Pasty faced Pillock: Plods ‘leeking’ cash: Piste over prayers: Pay, pensions and petrol: and Taxing crap.

A lack of height in the liquid metal gauge, but it is still nice, sunny and calm at the Castle this morn.

Woke up this day to find that the one remaining brain cell has managed to fire itself up; so instead of a three cylinder two stroke DKW it has returned to a V8 Asbo Martin -took long enough...

Just returned from the stale bread, gruel and pussy food run dahn Tesco-the go-juice forecourt was heaving with a bit to spare at 07.30-I see that no one is panicking then...

Nice to be back though.

As we all know U-Turn Cam is an idiot

But it seems he is exceeding even his Piss Poor standards.

Not only is he facing the wrath of the pie gobblers over VAT on ‘warm’ food, but has plunged what is left of Blighty into a panic over flammable liquid in large boxy vehicles.

But should we really be surprised; so far he has managed to bring the economy to a standstill, raise taxes for ordinary folk while reducing them for the rich, is about to privatise the NHS and the roads, and along with the rest of the Millionaires Club Coalition has reduced our warm and dry island to a third world country.

Still, at least he hasn’t taxed air-------yet...

Meanwhile:

Up in Warwickshire

Plod has “lost” £113,000 seized from criminals in 2009 from a "secure storage area" in the village of Leek Wootton.

The force, suspecting it may have been taken by a police officer, set up a secret investigation in an attempt to catch the culprits. But after a six-month inquiry no one has been caught and the force has decided to go public with an appeal for information.

That really gives one confidence in the Woodentops...

Right to the high, cold bit of part of what is left of Europe

It seems that the Duck and Duckess of the place that isn’t Oxford have decided that going on the piste is more important than attending Friday's service of thanksgiving for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

Nice to see that holidays come before duty....

And back to the go-juice crisis

Moves to start peace talks aimed at averting a strike by fuel tanker drivers will be stepped up today amid fears that panic buying of petrol will escalate.

Many garages have reported long queues after Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude suggested drivers should fill up any spare jerry cans with petrol and keep them in garages.

But another Government minister admitted Mr Maude had made a "mistake" after fire safety experts warned of the dangers of storing petrol.

Conciliation service Acas is trying to convene talks between the Unite union and seven companies involved in the dispute over terms and conditions and safety.

Sales of petrol were up 45% on Tuesday and diesel was up 20%, in what appeared to be a sign of panic-buying by motorists, with the trend seeming to continue last night.

Unite has not set any strike dates and has been stressing its willingness to negotiate.

 Let’s put this into perspective, there are about 10,000 tanker drivers in privatised Blighty, on average they earn about £45,000 to £50,000 a year and are thinking of striking over ‘pay, pensions, safety and “job insecurity” ’.

Join the other sixty three million in the same club chaps....

And finally: 

Right quite a lot to one of the “Stans”

Kazakh farmers have voiced their opposition to the country’s new ecological legislation that imposes taxation on livestock manure, which has been declared an environmentally harmful substance, local television channel 31 said.

All livestock is currently being registered at the expense of the owners for manure taxation purposes, the channel said on Tuesday.

“We’d prefer if the state encouraged people to take up animal husbandry, rearing livestock for meat and milk,” farmer Viktor Khilchenko was cited as saying.

The annual payment will be moderate, costing under 1,600 tenge ($11) per ton of manure, a local official told the channel. The new Environmental Code, which came into force earlier this year, treats manure as a waste product and not a fertilizer.

Local rights groups will campaign to have the law overturned, the report said.

This is not the first attempt by Kazakhstan to tax manure. In 2003, authorities in the eastern part of the country unsuccessfully tried to impose a similar law, saying it will prevent local settlements from being clogged with livestock by-products.

Hope son of a B....aronet and alien reptile in disguise George (the public pays for my go-juice) Osborne doesn’t read this....

That’s it: I’m orf to check out J1120+0641’s carbon footprint.

And today’s thought:

 One can always hope.

Angus

Tiger wives: Eurozone backlash: Lords are coining it in: The ups and downs of life: A Helivan: Fat German nudists: Bridge under troubled water: Alabama Confederates: and an exploding Manhole.

Dark, damp, drizzly and dingy at the Castle this morn, very late-couldn’t be bothered to get up, been to Tesco for stale bread, gruel and pussy food, the study is still empty of broken doo dahs, the garden still need fettling and I need a holiday. 

Apparently the World is run by “Tiger Wives”

According to the Torygraph; women such as Wendi Deng (Rupert bear), Cheri Blair (Tone), Anne Sinclair (Dominique Strauss-Kahn), Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (Guess who) and Melania Trump (up your tower) are the real power behind their husbands.

Read the whole lot if you want (click on the link over the photo) but I for one am not surprised by this “revelation”. 

And Auntie is commenting on the “Eurozone” thingy.

Eurozone leaders are set to meet for a crunch summit to try to resolve the Greek debt crisis and prevent any further contagion to other so-called peripheral economies.

Policymakers will discuss a range of measures, including a new loan package to Greece and the role of private investors in any debt restructuring.

