Oodles of skywater, even more lack of warm, more than enough
atmospheric movement and not a glimmer of solar stuff at the Castle this last
day of 2013.
Not been a good year for poor old Angus, bits have dropped
orf, clogged up and gone tits up, Grimly Dark Orspitalgot in touch yestermorn to tell me that I
will have to go in to have the arteries reamed next Tuesday instead of
Wednesday because "there is a big case coming in" which will
apparently take all day in the short stay surgery thingy.
Makes you feel important and cared for-not.
But it has been an even worse year for some people-Michael Schumacher is
apparently at death's door after falling orf a couple of flat sticks orf
the piste.
The
old fella dahn in Sarf Africa finally shuffled orf this mortal coil after a
very bad year and to show their love and respect his body was dragged up and
dahn the country to be put on show like an exhibit in a freak show for days on
end by the "management".
Others who popped orf include-Peter
O'Toole, Frank Thornton (who is now finally free), Lou Reed and of course
Maggie (I fucked up the country more than anyone else) Thatcher, Mikhail (my
product has killed many, many people) Kalashnikov, Ronnie (good riddance)
Biggs, and loads of others who I can't be bovvered to mention.
But there is some
"good" news:
Ex
Nazi El Papa Benedict XVI took the easy way out and "retired"
instead ofdoing the right thing and
expiring, and is now living in luxury in the Vatican probably surrounded by
young boys and jack boots.
Have apparently been paid oodles
of loot to switch off their
turbines while storms lashed the UK over the festive period and tens of
thousands of homes were left without power, according to figures published
today.
No change there
then.....
But enough of all this doom and
gloom, let's look forward to 2014, may it be better in all ways than this one,
may all your dreams be fulfilled, may your bank balance equal that of the members
of the sideboard and may your standard of living rise beyond your wildest
hopes.
Lots of lack of warm, even more skywater, not even a cough
of atmospheric movement and negative solar stuff at the Castle this morn, still
no hot water-the “man” can’t get here until Wednesday morn, but he did suggest
that I switch on the immersion heater in the tank-my reply was “have you seen
the price of Leccy lately” to which he made an odd noise and went away.
I
see that the Ex Nazi Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger (otherwise known as the Ex
Nazi Pope Benedict the more than fifteen) has handed in his notice on the
grounds that “I have come to the
certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an
adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”
Oh dear. What a shame, maybe he could spend his remaining
time contemplating the millions of people murdered by his former employer...
It seems that the same sex marriage of the ConTories and the
LibDooms has managed to complete the massive number of seven of the 576 major
building projects in the Government's much-trumpeted national infrastructure
plan, according to a report out today.
Apparently only 1 per cent of the schemes are operational
and just 18 per cent are said to have "started" or to be "under
construction", according to data compiled by Labour from Treasury figures.
Has let go of the tree he has been hugging for the last decade
or so and is preparing to battle authorities after Britain's oldest working
fish smokehouse was shut down after a single resident complained about the
smell.
It had survived for more than 130 years and was bombed in
the Blitz but Walter Purkis and Sons was told to close by Haringey council
following a complaint from a resident in a nearby flat block in Crouch End,
North London.
The Purkis family were informed last month the smokehouse
was in breach of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Clean Air Act
1993.
But Charlie, who has been said to be a strong supporter of
traditional and organic foods, has stepped in to help the owner of the
business, John Purkis, whose family has been in the fish business for
generations.
Last week a female member of the Prince's staff came to see
the Purkis family and asked for details about what had happened.
It was explained that the smokehouse won a reprieve and was
once again allowed to produce its kippers, smoked salmon and mackerel. However
the family were worried the reversal of the ban may only be temporary.
That’s alright then; but are they real fish; could they be
fake fish with Romanian slugs and snails and puppy dog tails cunningly disguised ,
perhaps the dept for Gee-Gee Grub could investigate....
Human beings are not the only creatures on Earth who cause
the climate of the planet to change. Ordinary earthworms also make a
significant contribution to global warming. Scientists believe that in the next
few decades, the population of earthworms will experience a real boom.
