Peace and Quiet

Forget chocolates, presents and breakfast in bed- all most mums want for Mother's Day (this Sunday- 3rd April) is a long lie-in.  It also emerged what many mums hope for on Mothering Sunday and what they will actually get are poles apart.  While one in three said they were dreaming of a lie-in only one in six are confident they will actually get to enjoy one.

One in four would love someone else to clear up after dinner but it will only happen for around one in ten.  Mums who would like a day without arguments will be similarly disappointed.

Here We Go

SEBASTIAN Coe has launched the first tranche of excuses about why something in the Olympic Stadium doesn't work.

Don't even think about it

With just 16 months until the games begin, many had feared workers would run out of time to explain why the toilets don't flush and all the seats are facing the wrong way.

But Lord Coe said: "It's a beautiful testament to British buck-passing and I can't wait until the opening ceremony to be given the chance to explain why the place is half-empty and smells like a cesspit.

"I don't think anybody wants to see a re-run of the disgraceful scenes in China with its breathtaking spectacle running like clockwork.

"And if they do, they're barking up the wrong ill-conceived, mindblowingly expensive and ultimately ruinous tree."

Some have cited the stadium's completion on time and under budget points to a successful project not requiring excuses, but the builders have promised that will all change as soon as anybody tries using the electrics, the plumbing or any of the floors.

Coe added: "Then there's the issue of a transport system unable to cope with a coach party of pensioners from Leeds, let alone the numbers associated with a hamfisted international sporting event, to concoct excuses for.

"And, lest we forget, the whole thing is in East London."

The stadium will be opened officially next week by Lord Coe and London mayor Boris Johnson, who will then launch an immediate enquiry into why there was piss everywhere.

DMash

Ryanair Insurance

GROUND-breaking budget airline Ryanair has unveiled the industry's flimsiest every bullshit excuse for a price rise.

The whingeing, sky-based hellhole said it would have to add £2 to ticket prices because of some EU ruling about volcanoes and winter.

Industry analysts said it was yet another game-changing manoeuvre from the business which finds up to 137 different ways a year to charge people more money for doing less, while ocassionally flying them to the country they actually want to go to.

Nathan Muir, from Madeley-Finnegan, said: "It's the carried-away-on-the-breeze flimsiness of these excuses that leaves their competitors flailing.

"Whether it's the shoe charge, the not being punched in the face charge or the paying the wages of some poor Filipino to empty out the big tank full of piss and shit charge."

But beleaguered flyer Jane Thompson, said: "There's always some fucking 'reason' isn't there?

"How's about you just tell me how much it costs and let me make my choice without boring me with the details of your latest pissy-fit with some bureaucrat you appalling, money-grabbing little tosspot?"

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said: "The European Union, in its wisdom... hey, shut up I'm making an important point here.

"The European Union, in its wisdom... where are you all going? Come back and listen to what I have to say.

"You're ruining my price increase!"  

DMash

Not Having It

After beginning legal proceedings against the decision to give the Olympic Stadium to a team that deserves it, Tottenham Hotspur have begun the long battle to redefine the term ‘bad losers’.

Tottenham are challenging the way in which the Olympic Park Legacy Committee made the decision to give the stadium to a club nearer, and who plan to use the stadium as it was designed.

“No, I’m sorry, but I’m just not having that. We are Tottenham Hotspur, and we don’t lose out to West Ham. In anything. And if I have to get a load of lawyers on the job to prove it them I will.”

“We want the Olympic stadium, and if can’t have that, then we want our own entry in the dictionary right – just above Bad Lover and Bad Lower Back.”

Sports fans have insisted that they are not in the least bit surprised by Tottenham’s legal challenge of the decision to give the Olympic Park stadium to West Ham.

Rugby fan Mike Williams told us, “It’s lovely to see a sports team completely ignore the final decision of the officials and then go bleating about it to anyone who’ll listen. Did anyone seriously expect anything different from professional football?”

