Jacqui Smith - she’s a goner

Surely, surely this woman isn’t getting re-elected...

80p claimed on expenses for a bath plug - good work.

At least Dave Cameron had the balls to put mortgage interest on his.

The Home Secretary might want to look into the police account of Ian Tomlinson’s death during the G20 protest.

So, instead of not touching him at all... the police flattened him. Fancy that.

MPs up to their snouts in swill, shock

MPs are really getting their snouts well and truly stuck into the trough.

This from the Telegraph.

The maximum rise in the price of any item sold in the Parliamentary catering establishments will be capped at five per cent this year - despite food and drink prices rising by more than 18 per cent in supermarkets.

The deal, agreed by senior MPs at a meeting last month, means the taxpayer will have to provide a £5 million subsidy for food and drink sold within the Palace of Westminster.

The controversial price-capping scheme has been introduced despite growing public anger over the generosity of MPs expenses. The Parliamentary Committee which agreed the scheme is headed by Sir Stuart Bell, a backbench MP who has led the protests against the leaking of information about MPs' expense claims.

Susie Squire of the Taxpayers' Alliance condemned the decision. ‘It's unbelievable that after the handsome salary and perks MPs receive that they are trying to squeeze even more money out of taxpayers,’ she said.

‘The rest of the country is having to pay more to put their own food on the table. Yet again, this shows that too many MPs are out of touch and unconcerned as to the realities facing their constituents. This is damaging both the democratic process and the British public's faith in Parliament.’

MPs already benefit from heavily-subsidised food and drink prices. For example, a cup of tea costs 30p, a breakfast about £2.10 and a pint of lager is about £1 cheaper than in nearby pubs. They are also able to claim for groceries bought when they leave the Commons.

Statue of the week award

One of London’s finer statues - Merchant Navy chap at Tower Hill looks out towards distant convoys and dreams of hot cocoa.

Back to the early 80s...

Holy crap.

Here we are, 25 years later and things look strangely familiar.

Talk of 3m unemployed within the year.

IRA murderers gunning people down for the sake of it.

Russia and China grumbling about the West and rattling their sabres.

England about to lose a Test series in the West Indies (and to follow it - probably - with Ashes defeat).

Taxpayers starve as Goodwin eats caviar

Well, it’s not that far off the truth.

So let me just get this straight.

After tax, Greed is Goodwin will take home about £33,000 every month.

However, if RBS had been allowed to collapse he would receive just (I say ‘just’ though it’s a lot more than I and most others will ever get) £20,000 per year from his pension.

So... RBS has so far received more than £45 billion in public funds, which means the bank is 70-per cent owned by the taxpayer. Without such a bail-out, the bank would have collapsed, and all pensions would have been transferred to the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).

The PPF guarantees 100 per cent of final-salary pensions in payment, and 90 per cent of those yet to be paid, up to a maximum of £28,000 per year. As this amount gets lower if a member retires before 65, a member retiring at 50 would be able to receive a maximum of £21,952 per year.

Dr Ros Altmann, an independent policy adviser, told The Times: ‘Sir Fred Goodwin should be treated like any other member of a pension scheme whose company has gone bust – he should be transferred to the PPF. There is absolutely no social justice or rationale behind taxpayers propping up banks to ensure that chief execs get paid such obscene pensions.’

Greed is Goodwin

There was a time when a chap knew what to do in the event of a catastrophic failure on his watch.

It involved the whisky bottle and the service revolver.

Today we have the largest corporate loss in history from RBS - a mind-numbing £40 billion - and the man in charge is not only not blowing his brains out he’s trousering £650,000 a year, for life.

This is after he has not only brought down his own company, but wrecked the prospects and savings of countless others.

And it has all been done with the collusion of the government.

Shocking, shocking stuff. There seems to be no bottom to what the banking industry is capable of.

Boy marries dog

A toddler has reportedly been married off to a dog in eastern India in a bid to prevent his predicted death by a tiger.

