2020 Navy: How to date posh girls: Brain burgers: ‘None of above’ gets my vote: Honda Miimo: and Dahn Unda emulsion warning.

Oodles of ex-skywater, not even a smidgen of solar activity and even less lack of cold stuff at the Castle this morn, the garden looks like something out of Jurassic park and his Maj has abandoned frogs and is now bringing me very, very large moths.

 

In the channel and in the future

Allegedly the MOD has revealed the Royal Navy's latest warship; the announcement on the Type 26 Global Combat Ship has been described by officials as a "significant milestone" in a programme which will support "thousands of UK shipbuilding jobs".

The ship will be 148 metres long with a displacement of 5,400 tonnes.

Vertical missile silos for a range of weapons, such as cruise missiles, will be housed on board along with a medium calibre gun.

The hangar on board will house a Merlin or Wildcat helicopter and there will be extra space for unmanned drones, underwater vehicles or other specialist equipment.

According to Minister for defence equipment, Peter Luff "The Type 26 will be the backbone of the Royal Navy for decades to come.

"It is designed to be adaptable and easily upgraded, reacting to threats as they change."

The current plan is to build 13 of the ships, which are due to start coming into service after 2020.

The modular design means it will be constructed in sections, possibly at different sites around the UK.

BAE Systems was awarded a contract of £127m in 2010 to work on the initial design.

 

I do like an optimist...I would have only charged them £110 million to design it...

 

Just above dahn ‘ere in ‘Ampshire

An Oxford University student publication giving young men from modest backgrounds tips in how to date ‘posh girls’ has been withdrawn and its publishers forced to apologise after attracting criticism from those who failed to see the funny side.

Its author, Tom Beardsworth, 18, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, insisted the article was a well-intended joke, but it was met with accusations of ‘misogyny’ by the University’s women’s campaign.

The guide was published in the “interests of averting mutual befuddlement”, and offered advice on meeting a woman’s affluent parents and friends, how to discuss politics, and how to handle foreign travel, sexual intercourse and “getting dumped”.

When it comes to sex, Mr Beardsworth, who is reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Brasenose College, warned ‘posh girls’ are not naïve.

The former Manchester Grammar School pupil warned: “She’ll have had a lot of it; way more than you. Do not believe any assertions to the contrary - she is massaging your fragile ego.

“Posh Girls lose their virginity at 15, often to the same floppy-haired bloke (remember, they share everything). She duly worked her way through the Eton rugby team before re-eloping with the same floppy-haired w----r on her gap year in Phuket.

Their well-bred friends are no less intimidating, he adds. “Posh Girls, ‘practically sisters’ since their years together in the boarding house, tell each other everything. Consequently they know more about your sex life than you do.

"Relations between you and them will therefore embody all the warmth and intimacy of a court room.”
 

Wanker.....

 

Dahn in the Smoke

A stall in Camden Market has a new menu; you can have some brain burgers, pigs’ feet, cow thyroid nuggets, skewered beef hearts, brain salad wrap and crispy brain dippers in barbecue sauce.

Chef Mark Jankel, who runs mobile food firm Street Kitchen, said the reason you don’t see more brain dishes is because it is pretty expensive to buy at around £10 a kilo.

He added: “It’s pretty easy to cook, poach it in vinegar and salt and then dust it in flour and fry until golden.

“It’s fresh and tasty and makes a change from a shop bought ­sandwich for lunch.

 

Note to self-cross Camden Market orf the place to go for lunch...

 

Over the salty, wavy thing on the left

 

Nevada has given official notice that it will appeal a ruling that struck down the state's decades-old voting option of "none of the above."

The notice filed late Friday by the attorney general's office says the state will appeal the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco once a written order is issued by U.S. District Judge Robert Jones.

Jones struck down the ballot choice Wednesday. He says the voting option Nevadans have had since 1976 is unconstitutional because votes for "none" don't count in election tallies and cannot win.

The Republican National Committee financed the lawsuit out of fears that votes for "none" could influence the outcomes of what are expected to be close presidential and U.S. Senate races in Nevada.

 

I think it’s a great idea, we should introduce it in Blighty...I might even start an E-Petition....

 

East to the land where there are no radioactive consequences at all

 

 

Honda has unveiled its latest hi-tech creation: a robot lawnmower.

The machine, named Miimo, will go on sale from early next year in the UK and Europe, the company said. Honda has said that it is aiming to sell about 4,000 of the machines each year to begin with.

The machine, which looks somewhat like iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner, continuously shaves about 3mm off the grass, manoeuvring itself on slopes.

The manufacturers say it will not break potted plants, goes to charge itself on its own and will not wander off.

