One thousand posts: Piss Poor G.M.C: Winter is under control: Hotel of doom: Smokin in the Dam: Bash Street Dundee: and Chinese cabbages.

 

 

Annoying amounts of lack of warm, absence of skywater, almighty amounts of solar stuff and abysmal amounts of atmospheric movement at the Castle this morn.

 

Well; it has finally happened; this is the 1,000^th piss poor post on this even piss poorer blog, after three years and a bit it seems that the left handed brain cell has managed to produce more bollocks than you could shake a knob at, and to my amazement people are still visiting and some even take the risk of commenting with their names!

 

Many thanks to all those who have read, spoken, re-tweeted and appreciated what I laughingly call “news”, and to those who leave remarks “incognito”; although I don’t publish them I do read them all.

 

The Piss Poor General Medical Council

Is still living up to its much deserved reputation: Dr Muhammad Naeem Khan, a trainee GP in Glasgow, threatened to humiliate and shame his ex-girlfriend by releasing the pictures to her parents if she did not keep in contact with him.

However, despite finding four charges against him proved, a watchdog disciplinary panel ruled Dr Khan's "fitness to practise" was not impaired.

The Medical Practitioners' Tribunal Service (MPTS) decided against even giving Dr Khan a warning. The hearing in Manchester heard glowing tributes from colleagues of Dr Khan, who described him as the "number one choice for a locum candidate".

The General Medical Council (GMC), which brought the case, had argued the doctor's fitness to practise was impaired, and the outcome was condemned by patient groups who said the case would undermine the public's confidence in the NHS.

The tribunal earlier dropped eight charges, including that he raped the woman in a Pakistani medical college, after finding there was no case to answer.

Yesterday the panel found four of the charges against the doctor, who moved to the UK from Pakistan in 2008, proved.

These included a charge he "threatened to reveal the naked photographs of Miss A to her parents if she did not maintain contact with [him]".

The panel accepted his actions would "have led to the disgracing of Miss A and her family" if he had released the pictures.

Another charge, that Dr Khan discussed kidnapping a friend of Miss A's in Pakistan, was found proved, although the panel found this did not amount to misconduct.

Yesterday it announced the doctor's fitness to practise was not impaired, and he has escaped any sanction.

The panel said his actions were "exceptional" in an otherwise unblemished career.

Tribunal panel chairman Dr Neil Fyfe said: "The panel noted the extreme stress you were under at the time of the events.

"You were clearly desperate, distraught and emotionally stressed by the break-up of your relationship with Miss A.

"The panel's judgment is that the circumstances were highly specific in nature, place and time. They were exceptional.

 

Go figure, wonder who he knows?

 

According to the Flailing Sail

A freezing winter is on the cards with experts forecasting a repeat of conditions that led to temperatures of -22C (-8F) in 2010.

The Met Office’s long-term forecast suggests that, like two years ago, high-pressure systems will cut off mild Atlantic air, sending temperatures plunging as Arctic air moves in.

More snow could fall than last winter, which was much drier than average in England, leading to weeks of transport chaos, it adds.

British Weather Services also warns of “significant” snow, temperatures of -18C and transport disruption.

The Met Office said its winter forecast is more accurate than ever thanks to a new computer programme.

Government meteorologists have briefed ministers and transport leaders to be ready for colder-than-average temperatures until the end of January.

Councils have put thousands of extra staff on standby for snow clearing duties and a record three million tons of salt has been stockpiled.

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said the sector is “prepared”.

 

Har-fucking-har...

 

East to the land Norf of Sarf Korea

 

 

The 105-storey, pyramid-shaped hotel that has stood over North Korea's capital city like a mountain for more than 20 years just might be on the verge of opening for the first time.

Pyongyang's Ryugyong Hotel will "partially, probably" open in the middle of next year, Reto Wittwer, chief executive of international hotel operator Kempinski AG, said at a forum in Seoul, South Korea.

Kempinski will manage the hotel, which Mr Wittwer said will open with shops, offices, ballrooms, restaurants and 150 rooms.

North Korea began building the Ryugyong in the 1980s but stopped when funding ran out in the 1990s. Exterior construction resumed in 2009.

Various reports in recent years said the hotel was preparing to finally open.

