The Pirate Party, founded in 2006, look set to enter Berlin’s state parliament after exit polls suggest they attracted 8.5% of the vote. This means they would oust the Free Democrats, Angela Merkel’s junior partner in the unpopular national government.
Grab your lederhosen and head for Munich
The largest festival in the world, the Munich Oktoberfest, began on Saturday and continues for the next couple of weeks with an estimated six million people expected to attend.
Imagine the phone bill!
A Dutch woman who called a man 65,000 times during the past year, which is an average of 178 calls a day, is now set to face charges of stalking. Lawyers say the woman claimed to be in a relationship with the man, which he refutes, and denies that her actions were excessive. At an initial hearing the woman was …
A bit of initiative can make all the difference
Bill Bennett wrote to M&S asking for a refund after he was mistakenly charged £3.00 for a £1.90 salmon sandwich at a store in Taunton, Somerset. Mr Bennett received a reply offering him a gift card, but it never arrived and so he wrote again, cheekily asking for a ‘hand-drawn picture of a smiley dinosaur’ to compensate ‘for the inconvenience’.
Another successful Day
At the age of 87 years, Doris Day has become the oldest artist to score a UK Top 10 with an album featuring new material, according to the Official Charts Company. Doris Day’s new album My Heart has entered the charts at number nine. It is a mere 62 years since her debut album was released in the US.
And still nothing changes
Sir Stuart Bell, Labour MP for Middlesbrough, is under pressure from the Labour hierarchy to explain himself following claims that constituents are unable to contact him. Sir Stuart readily admits he has not held a local constituency surgery since 1997 and has no office in his constituency, despite paying his wife Margaret £35,000 a year to work as his office …
Hard to believe
People are forever having tremendous problems as a result of squatters moving into and trashing their homes when they leave them unattended for more that a day or two, so this should really help matters in the UK.
Unhappy down under
Australian Christians are not very happy, to say the least, about changes to the national curriculum that will see the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) dropped from text books in favour of the neutral, more politically correct, non-religious terms BCE (Before Common Era), BP (Before Present) and CE (Common Era).
Bog standard
A new record time has been set in the annual world bog snorkelling championships in Powys, Andrew Holmes from Halifax, West Yorkshire, taking less than 90 seconds to complete two lengths of a 55m trench and smash the previous record, set last year by Brecon’s Dan Morgan, by more than six seconds.
So, what is the point of a long sentence?
Dubbed the Beast of Sligo, one of Britain’s most notorious paedophiles, Irishman Joseph McColgan, appears to be back on the streets and free to mingle with children and families after being spotted at a car boot sale in Plymouth, Devon.