Honda said yesterday that Miimo will sell for around £1,700.

 

Oh dear.....

 

And finally:

 

Dahn Unda

Police in Australia put out a public safety warning on Facebook - after a driver and his passengers ended up whitewashed.

The man and his friends were driving in a Sydney car park, with a 25-litre bucket of white paint on the back seat, when they were in a minor shunt with another car.

Nobody was hurt but the bucket flew open - sending white paint flying over the car and its occupants.

Local police in the Sydney suburb of Chifley posted a picture on the incident on their Facebook page as a warning to others.

Officers posted: "Safety tip of the week. Always put the paint in the boot!

 

Cheaper than a respray I suppose....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to camouflage my old boat race-just in case

 

And today’s thought:

New Royal Navy stealth warship

 

 

Angus

Winter fool allowance: Bid for health: Hover bike: Man bites snake-snake dies: Norwegian plank: and a Hippopoolamus.

Not a lot going on atmospherically at the Castle this morn, just a whimsy of warm stuff, no wet stuff, even less windy stuff and lots of cloudy stuff.

Still stunned over the cost of a new “toof”, I could sell the old bod, and I reckon that might raise abaht 50p.

 

All over what used to be Europe and the sarf of Blighty

Trouble is brewing, the Work and Pensions Secretary also known as the Irritable Bowel Twins is fighting “ludicrous” European rules that mean the winter fuel payment must be made to an estimated 440,000 British pensioners living abroad.

Knob head Smith announced yesterday that he intended to introduce a new “temperature” test to prevent pensioners receiving the benefit if they live in warm countries and do not need extra money to spend on winter fuel.

However, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) confirmed that the new temperature rule would also apply to pensioners in Britain.

Apparently this would see the elderly in milder areas of the south of England lose the benefit, while those in colder parts of Europe continue to receive it. The reform could also mean that pensioners living in Labour-supporting parts of Scotland and northern England keep the payment, while those in the southern Tory heartlands lose out.

The average low January temperature in Portsmouth is 41.4F (5.2C), warmer than Madrid, which has an average low of 37.4F (3C).

Mr Duncan Smith yesterday promised to “protect taxpayers’ money and bring in temperature criteria”. DWP officials said the details had not been finalised.

David Cameron has promised not to cut pensioners’ benefits during this parliament.

 

Yet another Piss Poor Policy...

 

Meanwhile up in the Smoke

South London Healthcare Trust, which runs three hospitals in the capital, was put in the hands of special administrator Matthew Kershaw last month because it was losing more than £1 million a week.

On Thursday, Mr Kershaw announced that he had invited providers of NHS-funded care - including both NHS organisations and private companies - to submit expressions of interest.

That could mean firms including Virgin Care, Serco and Circle bidding for the contract to run the trust, which has a turnover of £424 million.

Mr Kershaw wrote that he was “seeking to identify any parties who may be interested in being part of one or more of the solutions”.

That indicates different services could be hived off to be run by different providers.

 

I see that the Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition’s plan to privatise the NHS is going well....

 

Left quite a few linear units and then left even more

 

A US company has tested a device that allows riders to float over the ground, in footage released by Californian manufacturer Aerofex Corp the device can be seen hovering above a dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert and performing a series of manoeuvres.

Aerofex has spent the best part of four years perfecting its 'hover bike' and its latest offering can hover up to 15ft in the air, reaching speeds of 30mph.

The craft is steered by the rider leaning from side to side - just like a motorcycle - in a style reminiscent of the speeder bikes from "Return of the Jedi".

In a statement accompanying the video, the company explains the latest test model has technology to keep dust and debris away from the pilot, which had been a problem with rotored vehicles in the past.

The company plans to use the technology to develop unmanned aerial vehicles that can be used to patrol borders where there are no roads.

 

Seen it all before, it’s called a hovercraft.....

 

East to the land where llamas are called Dali

 

A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit it back and killed the reptile in a tit-for-tat attack, a newspaper said on Thursday.

Nepali daily Annapurna Post said Mohamed Salmo Miya chased the snake, which bit him in his rice paddy on Tuesday caught it and bit it until it died.

"I could have killed it with a stick but bit it with my teeth instead because I was angry," the 55-year-old Miya, who lives in a village some 200 km (125 miles) southeast of the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, was quoted by the daily as saying.

The snake, called "goman" in Nepal, is also known as the Common Cobra.

Police official Niraj Shahi said the man, who was being treated at a village health post and was not in danger of dying, would not be charged with killing the snake because the reptile was not among snake species listed as endangered in Nepal.