The ceremony, at a Hindu temple in Orissa state’s Jajpur district, was conducted with all the rituals observed at traditional weddings.

It included a dowry for the bride - the village bitch.

The dog sported two silver rings and a silver chain, the UNI news agency reported.

Parents of the groom, 18-month-old Sangula, were advised to arrange the marriage when they noticed a tooth growing from their infant son's upper gum.

The growth was considered to be a bad omen in the boy’s tribal community.

Village elders believed it would lead to him being killed in a tiger attack - a fate preventable, according to tribal tradition, by marrying a dog.

Ancient terror brings horror to Borneo, shock

Looks like there could be a humungous monster out there in the forests of Borneo, gobbling up pigs, goats, people - you name it.

(Though maybe not as scary as the giant rat of Sumatra - and less likely to fit in you rubbish bin).

Locals reckon it’s an incarnation of the Nabau, a legendary snake more than 100ft in length and with a dragon's head and seven nostrils.

Villagers living along the Baleh river in Borneo believe the mythical creature has returned after a photo of a gigantic snake swimming along the remote waterways has emerged.

The picture, taken by a member of a disaster team monitoring flood regions by helicopter, has sparked a huge debate about whether the photos are genuine or merely the work of photo-editing software.

Even the respected New Straits Times newspaper in Kuala Lumpur has asked readers to make up their own minds about the photos.

People who have studied the photograph of the shape taken from the air have dismissed suggestions that it's a log.

As one writer asked: 'A log can't be that winding, can it?' Others have suggested it's a speedboat, but this has been dismissed because of the twisting wake.

The most common accusation is that the photo has simply been manipulated on a computer, while others complain that the river is a different colour to the real Baleh river which is a murky brown.

But villagers who insist the snake exists say that photos of the creature being taken in different parts of the river prove it is swimming about.

Earlier this month scientists unearthed the fossil of a killer snake that was longer than a bus, as heavy as a small car and which could swallow an animal the size of a cow.

The 45ft long monster - named Titanoboa - was so big that it lived on a diet of crocodiles and giant turtles, squeezing them to death and devouring them whole.

Weighing an impressive 1.25 tons, it slithered around the tropical forests of South America 60million years ago, just five million years after the last dinosaurs were wiped out.

Partial skeletons of the boa constrictor-like prehistoric killer were found in a Colombian coal mine by an international team of fossil hunters.

Giant rat of sumatra caught and eaten (maybe)

A chinese ratcatcher has caught a giant rodent – weighing six pounds and with an impressive 12-inch tail – in a residential area of Fuzhou, a city of six million people on China's south coast.

Says the Daily Telegraph (and you have to love the DT for reports such as this in the troubled times).

‘The ratcatcher, who was only named as Mr Xian, said he swooped for the rodent after seeing a big crowd of people surrounding it on the street.

He told local Chinese newspapers that he thought the rat might be a valuable specimen, or a rare species, and had to muster up his courage [I should jolly well think so] before grabbing its tail and picking it up by the scruff of its neck.

"I did it, I caught a rat the size of a cat!" he shouted out afterwards, according to the reports. Mr Xian is believed to still be in possession of the animal, after stuffing into a bag and departing the scene [maybe, but having read the last paragraph I wouldn't be certain Mr Rat hadn't been served up in black bean sauce by now].

The local forestry unit in the city identified the nightmarish creature [hang on, what about journalistic impartiality] as a bamboo rat from initial photographs, but said that it would need to examine the rat more closely before making a final identification.

Chinese bamboo rats rarely grow beyond ten inches and are found throughout southern China, northern Burma and Vietnam.
However, the Sumatra bamboo rat, usually found in the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan and in the Malay Peninsula can grow up to 30 inches long, including tail, and can weigh up to eight pounds.

A "Giant Rat of Sumatra" is mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes tale: The Adventure of a Sussex Vampire.

All bamboo rats are slow-moving and usually spend their time in underground burrows, feeding on bamboo. Chinese bamboo rats are often sold for meat in Chinese markets. The largest rats in the world are thought to be African giant pouched rats, which can grow up to 36 inches in length.’

