The UK Government is still apparently spending around £5,000 a day of taxpayer money trying to find the mole who leaked details of the parliamentary expense claims. The new Speaker, John Bercow, has vowed to stop this blatant waste of public money, saying that it has gone on long enough.
When you can’t do right for doing wrong
In many countries still, the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ remains at the heart of the legal system. In the UK, however, it appears more and more the case that the onus is on the accused to prove himself innocent. This seems to apply both to serious crimes and now, to the lesser (or sillier) crimes, the following being …
La Tomatina 2009
Around 40,000 people attended this year’s ‘La Tomatina’ festival in Buñol, hurling 100,000 kilos of (rotten) tomatoes at each other.
Fat Duck food poisoning mystery solved
Seven months ago, Heston Blumenthal’s Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant was forced to close after around 500 people became ill after eating there. There were all sorts of theories for the food poisoning, including everything from a jealous rival to contaminated mushy peas. However, after a seven month investigation, environmental health experts believe they have found the culprit. In total, 529 …
Back to the carrier pigeon?
The idea started when a worker at Unlimited IT in Durban, South Africa, complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL broadband, commenting that it would be faster by carrier pigeon. Enter Winston, an eleven month old pigeon. Armed with a 4 gigabyte memory stick, Winston took on South Africa’s biggest web firm, Telkom. The race had strict rules, …
PC knows no bounds
It may have been around since 1850, but that hasn’t stopped the PC brigade from taking ‘Spotted Dick’ off the menu. Flintshire Council have decided that this traditional English pudding, whose recipe was first mentioned in 1850 by Alexis Soyer in his book ‘The Modern Housewife of Menagere’, is offensive and has been taken off the menu. The mention of …
A bit of character
Personally, I think street musicians add character and, in some cases, charm to places. These guys were outside the castle in Prague last week. Probably still are!
Want a F1 car? All you need is the bread
Take six chefs, two artists, two technicians, two culinary staff members, and five young volunteers. Give them 15 kg of yeast, 14 litres of water, 2 kilos of salt, and 10,800 mls of varnish. And what do they come up with? A full-sized Formula 1 car made entirely of bread. This little enterprise, currently on show at a hotel in Singapore, …
A Rolling Stone gathers no….fortune
Rolling Stone guitarist Ronnie Wood looks set to be deprived of at least a couple of limbs following a reported out of court divorce settlement.
Theatre checklist: kids? bouncers? Film crew? OK, let’s go
A busy and exciting day in showbiz world. Victoria Beckham, her every move seeming worthy of front page attention, swapped her tight dress (remember, yesterday she struggled to negotiate some stairs in a super-tight creation?) for something more comfy and was able to put one foot in front of the other without too much trouble.