The soil produces about 20 percent of global emissions of
carbon dioxide and two-thirds of nitrous oxide. Worms act as architects of this
ecosystem. They make the structure soil more porous and interact with microbes
that produce carbon dioxide. The presence of invertebrates in the soil is
directly related to the amount of carbon dioxide that the soil releases in the
atmosphere. Nitrous oxide produces the bacteria that live in the intestines of
worms. The concentration of nitrous oxide is three times higher in the places
inhabited by earthworms.
A while back, scientists faced the following problem. On the
one hand, worms contribute to the growth of emissions in the atmosphere from
the soil. On the other hand, then help "recycle" carbon dioxide,
hiding it under the ground. This contradiction became known as the
"dilemma of earthworms."
In a new study, an international team of scientists from the
Netherlands, the U.S. and Colombia analyzed the results of 237 separate
experiments that studied the role of earthworms in greenhouse gas emissions,
says the Guardian. The researchers carried out experiments on the
emissions of all types of gas and found that the worms increase the
global-warming potential of soil by 16 percent.
And the results could even be worse if the worms drive about
in cars...
In a world first, a McDonald's franchise in Australia is
offering full table service for its dine-in customers, complete with china plates, glassware and metal utensils in
place of the more usual paper boxes and plastic.
Meals are also brought
to the table by waiters and waitresses, and diners can daintily dab their lips
with cloth napkins after eating.
"It's very
popular," store manager Michelle Steain told Reuters of the five-week trial
service. "Everyone seems to be loving it."
Glenn and Katia
Dwarte, owners of the franchise in Warilla, some 100 km (62 miles) south of
Sydney, sought permission for the idea after their habit of serving Mr Dwarte's
parents with cutlery and plates caught the attention of other diners.
The dine-in offer is
open to customers who purchase premium meals between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. each
day.
More lack of warm than you could shake a set of long johns
at, masses of white fluffy/scrapey scrapey stuff, minimum amounts of
atmospheric movement and fuck all solar stuff as usual at the Castle this morn,
just returned from the stale bread (£1.45) gruel (94ps per tin) and his Maj’s
food run dahn Tesco, bought yet another “charity” fake pound coin for the pay
me or stagger around with a basket trolley thingy (so far I have lost two) and
his Maj is back to his old loony self.
And alien reptile in disguise George (I don’t have to worry
about my gas bill) Osborne is lining up his excuses for his piss poor “management”
of broke Blighty’s economy.
Apparently disruption caused by heavy snowfall across
Britain could see the UK slip back into recession once again, in what would be
an unprecedented setback for the economy.
Back in 2010 Osborne blamed the snow for the UK economy's
poor performance in the final quarter of 2010 and he will probably do it again this
year.
According to Global Insight's chief UK and European
economist Howard Archer "Given
the UK's ability to grind to a halt with even a flake, the snow has come at a
very brittle time for the UK economy, adding to the headwinds that it is
already battling against as it tries to avoid a triple-dip recession,"
2012 saw the double-dip recession begun in October 2011
continue for the first half of the year, before the three months to the end of
September 2012 registered growth of 0.9% boosted by the Olympic Games.
Oh good, it was worth the twenty billion for the jumpy,
runny, throwy, swimmy thing then......
Allegedly UK and
Irish ministers will today sign an agreement that could see some of the world's
largest wind turbines built across the Irish midlands.
Stretching more
than 600 feet (180 metres) in the air, the towers are set to generate energy
for millions of UK homes from 2017.
The UK government
says the Irish power is a cheaper form of renewable than offshore wind.
Under the plan, a number of companies are seeking to erect
hundreds of wind turbines across the boggy midlands of Ireland. The power
generated would be transferred to the UK via undersea cables that would join
the grid at two points in Wales.
One of the
developers, Element Power, says the plan would save UK consumers around £7bn
over 15 years compared to other renewable sources.
The developers also
say that thousands of jobs will be created in Ireland and the economy as a
whole will benefit.
But concerns are
now growing that the turbines needed to provide the power will be of a size and
scale not seen in Britain or Ireland before.
"They will be
spread around 40 clusters in five counties," said Element Power's Peter
Harte.