More on why bankers deserve shooting

This from Simon Carr in the Indie on the subject of greedy bankers. Good stuff.


Latterly, the top performers were getting Renaissance fortunes, the second level got second homes and the failures got Porsches. How did bankers pull that off? They are just very, very good at getting their manicured hands on other people's money. Even now, in their chastened state, they offer to take their bonus in shares rather than cash. But the shares are 15 per cent of what they were at the height. When the value doubles and trebles over the next five years the directors will be vastly richer than if they'd been paid in money.

Yet there is something our leaders might say to these insulate beneficiaries. "We'll save your firms from bankruptcy but as your new owners we've got new rules. Existing bonus contracts are void. You'll get a utility salary with nothing on top. You won't leave for jobs elsewhere because there aren't jobs elsewhere. And if there are, you won't get them because you'll have a court case pursuing you. Yes, chum, if you bale out we will prosecute you for a) trading while insolvent, b) fraud and/or theft, or c) misfeance. Now unravel these securities and derivatives and get this bank back on its feet."

Many think regulation is the answer. No, revenge is the answer. You can't specify what people should do in every situation. It is incentives that guide employees. The risk of catastrophic personal loss in the event of losing the money they were entrusted with – only that will produce the culture of responsibility politicians are after.

Darling, poor fellow, is out of his depth in all this. He assures us he will squeeze out "excessive risk-taking" from the banks. He has no idea what that means. I speak as one who sold his house to buy talking clocks. Was that an excessive risk? I don't know yet, so how would he know? The difference is – the money at risk was mine.

Hedge funds, operating with their own money, behave very differently from banks playing with other people's. The funds were leveraged just 1.7 times (now fallen to 1.4 times). Banks were leveraged up to 50 times. The wildest hedge fund ever to go broke – Long Term Capital Management – was only leveraged 33 times. Banks went to play out on the margins of finance with our money and they took home billions.

Fair play suggests they should pay for their current failure with their houses, their Bentleys and their children's school places. They want to participate in success – well and good. The principle, as the PM used to say, is symmetrical. The Chancellor has feebly agreed that "contractual bonuses" are sacrosanct. But surely insolvent companies don't have the right to enforce such contracts.

And where has the idea of a guaranteed bonus come from anyway? What is this modern contradiction in terms we are locked into? The "bonus culture" has been smuggled into the public sector – quangos, councils, ordinary administrators, they're all at it. The philosophy is: "Thanks for the job offer. We'll do it on a work to rule basis. We can do it properly if you want – but it's extra."

The fact is, the "extra" that bankers got depended on how much they behaved like Nick Leeson. Leeson ruined Barings, these fellows ruined their banks. The difference is that Leeson went to jail.

Quote of the week

‘Liberty’s postbag suggests that the House of Lords is more in touch with public concerns that our elected government. Over the past seven years we’ve been told “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”, but a stream of data bungles and abuses of power suggest that even the innocent have a lot to fear.’

Director of pressure group Liberty Shami Chakrabarti

Clarkson labels Brown idiot cyclops

Jeremy Clarkson. I find myself warming to him. He’s doing very well to be so un-PC and yet to have escaped major disciplining by the BBC.

Now he has called Gordon Brown a ‘one-eyed idiot’. Terribly offensive, but very ‘on’ the Clarkson brand.

Speaking at a press conference in Sydney, he compared Mr Brown to Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, after Mr Rudd had just addressed the country on the global financial crisis.

According to The Australian newspaper, he said: ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a world leader admit we really are in deep s***. He genuinely looked terrified. The poor man, he’s actually seen the books.

‘[In the UK] we’ve got this one-eyed Scottish idiot, he keeps telling us everything’s fine and he’s saved the world and we know he’s lying, but he’s smooth at telling us.’

Carol Thatcher in the doghouse

From the Guardian... (and everything else)...


Carol Thatcher faces being banned from the BBC after she referred to a tennis player as a ‘golliwog’.