Reports suggest a new tax on banks will also be debated.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel has cautioned against over optimism.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, has said that the crisis in the Eurozone posed the most serious and immediate risk to the UK's financial system.

President Barack Obama has also weighed in, calling Mrs Merkel on Tuesday night to stress the importance of tackling the debt crisis in sustaining the global economic recovery.

The International Monetary Fund has also called on European leaders to take swift and decisive action.

Delaying such action further would be "very costly" for the world economy, it said.

Why does all this sound so familiar?

And despite expenses “reforms”

The unelected members of the House of Lords are claiming even more of our money. Since the changes were introduced the average sum received by members of the House of Lords had risen from £270 to £274 for every attendance.

The Coalition’s appointments to the upper chamber also boosted the overall expenses bill, figures released by the parliamentary authorities suggested.

The new system was put in place last October following a series of scandals that resulted in two peers being jailed. The £174 overnight subsistence, £86.50 day subsistence and £75 office costs allowances were scrapped in favour of a tax-free flat rate of £300 per day, or £150 per half day. Travel expenses were reimbursed separately as previously.

Membership of the Lords rose from 750 in 2009-10 to 819 in the fourth quarter of 2010-11. The average daily attendance between January and March was 497 — up more than a quarter on the same period in the previous year.

The total financial support granted to peers in 2010-11 was £18.7 million, compared with £17.2 million in 2009-10.

But do not forget-“We are all in this together”.......

In the land of ups and downs

A suburban Dallas woman’s well-meaning attempt to help her future husband overcome his fear of heights went horribly wrong when a bungee ride they were in got stuck 50 feet off the ground for three hours because cables got tangled.

Irving residents William Mancera and Thalia Rodriguez were not injured during their Monday ordeal. Dallas fire-fighters eventually used an aerial ladder truck to help get the couple safely to the ground.

Mancera tells KXAS-TV that his fear of heights "won again" and he is "never riding anything of that sort ever again." But he also says the ordeal has brought him and his fiancée closer together. They plan to marry in February. 

She wishes.......

 Back in East Sussex

Visitors to the Blackberry Wood campsite, near Ditchling in East Sussex, will get their camping holidays off to a flying start if they spend their break in this contraption.

Father-of-three Johnson bought the former Royal Navy copter for £5,000 and has already stripped it down to make way for caravan furniture.

Happy campers can hire it for about £60 a night, plus a charge of £5 and £9 per person.

It will be surrounded by a mock army camp, complete with sandbags and an army shelter. Such a unique camping feature is bound to take off.

Those who don't fancy bedding down in that particular vehicle can opt to stay in a double-decker bus or a tiny ’60s Dutch ‘bubble’ caravan.

 

Must cross Ditchling orf the list of places to stay....

 And over in the land of funny tasting cabbage

The naked sunbathers who once crowded Germany’s Baltic beaches and city parks are becoming an endangered species due to shifting demographics, the fall of the Berlin Wall, growing prosperity and widening girths.

Allegedly the main problem is the shrinking population. The number of Germans fell by more than 3.2 million over the last three decades even though the country’s total population has managed to remain more or less steady at about 82 million thanks to immigration — often from countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans as well as Turkey and Arabic countries.

Oh dear a dearth of fat nudists-what a shame.....

Right a fair bit

A truck overloaded with sand has caused a bridge to collapse in China - leaving a scene that looked like the aftermath of an earthquake.

The vehicle, which was weighed down with 160 tons of sand, crushed the Baihe Bridge in Beijing's Huairou district.

The 230 metre structure can only support 55 tons and crumpled under the weight of the lorry as it tried to cross.

Officials have put in place and emergency repair plan for the crossing which opened in 1987.

Nobody has been reported injured but the driver was detained for questioning.

Liang Chaoyang, deputy director of Huairou road department, said: "We are going to build a contemporary road down by bridge for vehicles to pass."

 Should have gone to Specsavers....

Back across to the Southern bit of the land of “temporary taxes”

The last of the more than 60,000 Confederate veterans who came home to Alabama after the Civil War died generations ago, yet residents are still paying a tax that supported the neediest among them.

Despite fire-and-brimstone opposition to taxes among many in a state that still has "Heart of Dixie" on its license plates, officials never stopped collecting a property tax that once funded the Alabama Confederate Soldiers' Home, which closed 72 years ago. The tax now pays for Confederate Memorial Park, which sits on the same 102-acre tract where elderly veterans used to stroll.

I have heard of this sort of thing before-isn’t our “income tax” a temporary thing imposed to support the Napoleonic Wars?

 And finally:

 Up a fair bit

Amateur video shows a car being hurled into the air after flood waters blow open a manhole in Montreal.

Video provided by Canadian broadcasters showed the explosion of water caused by a flooded sewer.

Water rushed from under the car pushing the vehicle's rear several feet into the air before eventually shifting it from over the fierce jet of fluid.

The last time my manhole exploded was after a dodgy biryani from the Delhi Belly takeaway.

That’s it: I’m orf to search for the Bog Spider-with a rolled up newspaper.

 And today’s thought: It may be that your sole purpose in life is . . . simply to serve as a warning to others.

 Angus