Because the bog
lands are relatively windless, the company behind the scheme says they will
need to stretch high into the sky to catch sufficient wind to generate power.
The Japanese finance minister Taro Aso, who also serves as the deputy prime monster, had been in office little more than a month when he insulted Japan’s elderly on Monday, calling those who can no longer feed themselves "tube people,” and claiming that treatment for just one patient close to death can cost the government “tens of millions of yen” a month.
He reckons that he would refuse any treatment meant to prolong his life and “I would wake up feeling increasingly bad knowing that [treatment] was all being paid for by the government,” he said during a meeting of the national council on social security reforms. “The problem won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die.”
He obviously hasn’t learnt much since we kicked their arses back in 1945.
A new full course menu of dirt-inspired items at Tokyo
French restaurant Ne Quittez Pas will set you back 10,000 yen or $112.
According to Japanese news site Rocketnews24, the chef at
the restaurant once won a high profile cooking contest with his dirt sauce, so
a full menu of soil-infused courses was apparently the next logical step. The
dirt is a special black soil from Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture and has been
tested for safety and purity (yeah right).
The first course is
a potato starch and dirt soup served in a shot glass rimmed with salt, and is
reportedly way better than it sounds. Apparently it doesn’t have “a dirty
flavour at all.”
The second course
of salad with dirt dressing “tasted so little of the earthiness I was expecting
that I’d kind of forgotten about that ingredient,” writes the reviewer.
The inventors of a
jet-propelled surfboard so they are struggling to keep up with demand.
The Jetsurf is a
cross between a surf board and a jet-ski and can reach speeds of 40mph.
The flat carbon
fibre board has a 100cc engine attached to the back and features a 2.5 litre
fuel tank.
Users stand upright
on the board and use their body weight to steer it from side to side like a
surfer would.
The craft sucks in
water from the front and shoots it out behind, helping it to build up speed
very quickly.
Meanwhile, an
electronic leash which is attached to the surfer's wrist acts as both a
throttle and an emergency kill-cord.
It was developed by
jet-surf.com and the company says it is struggling to keep up with demand for the
£7,000 product.
Technician Ben
Gibson said: "It handles like a surf board and the weight of it isn't much
more than a kite board or a surf board.
"Out of all
the sports out there it is actually closest to snowboarding, as you are not
getting pulled around or waiting for waves like on a surf board.
"We make 20
boards a month, all handmade, and constantly have a waiting list for
them."
A whimsical layer of white fluffy stuff, a whatnot of
atmospheric movement and nary a glimmer of solar stuff at the Castle this morn,
the butler is running out of fat, carbon neutral teenagers to feed to the
furnace and his Maj is in the study clinging to the radiator.
It turns out that the Piss
Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition has managed to find £2 billion
squids to give to foreign projects including wind turbines in Africa and
greener cattle farming in Colombia.
Allegedly the inhabitants of every Castle in backward
Blighty will “contribute” £70 to schemes to tackle climate change in developing
countries before March 2015, under plans championed by Ed Davey, the Liberal
Democrat Energy Secretary.
At a United Nations climate change talks in Doha, Qatar shit
for brains Davey gave details of £150 million in new projects as part of
Britain’s £1.8 billion in “climate aid” for poorer countries within three years
– the equivalent of £70 per household.
Mr Davey said the money should be spent because “climate
change is a global threat and with every passing year, the nature and the
extent of that threat grows clearer”.
Apparently what’s his name-the Deputy Prime Monster hailed
the cash as “fantastic news”.
Up Norfish in Stanley Durham a nice eight foot metal Crimbo
tree with thousands of twinkly blue lights was taken dahn because it was
running on 240 volts, Durham County Councillor Carl Marshall, who helped
organise the festival, said: 'The tree was metal and covered in LEDs.
'If anyone was to open up a junction box or was messing
about with it then there was good risk that they would not just get a little
shock.
“They” have apparently discovered the first dinosaur to have
walked the Earth, a mysterious fossil specimen that has been in the museum's
collection for decades has now been identified as most likely coming from a
dinosaur that lived about 245 million years ago - 10 to 15 million years
earlier than any previously discovered examples.