Thatcher, the daughter of former prime minister Lady Thatcher, made the remark in a private conversation in the green room of The One Show after the broadcast of the BBC1 programme on Thursday night.

Sources have said that Thatcher will not be used again on the show, where she is a roving reporter, until she formally apologises to those who were offended by the remark.

According to insiders, Thatcher – who won ITV1 reality series I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! in 2005 – was chatting with The One Show host Adrian Chiles and guest Jo Brand about the Australian Open when she described an unnamed player as a ‘golliwog’.

Camo cow blasts bunnies

Ah, a mad cow story of a different kind. This from the Press Association...

Paul Coppen, 69, who supplies London's oldest restaurant with pedigree beef, was struggling to keep an army of rabbits from stripping his pastures bare.

So in an attempt to gain the upper hand, he camouflaged his vintage Massy Ferguson tractor as a cow - complete with a firing platform and a gunslit from which to blast the unwary bunnies.

He admitted the disguise - a black and white heifer painted on a wooden board fixed to the side of the vehicle - was not entirely foolproof.

He said: 'One of my neighbours, Stan Mitchell, came up with the idea and helped me out, and I just went with it. I hoped the rabbits would ignore the fake cow, thinking it was just another member of the herd, thereby presenting a stationary target for the rifleman as I drive about the farm.

'A driver-cum-rifleman was cunningly camouflaged behind a picture of a tree above the cow. Maximum angle of fire was achieved by pointing the air-rifle through a horizontal slit above the cow, not unlike the firing positions in Second World War pillboxes.

'It has to be said that not all rabbits are entirely fooled. Whereas cattle obviously do move around, trees usually don't and that may be a problem.'

Mr Coppen has farmed at White Close Hill, near Bowes in County Durham, since 1975. Beef from his herd of pedigree Belted Galloways - an ancient breed probably derived from Celtic stock - is supplied to Rules, of Covent Garden, London's oldest restaurant.

'I won't pretend this device is going to be the be all and end all of rabbit control - but it does seem to startle them somewhat and stops them from scampering away too quickly, which give us a chance to have a shot at them.

'Luckily, no cows have been accidentally shot so far and Granite Brain, the stock bull, has not displayed any amorous or belligerent intentions towards the glamorous heifer depicted on the side of the tractor.'

Quote of the week

‘I'd like to throw these guys in the brig. They're thinking the same old thing that got us here, greed. They're thinking, “Take care of me.”’

US Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr on taxpayer-bailed-out Wall Street bankers intent on giving themselves fat bonuses.

Time to start executing some people

Truly ghastly and proof of how bloody dangerous our cities can be.

I’m not a death penalty fan, but the perpetrator of this needs a bit of Iraqi justice - ie, bullet in head.


A man who was fatally stabbed at a London bus stop last night was taking his three-year-old daughter to hospital to meet her newborn brother, it emerged today.

The 26-year-old victim, who has not been named, is thought to have been attacked after becoming involved in an argument with another man in London Road, west Croydon, shortly after 6.15pm.

He was taken by ambulance to Mayday Hospital, in Croydon, where he was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

A 22-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder remains in custody at a south London police station.

The detective leading the investigation described the circumstances of the murder as "particularly tragic".

Detective Chief Inspector Cliff Lyons said: "This was a shocking attack in a public place in the early evening.

"The victim's three year-old daughter was with him when he was attacked, though fortunately she wasn't physically injured.

"Even more tragically, his partner had given birth to a son just that morning."

More con than Conway, pt2

In a further fit of pique I just googled Henry Conway and found this rather excellent piece by Monique Webber, written in the Times.

It’s on the subject of Choffs - Chavs who think they’re toffs.


‘Nothing, however, quite compares to the deluded decadence of Henry Conway, son of the disgraced Tory MP Derek Conway, who once threw a F*** Off I’m Rich party in a Chelsea nightclub and describes himself as “blond, bouncy and one for the boys”.


