurtled through the sands.

The reason, it is claimed, is that Russian authorities instruct the military, where possible, to transport their tanks and other heavy-duty vehicles on the sand so not to damage the country’s road network. 

So how do they get them to the beach then?

That’s it: I’m orf to watch the annual Perseid meteors this dark thing

And today’s thought:

Think I’ll miss this one-Olympics

Angus

Mumbling idiot: Cupid stuntman survives: Tanks a lot: Finger wrestling: Android avatars: and Mechanical doors.

A whimsy cooler at the Castle this morn, there is a nice covering of cloud at the moment and the liquid metal gauge is reading in the mid seventies.

The Honda is covered in even more yellow stuff and his Maj has discovered the joy of lying in the bath to keep the heat at bay.

 

U-Turn Cam got in a touch of trouble during Prime Monster’s questions yesternoon-ish

Shit for brains Dave called Ed (starey eyes) Ball a “mumbling idiot” and was taken to task by Dopey speaker Bercow who told him to withdraw the remark as the word “idiot” was ‘unparliamentarily’.

A ''simple withdrawal'' would do, he said.

Shame Dave’s dad didn’t do that before he was conceived....

And cupid stuntman Gary Connery lives to jump another day

He managed to jump 2,400 ft from a helicopter and landed on a pile of cardboard boxes without using a parachute.

"I feel incredible, just completely elated," he told reporters, who had to put their buckets and shovels back in their motors.

Bet a lot of poo came out...

East to the place where Siberians live

The authorities have come up with a cunning plan to save money on children’s climbing frames.

Scattered around playgrounds are decommissioned ASU-85s and Т-62s Soviet tanks for kids to clamber upon.

They would have nicked them for scrap if that was Blighty...

West a smidge and dahn less than that

Lederhosen attired men gather in vast quantities for a lot of finger wrestling, competitors subject themselves to an intense regime of finger training in the build up to a tournament, with some preferring to squeeze tennis balls or holding their own body weight with a single finger, some insist that a series of one-finger press ups is the best method of strengthening.

 No wonder Europe is such a shit hole...

East again to the land of Russians

According to Dmitry Itskov and the people Russia 2045 immortality is just a smidge away, a team of real scientists working on a way to make us all immortal.

He used his ‘skills’ to create a social movement with the goal of connecting scientists, philosophers, visionaries and public figures to work on this common goal. They’ve already started working on androids, or human avatars, that will soon replace us physically, but carry on our spiritual and intellectual legacy.

By 2020, this robotic copy of a human being will be remote-controlled via BCI (Brain Computer Interface), and by 2025 we’ll be able to transfer a person’s brain into one of these avatars, after they die. By 2035 these androids will be so advanced they’ll be able to support a human’s personality as well, and finally, in 2045, humanity will have created holographic avatars able to carry our legacy beyond the stars and practically render us immortal.

 

Can’t wait...

And finally:

East even more and dahn a fair way

Japanese company Yuki Corp has “invented” the Auto Door Zero — the automatic door that needs no electricity to operate.

This automatic door uses the body weight of the person about to go in or out of the door. Those passing through it might notice that the floor just before the door sinks about two centimetres once they step forward. The rest is mechanical history.

 

And supersedes the door knob by a centimetre-or two...

That’s it: I’m orf to ask Google for a raspberry pi

And today’s thought:

Order; order...

Angus

Flying thief caught again an 83 (yes 83) year old woman nicknamed the “flying thief” because she used to use commercial flights to escape, but should really be called the “great train robber” because her mode of escape is now trains as pensioners in Hungary get free rail travel, has been arrested after she entered a house in Komarom, a town in the northwest.

"At her hearing she said she wanted to find a cheaper lodging than in Budapest, where it is too expensive," she has been convicted more than 20 times and first came to the attention of the police in the 1950s.

Never too old it seems.


Suspects caught with stolen WWII, Soviet-era tanks in Poland two suspects have been arrested over the theft of four WW2 tanks from a range where they were being used as props.

The suspects hired two transport companies to move the tanks to a scrap metal depot.

The four tanks -- each weighing more than 20 tons -- were to be sold for about 60,000 zlotys (13,000 euros, 16,700 dollars)," local police spokesman Jacek Deptus said.

The Polish heavy mob I suppose.


Man smashes cash machine in bid for free lodgings a homeless Czech man went on a rampage of destruction so that he would be sent to prison which would solve his accommodation problems.

He smashed a police car window, an entrance door and a cash machine in separate incidents.

Unfortunately for him he was released on bail, and is still homeless and jobless.

Still if at first…………


And finally…


U.S. judges admit to jailing children for money two judges in Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to receiving $2.6 Million from a private youth detention centre in Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences.

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan admitted that they took payoffs from PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare, between 2003 and 2006.

Judge not lest you be judged?


"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!" Sir Walter Scott

Angus

NHS Behind the headlines

Angus Dei politico