 

Oh well, at least that’s his lunch sorted out.

 

West to the land of lots of woody stuff

 

A Norwegian art gallery lost a Rembrandt etching worth up to $8,600 in the mail after trying to save money on courier and insurance costs, the gallery's chief said on Thursday.

The Soli Brug Gallery in Greaaker, about 80 kilometres south of Oslo, purchased a copy of Rembrandt's 'Lieven Willemsz, van Coppenol, Writing-Master' made in around 1658 from a British dealer, only to have it lost in the Norwegian postal system

"Using a courier or special insurance is quite expensive so we have used regular mail until now," Ole Derje, the gallery's chairman said.

"It is worth around 40,000 to 50,000 crowns ($6,900-$8,600) and the postal service is offering us compensation of 500-1,000 crowns."

 

Could have been worse, they could have used Parcel Force....

 

And finally:

 

Right a lot and dahn more than that

 

A young hippo chased away from his herd at a South African game reserve has found a refreshing place to relax: the lodge's swimming pool. Now it's stuck there.

The young hippopotamus plopped into the pool on Tuesday at the Monate Conservation Lodge north of Johannesburg. The pool is big enough for the hippo to swim but its eight feet deep with no steps and "there's no way he can come out," lodge manager Ruby Ferreira told The Associated Press on Thursday.

A game capture team will sedate the hippo and lift it out of the pool with a crane, said MuIsabel Wentzel of South Africa's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Much of the water has already been drained to make the extraction easier. A veterinarian will be present during operation hippo extraction today.

Staff have been feeding the hippo. Ferreira said it's been noticeably relaxed with no other hippos fighting it for dominance, though the water in the pool has been getting mucky with hippo poop. The pool will be entirely drained before the hippo is lifted out.

Oh well that’s dinner sorted out then.....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to try out a Maser

 

And today’s thought:

Not entitled to a winter fuel allowance.

 

Angus

Gobsmacked: War on drivers: Naked squaddy: Tennis legs: Badly stuffed animals: and a Vampire rat.

Much, much less lack of cold at the castle this morn, just returned from the stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s food run dahn Tesco, two weeks ago his fave grub cost £3.00, then last week it went up to £3.68, then this Monday it was £4.00 and today it is £3.00 again...

I was going to post yestermorn after my visit to the tooth puller, but I was so stunned that I couldn’t put finger to keyboard until now.

 

 

The long saga of the front “toof” has now reached epic proportions, as you may know just before last Crimbo I broke a piece orf one of my front “teef”, I went to the tooth puller in Jan, he decided that instead of repairing broken tooth he would grind it dahn to the root and stick a “cap” on it which he ‘printed’ out on his doo-dah.

The “cap” lasted 12 days, so I returned to have it refitted, seven days later it fell out again and I swallowed it. Back to the Dentist, who decided that I would have to have a plate with one toof on it-the plate made me vomit, was loose and eventually broke after a while.

Went back again to the ten miles away dentist, after a very long “consultation” with a junior, and probably the toilet roll he decided that my bite was too strong for anything else than a nice “toof” implant which was going to cost-wait for it-TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED pounds, oh yes £2,5000 for one biter.

After picking me up and reviving my poor old body he reiterated the price and asked if I wanted to “go ahead” with the procedure.

Needles to say my reply was not in the positive, but I did consent to a £50 ransom to have what are left of my pegs “hygienically cleaned”, because apparently they don’t do scale and polishes anymore under the NHS unless it is “clinically necessary”, and it takes too much time.

 

Why are we paying so much money into the NHS when all we get back is private bollocks....?

 

According to a left wing “Think Tank”

The war on the motorist is a myth and fuel taxes should be raised without delay, Pay as you drive road charging and congestion charging should also be widely implemented to raise funds for public transport, according to the Institute of Public Policy Research, which has close links to Labour.

The IPPR urged the Chancellor to press ahead with future fuel duty rises including 3p scheduled for Jan 1.

“Compared to users of public transport, there is no war on motorists,” said Will Straw, the IPPR’s associate director.

“Rail and bus users have seen fares spiral out of control while the cost of driving has actually fallen over the last decade.

Users of public transport rarely have an alternative, while car drivers can switch to smaller and more fuel-efficient cars and cut out non-essential journeys.

However the report was condemned by the AA. “Far from raising fuel duty the Chancellor should continue to freeze it to help stimulate the economy and lift some of the fuel burden from families and business.

A Government spokesman said: "The Government is embarked on the biggest programme of rail improvements since the Victorian era.

"Rail fares make a vital contribution to delivering these improvements. However, we are determined to bring get the cost of running the railways down to allow us to end the era of above inflation fare rises.