In September, a Beijing-based tour agency was allowed to peek inside and released pictures of the bare concrete lobby.

Wittwer said he first saw a picture of the hotel many years ago and thought then that it could eventually make a lot of money.

 

I do like an optimist...

 

Back over to the left a lot

 

And below sea level to the “Dam”, what will be welcome news for backpackers and travellers who go to the 'Dam looking for a good time as apparently tourists won't be banned from smoking cannabis in Amsterdam in the near future.

Eberhard van der Laan, the mayor of Amsterdam, believes that changing the law would lead to more crime.

His decision follows months of arguments over Dutch drug laws after the country's government said it would leave it to local authorities whether or not to impose a ban.

Amsterdam is allegedly famous for its cannabis cafes.

"The 1.5 million tourists will not say 'then no more marijuana’; they will swarm all over the city looking for drugs. This would lead to more robberies, quarrels about fake drugs, and no control of the quality of drugs on the market - everything we have worked towards would be lost to misery," said Mr Van der Laan.

Amsterdam is one of the most popular cities in the world among backpackers and travellers and one of the reasons why is due to its lax laws on drugs. According to the BBC, some 1.5 million out of an estimated seven million foreign tourists go to a weed-selling coffee shop while in the city.

Although cannabis is technically illegal in the Netherlands, the country in 1976 decriminalised possession of less than five grams of the substance.

 

Time to book my ticket....the coffee and Patats are good too...and apparently there is a district where all the street lamps are red to protect your eyes.....

 

Back in Bloggy Blighty and up Norf

 

Plug, Spotty, Smiffy and the rest of the anarchic Bash Street Kids are set to have a street in Dundee named in their honour to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Beano comic.

DC Thomson, the Dundee-based publishing company, has submitted plans to the city council to name to create a real life Bash Street next to the city’s West Marketgait where there are proposals to build a new children’s soft play area.

A spokeswoman for DC Thomson said: “We’re discussing with Dundee City Council the idea of naming a new street ‘Bash Street’. This is to tie-in with a proposed children’s soft play area within the former works buildings off West Marketgait. We think it’s a fun idea.”

A Dundee City Council spokesman confirmed: “Dundee City Council has received a request from DC Thomson to allocate the name Bash Street to the street adjacent to 142/144 West Marketgait, which currently has no name.

“This is to tie-in with the proposed new build and to celebrate the 75th anniversary of The Beano in 2013 in the comic’s hometown.”

Councillor Will Dawson, the convener of the council’s city development committee said ‘We’ve already got Desperate Dan and Minnie the Minx in the centre and it’s good to tie in the Bash Street kids. ‘We’ve got to make these historic connections.”

And he revealed: “There’s another plan to put Glebe Street back on the map. It used to exist in the city and it ties in with the Broons too.”

 

Good for them, it’s nice to find something older than I am....

 

And finally:

 

Back out east to the land of veg

 

Farmers who found themselves with a bumper crop of cabbages after a harvest glut gave out hundreds for free.

The farmers were seen shifting more than 30 tons of cabbages to more than 6,000 people in Xi'an Shaanxi province.

Shoppers queued round the block for the free cabbages as the truckloads kept the vegetables coming.

One official told local sources: "It was either give them away or let them rot in the field. It would be wicked to waste such a lot of food."

One of the farmers added: "We had a record harvest and did very well. So we should spread that good fortune around," explained one."

 

Bet there was someone from Tesco in the queue...

 

That’s it: I’m orf to keep an eye on my Facebook page

 

And today’s thought:

Dam Doc

 

Angus

Not a pot to piss in: Silly Billy gets stuffed: Gandalf retires: Flying Hobbit: Flying Jobsworths: and a Cheap plasma jet.

Loads of solar stuff, lots and lots of lack of warm and little atmospheric movement at the Castle this morn, quite late, the vast amounts of skywater and low readings on the liquid metal gauge has it seems finally managed to paralyse the interweb thingy, and it is only working in spurts which is a bit miffing.

 

All over banjaxed Blighty

Those with expectations of becoming rich old farts are a tad disappointed; the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said that from 2014 the predicted growth rates used to give investors an idea of what their pension pot will be worth when they retire must be significantly lower than they are today.

