Bloody heart disease: Degree of value: Hello bruv: The quality of Bromley: Norwegian Numpty: and the Camo-bot.

No atmospheric movement, quite a lot of damp stuff and not a glimmer of solar activity at the Castle this morn, running a touch late-overslept, and I am orf out not much later to see some old fart mates.

According to “experts”

People from blood groups A, B and AB are more at risk of heart disease than those with the more common blood type O.

Those with the rarest blood group, AB, are the most vulnerable - they are 23% more likely to suffer from heart disease than those with blood group O.

The study also found that for individuals with blood group B the risk of heart disease increased by 11%, and for blood type A, by 5%.

Apparently blood group AB has been linked to inflammation, which plays an important role in artery damage and blood group A is associated with higher levels of the 'bad' type of cholesterol, low density lipoprotein (LDL), a waxy substance that can clog arteries.

While those with blood group O may benefit from increased levels of a chemical which helps blood flow and clotting.

The findings are based on two large US analytical studies - 62,073 women from the Nurses' Health Study and 27,428 adults from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. They were between the ages of 30 and 75 and followed for 20 years.

The findings are published in an American Heart Association Journal.

Ha! I laugh at heart disease-blood group O am I.

According to Fraser Nelson at the Torygraph

Your degree is not worth as much as “they” say it is apart from doctors and dentists who will earn £400,000 more over a lifetime than us uneducated plebs.

But allegedly if you study history and philosophy you can expect to earn £35 a year more than non-graduates.

For graduates in “mass communication” the premium is just £120 a year.

And a degree in “creative arts” will dock your earnings by £15,000 over a lifetime, than those who start work aged 18.

It seems that one in 10 recent graduates are now on the dole and almost a third are in jobs that don’t require anything more than GCSEs. 

Educated at Nairn Academy and Dollar Academy, Fraser Nelson went on to study History at the University of Glasgow and Journalism at City University, London.

Is that after students have paid orf the forty grand “university” debts or before?

Left a whimsy to Wiltshire

Alf and Kesho, two lowland Gorilla brothers, were recently reunited at Longleat safari park after being separated for three years, according to The Torygraph.

The two apes wasted no time getting reacquainted. According to the Mirror, Kesho, 13, and Alf, 9, recognized each other right away, hugging and shaking hands when they saw one another.

Bless...

Right a smidge to part of the Smoke

A recent 'Quality of Life' study compiled by Experian Credit Expert has found that Bromley is the capital's best borough to call home.

The findings examined more than 40 factors, such as air quality, crime rates and life expectancy to rank each district in the UK.

The study examined the four key life-stages - 'pre-children', 'young children', 'older children' and 'post-children' - looking at a different set of values for each stage, from job opportunities and house affordability to average OFSTED scores and average grades in local schools.

Bromley is among the best areas in the country for annual earnings (16th out of 324), quality of businesses and shops (27th and 37th respectively), as well as ranking strongly across the board for a range of health and educational factors.

These are the top 10 London boroughs for quality of life, along with the average house price:

1. Bromley (£312,184)

2. Bexley (£226,089)

3. Sutton (£264,568)

4. Harrow (£324,539)

5. Kingston upon Thames (£348,880)

6. Richmond upon Thames (£563,629)

7. Croydon (£253,283)

8. Kensington & Chelsea (£1,449,883)

9. Barnet (£424,987)

10. Merton (£376,805)

Or you could just live outside the smoke and avoid all the bleedin stress of getting to Bromley.

Right to the land of woods and stuff

A Norwegian driver who swerved his car on a rural road to avoid running into a moose hit a bear instead, authorities said on Thursday.

The driver spotted the moose on a country road near Hanestad, 225 kilometers north of Oslo, around midnight on Wednesday, and tried to go around the animal, not realizing that a bear was also nearby.

"The driver had lost a bit of speed as he tried to avoid the moose before hitting the bear," said Svein Erik Bjorke of the local wildlife authority, who was out in the forest searching for the wounded animal.

"We are currently tracking the bear and we have found traces of blood indicating internal injuries," he said.