Spurs season ticket holder Ben Goldberg told us, “I have a dream, a dream that in years to come when people talk about bad losers, it will immediately conjure the image of a massive cock. On top of a football.”
NT

Half the 999s

Government budget cuts across the Police system will see public sightings of ‘bobbies on the beat’ fall from ‘extremely rare’ to ‘never’, according to police officials.

Police budgets are being cut 20% over the next four years, with all constabularies insisting this will have a direct impact on the sort of front line policing that you never see anyway.

A spokesperson said, ”The sight of a policeman or policewoman walking the beat is an incredibly reassuring one – for the two or three people a year that witness it.”

“These dramatic cuts will deprive those extremely lucky few people of the security associated with seeing the police wandering about looking authoritative.”

“Sightings of police officers on the beat are a national institution, and as such are revered as highly as sightings of Santa, or Jesus – and now the government is going to remove the admittedly tiny chance of you experiencing it yourself.”

Members of the public are unhappy at the cuts, insisting that seeing a Bobby on the beat is one of those lifetime ambitions they have yet to fulfil.

Karen Williams told us, “I saw a policeman walking on the street once, he was going past the chip shop. No-one believed me, obviously, but I definitely saw him. Definitely”

Mike Chappel added, “Yeah, I thought I saw one once too, but it turns out it was just a plasterer on his way to a fancy dress party.”

“He looked at me funny and said that the police hadn’t dressed like that since the 1920s. How the hell would I know that?”
NT

Top Gear

Some car manufacturers including US firm Tesla still appear to be under the misguided impression that the BBC’s Top Gear programme is about reviewing cars, a new survey has discovered.

As US electric car manufacturer Tesla began legal proceedings after the show mocked their electric sports car, the new survey has shown they are not alone in giving any weight whatsoever to anything at all said on the programme.

Television owner Sam Mitchell told us, “I’ve seen the Top Gear programme, yes, and it’s abundantly clear to me that it’s just a show about creating highly contrived scenarios in which they allow three men in their forties and fifties to act like children. Right?”

“I mean, ‘can you turn a Robin Reliant into a Space Shuttle’ is the sort of question I’d expect to hear from an eight-year old, and certainly not one answered at extortionate expense on a show purporting to be about reviewing cars.”

“Are you telling me that some people treat it like a consumer advice programme? What sort of moron would base any sort of significant purchase decision on anything that Richard Hammond said, seriously?”

“That would be like deciding on what music to purchase based on which Simon Cowell television show you watch. Oh.”

Tesla are to sue Top Gear after the presenters claimed it would struggle to drive over a volcano, would look rubbish falling off a cliff, and would fail miserably in a snow rally.

A spokesman for the firm said, “They made some jokes at our expense, and we didn’t like it. Yes, that’s about the gist of it really.”

Sam Mitchel continued, “If you accept it for what it is, boys pissing about with machines, then it’s a passable hour of mid-range entertainment, I suppose.”

“But please, whatever you do, don’t mistake it for a serious programme about cars.”
NT

Going Down in America

What kills an industry? Technological innovation or global competition.

Take a look at this list from market research firm IBISWorld.  It's for US industries, and it's sorted by industry size:

  Six of the 10 are clearly getting killed by technology: wired telecoms (i.e. landlines); newspapers; game and video rental; video postproduction; record stores and photofinishing (i.e. photo printing).

Two of the 10 are clearly getting killed by global competition: apparel manufacturing and mills. (Mills, in this context, basically refers to what we think of as textiles — it includes textile mills, textile mills, apparel mills and carpet and rug mills.)

The other two industries on the list — manufactured home dealers and formal wear.

Formal wear, as it turns out, is getting killed indirectly by foreign competition: Globalization means tuxes and the like are cheaper. So, the report says, "consumers are more inclined to pay a marginally higher price to own their formal wear rather than rent it for each occasion."

Manufactured homes (aka mobile homes) may be the exception. The IBISWorld report argues that manufactured home sales are stagnant because the industry is not innovating, and that sales are likely to continue falling in the coming years.