Currently pension companies use a so-called “intermediate projection rate” of 7 per cent in statements to savers. This means that someone in their 20s who earns £30,000 and saves £2,000 a year into a workplace pension can expect to have a retirement pot when they reach 68 of £540,000.

However under the new 5 per cent growth rate that firms will have to use, this pot will be valued at just £335,000. The change means that the person’s predicted pension income will fall from £10,400 a year to £6,430 a year, a drop of 38 per cent.

Experts said that the lower rate will provide a “dose of cold economic reality” to savers and will give them a more accurate idea of the money they can expect to receive on retirement.

As well as pensions, the new rules will also cover the expected growth of financial products including ISAs and endowments. From 2014 all statements about existing investments will use the new lower projection rates.

 

Which means bugger all really...

 

Up in the Smoke

Silly Billy has coughed up ten grand to re-stuff his new mate; a giant anaconda named Albert who has spent most of the last century hanging above the ministry library and reckons that "He is looking very optimistic about the future of our foreign policy".

A ministry spokesman said that as Albert was a gift, he is regarded as a government asset.

 

"As such, the Foreign Office is obliged to maintain its assets, and the work on 'Albert' was essential maintenance," he said.

"It is believed that 'Albert' was first re-stuffed in the 1960s or 1970s, but there are no records of how much it cost on that occasion. Certainly no significant maintenance has been carried out on him in the last 40-50 years."

 

And it could have waited another decade or so....

 

Up to the place where everyone has calmed down

 

Photographer Mark Bridger captured a picture of Gandalf the great grey owl at an outbuilding at Knowsley Safari Park in Prescot, Merseyside, on Monday.

'It transpires he lives in that outbuilding,' said Mark, 44, from West Malling, Kent.

'I went up to the park on Monday to photograph reptiles and noticed that Gandalf was happily watching the birds flying around out of the window of his house.

'He lives at Knowsley Safari Park. They said he loves watching the birds and the dogs through the window.'

Bless...

 

Dahn Unda and right a bit to middle earth

 

A four-minute-long Air New Zealand safety video celebrating the upcoming premiere of the first film in the Hobbit trilogy has gone viral within 24 hours of being posted on YouTube.

The in-flight video – which features the character Gollum and the film director Sir Peter Jackson - has received more than two million hits.

The video is the latest of the airline's in-flight films to become popular online.

Other online hits have included a video showing fitness guru Richard Simmons wearing in a sequin tank top, and another starring the cast of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team.

 

My brain hurts....

 

Up a lot to the place near Sweden

A Norwegian plane carrying 40 passengers turned around and returned to an airport hundreds of kilometres away -- despite having already started its descent -- just so the crew would not have to work overtime.

The plane was about to land in the small northern town of Mosjoen when it turned back to Trondheim, around 350 kilometres (220 miles) south, local newspaper Rana Blad said in a report.

"Shortly afterwards, the captain himself said on the tannoy that it was unbelievable, but that it had been decided that we had to turn around," passenger Steinar Henriksen said.

Company Wideroe, a regional carrier owned by Scandinavian airline SAS, said that the last-minute decision was based on Norway's strict working time regulations.

"Unfortunately, the plane took off with a crew that was about to clock out. We have strict working hours that are imposed by the authorities, which we cannot exceed," a spokesman for the company, Richard Kongsteien, told the paper.

"If the airplane had landed, it would have had to stay in Mosjoen since we didn't have a back-up crew there, and the schedule for the rest of the evening would have had to be cancelled," he said, adding that this would have affected more than 200 passengers.

 

My brain hurts even more...

 

And finally:

 

Fancy a cheap way to visit the planets?

 

Well now it seems that you may be able to, travel to the moon, asteroids, Mars and other nearby destinations could become more affordable if a Virginia-based company achieves its goal of building cheaper electric space propulsion.

The firm, called HyperV Technologies Corp., has started a crowd-funding campaign on the website Kickstarter to pay for the project, called a plasma jet thruster.

The 8-year-old company, which officials said collaborates with several United States laboratories in its research, has just two days left in the campaign to raise its goal of $69,000.

 

Anyone would think that it’s rocket science......

 

That’s it: I’m orf to reset my brain cell to GMT

 

And today’s thought:

Hard life.