The driver escaped uninjured while his car suffered some damage.

Norway's rugged mountains are sparsely populated and full of wildlife. The country, nearly the size of Germany but home to just five million people, has around 100,000 moose and 150 brown bears, authorities said.

Make that 149 brown bears...

And finally:

Left many, many Imperial miles

To the land where very fast things aren’t and stuff costing oodles of money have no useful purpose at all comes the camo-bot.

Stephen Morin from Harvard University has been trying to duplicate the colourful quick-change ability of an octopus or cuttlefish with a soft-bodied, colour-changing robot.

The camo-bot is an upgraded version of a soft-bodied machine that strode out of George Whitesides’ laboratory at Harvard University last year. That white, translucent machine ambled about on four legs, swapping hard motors and hydraulics for inflatable pockets of air. Now, Morin has fitted the robot’s back with a sheet of silicone containing a network of tiny tubes, each less than half a millimetre wide.

By pumping coloured liquids through these “microfluidic” channels, he can change the robot’s colour in about 30 seconds.

What a load of expensive bollocks.

That’s it: I’m orf to have a gander at the "Resomation" machine

And today’s thought:

Does my bum look big in this bruv?

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

Lincoln green: Bitter Dopey: The Bourne Numpty: Light of the street: Sheep racing: and Red planet litter.

Some odd atmospheric conditions at the Castle this morn-lack of cold stuff, no solar activity, lots of damp stuff in the air and not a lot of light stuff.

And I see that U-Turn Cam has decided to spend his money in Majorca rather than Blighty...

Up a bit from dahn ‘ere in ‘Ampshire

Final plans for a £19m refurbishment at Lincoln Castle are to go on show.

Planned work includes a new vault to showcase the Magna Carta, repairs to the castle wall and the restoration of two prison buildings.

The refurbishment has been part-funded by a £12m grant from the Lottery, with the county council providing £5.2m towards the project.

A presentation event showcasing the improvements is being held at The Lawn in Lincoln later.

The county council has made a £1.1m bid for European funding. The rest of the money needed will rely on fundraising efforts.

Chance would be a fine thing...

Up in the Smoke

Apparently Dopey Bercow has hit out at MPs and journalists who have attacked him saying his critics are 'resentful' and 'embittered'.

Sneezy, sleepy, doc, happy, bashful and grumpy’s mate dismissed his many critics in the Commons, including those who accuse him of bias towards Labour, as the "hard right" who are jealous that he is Speaker.

And he said he was "uninterested" in media reports which often suggest he is prone to interrupting debates to deliver unnecessary pronouncements.

Allegedly he is “supremely uninterested as to what is written in many of the newspapers.

"Their utterances are absolutely of no interest to me whatsoever. I’m sorry to disappoint them, but they’re just not important.”


Methinks he protests too much...

Over to the left a lot

Police say a man accidentally shot himself in the buttocks at a Nevada movie theatre during a showing of "The Bourne Legacy."

Police in Sparks, Nev., say the 56-year-old man's injuries are not life-threatening and no others were hurt.

Authorities say the man had a permit to carry a concealed firearm. The man told officers the gun fell from his pocket Tuesday night as he was adjusting himself in the seat and that it discharged when it dropped to the floor.

Ah the old right to bare arse constitution...

Over a bit to Connecticut

Connecticut Light & Power has reimbursed a woman almost $10,500 after acknowledging it billed her for 25 years for the electricity used to power streetlights near her home.

Grace Edwards tells the Hartford Courant she discovered the billing error after a prospective buyer for the house in Cheshire asked for a history of utility charges.

The bills included line items for "9500 Lumen HP Sodium" and "6300 Lumen HP Sodium"—two sodium vapour streetlights.

When she inquired about those charges, Connecticut Light & Power said a developer who previously owned the home had agreed to pay for the streetlights.

The company removed the charges from her bill but initially refused to reimburse Edwards for past charges. She said they relented when the state's Office of Consumer Counsel got involved.

Looking at the Castle Leccy bill I reckon I am paying for most of ‘Ampshire’s outdoor lighting...