But a big chunk of the industry's trouble in the past decade came from the housing and credit boom. During the boom, it became much easier for people with low incomes to get mortgages to buy traditional homes.

From here.

Ay...

Henry Winkler, who played Arthur Fonzarelli on the show Happy Days, is celebrated in his hometown of Ulliott, Minnesota with a small statue depicting a "closed hand" with a thumb raised skyward.

Cool.

Got the Time, Cock?

69,679 views, Mar 30, 2011 9:00 PM

The Harry Winston Opus Eleven doesn't need watch hands.  It's got main cylinders which disintegrate and re-assemble every hour to tell you the time.

The three cylinders are meant to "deconstruct" time- with the biggest circle housing 24 placards that rotate and move every hour on a complex series of gears. The small top circle displays the minutes while the small bottom circle displays the beat of a titanium balance-wheel.

And they ain't cheap either- there are only 111 of them being made at $250 000 each.

Coming Down Hard- Maybe

Public concern at the way footballers behave has been around since long before the Premier League came into existence.

Whether on the pitch or off it, football's highly paid players and managers attract controversy and criticism unrivalled by any other sport in Britain.

This season has been no exception. From Ashley Cole firing an air rifle at a Chelsea trainee to Manchester United and Liverpool players getting involved in mass confrontations, the problem never seems to get any better despite the intense levels of scrutiny.

It is against this backdrop that the 20 Premier League clubs have decided to draw a line in the sand.

The chief executive Richard Scudamore told me in an interview that the moment had come to "raise the bar" on the standards of player and manager behaviour in English football.

Starting next season, the League, working with the League Managers' Association and the Professional Footbllers' Association, will look to introduce a new zero tolerance approach to on-field misbehaviour.

Scudamore highlights the crowding and intimidation of match officials, criticism of referees and foul and abusive language.

As the employers of players and managers, the clubs say they have the power to set new standards for professional behaviour.

They are then hopeful of persuading referees to get tougher on players who step out of line by booking and sending them off instead of turning the other cheek.

All laudable stuff and about time too, you might think.

But haven't we heard this all before? Is the situation really any worse than at any point in the last 10 years?

Scudamore acknowledges the point, saying it may not be deteriorating, but it certainly isn't getting any better.

What has changed, he suggests, is the public's capacity to accept bad behaviour from players. At a time of great economic uncertainty for many supporters, the spectacle of multi-millionaire players and managers behaving so appallingly sticks in the craw. He says they have a greater responsibility to behave.

There is also a worry that what young and amateur players see on the TV filters down to the parks at weekends. A BBC report earlier this week showed assaults on referees at grass roots have increased alarmingly this season.

So Scudamore and his team of policy advisers at the League may well have detected a shift in public mood.

The League is also, no doubt, conscious of the potential damage that is being done to the Premier League's money spinning brand. And with the London Olympics just around the corner, football and its stars will be exposed to a distinctly unflattering light when compared with the heroes of the velodrome, rowing lake and pool next summer.

But there is another motive behind Scudamore's zero tolerance crackdown.

Next Tuesday he and chairman Sir Dave Richards will face the parliamentary inquiry into football governance. It might be the Football Association who are in the select committee and government's sights but make no mistake it is the perceived failed relationship between the FA and the Premier League which put them there.

By announcing the intention to get tough with miscreants of the pitch and the dugout, Scudamore is hoping to take the sting out of any difficult questions about overpaid players being poorly disciplined and regulated.

He is also stealing a march on David Bernstein's FA by showing the League to be the innovator in football regulation at a time of structural weakness at Wembley.

This is all smart political calculation from a man widely accepted to be the best administrator in the game.



But does his new policy add up to much?

Beyond urging referees to get tougher and clubs agreeing to "raise the bar" where is the actual detail? Where is the commitment to tougher fines and other displinary measures for those who misbehave?

Sure, employers can set guidelines but when the pressure is on at the top or bottom of the table, are clubs really going to risk upsetting a star player who could be the difference between winning or losing the league?