"We have also rightly taken action to support motorists at a time of high international oil prices. Pump prices are 10p a litre cheaper than if we had proceeded with the planned fuel duty escalator."

 

Thanks for sod all-the cost of road fund license is up, insurance is way up, MOTs are up and garages are now charging close to £150 per hour for repairs...

 

After my mention of a ginger haired squaddy in Las Vegas

It seems that said copper knob has been at it again, the squaddy formally known as Henry has allegedly been displaying his crown jewels to a young lady in a hotel room.

I refuse to show the pictures on the grounds that I don’t want MI5 banging on the portcullis to take me to the tower but if you are in need of a glimpse of copper knob click on the link over the picture, but I warn you that if you are of a sensitive nature-DO NOT click on the link....

 

Meanwhile still in the home of “glamour” and the land of the telephoto lens

Allegedly 25 year-old tennis ‘sensation’ Maria Sharapova put her legs on display while visiting the Hamptons.

 

Oh joy, I never knew that tennis players had legs.....

 

Somewhere in the ether

 

There is a Facebook page entitled badly stuffed animals.

The collection of bizarre taxidermy pictures has attracted more than 12,500 followers.

It includes stuffed animals in bizarre poses such as camel in a suitcase, a dog leap-frogging a globe and a squirrel in a flasher mac.

The page also features lots of animals stuffed by taxidermists who do not appear to have completely mastered the art. 

Love it.....

 

And finally:

 

East to the Indonesian bit of the world

An unusual species of rat that cannot gnaw or chew has been discovered, which scientists say is a new step in rodent evolution.

The rodent, called paucidentomys vermidax has fang-like upper incisors that are useless for gnawing and no back teeth.

The rat, which lives exclusively on earthworms, was found in remote rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

It has a rat's tail, a long, thin nose similar to a shrew's and its only teeth are incisors which are in the upper jaw and end in twin points.

The genus name paucidentomys means "few-toothed mouse" and the species name vermidax means "devourer of worms".

Seems logical...

That’s it: I’m orf to extract some uranium from the moat 

And today’s thought:

No comment.

 

 

Angus

 

NHS news: Tesco Extra: Royal Las Vegas: Chicken charmer: Got orf my land: and Rubber Duck Debugging.

Not a lot of light stuff at the Castle this morn, the liquid metal in the gauge has descended to a more reasonable level, the garden is in need of a fettle-again and his Maj has discovered the joy of vanilla ice cream.

Not sure if there will be a post tomorrow-I have an early appointment with the tooth puller, hence the rather endless rambling today.

All across not well Blighty

And apparently over the seas our dear old NHS is still being “Reformed”, it seems that high-profile NHS hospitals in England are to be encouraged by the government to set up profit-making branches abroad to help fund services in the UK.

An agency will aim to link hospitals such as Great Ormond Street with foreign governments that want access to British-run health services.

Investment would have to be drawn from hospitals' private UK work, but with profits ploughed back into the NHS.

Meanwhile, before the Health and Social Care Bill actually passes into ignominy in the leaning tower of Westminster tonight NHS trusts have been pre-empting the “reforms”.

Thousands of staff have already been laid off, meaning the existing management bodies - primary care trusts - have had to merge during the transition.

At a local level, GPs have been forming themselves into groups - known as clinical commissioning groups - for the past 18 months. They will be the bodies that take responsibility for spending 60% of the NHS budget.

There are now 240 of them, although that could change if some of the smaller ones merge as has been happening in the past few months.

1 April (vey apt) 2013 marks the day the new NHS is born. Strategic health authorities and PCTs will be abolished, leaving the GP-led groups and the national board to take on their full functions.

However, the board will retain ultimate responsibility for the budget for those groups which have not been authorised to take full control of the purse strings.

Meanwhile, local authorities will take control of public health - something they used to do up until the mid 1970s.

This will mean directors of public health, currently employed by PCTs, will move across to local government and, on a practical level, schemes designed to encourage healthier lifestyles will be organised by local councils.

A new body, Public Health England, will be created within the Department of Health to take a lead on the issue.

From April, competition in the health service will be extended to include a host of community services such as physiotherapy and podiatry - it is already available to patients who are undergoing non-emergency operations such as knee and hip replacements.

Which brings me to THIS

Eight NHS trusts have been warned about anti-competitive behaviour over the way they ran their private patient units.

The trusts - all based in south-east England - were reported to the Office of Fair Trading by a whistleblower after they exchanged information about pricing.

They escaped a formal investigation by giving voluntary assurances they would no longer discuss pricing.

They have also agreed to train their staff in competition law.

