A Dog has claimed that a man punched him in the face whilst he was in a Colchester pub. The dog, who is a resident of the Fox And Hounds pub, and sometimes tries to communicate with drunk people, claims the incident took place last night. …more
WALES last night insisted that it is alive and well after reports linked its demise with Electric Ant Arsonists. Possibly tens of English people were said to be mildly curious for not more than 20 seconds before forgetting about it and promptly getting on with job of pomposity. WALES, Welsh Against Laudable English Superiority, had thought to have been wiped out following the attack. …more
Chancellor Obama last night revealed plans for a fairer Health System for all Americans, particularly the ‘can work, won’t work’ demographic. The proposed ‘Peoples Well Being System’ is based on a concept of fusing the health system the bad guys had in the 1984 movie ‘Red Dawn’ and the British National Health Service (NHS).
The NHS was born of Britain’s lack of population control after doing a thoroughly good job of limiting the prospect of yet another big war. When confronted with the possibility of peace in Europe the Labour Communist Workers Alliance for the People Party needed a system to kill as many British voters as possible. The proposal for a state run health service was quickly put in place and has been starving Britons of first world health services ever since, limiting the population there to a manageable 60 million.
With the prospect of the War on Terror, now in its 8th season, getting a bit boring for the average US voter Chancellor Obama has pledged to mimic the NHS …more
The National Health Service has been under attack from some Americans who are holding the system up as evidence that Barrack Obama’s health reforms are a bad move. Britain’s free at the point of delivery system has been used by the President’s opponents to show how a “socialized” system would be bad news for patients, providing a low level of care. …more
I had a fair few toys when I was a kid – but there was one toy that it always came back to. Lego. I just couldn’t get enough of those little bricks – and the seemingly unending scenarios I could conjour up.
Lego childrens toys
When I look at the kind of childrens toys today, it seems that there is a missing element of imagination. I don’t mean the toys themselves are lacking in imagination – some are excellent – but I mean that there is limited capacity for the child themselves to be imaginative.
I think this is where those bricks were so good. It’s true, you got instructions to build a certain model – be it a house, car, boat, castle – whatever – but after you’d got tired of the model, you could simply take it apart and start building another completely different one.
And of course the best thing about Lego that makes it one of the best childrens toys (in my opinion) is that you could use the bricks from, say, a castle – and make them into something like a spaceship instead.
In terms of learning, I think that Lego must be responsible for many an engineer’s career. More than that, I think it probably inspired the storytelling element of childhood; you could come up with infinite variations of conflicts and situations. Admittedly, most of my stories involved laying siege to a castle and somehow destroying it.
You could get Lego on all sorts of themes – many of which are now long gone. Castle, Space, Pirate – something for every taste and imagination.
Video games now account for a great deal of childrens toys – and although they are often hugely impressive – do they stimulate the imagination of the child concerned? I would say it probably doesn’t – but nevertheless, they are great fun.
Still, it’s not like they don’t sell Lego anymore. And if you really can’t bring yourself to buy your child a box of Lego – just buy the latest Lego video game instead!
Ok go! Well, I think charity shops are the bee’s norks because they sell a whole range of fascinating nonsense – with a level of service you’d expect from the Ritz. The old ladies that staff these smelly-old-dress emporiums are constantly on the lookout for someone to assist; resulting in the best place to get hold of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle with a statutory 25 percent reduction in pieces.
Where else can you wander into a shop and ask for a tie, where a little antiquated madam slowly mounts 3 flights of stairs, rummages round a bit the loft, then returns, very slowly, with half a tonne of the most flee bitten ties ever to have dodged the bin collection – no I haven’t finished this sentence yet – and where she watches you sort through each tie for a good 20 minutes, only to make an earth-shattering 45p for her efforts once you’ve decided on the hilarious Snoopy tie?
Not only this, but the low-key, musty atmosphere of the charity shop means that the people who visit them feel right at home, and will strike up conversations immediately about anything. It’s basically a place where old people come to chat to each other whilst eyeing up the latest in 1987 knitwear.
And it’s not the corporate ones I like either – it’s the ones with the odd little names that have a grand total of ONE BRANCH. I’m thinking the Exeter Rabbit Rescue Association, or The Dunstable Senile Society. In these you HAVE NO IDEA what’s going to happen when you walk through their front door.
As more and more of our pubs shut each day, more and more charity shops spring up to replace them. The charity shop is clearly the new public house – fast becoming the mainstay of British society. In a country where everything is put into little boxes and given a label, it is refreshing to saunter into these chaotic jumbles of books and clothes – invariably staffed by Miss Somerset 1956 – and find a 2nd edition copy of the Thames Tidal Barrier 1974-82 for only 10p. Where else can you do this?
Britain is to conduct a national debate on the issue of food production for forthcoming years. It might come as a surprise to some people that Britian is thought to be 60-65 percent self sufficent. The nation imports 20 percent of its food from Europe and the rest from other areas (obviously).
It’s pretty amazing such a little island can provide most of its food for its 60 million people – so one naturally wonders if it could provide the whole 100 percent if it had to? With modern farming methods many would argue that unlike the dark days of World War One and Two, where Britain’s food supply was sometimes under extreme pressure due to reliance on food from abroad – we could could perhaps sustain oursleves.
