Still misty, murky, moist and miserable at the Castle this
morn, the study is still overflowing with terminal thingies and the elbow is
finally starting to feel better.
I
see that despite all the austerity that abounds in broken Blighty
Our beloved Prime Monster has managed to scrape together
£140,000 for a bit of land next to his Oxfordshire home.
It was disclosed on Tuesday that the Prime Minister paid
almost £140,000 for the land, which was owned by Lord Chadlington, the brother
of John Gummer, the former Conservative cabinet minister who is now a peer.
Lord Chadlington has long-standing links to Mr Cameron and
donated £10,000 to him personally to fund his 2005 run for the Conservative
leadership. He has donated more than £60,000 to the party since then. His
company has donated a further £30,000 in the past three years.
Downing Street officials said the land had been
independently valued at the price paid by Mr Cameron and that there was no
conflict of interest. The deal was cleared at the highest level by Whitehall
officials, they said.
He and his wife, Samantha, are recorded by the Land Registry
as having paid £137,500 for the land. They are not recorded as having taken out
a mortgage to cover the cost of the purchase.
But remember-“we are all in this together”.
The Dept of Very Lengthy Administration (DVLA) is looking to
cash in on motorists by selling their names and addresses to wheel clampers and
private parking companies at a profit.
The agency wants to plug a £100m gap in its finances by
charging more than the current £2.50 administrative fee.
Last year the agency sold details of 1m motorists to more
than 150 parking enforcement companies, angering driving groups.
The most expensive private parking ticket costs £150 – £30
more than the maximum fine for illegal parking in the heart of London.
Even the £150 figure, which was set down in the British
Parking Association’s code of practice, is only voluntary.
While a motorist receiving a council parking ticket has a
right of appeal to an independent adjudicator, no such safeguards exists for
anyone “fined” for parking on private land.
Motorists have received private tickets – known as parking
charge notices – for spending more than 20 minutes at a fast food outlet or
even catching a few hours sleep for safety reasons at a motorway service
station.
Private tickets are often enforced by debt collection
agencies and occasionally even bailiffs have been involved.
Nice...
Local fishing boat owner Carlos Rafael was elated when one
of his trawlers snared an 881-pound blue fin tuna orf New Bedford Massachusetts
earlier this month.
But the joy was short-lived. Federal fishery enforcement
agents seized the fish when the crew returned to port Nov. 12.
Rafael had tuna permits but was told catching tuna with a
net is illegal.
Instead, it's got to be caught by hand gear, such as rod and
reel, harpoon or handline.
A fish that big is hugely valuable, prized by sushi-lovers
for its tender red meat, a 754pound tuna recently sold for nearly $396,000.
Rafael's fish will be sold overseas, and he'll get no share
of the proceeds if regulators find a violation, The Standard-Times reported (http://bit.ly/uczYap ). The money would instead go
into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fund that also holds
money collected for fishery fines.
Bet Rafael is feeling a bit out of Tuna.
Police say a man wearing shorts and a tank top left a
suitcase at Cafe Marco on Tuesday morning. Staff at first thought it might
contain a bomb but it turned out to be stuffed with 50-dollar notes.
Officers arrested a man in connection with the incident Tuesday
afternoon, said Senior Constable Chris Nash, a New South Wales police
spokesman. Nash said the man then suffered an unknown medical problem and was
taken to a local hospital where he remained under police guard Wednesday.
Nash said detectives probably will have to wait until the
man recovers before asking him more questions about the cash. Police wouldn't
say whether they think the arrested man is the one who left the case in the
cafe.
A worker at the cafe said Wednesday that the man who left
the case was "a bit nervous. He was really nervous."
"It's crazy, it's scary. Now we can laugh about it, but
yesterday I was scared. I called the police," she said. She ended a
telephone call to serve a customer before a reporter could ask her name, and a
subsequent phone message left at the cafe was not immediately returned.
Nash said that if the money legitimately belongs to the man
it would be returned to him. If the cash is proceeds from a crime it will
likely be forfeited to the government. If the owner of the cash is not found,
whoever discovered it could make a claim on it after three months.
Small change to U-Turn Cam.....
A pilot created a
hijacking scare when he got stuck in the lavatory during a flight in the US.
The captain of the
Delta flight accidentally locked himself in the bathroom during the flight from
Asheville, North Carolina, to New York.
The co-pilot became
alarmed and notified air-traffic control after a passenger, with a "thick
foreign accent", tried to alert the cockpit of the problem.
The conversation
between the co-pilot and the control tower was recorded and posted on air
traffic control website LiveATC.net.
"He [the
pilot] is stuck in the lav and someone with a thick foreign accent is giving me
a password to access the cockpit - and I'm not about to let him in," the
co-pilot said.
Indianapolis-based
Chautauqua Airlines said the pilot had decided to answer the call of nature
about 30 minutes from landing but had become trapped.
Vicious things those airplane toilets, they have been known
to suck ones rear exit orf....
And finally:
Kishwar Khan was surprised when an officer knocked at his
door to tick him off about the behaviour of his ginger and white cat,
Tinkerbell.
Mr Khan, 30, was told that a neighbour had phoned to report
the cat for regularly going into his property, and asked by the policeman to
keep her under control.
Mr Khan, from Pitsmoor, Sheffield said “Tinkerbell belongs
to my three year old son Yaqoob and we love her. The policeman said Tinkerbell
had been going on a neighbour's property and they had received an official
complaint. He asked me to stop the cat from going into the neighbour's garden
but how can I do that? It's perfectly normal for cats to wander around the
neighbourhood when they are let out. Every cat does it.”
Inspector Jayne Forrest said: "Police were called
following an allegation of harassment. When we receive any reports of this
nature it's vital officers follow up all lines of inquiry.
"Harassment comes in many different forms and the
incident described by Mr Khan formed part of an inquiry on that day."
Pussy see garden, Pussy do doo-doo, maybe they should have a
word with Peter Pan.....
That’s it: I’m orf to purchase some Nano
tubes so that I can park on private land.
Angus