The exchange of commercially sensitive pricing information can result in higher prices for customers as it can diminish incentives to compete on price.

The OFT has the power to impose large financial penalties when such practices are uncovered.

But in this case the regulator decided not to carry out a formal investigation as it judged the exchange of information was down to a lack of awareness.

The eight trusts involved were: Brighton and Sussex, Frimley Park, East Sussex Healthcare, Portsmouth, Dartford and Gravesham, Southampton, Epsom and St Helier, North Hertfordshire and my very favourite butcher’s shop- Frimley Park,

Deborah Jones, of the OFT, said: "We welcome the assurances given by these trusts which have enabled us to bring our preliminary investigation to a close."

Oh well as long as they have promised......

Keeping with the Blighty icon theme

Tesco could be fined up to £200,000 after foreign students at one of its warehouses were found to be working illegally.

Authorities found the students, of almost a dozen nationalities, were working significantly longer hours than their visas allowed at the warehouse operated by Britain’s biggest supermarket chain.

The breaches were discovered after immigration officials swooped on the Tesco.com building in Croydon, south London, last month.

It is understood that at least seven of the students, none of whom has been identified, have been deported. It follows Home Office operations to put a stop to “visa abuse”.

Officials discovered the students, who were predominantly of Bangladeshi and Indian origin, had been working up to three-and-a-half times longer than their visas allowed.

The Daily Telegraph understands that a further 15 students remain under investigation. The Home Office would say only that inquiries were “ongoing”.

Tesco was subsequently issued with a “notification of potential liability”. Authorities are now deciding whether to go further and issue the employer with a notification of liability, and a fine of up to £10,000 per illegal worker. The Home Office said the company needed to provide “evidence that it was carrying out the legally required checks to avoid a fine”.

The retailer said it was “co-operating fully” with the UKBA, adding that it had tightened its procedures. It did not condone employing illegal workers.

 

Yeah right, still every little helps...their profits...

Over the big salty thing that isn’t the pacific

Allegedly a certain ginger haired squaddy has been spotted partying poolside with Hollywood royalty at a Las Vegas casino.

The third-in-line heir to England's throne was at Wet Republic on Saturday, an exclusive club at the MGM Grand which was hosting a party celebrating the start of Jennifer Lopez's tour with Enrique Inglesias, People reported.

The shirtless royal reportedly went largely unnoticed, with J-Lo attracting all the attention.

He sipped Grey Goose and chatted with his entourage, a small group of male friends, and some girls who had joined the group.

The next day he was seen again sipping vodka and beer and throwing inflatable beach balls at passing women.

That night he went to a VIP pool party and jumped into the water in his jeans.

Alright for some....

Somewhere on this wobbly world
 

No guns, no traps, just his wits and a song.

Watch as the man above sings for his supper.


Must try that....sorry about the sound, click on the link over the video and watch the original.

Across the channel and right a whimsy
 

A German farmer poured manure on a group of trance music fans who organized an improvised open air festival on his land, the N-24 TV channel reported.

At first, the elderly farmer from the northern German province of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania tried to persuade about 40 Goa trance fans, who gathered at his field without permission, to end their party.

When they refused, he drove a tank-truck with manure to the place, took a hose and turned the faucet on.

The participants, who had to immediately end their party for apparent reasons, complained to police about damage done to their cars, tents and other property, which they estimated at 5,000 euro ($6,100).

The incident is being probed by local prosecutors, who are to decide whether a case should be launched. 

Slurry with a fringe on top?

And finally:

How to debug your code using a rubber duck

Rubber duck debugging, Rubber Ducking, or the Rubber Duckie Test is an informal term used in software engineering to refer to a method of debugging code. The name is a reference to an apocryphal story in which an unnamed expert programmer would keep a rubber duck by his desk at all times, and debug his code by forcing himself to explain it, line-by-line, to the duck.

To use this process, a programmer meticulously explains code to an inanimate object, such as a rubber duck, in the expectation that upon reaching a piece of incorrect code and trying to explain it, the programmer will notice the error.  In describing what the code is supposed to do and observing what it actually does, any incongruity between these two becomes apparent.

In a nutshell, a software engineer places a generic rubber duckie on your desk. Every time you make a big coding decision or implementation, you explain how it all works to the rubber duckie. If you find yourself straining for an explanation, or if you find yourself unable to even come up with something logical, stop. The duckie has served its purpose -- it's helped you expose a bug or design flaw or implementation flaw that otherwise might have gone unnoticed.

 

Thank him/her upstairs that I got out of computers....

 That’s it: I’m orf to suss out ‘solid smoke’ 

And today’s thought:

Do you really want me to tell you?