 

 

Angus

Werritty walks: Morgue Money: California Walnut nicker: Nut behind the wheel: Boston split: and Choc Frocks.

More than a lot of skywater, just as much lack of warm, even less atmospheric movement and sod all solar stuff at the Castle this November morn.

Orf out to somewhere to do something later and his Maj has discovered the joy of snail stalking.

 

Somewhere in the halls of “justice”

The CPS (crap prosecuting service) has decided that the self-styled adviser to former defence secretary Liam Fox will not face criminal charges.

Adam Werritty was under investigation after describing himself as Mr Fox's (who resigned last year after being found guilty of breaching the ministerial code over his relationship with Mr Werritty, whom he met 40 times in the Ministry of Defence and on trips abroad)  adviser on business cards and allegedly accepting donations. Andrew Penhale from the Crown Prosecution Service said: "We have advised City of London Police there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction."

 

So the old it’s not what you know but who you know still reigns supreme...

According to the Torygraph

Almost two thirds of NHS trusts using the Liverpool Care Pathway have received payouts totalling millions of pounds for hitting targets related to its use.

Apparently figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the full scale of financial inducements for the first time.

They suggest that about 85 per cent of trusts have now adopted the regime, which can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition from dying patients.

More than six out of 10 of those trusts - just over half of the total - have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so amounting to at least £12million.

At many hospitals more than 50 per cent of all patients who died had been placed on the pathway and in one case the proportion of foreseeable deaths on the pathway was almost nine out of 10.

The LCP was originally developed at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and the city’s Marie Curie hospice to ease suffering in dying patients, setting out principles for how they to be treated.

It involves the withdrawal of treatments or tests from patients which doctors believe could cause distress and do more harm than good.

 

Last night the Department of Health insisted that the payments could help ensure that people were “treated with dignity in their final days and hours”.

 

Load of old Bollocks-notice the word “could”?

  

Over to the bit of America that isn’t under water

Authorities on the West Coast were embroiled in a seriously nutty mystery: the disappearance of 80,000 pounds of walnuts, stolen in two instalments, from Northern California.

The walnuts were first reported missing Friday by workers at a freight brokerage firm. Workers called the Tehama County Sheriff's Office to say that a truckload of walnuts, purchased by Seattle Company F.C. Bloxom and Co., never reached their destination in Miami.

The incident was then matched to a similar theft a few days earlier. A heist on Oct. 23 involved 40,000 pounds of walnuts, which were picked up in Los Molinos, Calif., but never arrived in Texas, where they were expected, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth notes.

According to the Redding Searchlight, authorities believe the two crimes could be the work of the same individual-- a "suspicious delivery driver" with a tall build and strong Russian accent.

The man is said to be 6 feet 2 inches tall and driving a white semi. The 80,000 pounds of walnuts were valued at about $300,000.

 

Ah; the old squirrel disguised as a Russian ploy eh-it’s been a long time since I had a white semi.....

 

Back in Blighty and up to Essex

Marcus Lamm, 21, tried to squeeze through the closing barriers across the railway in Manningtree, Essex, But he got stuck behind a slow agricultural vehicle and did not make it across before the barriers closed, trapping him on the tracks.

The First bus was empty, apart from the driver, but had only just dropped off children from local schools.

Lamm, of Willow Way, Jaywick, admitted driving without due care and attention when he appeared at Colchester Magistrates' Court yesterday.

Representing himself, he said: "I had been sitting waiting for the train to come past with the barrier down.

"It came up and I followed with the traffic that was moving.

"It was safe at the time. I didn't see any lights as I went through but obviously they were flashing.

"I don't know what happened between me moving off and getting stuck."

Lamm, a former Tendring Technology College student, said he has lost his job with First as a result of the incident on July 19. He is now a bus driver with New Horizon Travel, in Frating.

 

Oh well; that’s alright then, as long as the cupid stunt is still driving buses.

 

Over to the bit of America that is under water

 

A Massachusetts fisherman has caught a creepy-looking lobster that's coloured to match Halloween.

The New England Aquarium says the 1-pound female lobster has an orange side and a black side, with the colours split perfectly down the middle.

Marine officials say such coloration is estimated to occur once in every 50 million lobsters.

The fisherman who caught the seasonally coloured crustacean in a trap last week is from Beverly, a seaside community 20 miles northeast of Boston.