Norf of the border

Hundreds of fans lined the streets of Moffat, Dumfriesshire in Scotland to witness the first annual sheep race.

The gang of sheep were ridden by custom made knitted jockeys as they competed in several heats throughout the day.

Members of the public were also able to place £1 bets at the event which was won by the weekend's fastest four legged competitor Lingonberry.

Organiser Thomas MacDonald of Moffat Promotions Group now hopes to turn the event into an annual competition.

'It is a new event for us in Moffat and we believe it is the first in Scotland to be held on public streets,' he told the BBC.

 

Probably better than that big sporty thing dahn in Smoke...

 And finally:

Millions and millions of space units away

Images taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars show a plume of dust, left, which had disappeared when another photo was snapped 45 minutes later. Engineers say the plume indicates the crash-landing of the spacecraft that delivered the rover to the Martian surface. (NASA) – laTimes

Engineers said Friday that the Curiosity rover happened to catch a picture of its own ride crash-landing on Mars.

The photograph captured a pyramid-shaped blotch on the horizon the same photo taken 45 minutes later with the same cameras showed the same view of the Martian landscape, but no blotch.

Trust human kind, spend billions on a fruitless expedition to another planet and then all we do is litter the place....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to change my mobile provider

And today’s thought:

Dahn Unda smoking law

Angus

EU welchers: Up your chuff-chuff: Getting your oats: Big snake: Sod that swimming: and Beaver bites man’s arse.

Dull, dingy, damp, dismal and not a lot of lack of cold stuff at the Castle this morn, his Maj has a new “toy” a feather which only seems to work when I perform my duties and the Honda is covered in yellow stuff-again.

And the skywater is affecting the interweb thingy-again

All over “this is why we are in the EU” Blighty

It seems that we are owed over £11.1 million by EU students who are apparently entitled to low interest loans to cover their tuition fees at British universities.

Allegedly 42% of EU students who owe money borrowed to put them through their courses are either in arrears or "not currently repaying", a newspaper reported.

The total outstanding debt owed by EU students has more than doubled from £49.2 million in 2009/10 to £111.1 million in 2010/11.

A Department of Business spokesman said: "The majority of overseas borrowers are honest and want to repay their loans. However all borrowers need to know they cannot evade their obligation to repay simply by moving overseas.

"We actively trace those in arrears and will obtain court orders in other jurisdictions to require repayment if necessary.

UK universities have seen a rise of 56% in the number of EU undergraduates in a decade, compared with a 14% rise in the number of UK undergraduates.

No bloody wonder is it.

And still in the pay up or else Isle

Chuff-chuff ransoms are due to be issued today with some commuters set to see rises of more than double the rate of inflation.

The latest Retail Price Index inflation figure - expected to remain at 2.8% - will be used to calculate the increase.

In England fares will rise by inflation plus 3%, while in Scotland they will go up by inflation plus 1%. Wales has yet to set a figure for its increase.

It seems that commuters across the country routinely spend between 5% and 10% of their salary getting to work. In some towns in south-east England they spent up to 15%.

The extra money is helping to fund huge investment across the network.

Har-bloody-har, for “investment” read shareholders dividends, top knobs bonuses and nice big pensions.

Norf of the border

ScotlandsDNA, a project designed to analyse the genetic background of Scots, discovered there was a huge rise in the population in around 3,000BC.

According to Alastair Moffat, the author of The Scots: A Genetic Journey, the reason ancient Scots women were able to give birth to more children was the discovery of porridge.

In hunter-gatherer societies the rate of population growth was low because mothers suckled their children for as long as five years until their teeth were strong enough to consume the diet of meat and roots, fruits and fungi harvested. During the period in which women were breastfeeding their children they were often infertile.

However, when farming techniques arrived in Scotland in around 3000BC, cereals were grown and were then mashed into a nourishing porridge which did not need to be chewed and so could be easily fed to infants, this in turn allowed women to stop breastfeeding a lot sooner. 

And then along came deep fried mars bars....

Left to the home of the everglades and the land of big things

A 17ft 7in (5.18m) snake weighing 164lb (74kg) was found in Everglades National Park, the University of Florida announced.