Angus

Grimly dark takes orf: How to build a Brompton: Shit in Dahn Unda: Invisible air bag helmet: Auntie says sorry: and a nasty De-daw.

More lack of cold than you could shake a liquid metal gauge at this morn at the Castle, went dahn Tesco early to avoid the atmospheric perspiration-didn’t work, but they have now upped his fave food to £4 per box from £3.68 from £3.00 over the last week or so.

And I see that her Maj’s dog boy is in the doo-doo after the royal corgis took several lumps out of one of the ugly sister’s terrier, bet her Maj doesn’t get done for having dangerous dogs....

Just up the road from dahn ‘ere in ‘Ampshire

A £22m extension to a Surrey hospital is nearing completion with the testing of a new helipad for air ambulances.

Frimley Park Hospital staff and air crews have tested off-loading casualty trolleys into the resuscitation department below.

The emergency department opened in July and serves people in Hampshire, Surrey and Berkshire.

Until now, air ambulances had to land on school playing fields on the opposite side of the nearby M3.

Patients were then transferred to the hospital by road ambulance.

The hospital has recruited 23 helipad standby crew from within its existing staff.

The helipad is expected to become fully operational in September, the hospital said.

A dedicated lift links the roof to the resuscitation area.

The extension houses the new emergency department and day surgery unit, which the hospital said would be one of the best in the country.

Compared with what?

Up in the Smoke

Building a Brompton bicycle is a labour intensive task. It takes a factory of 115 skilled people, some 1,200 parts and six hours to custom build each individual bicycle.
Every stage is inspected to meet the high standard and all the engineering, brazing, and assembly is done under one roof in West London, just a stone’s throw away from where the bike was first conceived by owner Andrew Ritchies 1975.
Brompton currently export to 38 markets worldwide with their biggest demand in Japan and South Korea. The main market is city dwellers, not just commuters but people who have limited space at home, at work and even on a busy train.
Brompton is part of the Making it in Great Britain campaign.


So now you know...

And staying with the two wheeled transport thingy

From the land of alleged extradition to America comes the 'Hovding' helmet which is the brainchild of Swedish designers Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin who received requests for a helmet which would not spoil your hair-do.
Now, eight years after starting work on the device, their vision is finally being realised and the bizarre helmet is going on sale for around £350.

The helmet looks like a scarf and only springs into action when accelerometers and gyro-meters inside detect sudden jolt. If the wearer is involved in an accident the helmet inflates in under 0.1 second to cocoon their head.


But will it work when something falls orf the lorry you are undertaking and clouts you on the bonce?

Very Dahn Unda

Twelve people, dressed in bowler hats and smart suits, carried their own toilets down to the beach, placing them in a line on the beach front before dropping their trousers and sitting.

The protesters said they were demanding public toilet facilities, of which there are currently none, in the local area.

Beachgoers often have to ask local cafe owners to use their toilets, disturbing customers and inconveniencing the owners.

But Kym Hewitt, a local business owner, said he sympathised with those beachgoers faced with little choice.

"The public toilets are not up to scratch at all and quiet often we have a lot of people coming through to the cafe, sort of not really dressed for the cafe," he said.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the local council is currently consulting the community about the best place to build the toilets

All sounds a bit potty to me...

Back in the Home Counties

BBC weathermen have been forced to apologise after ignoring computer forecasts predicting showers across South East England on Sunday.

Apparently they doggedly stuck to their own assessment that it would turn out hot and sunny again across the region - only for a series of thundery showers to put a dampener on many people's barbecues.

Their predictions, in defiance of Met Office models, meant many were caught unawares as they headed out to enjoy what they thought would be a fine, dry day.

Instead the heavens opened as a series of showers built up from 11am, firstly across Sussex and Kent, and later across the rest of the Home Counties, London and East Anglia.

At 1.30pm BBC weatherman Philip Avery apologised for the errors on the BBC News channel.

He admitted: “There are thunderstorms there which were not represented in our forecasts over the past couple of days or so.”

It seems that the populace of blighted Blighty are no longer capable of looking up at the sky...

 And finally: 

Over the warm salty thing on the left

A fierce new breed of spider which has claws has been ­discovered, amazing ­experts that it has remained undetected until now.

Measuring three inches across it was found in the caves of Oregon, USA.

Scientists say the “cave robber” – which lurks in caves swinging on strands of silk snapping up prey with its oversized claws – is so ­significant it’s been given its own family name of ­Trogloraptoridae.

A spokesman for the California Academy of Sciences said: “That such a relatively large, peculiar animal could elude discovery until now suggests more species may be lurking.”