The rare lobster is known as a split. Aquarium officials said Wednesday splits have been caught in Maine, Rhode Island and Nova Scotia in the last 10 years.

 

Schizophrenic crustacean...

 

And finally:

 

Back over to the bit of what is left of Europe where the big iron pylon resides

 

Some tasty looking outfits, including a naughty but nice bra, were showcased at a chocolate show in Paris.

 

They also featured chocolate truffle wings and a kimono sprinkled with confectionery flowers.

The delicious dresses were made for the 18th annual Salon Du Chocolat trade fair.

 

Fashion designers and chocolatiers joined forces inspired by the theme “The New Worlds of Chocolate” to create the outfits

 

Num-num- num, and the frocks aren’t bad either...

 

That’s it: I’m orf to get some re-healable concrete for the Castle.

 

And today’s thought:

When you said do you want some nuts, I never expected THAT!!

 

 

Angus

Three core Cable shorts out: Posh council homes: Sherwood goes commercial: Dung spitting: How to be Hungarian: and a Big cake.

Enormous amounts of lack of warm, not a cough of atmospheric movement, even less skywater and some invisible solar activity at the Castle this morn, still coming to grips with the new laptop, still smelling the decorating, and still trying to decipher the meaning of life.

 

Up in the Smoke

Vince Cable told MPs that a new committee set up to promote economic growth had not held any meetings saying: "I can't tell you why that committee has not been convened yet "despite the fact that he attended two of them.

He later corrected his “evidence” to the Business, Innovation and Skills select committee- "I readied my memory very quickly and I couldn't recall meetings of the committee. There were in fact two, on 18 September and 22 October, so that committee is operating and has met," he said.

 

So it seems that the old fart fails on “Business, Innovation and Skills”, think his earth wire has come loose.

 

Over to the posh part of the Smoke

Conservative councils are planning to build hundreds of “middle-class” affordable homes for nurses and teachers in Britain's most expensive neighbourhoods.

The three boroughs of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham are proposing to borrow against their “extremely valuable” housing assets to build the homes.

Today they will submit their plan for a pilot scheme of 300 homes on a new “middle-class” estate to the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles.

The councils say many working families on average incomes struggle to afford homes in central London, where a typical family home costs £1 million.

Officials from Mr Pickles’ department are believed to have worked with the councils on their plans.

The councils’ business case states: “Home-ownership is increasingly unaffordable except to households on very high incomes, and families on middle and lower incomes are being driven away from the area.”

Jonathan Glanz, Westminster city council’s cabinet member for housing and property, said the plan aimed to give hard-working people on average salaries “at least some chance” of living in central London. “At present they are simply priced out,” he said. “We need to continue ensuring that we provide for a wide range of people and maintain mixed communities, including middle-class people on middle-range salaries.”

 

And who will pay orf the loans-the council tax payers...

 

Up Norf a bit

Plans for a new multimillion-pound visitor attraction celebrating the legend of Robin Hood have been announced.

Nottinghamshire County Council is seeking to build a £13 million visitor attraction called Discover Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, complete with medieval castle and fortified ramparts. If the plans are approved, the 40-acre attraction would open in spring 2015.

There will be a host of indoor and outdoor displays, street performers and an open-air theatre to bring the legend, life and times of Robin Hood and his band of merry men to life.

Visitors will be able to have a go at activities including firing arrows, wild food cookery demonstrations, and dressing up in armour.

A tournament field will be used for events such as jousting shows, falconry exhibits, archery contests and costumed medieval theatre, while visitors daring to enter the maze will encounter talking trees.

 

Prince Charlie will be well chuffed....

 

Right a lot to the dark Continent

A weird pastime called Bokdrol Spoek. Roughly translated as “spitting buck droppings is an African sport popular enough to have its own official competition, in which contestants have to put a kudu dung pellet in their mouth and spit it as far as possible.

The origins of kudu dung spitting can be traced back to tribal hunters who had difficulties catching the fast antelope. Most times the only sign of the animal was a trail of dung, which meant it had been there but it was long gone. Apart from swearing at the elusive kudus, hunters would engage in a contest of pellet spitting, to pass the time. In countries like South Africa, the custom is so popular that there’s even a championship held every year to find out who can spit a piece of antelope poop the farthest.

