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?