Cigarettes in Plain Packaging
Surely, if plain packaging became the law, anyone who was smoking from a coloured or fancy packet could have obtained them from illegal sources and should get some well-deserved third degree from the police.
Obviously, if there was no satisfactory explanation, as to how they obtained the fags, they would be confiscated.
Political Correctness Runs Amok
Not my words but a headline in the Daily Mail for this article. It’s all about New York City banning the use of a list of fifty words in tests. One was dinosaur because it might upset creationists.
Who cares upsetting them, as they are a ragbag collection of religious idiots who deny the truth and logic of science.
Read David Attenborough on the subject of creationism here.
Now We Know What Freemasons Get Up To
In both The Times and the Metro this morning, there is a similar article about the sale of a rather extreme convertible Rolls-Royce nicknamed the Honeymoon Express. Here’s the piece from the Metro. I particularly like this paragraph.
It was originally delivered as a chassis to the coachbuilders who adapted it for a high-ranking Manchester freemason.
Now we know what freemasons get up to in their spare time!
The car is coming up for auction next month! I shall not be going!
France’s Public Finances are as Precariously Balanced as a Drunk on a Tightrope
This phrase was used in the second leader of The Times today. I like it.
The leader also goes on to use that wonderful English word; pootle.
My Concise Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t have the word. I think it must be a London word, as C often used it.
But it is in the online version of the OED and is defined as.
move or travel in a leisurely manner
It was a strange word though for a serious piece in a serious newspaper.
The Zopa Return Rate Is Up
The Zopa rate so far this year has been 7.4 % before tax, including all costs and bad debts. This time last year the rate was 5.98 %
From my figures, it looks like they are short of borrowers. Have the banks finally got their act together or is it that the economy is turning?
It could also be that the bad publicity of payday loans is rubbing off! Their only connection is that they have a snappy name and they give loans, but they are a peer-to-peer lender, not a payday loan company.
Worse To Be Late Than Racist
According to this article in the Guardian, Manchester City have been fined €30,000 by UEFA for returning to the field late for the second half of their match against Sporting Lisbon.
This compares with a fine of just €20,000 for Porto for racially abusing Manchester City’s black players.
The logic of this defies me and I suspect every other person in the UK, be they a football fan or not. To take a simple example.
Does this mean if my bus is on time, I can’t racially abuse the driver, but if it is late, I can? Or is it the other way round? Not that we do this in London or in fact anywhere in the UK, even if the bus driver is a UEFA official doing a job on the side.
Wot No Fountains!
It is always reckoned that if you want it to rain on your event, you ask the Queen, as she is renowned for bringing the rain.
But the current drought has even stopped the fountains in Trafalgar Square, as this article in the Telegraph outlines. Here’s two pictures I took today.
The visitors don’t seem too bothered. The Queen’s bad luck doesn’t seem to be having any effect. It will of course bucket down at the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics
Climbing The Shard
It would appear that a group of intrepid climbers have climbed the Shard by London Bridge station. Read the story here in the Belfast Telegraph.
People and especially students have always been doing this.
At Liverpool in the 1960s, I was in a year with Alvin John Slasser, who was usually known as Sean.
One night he climbed the crane of the Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool, which was being built at the time. I suspect that the Shard was taller, although the crane was several metres taller than the cathedral and Sean did claim to have gone right out to the driver’s cabin.
Sadly, Sean is no longer with us. In the first year of the course he died in a freak climbing accident in I think North Wales.
If there is something tall there, someone will climb it!
It must have affected me greatly, as when C named our second son, he had a middle-name of Shaun. She got the spelling wrong.
Santorum Gives Up
I think this is good for the world, as he would have made one of the worst US Presidents ever.
With all the religiously-driven troubles around the world, the one thing we don’t need is an extreme right-wing Catholic, totally out of kilter on womens’ issues and humanity in the White House.
He should crawl back with the dinosaurs and reeducate himself about the real world, where contraception and abortion are commonplace and legal, women work and guns and the death penalty are something you read about in history books.
Everton’s Cup Odds Have Just Shortened
Liverpool might still win their game tonight against Blackburn, but to have a second goalkeeper sent off in a week or so is careless.
Everton must be looking up for the FA Cup at the weekend.
The Anonymous Widower 