HOW TO SPOT A CHOFF [according to Monique]

Wears a signet ring slightly too shiny to have been inherited. Actually, wears any kind of signet ring at all. Has acquired an accent that sounds entirely different to the rest of the family, who all live up north. Obsessed with Brideshead Revisited and Anthony Trollope. Is described by friends as being OANAL (Oxbridge Attitude, No A-levels). Asks what you’re doing “this season”. Looks for new Facebook friends in Tatler.

Attends Chinawhite’s Rock the Polo event religiously, but fails to get into the Cartier tent for tea. Used marriage as an excuse to adopt a double-barrelled surname. Bristles when confronted with someone who went to a public school of higher status. Shops at Smythson, has applied for planning permission for a roof wind turbine and hangs out in Notting Hill in the hope of bumping into Dave’n’Sam.‘

Disgraced Derek Conway given gentle ticking off over thieving taxpayer cash

Good head in the trough action from disgraced MP Derek Conway who is being asked to pay back a piffling £3,757 of the £82,000 of taxpayers' cash that he paid to his sons Henry and Frederick for little or no work.

A year ago, the Committee on Standards and Privileges hammered Conway by suspending him from the Commons for a whole ten days for his indiscretions (the brutes).

The Standards and Privileges Committee has now concluded that Henry's starting salary was not ‘unreasonably high’ - despite being £800 above the recommended level - and despite the fact he wasn’t actually doing any work.

The Parliamentary watchdog said: ‘We expect him to apologise to the House for his breach of the rules by writing to our chairman.’

OK - so this gent trousers £82,000 of the taxpayer’s hard-earned and he has to write a letter of apology. If, on the other hand, a regular citizen fails to pay a parking fine within 10 seconds flat, they end up being hauled off to the debtors’ prison in double quick time.

Any wonder that MPs are so keen on the Freedom of Information Act applying to everyone but them? And her Majesty, of course.

The incredible greed of Lloyds bankers

Good effort by the bloated fatcats of Lloyds Banking Group, who have sounded out their non-government shareholders about a salary increase for directors.

The City institutions they approached don’t appear to have been that keen on the idea. Which is probably nothing to what the taxpayer thinks about the proposal.

You greedy, useless, arrogant bankers. Having played a key role in wrecking the economy while getting paid millions, you now want more. Your highnesses have surely lost the plot, no?

Lloyds will soon be dealing with its HBOS acquisition and laying off 20,000 staff or thereabouts. Accepting a salary increase (let alone a big incentive package) against a backdrop of redundancies and branch closures would be the act of a true Lloyds banker – to coin some rhyming slang.

Masturbation is good for you…

Well, it might be if you’re a man over 50... according to a University of Nottingham survey extrapolated in the Independent.

That’s because it may protect against prostate cancer ‘because it helps remove toxins that have built up over a lifetime’.

The bad news, sorry, the ‘other’ news is that too much masturbation in your teens, 20s and 30s can increase the risk of prostate cancer. Lots of people out there are no doubt thinking: ‘Sod it. Bit late to find that out.’

Says the Indy: ‘The findings showed that those who had been most sexually active in their twenties – having sexual intercourse or masturbating more than 20 times a month – were more likely to have the cancer. Frequent masturbation, but not sexual intercourse, in the twenties and thirties was significantly linked with the later development of prostate cancer.’

(20 times a month...)

Polyxeni Dimitripolou, who led the study published in the British Journal of Urology International, said: ‘One theory is that during the early years the prostate gland is more susceptible to hormonal changes and is still developing. As men age and accumulate toxins from the diet or through their lungs , sexual activity may help release them. Studies have found toxins in the semen and the fluid produced in the prostate. As you age it is more important to flush them out.’

There’s a raccoon up my tree

Imagine the surprise of Ena Webber from Christchurch, Dorset.

She thought she saw a cat in a tree in her back garden so, being a keen bird watcher, she crept up on the beastie intending to give it both barrels from her water pistol.

Imagine her surprise, then, when she realised it was a... raccoon.