Obviously, we’d have to do without exotic fruits like oranges. And pineapples would be but a distant memory.
The really worrying thing would be that if we has to be totally self sufficent, we would no longer be able to buy in challot and chive Boursin cheese from our French cousins. Wouldn’t that be terrible? Admittedly, it’s only 20 miles to France and it’s made in the north of the nation – so it’s not too far.
I for one would be willing to train to be an Olympic style swimming person, and swim across to get a couple of packs of the mouth watering stuff.
Of course, this all brings up the question of what circumstances we would be facing if we couldn’t import Boursin from France? Whatever it is, if survived World War Two without Boursin, we can do it again. Just send the SAS to get some for us.
The world famous daytime TV personality Sandi Toksvig has been sacked from her role playing her ‘Gluttenpeepe’ (a kind of annoying Danish pipe) in weasel folk band The Weatles. The news emerged last night after Brian, the band’s lead singer, gave a short interview to waiting reporters outside his weasel hole in Hampshire.
“We realised, when we were rehearsing recently, that Sandi took up too much space in recording studio.” The Weatles have been recording their latest album entitled Stuck In The Farmer’s Snare in a hole in an old tree.
“She’s always taken up a great deal of space, but when Bubbles was pushed out of the studio by Sandi’s massive bum, we knew things had to change.”
Bubbles, who is the band’s bass player, reportedly sprained one of his front legs in the alleged incident involving the Danish TV star. He uses his front leg to strum tunes such as I fell In Love With A Stoat (Why Oh Why?) as well as top 10 hits like Stealing A Sparrow’s Egg and lesser known songs like I’m A Wriggly Bastard.
Sandi has been linked with other weasel related accidents and is reportedly under surveillance by the RSPCA. She has been in 3 weasel folk bands in as many years, with commentators suggesting she’s been seducing individual members of each band in order to play her Gluttenpeepe to large, overawed audiences.
“She ticks all the boxes for a young weasel,” according to Gary, a small weasel from Basingstoke, and Weatles fan, “it’s no wonder she’s bedded half the weasels in the weasel folk band industry.”
This is a great one to serve your husband when he gets back from a grinding day at the office. Us housewives are always busy with ironing and Jeremy Kyle, but this quick and easy meal shouldn’t eat into your schedule too much.
What you need to do is like get some potatoes and take their skin off with some sort of implement – perhaps a potato peeler – and then give them a bit of a boil. Just 5 mins. But wait! before you do this get a leek or something (no, actually get a leek) and then slice it up proper. Then boil this with the tatties for a bit. Make sure you wash the leek well, as it might have loads of dirt in it.
Now, after those 5 minutes passed you by (you can watch Kyle during this – but don’t get too engrossed) get the par-boiled potato and grate it up. The leek (actually, now I’m thinking about it you shouldn’t have boiled the leek. Forget that bit. Fry it instead) should be already fried up at this point.
Now, rub your hands together in an excited manner, and toss the grated potato and leek into a frying pan – and fry it. OK OK, before all this, you should have got an egg and whipped it up so that all the yellow and see-thru bits are a yellowy colour. You can use a fork or something for this. Right, what I should have said is add the egg to the potato and leek BEFORE you put it in the pan. Right go back and do it again.
So, put that egg, potato and leek in little dollops. And fry them. You should probably add salt and pepper at this stage if you actually want it to taste of anything.
And you should find that these things are cooked after a bit of time has elapsed.
And Voila!
Your Fried Potato and Leek Thing is ready! You’ll probably find it doesn’t taste of anything at all, so get a massive lump of cheese out of the fridge and eat that with it.
It has emerged that a colony of fire ants have set fire to Wales, burning it to the ground. The previously undiscovered species of ant are attracted to electric currents in houses, and it is thought they simultaneously started fires in council houses in Swansea, Newport and Bangor.
Looking across the border from Ross On Wye, Charlie Stanbridge said “It looks like the ants set fire to the houses which in turn set fire to the vast coal reserves underground. The whole country just went up like a tinderbox.”
It is not clear whether the ants started it accidentally or if it was sparked by some deep seated racial issue. However, a respected ant expert commented “They clearly planned it, they all knew what they were doing, and they were probably trained by that Ayatollah Khoimeni or something.”
The ants are thought to be attracted to electric currents to an even greater degree than they are to food or water. Wales has an abundant supply of Honeydew aphids, the eating of which is the ants’ preferred activity, when they’re not torching Welsh housing estates.
Responding to the news Boris Johnson said “I’ve never been to Africa, but I’ve heard it’s really nice this time of year.”
After one of his assistants whispered something in his ear, he went on “I find it totally unacceptable that aunts have set fire to large sea mammals in this way, it’s a disgrace.”
Over in England an emergency investigation team has been set up in a PortaKabin round the back of Hereford Police HQ. The squad is expected to begin the investigation on Monday morning, because the fire started on Friday night and it was the weekend, like.
Owain Jones, the last Welsh person on the planet, said “Luckily I was over the border in Bristol on the lookout for unattended motor cars containing high specification stereos, when I saw it go up in flames. I was really shocked when I heard Bangor had gone up too – I didn’t think it had electricity put in yet.”