The python - now dead - was pregnant with 87 eggs, also believed to be a record.

After scientific investigation, the snake will be exhibited at the museum on the University of Florida campus for five years before being returned to the Everglades National Park. 

Where it will be used as a flagpole...

East more than many, many whatnots

To the land of Engrish, a Chinese hotel has built what might just be the world's scariest swimming pool.

The glass-bottomed pool, at the Holiday Inn Shanghai Pudong Kangqiao, partly hangs over a 24-storey drop.

Offering a birds-eye view to the street below, the cantilever pool is designed to make guests feel they are swimming in the sky.

The 30 metre-long and 6m-wide pool was designed by Singaporean company Chan Sau Yan Associates and is the first of its kind in China.

"We wanted to provide our guests a unique swimming experience, and let them feel they're vacationing even in a bustling city," a hotel spokesperson said.

 Sod that....

 And finally: 

Back over to the left

And up to NY a Boy Scout leader from New York who was attacked by a rabid beaver while swimming in the Delaware River is recovering.

The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that 51-year-old Normand Brousseau, of Pine Plains, was swimming in eastern Pennsylvania on Aug. 2 when a beaver swam through his legs and bit him in the chest.

The animal then bit him in the leg, buttocks, arm, hand and torso before he managed to grab it and hold its jaw closed.

One Boy Scout pulled Brousseau to shore, where he tossed the beaver away from him. The Scouts then used rocks to kill the animal.

A doctor confirmed the beaver had rabies a day after the attack.

Dutchess County health officials say a rabid beaver attack is unusual.

 Last time I was near a Beaver I bit IT.....

That’s it: I’m orf to clear all the litter out of the moat

And today’s thought:

Biting the Beaver.

Angus

Olympic adieu: Silly Billy rules Blighty: Badger burglar: No sand in Llandudno: and Hanging out in Oxfordshire.

Lots of lack of warm, low wispy stuff obscuring the blue stuff, not a whimsy of solar stuff and a definite lack of wet stuff at the Castle this non-Olympic morn.

Been up in Cheltenham for the weekend, just got back, his Maj was so pleased to see me that he bit me...

Just returned from the stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s food run dahn Tesco and checked out how much prices have risen since Thursday, they have...and his Maj has discovered the joy of hiding hard things in my shoes.

The sun has finally set over the five ring circus up in the Smoke

Some French bloke and a Ginger headed squaddy opened the old “entertainment”. 

And the “old” line up of “celebs” did their thing-

Del boy’s old motor exploded, sadly before the bang went orf.

We had the joy of old George Michael (who allegedly was given a whole car park to himself in order to minimise damage when he arrived in his motor).

Then old madness appeared to give us a rather quivering rendition of “our ‘ouse”.

The old Kinks did their “waterloo sunset” which I quite enjoyed.

A snatch of old (no more) Freddie Mercury, a bit of old (no more) John Lennon, some oldish Kaiser Chiefs doing the Who, some sort of fashion parade, no longer banned old Russell Brand pretending to be a walrus, an old DJ, and then five bottles of old Spice being transported on the top of unused London taxis.

Somewhere in this eclectic mix the real old WHO managed to ditch their Zimmer frames and do a song.

My second fave moment was old Eric Idle who gave us a snippet of Monty Python including some skating nuns, Morris dancers and quite a lot of people from the sub continent throwing stuff all over the old boy, followed by a youngish “rock band” who played some quite depressing ‘music’.

Then my very fave bit-old Brian May and old Rodger Taylor were joined by young Jessie J who looked very nice in not much at all and did “we will rock you”.

And if you click on the video above you will see the pride of the British Lions doing Queens “don’t stop me”.

Who says that Blighty isn’t a young, go getting technologically superior Coalition....?

And while the many, many visitors queue up at Heathrow for hours and hours to leave Blighty

U-Turn Cam and what’s his name have buggered orf on holiday after two weeks of free Olympic tickets and left Silly Billy Hague in charge.