It has been named Nyasasaurus parringtoni after
southern Africa's Lake Nyasa, now called Lake Malawi, and Cambridge
University's Rex Parrington, who collected the specimen at a site near the lake
in the 1930s.
The creature was about the size of a Labrador dog.
A New Zealand
animal welfare group has spent eight weeks teaching three of its shelter dogs to
drive.
The Auckland SPCA
says it wanted to show how intelligent dogs were to encourage more people to
adopt them.
Three dogs were
chosen from a group of seven and given daily training exercises to familiarise
themselves with the mechanics of driving.
After just eight
weeks Porter, Monty and Ginny were put behind the wheels of an adapted Mini
Cooper and reportedly managed to put it in gear, accelerate and steer.
So far, the dogs
have been driving with the help of an assistant inside the car, but their next
challenge is to drive solo on live television.
Auckland SPCA Chief
Christine Kalin said: "They will hop in, start the car, put it into gear, and
use the accelerator.
"It's an
off-road raceway track and at all times we have a remote capacity to stop the
car should we need to."
Ms Kalin described
the three pooches as "highly adoptable", adding: "They are very
intelligent, but they aren't any more special than any of the other SPCA dogs.
"Our dream
would be throughout our major cities and across Australasia will be people will
be proud of owning a rescue dog."
Bathfuls of sky water, bothersome atmospheric movement,
blissful amounts of lack of warm and bugger all solar stuff at the Castle this
morn, following yestermorn’s battle with the Giant Flying Freudian Penis and
tethering it dahn to the patio I was kept awake by wet stuff dripping on it all
night.
Still watching updates being “installed” on the “new”
desktop and have just returned from the stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s food
and “Dreamies” run dahn Tesco.
And his Maj has discovered the joy of a nice warm TV screen.
Apparently the Mayor of the Smoke has begun a six-day tour
of India to promote business links.
He said the UK could no longer rely on the colonial
sentiments of the past as it seeks to build new business links with India.
Boris Johnson said to simply rely on India's
history with the UK "simply didn't cut the mustard".
BJ began his tour visiting the Akshardham Hindu temple,
before heading to India Gate, in Delhi.
He was greeted by
monks with a garland of rose petals and the traditional kanku - with the red
dot daubed on his forehead.
But a bemused
Indian local mistook him for Wimbledon legend Boris Becker.
Akash Bharadia, 18,
who is spending his gap year volunteering at the temple, said: "One of the
locals shouted out it was Boris Becker while some people asked whether he was
the King of England.
Nah: It’s the king of cock-ups; there goes any hope of trade
with the sub Continent.
Son of a B.....aronet and alien reptile in disguise George (I
enjoyed the sus anal bum party) Osborne is so bleedin bad at his attempts
to do his job that he may have to raise VAT to 25% to balance the budget.
Weak economic growth and lower than expected tax payments
have left a hole in the Chancellor’s plans that may need to be filled by higher
taxes or further cuts to public spending, the Institute for Fiscal Studies
said.
Even under the most “optimistic” forecast, the Chancellor
will miss his target for debt to fall between 2015 and 2016 and should abandon
the goal, the IFS said.
But a more pessimistic assessment suggests that Mr Osborne
will also fail to achieve his key “fiscal mandate”, which is to balance the
budget within five years, the IFS said.
If the current weak growth and low tax receipts are
permanent, the Chancellor will need another £23 billion of tax rises or
spending cuts to be on course to meet his mandate by 2018, the report said.
The think-tank said this would be “roughly equivalent to
increasing the main rate of VAT from 20 per cent to 25 per cent”, or imposing
even deeper welfare cuts than announced so far.
Cadbury’s scientists have come up with a new kind of
chocolate that stays solid in the most sweltering temperatures.
The newly invented Dairy Milk bars can remain in
boiling temperatures of up to 104 degrees for more than three hours before even
starting to soften up
Engineers at the
Cadbury’s research and development plant in Bourneville have set out their
revolutionary technique for making the ‘temperature tolerant chocolate’ in an
8,000 word patent application.
