A Property Developer With A Good Sense of Humour
The Times today reports that property developer, Peter Beckwith is going to build a large data centre called MK Data Vault on a site once owned by Robert Maxwell in Milton Keynes. He has invited Mirror Group pensioners, who had their pensions stolen by Maxwell’s greed to attend the demolition.
Newt Gingrich Faces His Biggest Fight
Newt Gingrich seems to have one of the biggest requirements for a Republican Presidential Candidate; stupidity.
According to this piece in the Guardian , he has now started to use Eye of the Tiger, the theme song from Rocky III as his campaign song. But Newt didn’t ask permission from the copyright holder.
I suppose Newt could fight Sylvester Stallone for the right to use it. Now that would be a fight worth seeing, but it would be rather pointless, as I think Sly doesn’t actually own the rights.
So helpful Guardian readers have provided some suitable alternatives for Newt.
D.I.V.O.R.C.E
Space Oddity
Frontier Psychiatrist
Tragedy
When Two Fools Collide
Stupid White Men
You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly
Etc. Etc.
But the two I like are Born to Lose by Ray Charles and Go Now by The Moody Blues.
What Have Fred Goodwin, Allen Stanford and Robert Mugabe Got In Common?
They all have lost their knighthoods, although Mugabe’s was honorary. But they would make a wonderfully well-matched set of dinner party companions!
But count your fingers after they’ve left.
One ruined the currency of one of the richer countries in the developing world, another stole virtually all the cash in a series of islands and the third helped to create a banking crisis that affected much of Northern Europe.
The Americans Don’t Have A Sense of Humour
It’s all here.
I rest my case!
Now we have even more reasons to not visit the Land of the Hi-tech Death Penalty!
The Elsenham Level Crossing
NetworkRail has pleaded guilty to causing the death of two girls at the Elsenham level crossing in Essex.
There is now an immense footbridge there, so you don’t have to walk over the level crossing. It would be a difficult climb for someone like me at 64 with a dodgy heart valve. So does everybody use it? Sometimes level crossings with proper warning systems are much better for most people, except the stupid and impulsive. At a similar level crossing at Foxton, pedestrian access across the tracks is controlled by locks on the gates controlled by the signalling system. That system has been at Foxton for years, so why wasn’t it installed Elsenham?
Further north, just south of Newmarket there is a level crossing on the Ipswich to Cambridge line at Six Mile Bottom. It is on a long straight road with a thirty miles per hour limit and the crossing has barriers and flashing lights. But it still manages to have had a couple of cars hit trains in the last twenty years.
My view has always been that all level crossings should be eliminated on railways, as they have always been a major place for tragic accidents. And also for suicides, as at Ufton Nervet, where several people died. But to eliminate some level crossings, like say the one at Six Mile Bottom would cost several million pounds.
A Crap Cheap Lock
My second bedroom was fitted with a lock by Gerry, but I never received the keys when I bought the house.
So as I might be renting the room out during the Olympics, I felt it might not be a bad idea fit a new lock. I easily removed the faceplace from the lock to get at the screws that held it into the door and managed to price the lock from the door without much effort.
But when I came to fit the new lock, that I’d bought for ten pounds or so, I couldn’t get the faceplate off, as when it had been assembled one of the screwed had been jammed in at an angle. in the end I completely stripped the cross head of the strew, due to the large amount of plastic in whatever metal it was.
A Cheap Crap Lock
So as the picture shows, I will now have to buy a new lock again, just because the one I bought was so crap. The faceplate bent, whilst I was seeing if I could use a bit of brute force and ignorance to free the screw.
The Anonymous Widower 