She said: ‘At first I thought it was a cat; then I realised it was a raccoon. It was about 10 feet up the tree. The only time I'd ever seen raccoons before was in a zoo but I knew exactly what it was.

‘He didn't seem a bit bothered by my presence and looked as if he just wanted to go back to sleep.’

The RSPCA were called and put the animal in a cat box. He or she is now apparently being cared for by said organisation.

Mother trains three-year-old to smoke

No, it’s not April 1st.

Here we have another account of a half-wit moron who is being kept in generous fashion by the taxes of the workers - well, is being kept in cigarettes, anyway.



A single mother who allowed her three-year-old son to smoke cigarettes at home was freed by a judge today - for her children's sake.

Mother-of-three Kelly Marie Pocock, 24, was accused of letting the little boy smoke in his bedroom and around the house.

A court heard family friend was so concerned she used her mobile phone to film the youngster puffing away.

She handed the evidence to social services who alerted police. Pocock was arrested for child cruelty.

The single mother was yesterday given a 40-week jail sentence - but it was suspended for two years after a judge said her children had suffered enough.

Judge John Curron said of the case: 'This is one of the most extraordinary I have ever come across.'


(Really? Fancy that...)


Prosecutor Jonathan Rees said: 'The video demonstrates the boy placing a cigarette into his mouth, lighting it with a lighter and sucking.

'He was drawing smoke clearly into the lungs and seems to do it with some accomplishment.

'It doesn't cause him any discomfort. He is sat on a chair close to the mother, who is talking on the phone.

'It's clear that the boy, at the age of three, knows what to do with a lighter and cigarette.'

The judge told Pocock: 'This is an appalling situation and I don't see how you could have been unaware of the fact.

When sentences and crimes don’t add up

Three men who filmed themselves gang-raping a 16-year-old girl before dousing her in caustic soda were today sentenced to between six and nine years in jail, reports The Guardian today.

Not very tough sentences, given that this gang has left her with scarring to 50 per cent of her body and unlikely ever to lead a normal life.

One of the accused, however, was not sentenced. That is because he, Stephen Bigby, was stabbed to death in a gang fight in Oxford Street before he could face trial.

Not much sympathy for him, given that: 'The men had used their mobile phones to record the suffering of their victim... They could be heard laughing during the attack. Her attackers – possibly as many as 10 of them – had hoped the powerful corrosive would destroy forensic evidence.'

Politicians are fond of saying that society isn't working, but this really seems to prove that. Just what sort of upbringing have this men had to behave in this way? It is so far short of civilised behaviour it defies belief and the sentences meted out do not seem to mirror the crime committed.

Spinster slain by slipping suitcases, shock

The Daily Mail today reports the case of Joan Cunnane, whose demise reads like some ghastly kind of Biblical retribution for an addiction to shopping. Perhaps Gordon Brown should take note.

Joan was a spinster who, says The Mail, ‘obsessively hoarded clothes’.

She died after a mountain of suitcases fell on her, burying her alive.

She had so much stuff she was left with only a 2ft-wide path to get around them, and her car and garage were packed with other goods.

The Mail adds: ‘After she was reported missing earlier this week, it took police searching her home two days to sift through her possessions.

Miss Cunnane was eventually found buried under a 3ft pile of cases in a back bedroom where she had apparently gone in search of a favourite item.

Yesterday, neighbours spoke of their shock at the macabre death of Miss Cunnane, a retired BT operator and devout Roman Catholic who attended church services every weekend.

Her closest friend, Roy Moran, 77, said: 'I think it just gave her pleasure to buy things - none of it was really essential. I once asked her how many scarves she had.

She said she thought about 300. I asked her why she needed that many. She said they were all different colours.

'She bought everything. It had been going on over 16 years from when she bought the property.'

Miss Cunnane had enjoyed Christmas dinner with Mr Moran, a retired hospital supplies worker, before returning to her £170,000 bungalow in Heaton Mersey, near Stockport.’

Why on earth do we need to know the value of her property, I wonder?