And here is the fundamental weakness in English football - the FA's retreat from its core purpose and mission has allowed the Premier League to step in and fill the space, even though they face questions over a conflict of interest in certain areas of regulation.

It is exactly why the culture select committee is examining English football. And it is exactly why the Government continues to threaten to introduce legislation if the game doesn't take responsibility for failings which go way beyond a few on pitch brawls and bad headlines about referees.

BBC

Big Deal

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore has announced a crackdown on the "unacceptable" behaviour by players and managers towards referees.

"The clubs unanimously backed the idea that at the start of next season we want to raise the bar."

The new campaign will target abuse of match officials as well as surrounding them and unacceptable criticism and trying to get opponents sanctioned.

Really?  How exactly are you going to achieve this, when the managers are the biggest culprits.  Nice idea in theory but still a waste of time for these spoilt brats.

More at the BBC.

Back in Black

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club has returned to profit thanks to its success in Europe this season.   The club made pre-tax profits of £4.2 million during the last six months of 2010, up from a loss of £8.3 million over the same period the previous year, while turnover increased 49% to £79 million.  Chairman Daniel Levy said:

"Our first-half figures reflect a strong performance, buoyed by the contribution from our participation in the Uefa Champions League."

Tottenham's operating expenses rose to £61.5 million, up from £48.6 million, due primarily to the costs associated with having a larger squad, but in the club's half-yearly report it said this was off-set by the "significant increase in revenue" the club brought in from its campaign in Europe this season.

It said merchandise sales increased by 22% and sponsorship and corporate hospitality revenue grew from £12.7 million to £16 million.

Spurs returned to Europe's elite competition for the 2010-11 season, having waited 48 years.  The club qualified for the Champions League by finishing fourth in the English Premier League last season and now face Real Madrid in the quarter-finals on Tuesday.

Food for Thought

From the BBC.


There is, I will admit, something slightly absurd about journalists ranking the deeds of our finest sportsmen and women: who am I, to whom greatness is a stranger, to judge greatness in others? And how 'great', really, is someone who happens to have been conferred with the talent of ball control? Mandela-great? Give me a break.

Yet there was lionisation of gladiators in ancient Rome and wrestlers in ancient Greece, suggesting it is inherent in humans to be awed by the athletic prowess of others. No pub bores back in Neolithic times, but there were probably caves full of blokes arguing over who was the greatest tree-climber ever. Even Nelson Mandela, usually taken up with more cerebral matters, admits one of his biggest heroes is Muhammad Ali.

So, let's have it then: how great is Sachin Tendulkar, who goes into Saturday's World Cup final needing to score one century to have amassed 100 in international cricket and one win away from sending the nation of India into meltdown? To answer that question, first it is necessary to define sporting greatness. Then we must address whether Tendulkar fits each component part of that definition.

Don't worry, this isn't a university thesis. But Tendulkar hagiographies are everywhere, and for a full-on love letter to 'The Little Master', you can read a blog I wrote before the World Cup kicked off in earnest, what seems like a eternity ago.


When Andrew Flintoff retired from cricket in 2009 arguments raged in the media and in pubs across the land as to whether he was great or not. I said not, because the first component part of greatness is cold hard statistics.


Tendulkar has scored 51 Test and 48 ODI hundreds in a 21 year international career. Photo: Reuters

In 79 Tests and 141 one-day internationals, Flintoff scored eight centuries and took five five-wicket hauls, and never a 10-fer. South Africa's Jacques Kallis has to date played 145 Tests and 314 ODIs, scoring 57 centuries and taking seven five-wicket hauls. In addition, his bowling average in Tests is better than Flintoff's (the Englishman's ODI bowling average is, admittedly, markedly lower).

If a great cricketer is someone whose numbers are comparatively better than all or almost all of his contemporaries, then Kallis qualifies. Flintoff does not. Tendulkar, meanwhile, has scored 30 more tons than the next highest century-maker in international cricket, Ricky Ponting, which puts the Indian out on his own. Miles out, in fact, just like Don Bradman's vertiginous batting average.