Apparently U-Turn has gorn somewhere nobody is allowed to know about and what’s his name has gorn to Spain to the parents of his Spanish wife, Miriam.

That’s us stuffed then-another war in the Middle East?

A new chance for the unemployed

The Ministry of Justice is considering setting up call centres in prisons to increase prisoner work opportunities.

The plan is "one thing that could be considered" as part of efforts to make prisoners more employable when they finish their sentences.

No call centres are currently being run in prisons, but ministers are not ruling out such a scheme in the future.

Inmates already carry out a range of paid tasks including laundry services and printing.

The government wants to "transform prisons into industrious places of productive work" and make a 40-hour working week the norm. 

Sorry, it’s a new chance for criminals not the unemployed...

Left vast amounts of three feet and a bit to the land above the bit where the next big sporty thing is going to be held

A badger that wandered into a Reno-area retail store in northern Nevada dodged a tranquilizer dart and held authorities at bay for about an hour before being lured into a cage with cat food.

No one was hurt in the standoff at the bottled water/convenience store in a residential neighbourhood in Sparks, and the badger ultimately was returned to the wild north of Reno, Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesman Chris Healy said Wednesday.

"Apparently the door was open a bit and this badger just walked in," Healy told The Associated Press.

"Obviously, it was pretty hungry, because when they put the cat food in the trap, it went right in," he said.

Funny looking badger....

Dahn in Welsh Wales

North Shore beach in Llandudno was due to be the scene of a sancastle contest, which was scheduled to take place next week.

However, bosses have discovered there are far too many rocks and a large amount of seaweed covering the coastline, severely denting the potential of finding enough pure sand to compete effectively.

The annual event is organised by the Imperial Hotel and is a highlight of the summer in north Wales, typically attracting about 120 people.

Life’s a beach....

And finally:

Up a bit from dahn ‘ere in ‘Ampshire

A nude swim at Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire was the first of monthly meetings in scenic locations.

The venues will be kept secret until the last moment and only released to members of the Secret Swimming community.

The nude swim was also an attempt to break the record for the worlds largest skinny-dip

Note to self-join the Secret Swimming club.....

That’s it: I’m orf to stay awake for a long time-well; I can hope can’t I... 

And the last Olympic thought for today:

Thank thingy that’s over with.

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

All piss and wind U-Turn Cam: Sixty per cent law: Moose has a swing: Tomato wine: No fun in the Big Apple: and an ‘ere-‘ere De-daw.

More than a lot of solar stuff, nary an iota of atmospheric movement and even less wet stuff at the Castle this morn, the liquid metal in the gauge has gorn all Olympic and is trying to reach the gold gong at the top of the tube and I managed to do some serious vandalism in the garden yester aftermorn and now I have another load for the “recycling centre”.

And the formatting thingy on blogger seems to have a mind of its own today.

And as Blighty slowly sinks into the economic sewer

Our fearless bleader has more important things on his mind than actually doing his fucking job because the noise from the beach volleyball is keeping him awake.

The Prime Monster reckons that 'It's all very amusing for five minutes until you try to get the children to sleep. They have Moves like Jagger every sort of ten minutes. There are particular DJs, who do particular things,'

Aaron Copeland's 1942 classic Fanfare for the Common Man is another favourite on the loop of songs being played at Horse Guards Parade, along with Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera hit song Moves like Jagger an aide noted.

And Dave has had a pop at Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte because they have been peeing in the Olympic swimming pool before their swims he weighed in saying: 'I was quite surprised by that. It is not OK to pee in the pool.'

Yeah right Knob Head; never had a slash in the swimming pool yourself-eh...

 

Dahn in the West-est County

About 40% of crimes reported to a police force in the most recent year were not investigated, figures reveal.

Of 91,532 incidents reported to Devon and Cornwall Police during the 2011/12 financial year, 36,575 were not investigated after initial assessment.

The Freedom of Information (FOI) figures showed that investigations shelved by officers included about 11,000 reports of criminal damage, 4,000 thefts from vehicles and 3,700 burglaries.

The rate was a rise from the previous year's figure of about 34% of some 86,000 cases not going forward.