Sounds like a crap hobby to me....

 

Ever wanted to be a Hungarian?

Well now you can, proposed legislation listed on parliament's website would grant permanent residency and ultimately Hungarian citizenship to outsiders who buy at least 250,000 Euros ($322,600) worth of special government bonds.

The proposed legislation calls for the debt management office to issue special "residency bonds" to foreigners. Holders of at least a quarter of a million Euros' worth of the paper would get preferential immigration treatment.

"The goal of the modification is to create the institution of 'investor residency' in Hungary," the lawmakers who put forth the legislation wrote in their proposal.

 

We do that here in Blighty-it’s called tax....

 

And finally:

 

Left a bit to the place next to Germany

A group of pastry chefs may have baked their way to a new world title after creating a giant two-and-a-half tonne sponge cake.

The bakers spent three days whipping up the colossal sugary treat celebrating the coat of arms of the Austrian town of Seiersberg.

More than 3,000 eggs were mixed with thousands of kilos of flour and gallons of milk before chefs added in sugar and fruit for extra flavour.

Head chef Werner Russ said he was 'proud' of the team's 'very light and tasty' creation.

'It is a normal cake mixture, with a biscuit base, normal cream filling, and is topped with around 500 kilos of fruit,' he said. 

Num, num, num....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to plant a banana tree-or ten...

 

 And today’s thought:

How to solve the energy crisis.

 

 

Angus

 

Lost in the NHS: Paint your asteroid: Nazi Raccoons: Flash-ah-ah: Bog standard goalie: and Tobler-one piece short.

Lots of lack of warm, not a lumen of solar activity, loads of atmospheric movement and little skywater at the Castle this morn, been a bit busy; my Crimbo pressy to me arrived yestermorn-a nice new windows 7 (I can’t be bothered with the new touchy feely 7+1) laptop with stuff like a dual core processor, 8gbs of ram, 16” hi-def  led screen, 320gbs hard drive, DVD re-writer, an sd card slot, usb 3 thingies, hi-def do-da TV attachment, tea maker, oven and grill.

The transfer from the old one went surprisingly well and all my bits have been installed almost to my satisfaction, the only bugbear is that the knobs and whistles on the keyboard are in different places which makes typing a bit time consuming, but I will persevere.

 

All over badly run Blighty

It seems that more than 5,000 confidential patient records are being lost by the NHS every day, official statistics showed that at least 1.8 million sensitive papers went missing throughout the health service in just 12 months.

Among the breaches included data security records dumped in public bins and electronic records found for sale on an internet auction site.

Other security lapses involved details of terminally ill patients being faxed to the wrong number, patient records being stolen and posted on to the internet and unsecured laptops being stolen from homes of staff members.

The Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, has levied fines totalling almost £1 million on NHS bodies over the past six months; among those fined include Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Foundation (£325,000 over 69,000 patient records) and Belfast Health and Social Care Trust (£225,000 over 100,000 confidential paper records) and Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (£90,000 over 59 records).

The worst breach involved a CD containing 1.6 million patient records, including personal details, belonging to Eastern and Coastal Kent PCT.

The CD was lost when a filing cabinet went missing during an office move. The trust was not fined, but signed an undertaking with the ICO not to repeat the error.

Nick Pickles, of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, told the newspaper

"There is a real risk that if the NHS doesn't sort out how it looks after patients' details people will stop sharing information with their doctor and that could be extremely dangerous for care."

 

No shit-wonder if he is related to Eric?

 

Over to the left where it is a bit windy

Sung Wook Paek, an MIT graduate student who won the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition, sponsored by the United Nations' Space Generation Advisory Council reckons that the answer to the asteroid threat is to fire two volleys of paintballs at the space rock.

And for his test scenario, he focused on asteroid Apophis which was the biggest extraterrestrial threat to Earth. In 2004, initial observations suggested an uncomfortably high statistical probability that it may hit Earth in 2029. Fortunately for us, by 2006 further observations refined the asteroid's orbit and a 2029 impact could be ruled out. But there's another impact possibility in 2036, albeit a very, very small one.