Flintoff was a cricketer who occasionally did great things, which is different from being a great cricketer. Which takes us to our next component parts of greatness - longevity and consistency of performance.

To have scored 99 international centuries, it has been necessary for Tendulkar to be at the top of the game for more than 20 years, which in any sport is extraordinary. In that time, he has suffered nary a blip. He had a rough time in Tests in 2006, but the following year he scored 776 runs at an average of 55.4. Not much of a blip.

Paul Gascoigne, one of my few footballing heroes, had more talent in his big toe than most England footballers playing today. But truly great? I would have to say no - too few highlights, far too many lows.

John Daly has won two majors in golf, but only one tournament since claiming the Open Championship in 1995. Does that make him a better golfer than Colin Montgomerie, who has 40 professional wins to his name spanning 18 years, but none of them a major? And if so, does it follow that Daly is necessarily a great? Again, I would have to say no.
 
For many, Muhammad Ali is the benchmark for greatness in sport. Photo: Getty

Longevity was a big part of Ali's greatness - he won Olympic gold in 1960 and regained the heavyweight world title 18 years later. Mike Tyson, past his best by the age of 24, does not even make venerable boxing historian Bert Sugar's all-time heavyweight top 10.

Sugar, meanwhile, has Britain's Lennox Lewis down at 18 in his list. This is frankly bizarre, but I can understand his thinking: Lewis' achievements, Sugar would no doubt argue, are downgraded by a lack of competition. Competition and rivalry are also significant factors in greatness.

Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal are considered by some to be the two greatest tennis players of all time, and that is in large part down to the fact they have amassed 25 Grand Slam titles between them by having to beat each other on a regular basis.

In Tendulkar's first Test, against Pakistan in Karachi in 1989, the 16-year-old faced fearsome pace duo Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis and he played during the last flourishing of great West Indian quicks. Against Australia, the world's best team for much of the last 20 years, he averages 46 in ODIs and more than 60 in Tests. Like Federer and Nadal, like Nicklaus and Palmer, he thrived against the best.

But where, I hear some of you ask, are Tendulkar's medals, concrete proof of a sportsperson's greatness? Truth is, Tendulkar has won nothing of note. But this is often the way with team sports, especially modern cricket, where the best play almost exclusively in the international arena and the World Cup is the only thing of note to win.

A better gauge of the greatness of team players is how they perform on the biggest stage, and to that end Tendulkar is peerless. In six World Cups, Tendulkar has scored the most runs (2,260 to date), most centuries (six), most 50+ scores (21) and the most runs in a single tournament (673 in 2003). Sure, he has not won a World Cup (yet), but Italy rugby captain Sergio Parisse has a fair few Six Nations Wooden Spoons in his imaginary utensil drawer and is considered at number eight for any world XV.

Last, it is necessary to look at how Tendulkar has gone about his business - the manner in which he has achieved what he has. Personally, I don't subscribe to the view that Tiger Woods is any less great because of his personal travails or because he spits and curses on the course. But there are those who think Tom Watson, for example, is the greater golfer because of his more dignified nature.

Temperament-wise, Tendulkar is more Watson than Woods. During three decades at the pinnacle of his sport, under the glare of more than a billion countrymen, there has been barely a hint of controversy. Indeed, some would argue he has been a little bit dull, that a bit of off-field strife or outspokenness would have made him a more engaging figure.

But it is impossible to imagine the pressure Tendulkar is under. As the signs at his home ground in Mumbai will say on Saturday: "If cricket is a religion, then Sachin is God." The poor bloke has enough on his plate without inviting more attention, and perhaps only Manny Pacquiao, whose fights stop wars in his native Philippines, can truly empathise.