 Sod that....

That’s it: I’m orf to hand back some of my genes

And today’s thought:

Grimly Dark takes orf.

Angus

It wasn’t me

As I sit here in the Castle slowly dissolving into the sofa there is a thought running through what is left of my mind, and that thought is-I am getting more than a tad fed up with being blamed for all the ills in Blighty.

And I suspect that many others of a similar age are of a like mind, because apparently baby boomers are guilty of the state of our once proud nation, we have it seems destroyed the economy, raised taxes so that we can live in luxury on our massive pensions, eliminated growth, executed industry, sent the Eurozone into freefall, brought back whooping cough, invented University fees, euthanized the NHS, demolished the housing sites and thrown the exchequers (our) money into the nearest black hole.

 

Wrong: What “we” have done is work our arses orf for more decades than those right wingers have been on this buggered up world, paid our taxes, so that they can have free education, free health care and a reasonable-ish life. 

Let me enlighten those of you who have been misled so badly by “them”.

And this is not an excuse or a plea for sympathy, just a glimpse into a world you do not know and never will.

 Back in post war Blighty there was not a lot of decent food, believe it or not some of us didn’t live in nice detached houses in leafy suburbs, housing was mainly council estates, there were no “luxuries” such as central heating, bathrooms, inside loos, double glazing, phones, cars or bananas, there were a lot of jobs though mainly because some other bunch of right wing lunatics decided to take over the world and managed to kill orf quite a lot of young sons, brothers and husbands who thankfully stopped them.

But we managed, we managed to get our free education, pass our exams and then help the family out by getting orf our arses and getting a job to bring a bit more money into the family.

Many of us didn’t go to “free” university, not because we were dim but because the greater good came before personal gain.

We had an ethic, which we learned from our parents and grandparents to look after the young, the old and the family, to work for what we wanted and if we couldn’t afford it we didn’t get it.

We didn’t think that the world owed us anything we didn’t expect to move straight from school to Oxbridge, get a degree, move into a nice pad, have a well paid job, buy a BMW and sail though life while everyone else did their own thing, it doesn’t work like that. 

I admit we have been far too trusting of those we elected to look after our interests. We believed them when they said-“you have never had it so good”, and that they would look after the old, the sick those without work and our young.

 

But what we ended up with was bunch of thieving, lying, self interested rich gits who voted themselves into power and so far have managed to make things a lot worse.

And no, I didn’t vote for any of them, but we old farts do vote, usually before the pubs close and not always for those we meant to, and they have realised that we have a certain amount of clout-hence the increase in the basic state pension-or maybe not, and the double U-Turn on care for even older old farts. 

The truth is that the bankers cocked up the economy (average age well below old fart status), the lying Lib Dems (ditto) brought in university fees, the Tories upped VAT and fuel costs, and someone back in eighties deciding to sell orf a large percentage of council houses which led to the housing “boom”.

The Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition is stubbornly set on an economic course that was never going to work (like the 2.6 million unemployed) and is refusing to take a step back and look at the big picture. 

So there it is, decades of mismanagement by politicians of all party colours, decades of lying and false promises which has led to dear old Blighty becoming a third world country, and now turning the young against the old, the haves against the have not’s and all against sundry. 

Blame the politicians, blame your parents, blame him/her upstairs but don’t blame us old farts because we didn’t do it-whatever “it” is.

Angus

Generation shit for brains: face-kinis and morphsuits: The Sphinx observatory: Shoe socks: Christian tomatoes: and Avez-vous reçu de l'argent?

Loads of lack of cold, oodles of blue stuff above, not an atom of wet stuff and several long white things across the atmosphere from big silver birds with the vapours at the Castle this morn.

His Maj is still kidnapping amphibians and here is one he brought me at 9pm, which he left in the kitchen and frightened the brown runny stuff out of me when I turned the light on and it leapt across the floor...

According to a bunch of know nothing toss pots who have the life experience of a bit of gravel

All the problems in Millionaires Club Coalition Blighty are dahn to 'lazy' baby boomers, five MPs who are all 40 or younger and entered Parliament at the last election, are publishing a new book in which they say that "lazy" Brits prefer a lie-in to hard work.

Due to be published on the eve of the Conservative Party election, the book, called Britannia Unchained – Global Growth and Prosperity, also criticises the "baby boomer" generation for seeking to raise taxes for young workers to pay for their lavish pension pots.

Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss describe British workers as among the "worst idlers" in the world, and urge David Cameron to reform work places along the lines of the Asian, rather than the European model.