The force said that all crimes reported to them "received an appropriate level of investigation".

The Police Federation claimed it showed that cuts were affecting policing and the force was failing crime victims.

Or maybe it’s because they can’t be bothered to get out of their comfortable BMWs and do what they are paid for.....

Left to the home of the “cell phone” and the land of big horny animals

Police were called when residents spotted a moose tangled in chains outside a home in Ogden, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City in Utah.

Utah deputy Lane Findlay was told it would take at least an hour for wildlife officers to arrive, so tried to free the distressed and bleeding animal himself.

He handed his mobile phone to onlookers and asked them to video the scene, saying: "If something happens to me, give this to my wife."

Sgt Findlay eventually managed to free the struggling animal using a pair of bolt cutters.

The tangled swing fell to the ground and the moose trotted to a nearby bucket of water and began drinking, then collapsed from exhaustion.

Sgt Findlay spent an hour spraying down the animal with a hose before wildlife officers arrived to treat the animal.



What does he want-a bleedin medal....

Up a bit to the last pink bit on the map

Pascal Miche, a wine maker from Quebec, Canada, uses tomatoes to create an unusual yet increasingly popular vintage. His secret lies in a four-generations-old Belgian family recipe.

A former pork butcher, Pascal Miche moved from Belgium to Canada’s Quebec province, seven years ago and decided to go through with his idea of commercializing his grandfather’s precious wine, made according to an old recipe. He finally kick started his business in 2009, planted his “vineyard” and began making tomato wine.

For his Omerto wine, named after his grandfather, Omer, he uses subarctic, yellow and black cherry tomatoes, chosen for their bountiful yield and gustative properties.

According to sommeliers, Omerto tomato wine has a ”hint of fruit, zesty aspects, familiar in cakes… a bit honey-sweet, which could be very good with deserts and spicy foods,” and is often compared to a sweet Pineau des Charentes.

Who says there are no wine snobs....?

Dahn a fair way to the Big Apple

City officials pulled the plug on a vibrator giveaway by the Trojan condom company yesterday, disappointing potentially thousands of pleasure-seeking women who hoped to get their hands on some no-cost sex toys.

“I’m 57 years old. I should be able to get a vibrator!” declared Linda Postell, who was among hundreds of women (and men!) waiting in the heat on Pearl Street only to be left unsatisfied. “I have a problem with the smoking ban, and the soda ban — and now this!”

Trojan sent tingles of excitement across the city when it announced the giveaway of some 10,000 vibrating sex toys from hot-dog-style pushcarts.

Trojan began by handing out about 400 free vibrators without incident on Sixth Avenue in Rockefeller Centre between 11 a.m. and noon.

The giveaways were scheduled to start at 4 p.m. in the Flatiron District and near the South Street Seaport.

As carts arrived at each location, nearly 300 women and quite a number of guys queued up.

But instead of climaxing in a successful giveaway, the promotion was prematurely interrupted by City Hall, which sent a dark-suited representative to put the squeeze on Trojan’s “Pleasure Carts.”

The spoilsport, who declined to identify himself, told Trojan’s reps at the Flatiron location that they had to shut down because of the size of the crowd that had gathered.

Ah, the old too many people enjoying themselves ploy....

And finally:

East more than a lot of non Imperial units



 

A woman who checked into China's Changsha Central Hospital Wednesday (Aug. 8) with an itchy ear learned she had a small spider dwelling in her ear canal, according to news reports. It had crawled inside five days earlier while she slept.

At the hospital, pictures of the patient's ear canal revealed a stocky, hairy, four-eyed arachnid peering out at the camera, much to doctors' and the patient's surprise.

Amid concerns that disturbing the spider would cause it to "instinctively drill its barbs deeper, scratching the ear canal," local news sources reported that doctors succeeded in removing the creature by pouring saline solution into the ear canal and flushing it out.

As the spider's outstretched foot emerged from her ear, the patient, identified only as "Ms. Lee," reportedly "almost started crying

I’d have been running round the ceiling by then...

That’s it: I’m orf to buy a Meshworm 


And today’s thought:
Chase me-Olympics







Angus