Where Tendulkar is concerned, it is not a case of whether he is great, but how great. Ask a member of England's Rugby World Cup-winning side of 2003 who the most important member of the team was and there is a good chance he will say Richard Hill. Hill is a bona fide great, but he is fortunate in that he can stroll round his local supermarket and hardly anyone will recognise him.

The true greats - the really, really, really great - transcend their sport, become almost god-like, and gods don't go to the supermarket for their shopping. Tendulkar, a legend in his own career, is on the top table, up there with Tiger and Jordan and Pele. Not the greatest, though - I'm with Mandela, that simply has to be Ali, the greatest great there has ever been and probably ever will be.

My short list of names consists of Muhammad Ali, Bjorn Borg, Viv Richards, Valentino Rossi, Michael Schumacher and Pele.  But then that will no doubt change tomorrow when I've had time to think about.

High Colours

Before 1954, each Burnt Sienna Crayola Crayon contained approximately 1 microgramme of LSD.

April Fool Gags Part 8

You say Pinana...

 Last year Waitrose supermarket announced it was stocking an exotic new fruit: the Pinana, a hybrid combination of a pineapple and a banana. The advert read: "Fresh in today and exclusive to Waitrose. If you find that all Waitrose pinanas have sold out, don't worry, there's 50% off our essential Waitrose strawberries."

April Fool Gags Part 9

Natural blonde

 Stuffy global agencies aren't known for their jokes. Which made it all the more believable in April 2002 when the World Health Organization released a report claiming that natural blondes were likely to be extinct within 200 years. It said that due to the proliferation of dyed blondes and a genetic weakness, the last natural blonde would probably be born in 2202. The study was revealed to be a hoax and the WHO denied conducting the research.

April Fool Gags Part 6

Typographer's idyl

 On April 1 1977 The Guardian published a seven-page supplement on the semi colon-shaped islands of San Serriffe, situated somewhere in the Indian Ocean. The two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse and the editorial was littered with other puns and plays on words relating to typography. The islands were used for subsequent hoaxes in 1978, 1980 and 1999 and they often turn up in the paper's cryptic crossword.

April Fool Gags Part 7

The magic of colour TV

 In 1962 colour TV seemed like a magical thing in Sweden. So when its one television channel broadcast an advisory by the station's technical expert Kjell Stensson telling viewers that they could manually convert their black and white sets into colour by covering the screen in a nylon stocking, thousands of people gave it a try. His technical explanation for the peculiar activity was that the fine mesh of the material would cause a reconfiguration of the light particles emanating from the screen. Viewers were advised to tilt their heads from side to side to help with the readjustment process.

April Fool Gags Part 5

Tales of Nessie

 Loch Ness and its mythical monster have provided a wealth of material for hoaxers. In 1972 a team of zoologists from Yorkshire's Flamingo Park Zoo had gone out in search of the legendary monster and soon discovered a large body floating in the water. They retrieved the corpse, which reportedly measured between 16 and 18 feet and weighed up to 1.5 tonnes, and was described by the Press Association as having "a bear's head and a brown scaly body with clawlike fins." The creature was put in a van to be taken away for testing, whereupon police chased them down and took the cadaver under an act of parliament which prohibits the removal of "unidentified creatures" from Loch Ness. The case attracted worldwide attention, with the press reporting the discovery of the "son of Nessie." But it was later revealed that Flamingo Park's education officer John Shields was responsible for setting up his colleagues in an elaborate hoax. He had shaved off the whiskers and disfigured a bull elephant seal which had died the week before, and dumped it in Loch Ness to dupe them.

April Fool Gags Part 4

Jumping at it

 Well known television astronomer and national treasure Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 on April fool's in 1976 that due to an unusual alignment of planets, known as the Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect, Earth would have a temporary reduction in the gravitational pull. He urged listeners to jump at exactly 9.47am to experience weightlessness. Thousands called in to say they'd felt the decrease in gravity and one woman even claimed that she and eleven friends "wafted from their chairs and orbited gently around the room."

