Callin' All Low Life/Tea Leaf Types!

 "The first official estimate of the impact on police of the austerity drive predicted more than 34,000 policing jobs will be lost by 2015, including 16,200 officers." (Telegraph, UK)

Lads and lassies who have a penchant for alighting unannounced in other folks' houses, going on four wheel outings (T.W.O.K. to you) and all chirpy wee light fingered urchins: Listen Up!  Uncle David and Dep Dog Nick have declared just for you:  Xmas...everywhere in the UK.....every day....every year.....forever! Well, perhaps just for as long as Uncle Dave's party of law and order and his shot gun political hubby don't fall out.

Battle of Agincourt: Revisited.

                                          (Photo: Alamy)

From the beginning, Frenchy was totally convinced they would win the battle, so instead of having a good kip after haying the horses, admiring themselves in mirrors and polishing their much too heavy armour, they partied til dawn; celebrating with a goodly vintage and with such capers and mirth, taunting the English army... who were but a quarter of Frenchy's number...as to the whereabouts this eve, of their true and betrothed wenches.

The Day of Battle: Now...it must have been pissing down for it resembled Glastonbury on the third day and Frenchy was already complaining to the referee about how muddy their feathers and finery would get; and there was still that nagging doubt about the wisdom of togging up in obligatory heavy metal gear. Still, the English playing away from home gave Frenchy ground advantage, so potentially a couple of easy points to them. Plan A: a quick knightly charge down to the scruffy Anglo Saxon lines, do the messy piercing and chopping stuff, then gallop back in time to get their kit into the dry cleaners: sorted. But not so quick my garlic ones. The scruff bag English may smell like goat entrails after two days in the sun, but they are long of bow, strong of arm and the sound of T-W-A-N-G as 10,000 Saxon ale swiggers release their arrows, will pucker the sphincter of even the dumbest, charging noble-birthed bloke. And this it most certainly did! So an early bath and nae points for Frenchy by days end.
Their defeat at Agincourt should have been an early lesson in chicken counting...but no. So in WW2 when Jerry came through the Ardennes Forest via the Low Country and around the side of Frenchy's really big wall (aka the Maginot Line) their report card read: too complacent, too cocky, bowled out in six weeks. Yeah, I know 'twas real sneaky of Fritz to do that, but that's Attila's boys for you.

M&M's Big Day Oot!

                                               (Photo: BBC)
"The Murdoch family gave as good as they got during yesterday’s Commons select committee hearing into what they knew (or didn’t know) about the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed their empire. What had been billed as a merciless grilling of Rupert Murdoch, the world’s most powerful media tycoon, and his son, James, was an engrossing affair." (Telegraph, UK)

Former UK politician Dennis Healey's phrase comes to mind about being 'savaged by a dead sheep'. And as for the Telegraphy's idea of a 'merciless grilling'; well it would have got them fired from the Union of Spanish Inquisitors. Half the world's cables and mobile satellite dishes seemed to have been employed, with the hacks all but creaming their jeans over the so called 'engrossing affair'.  For most ordinary working 5 to 9ers the price of tripe is more griping. And anyway, what's new about wire taping, phone-hacking and the boss not knowin' nut'in'.  There's always been fat brown envelopes passed under tables if deemed to be worth the risk of getting a juicy story. It was all so puke provoking watching the media overdose on gravitas, hype and hypocrisy; scribbling below madam guillotine in a flight of phony morality and not so secret delight at Murdoch & Murdoch's humble pie picnic.
It's just one old fox's empire having been found with their undies around their ankles; and next week with a bit of luck it will be some other media glass house that cops for a well placed brick.

Neptune: "No Nippon's Here"

                                                                        (Photo: YouTube)

"The moment when a whale which had been freed from a net “thanked” its rescuers with a breathtaking display of leaps and dives" guffed on the Mirror, UK in it's boak-bagging way.
Just as well for young Humpy then, that it didn't have a close encounter of the terminal kind with a boat belonging to these blubber and big steak lovers hailing from that constitutional monarchy occupying the Japanese archipelago.

Pots Callin' Kettles...

                                                          (Photos: Copyright Control)

Ryanair’s chief executive officer, Michael O’Leary, said “Ryanair believes that the BAA is an abusive airport monopoly, which engages in significant overcharging and monopoly profiteering at Stansted, to fund Ferrovial's [its owner] acquisition and operation of Heathrow Airport.”"(ShareCast)

Well, well, well...as a character in Dad's Army used to say: 'they don't like it up 'em, Mr Mannering'. Now, I might just be a mite prejudiced about the chief executive: Without a jot of information then or ever, the flight cancelled 5 mins before an expected lift-off while standing in the queue at that quaint little out-of-Paris, we close at midnight shed. Any  Ryanair staff around to ascertain the whys and wherefores? Now don't be silly. Or perhaps it was the surprise three day 'I'm a nobody, get me out of here' experience in that exclusive industrial estate hotel which I was assigned to by some unknown French partisans that made my hols complete. Or could it be, all receipts submitted to the above airline's head office, never an acknowledgement and certainly nae a penny o' compo that tipped the balance against the big chief.

When that Icelandic volcano was belching  forth and the jets all over Europe were grounded, was I the sole day dreamer about a certain airline going bust?


 

Neanderthals R Us!

                                           (Photo: iStockPhoto)

Got in-laws, friends, relatives or work colleague that look a smidgen like the chap above? Then here's why. "If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings." So you thought that it was only banjo duelers in the Deep South with interesting  molecular connections. And do gym fiends and body builders have a few more of the N-factor than a concert pianist with long white fingers? It must be a real pisser for White Power supermists to find out that Black brothers and sisters are tad more pure than we mix and match white folks.

 "Britain’s banks were hit hardest in a broader stock market rout of the European financial sector on Monday, as investor nervousness mounted over their euro zone exposure." (FT.com)

How about the USA, UK and euro zone financial basket cases all just declare bankruptcy? It's mostly the Chinese and Arabs that will get their financial bum felt, so who cares. Then we can all design a new shinny currency and start over. Oh, so that wouldn't be acting responsibly? Well, Wall Street et al and the would be banking masters of the universe are the current owners of the present model which by most accounts hasn't quite shone. Yep ... B for Bankruptcy!