By Paek's reckoning, around five tons of white paint powder could be encased in pellets and, through two separate volleys, the majority of Apophis' surface can be covered which will change the asteroids path (release the first volley of paintballs. It would then wait for the asteroid to spin on its axis 180 degrees and release a second volley. The entire surface would then be covered by a thin layer of paint approximately five-micrometers thick, as light from the sun hits an object, a minuscule amount of pressure is applied -- each individual photon exerts a small amount of momentum to the object's surface. If the object is dark (i.e. if the object's albedo is low), more photons are absorbed; if it's light (i.e. the albedo is high), more photons are reflected. By changing the albedo of an asteroid like Apophis, it's theoretically possible to change how sunlight interacts with it. The greater the brightness, the greater the reflected light, the greater number of photons reflected, the greater the solar radiation pressure.)

And twenty years or so later the asteroid is no longer a threat.

 
I do like a barmy scientist...

 

Back totally buggered up Europe

It seems that Adolf may have the last laugh; Raccoons introduced by the Nazis have officially occupied Germany after experts admitted they are there to stay.

The German Hunting Federation says the animals, introduced by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering, will never be ousted.

It follows a spate of complaints by householders of racoons breaking into houses in search of food and shelter in the cold weather.

Federation spokesman Danaiel Hoffman said: "The raccoon is firmly established in Germany, this has to be accepted."

And Magnus Wessel, head of conservation at Friends of the Earth Germany, agreed: "Limiting their numbers is pretty much all that can be done."

Raccoons, which German pest controllers say now number in the millions, often choose to live under houses as they feel safe from predators and can steal food from bins.

As the cold conditions hit, a couple arrived back from holiday to find one of the animals had climbed down the chimney and eaten all the food in their cupboards in Spessart, Hesse.

A raccoon chased off a cat after breaking in through its flap, eating a packet of biscuits and ripping up a cushion for a nest at a home in Kaiserslautern.

Goering ordered the release of a breeding pair of raccoons when he was the Third Reich's chief forester in 1934, to give hunters something to shoot.

More got out in 1945 when an Allied bomb hit a farm where they were being reared for their pelts.

 

Nearly as bad as a right wing lunatic trying to wipe out half of the European population...

 

Over a bit to where there are no builders, plumbers or decorators

 

Police in hot pursuit of a speeding cyclist in Poland were shocked when they finally caught up with him riding completely naked and wearing his pants on his head.

Traffic police moved to arrest the rider after he set off a speed camera in Bialy Bor, northern Poland.

The cyclist, Piotr Chmielewski - then fully clothed - had been flagged for exceeding the 30mph (48km/h) speed limit in place.

But by the time traffic police had caught up with the cyclist they found him completely naked apart from his underwear, which he was wearing on his head.

Local police spokesman Waldemar Lada said: 'He was fined twice - once for speeding and again for indecent exposure.'

 

Wonder if alcohol had anything to do with it?

 

East to the land where radiation hasn’t done any damage-ever

 

The Japanese have come up with the latest sports accessory. The Super Great Toiler Keeper is part mechanical loo and part goalie, able to take on the country’s soccer elite.

The toilet uses motion-detecting cameras to calculate the flight of the ball, pivot on its axis, and fire a small ball from the bowl to parry the incoming soccer ball.

The toilet goalie is the unlikely result of two Japanese companies with similar names and vastly different products, joining forces.

Toilet maker Toto and sports lottery agent Toto pitched their collaboration as an environmentally friendly project.

 

Flushed with success?

 

And finally: 

From the land where chocolate is mountain shaped

 

Toblerone chocolate has been named and shamed with an award for dodgy goods and services for claiming its 400-gram bar has 16 serves when there are only 15 segments.

According to the 7th annual Shonky awards "We measured the actual number of mountains in the bars versus the recommended or serving size written on the packet,'' Choice spokesperson Ingrid Just said of Toblerone.

Other goods and services deemed sneaky and unscrupulous by Choice include so-called Nano technology aimed at protecting iPhones, The Samsung SW70SP 7kg front loader washing machine, Ticketek and Ticketmaster, Cabcharge, homeopathy treatments for restless and irritable kids, and travel services.


Don't you just hate that-should be a law against it...

 

That’s it: I’m orf to get some cheap wood for the furnace

 

And today’s thought:

Just can’t be bothered with the politics of it.

 

 

Angus