April Fool Gags Part 3

Alarming underwiring

  In 1982 the Daily Mail reported a series of signal interferences in fire and burglar alarms, television and radio broadcasts due, it claimed, to the manufacture and sale of bras containing extremely conductive copper underwire. The report claimed that the combination of body heat and nylon caused the copper to produce static electricity which interfered with signals.

April Fool Gags Part 2

 

Left-handed Whopper

Burger King launched a marketing campaign for its 'Left-handed whopper' on April 1 1998. A press release sent out at the time estimated that nearly 11 million left-handed customers visited the fast food outlet in the UK each year. A spokesperson from the Left Handed Club is quoted as saying: "We are delighted that Burger King has recognised the difficulties of holding a hamburger in your left hand that has a natural right bias to it. We urge all left handed hamburger lovers to visit their nearest Burger King and taste the difference for themselves."

April Fool Gags Part 1

The Independent celebrates the day by offering us its top 10 favourites, which we shall put up over the next few posts.

The Swiss spaghetti harvest

 In 1957 the BBC news show Panorama broadcast a programme reporting that farmers in the Swiss canton of Ticino were enjoying a bumper spaghetti harvest. The clipped BBC voiceover states benevolently: "Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland isn't carried out on a scale similar to the huge spaghetti plantations of Italy, but is a more domestic industry". He goes on to describe the regions' struggle with the depredations of the dastardly spaghetti weavel and their recent triumph over it. The story was so convincing that hundreds phoned into the BBC either to query it or to ask how to grow their own spaghetti trees.

Click here to watch it (or see previous post)

The Best Ever

Oh, Dear

A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt , and is named "Ahmal", the other goes to a family in Spain and is named "Juan". 

Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother.  Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal.. 

Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

"New" Look

A minor tweak as mum said she couldn't quite make out the titles of the posts due to their colour.  I've made them a bit darker, so hopefully that will make things a bit easier. 

Or just use the bigger laptop.  :o)

Rising Cost of Groceries

A third of all store robberies in America are committed for food items.

More Engineers

An engineer was crossing a road one day, when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess."

He bent over, picked up the frog, and put it in his pocket.

The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn back into a beautiful princess and stay with you for one week."

The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.

The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you for one week and do anything you want."

Again, the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.

Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess and that I'll stay with you for one week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?"

The engineer said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."

Summer Hols

In a bid to cut back on wasteful heating and fuel bills, British parliament is to shut from 1st September 2011, all the way through the winter, until 1st April, 2012.  MPs will "work from home" to cut costs to the tax payer and members of the public are being encouraged to visit them at their house(s) to discuss matters of the constituency.  It is also another way to ensure no false claims can be made for commuting.

The houses of parliament will still remain open for certain periods but only for guided tours of the facilities for tourists, who will be asked to wrap up warmly as all heating is to be switched off.  Tour guides will carry torches to help interested sightseers see, and a packed lunch will also be provided.

Tickets will start from £25 but there will be discounts for groups of 10 or over.

More details at House of Parliament.

Beans Meanz Veggies

Baked beans and peas is the new Heinz tin idea, designed to get kids to eat their greens.  If this proves successful, carrots and spaghetti will be considered and sprouts with frankfurters.  

Sounds gross but if children like it, why not?

More at TTel.

Five Years

We have reached quite a milestone with our travels as April Fool's day dawns.  We've been on the road for five whole years and have never looked back.  I feel that is quite an achievement, given that most of our friends gave us "three months- tops" before they expected us to come back to the UK.  Far from it.

Here's to the next 5 years and beyond.  :o)

Beeragers

There is to be a new style of beer on sale soon, which mixes the traditional art of real ale brewing techniques with the German lager styles.   

Nick named beeragers, they will last much longer in the pumps than standard ales and have an ABV of 7% upwards.   

Dark, nutty brown in colour, they will still have a fizzy head and will be on sale in half or full litre glasses.

Fosters, Boddingtons and Green King are all due to bring their new brews out in time for the summer and expect to pay £3.50 for the equivalent of a pint.

More details at TTel.