The secret to the
new bars is a change in the so-called 'conching step' - where a container
filled with metal beads grinds the ingredients, which usually include cocoa
butter, vegetable oils, milk and sugar.
Scientists has
developed a way of breaking down sugar particles into smaller pieces, reducing
how much fat covers them and making the bar more resistant to heat
The only snag is that Cadbury’s confectionary invention will
not be available to Brits – even when the weather starts to warm up, it will
only be available in tropical countries thought to include India and Brazil.
With our wevver I don’t think it will make much difference....
There are creatures called Tardigrades which were put
out into open vacuum space and solar radiation for ten days, and survived.
Some of the ones that died managed to mysteriously resurrect themselves
Commonly known as waterbears or moss piglets they are small,
water-dwelling, segmented animals with eight legs. They form the phylum Tardigrada,
and part of the superphylum Ecdysozoa. It's an ancient group, with fossils dating from 530
million years ago, in the Cambrian period. The first Tardigrades were
discovered by Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773.
Since 1778, over 500 new tardigrade species have been found.
Usually, Tardigrades are 1mm when they are fully grown. They
are short and plump with 4 pairs of poorly articulated lobopodial
limbs. Each limb has 4-8 claws also known as disks. Tardigrades all possess a buccopharyngeal
membrane apparatus, which, along with the claws, are used to differentiate the
different species. Tardigrades are covered in cuticle which
contains chitin
and protein.
Is about to give £1 billion of our loot to try to help firms
struggling to borrow from traditional high street banks.
He claims the business bank will be a “lasting monument”
underlining the need for fundamental reform of the banking system in the wake
of the credit crisis.
There have been widespread complaints from small and
medium-sized firms that banks are blocking access to finance and hindering
their ability to expand.
According to the old fart “I am working with the Chancellor
to develop a state-backed institution that will combine up to £1 billion of new
government capital with a larger private sector contribution.”
Ye-fucking Gods! Here’s an idea-why not get back £1 billion
of our money given to the Wanker Bankers and use that?
Middle-class parents and grandparents will be able to use
money from their pension funds to give grown-up children a deposit to get on
the housing ladder, the Liberal Democrats have promised.
The Deputy Prime Monster, revealed details of the “pensions
for property” scheme at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton.
The scheme will be targeted at parents who have built up a
pension fund worth around £40,000 and are nearing retirement.
Lib Dem officials estimated that around 250,000 households
have pension assets of around that value.
They include many public sector workers including teachers
and nurses.
Pension schemes typically allow members to take around a
quarter of the value of the fund in a lump sum when they retire.
Some people use the money for home improvements, holidays or
cars. Ministers said the scheme would allow them to forego such things and help
their children instead.
Under the new scheme, parents would sign an agreement with
their child’s mortgage lender promising that the lump sum will go towards the
cost of the child’s home.
So a parent with a £40,000 pension pot would be able to
promise £10,000 as a deposit on a child’s first home.
Have I slipped into an alternative universe while I was
sleeping?
It seems that beauty contests are a tad different in China, as well as measuring the contestant’s chest, waist, and hips an extra bit-the distance between nipples, if the nipples are not at least 20 centimetres apart, then the contestant is out.
X-rays revealed the eel "about the size of a decent sprig of asparagus," a hospital source told the newspaper.
The eel was removed and the man went on his way. The hospital confirmed the story to the newspaper, but revealed no further details in order to protect the man's privacy.
It was not clear how the eel had found its way inside the man. According to the newspaper, eels are secretive, nocturnal and prefer habitats with plenty of cover.
A teenager accidentally shot himself in the penis and testicle while cleaning his new gun.
Michael Smeriglio had reportedly not had the gun for longer than a month when the bizarre (and painful) accident happened.
While cleaning his weapon 9the gun, not his knob) 18-year-old Smeriglio somehow pulled the trigger and fired a shot which went through his penis and left testicle.
Doctors say the bullet ended up getting lodged in his thigh, though Smeriglio is now recovering from the ordeal.
During their investigation of the incident, police reportedly found marijuana in the house.