In the book, the group also claim that the country is being dragged down by support by baby boomers in their 60s and 70s for higher taxes in order to fund their pensions and live in comfort.

 

Oh dear, it seems that Thatcher’s generation has inherited the “it isn’t the governments fault” gene, and it is the old farts that make policy-I wish I could....

East to the land where wages are piss poor and Elfandsafety only belong to the right wing

Chinese ­beach-goers are covering up from head to toe in morphsuits and face-kinis in a variety of colours and designs.

Face-kinis first appeared a few years ago made from scraps of material found around peoples home.

The craze has hit the shores across Qingdao, north-east China, and masks are being made to meet everyone’s tastes in a variety of colours and designs.

My brain hurts.....

 

Over to the place where cars are the anti Christ

The Sphinx observatory is located at Jungfraujoch in Switzerland at an altitude of 3,571 metres.

The observatory provides unique conditions for successful research in various disciplines such as meteorology, astronomy, glaciology, physiology, radiation, and cosmic rays.

When the Jungfraujoch station opened in 1912 (which is also the highest railway station in all of Europe), Jungfraujoch became the number one place for scientists to conduct research under conditions of high altitude. At first the scientists worked in harsh conditions and lived in temporary shelters. Eventually, the Sphinx observatory was built in 1937 to accommodate eager scientists.

The Sphinx observatory is built on a steep cliff. The mountain top has been tunnelled to fit an elevator which ascends to the observatory from the Jungfraujoch train station. The main-part of the Sphinx is used by scientists but for the tourists there is a metal-grate terrace surrounding the building on all sides that provides a stunning 360 degree view of the Great Aletsah Glacier, of the snow capped Alps, and of the green valley down below. From the metal grating one can see 11,333 feet of abyss down below.

Sod that...

 

Still in the land of chocolate triangles

A Swiss company has designed a pair of socks designed to be worn for walking without shoes.

The Swiss Protection socks are designed to replace shoes altogether and make the user feel barefooted.

They even have spaces for each of your toes - in the same way fingers fit in a glove.

Designed by the Swiss Barefoot Company, the ultra durable footwear is reinforced by PVC soles which helps make them cut-resistant.

The Swiss company believe the socks are ideal for people who like to go barefoot and could be used for outdoor activities such as rock climbing.

Dieter Hesch, owner of The Swiss Barefoot Company, said: "It took many years of technical research and designing to create what we have now.

"I'm very happy with it and I even think the Swiss Protection Sock could become fashionable.

"We're also working on a new sock design which we think people will be able to run marathons in."

The socks come in long and short sizes and are available for about £45.

Cheaper to buy shoes, I think the altitude is getting to the Swiss....

Right a fair way and dahn more than a mile or twenty where real pyramids exist

Apparently a Salafist group from Egypt appears to be trying to retract a post on Facebook that warned that eating tomatoes are "forbidden because they are Christian."

The Muslim traditionalist group, calling themselves the Popular Egyptian Islamic Association, apparently still finds tomatoes offensive if they are cut in such a way that reveals the shape of a cross, according to the Now Lebanon website.

Along with a photo of a tomato cut in half to reveal what could be viewed as a cross, the group originally posted on Facebook: "Eating tomatoes is forbidden because they are Christian. [The tomato] praises the cross instead of Allah and says that Allah is three (a reference to the Trinity).

According to a translation by Now Lebanon.

"[God help us]. I implore you to spread this photo because there is a sister from Palestine who saw the prophet of Allah [Mohammad] in a vision and he was crying, warning his nation against eating them [tomatoes]. If you don't spread this [message], know that it is the devil who stopped you,"

Wonder what they think of cucumbers?

 

And finally:

Still in the tenth century middle east

Passengers on Air France Flight 562 were asked to open their wallets to check if they had enough cash to pay for more fuel when their plane made an emergency landing in Damascus.

The plane, heading from Paris to Lebanon's capital, diverted amid tensions near the Beirut airport on Wednesday. Low on fuel, it instead landed in Damascus, the capital of neighbouring Syria, where a civil war is raging.

An Air France spokesman explained Friday that the crew inquired about passenger cash only as a "precautionary measure" because of the "very unusual circumstances." Sanctions against Syria complicated payment for extra fuel.

He said Air France found a way to pay for the fill-up without tapping customer pockets, and apologized for the inconvenience. He wouldn't say how the airline paid, or how much.

The Boeing 777, carrying 185 people, took off for an overnight layover in Cyprus then landed safely in Beirut on Thursday. 

Surprised they didn’t put the plane in reverse and fly back to France....

That’s it: I’m orf to eat some walnuts-just in case 

And today’s thought:

Shit for brains generation.

Angus