Archive for the ‘Asides’ Category.

Eeny meeny miny moe

Following on from the launch of Inspiration Mars, billionaire Dennis Tito’s project to send a middle-aged couple on a non-stop a return trip to Mars, I had to wonder who my readership would want to send (involuntarily) on this trip.

Tony and Cherie Blair?
Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper?
Chris Hunhe and Vicky Pryce?
Neil and Christine Hamilton?
John Major and Edwina Currie
David and Victoria Beckham?

Or are these all people we’d like to send on a one-way trip?

The comments section is open for further suggestions…

Calling a spade a spade

It seems that someone at The Telegraph has the same opinion of Kier Starmer and his authoritarian ways as I do. I wonder if he’ll claim to be grossly offended by this?

The original image is in use on this article and (at least until they take it rename it) can be found here.

h/t @iamDarragh

Princely Mistakes

Making the mistake of clicking on a link which Guido was pimping on twitter this morning, my eye was drawn not to the small out-of-focus picture of someone who might or might not have been Prince Harry but to the vanity URL being used for the post:

William or Harry?

Has Guido been outsourcing his sub-editing to a company well known for getting members of the family mixed-up or, given the time at which it was posted (0233hrs), was it done quickly by Harry from a late-night drinking establishment?

Enquiring minds etc etc..

Criminal Stupidity

Dumb criminals are, well, dumb. Heck, there is even a website devoted to exposing ther stupidity to the world.

Meet Martin Peckham… the latest addition to the pantheon of stupidity. Aged 41, he is supposedly a dental technican when he isn’t being an idiot. And, oh boy, is he an idiot.

Martin apparently needed some money to pay for a house and his wedding (although why anyone would wish to marry such a fool is beyond me) but was a little strapped for cash. So he did what any normal person in such a situation would do and he lowered his sights a bit.

No, silly me, this is the age of ‘must have’ so he took out a loan.

Whoops, no he didn’t do that either. No, Martin, being the intellegensia that he is copied the actions of two other (allegedly*) dumb criminals and decided that the best way to raise the readies was to blackmail Bernie Ecclestone. As you do.

Demanding a sum of £200,000 he claimed, during phone calls to Ecclestone, that kidnappers were planning to abduct his daughter, Tamara.

Truely a first class criminal mind.

Three things:

  1. If you are going to blackmail a man worth over £2bn, why would you go for a measly £200k? I’d have thought £2m at least.
  2. Even as someone who doesn’t follow F1 or the gossip columns, I know that Tamara Ecclestone is a bit of a socialite. Common sense therefore says that she is probably followed by paparazzi 24/7 and thus any kidnap attempt would likely to be a non-starter. Instead why not mention family members whose movements aren’t tracked all day, every day?
  3. Demanding money for handing over details of a crime makes you look like more of a scumbag than the supposed criminals you are intending to shop.

Martin Peckham, you are a prat and you deserve everything you get.

* They are facing trial in February so any comments on their case will be censored.

The Talented Mr Shorten

There’s following the party line – and then there’s following the party line.

No surprises allowed

With the hiding of tobacco products (no doubt to be followed by plain packing); minimum pricing on alcohol (no doubt to be followed by measures similar to those enacted against tabacco); the new idea to slap age certificates on pop videos and a myriad of other inanities which the UK population are going to be made to suffer, in part, because of the ‘think of the children’ lobby, it is surprising gratifying to come across a piece of draconian stupidity which has nothing to do with this government.

Instead I bring you the US government’s ban on Kinder Surprise eggs because of – you guessed it – the children:

As Easter approaches, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reminds international travelers not to bring any Kinder Surprise eggs into the U.S. Also known as Kinder Eggs, these chocolate treats may be cute and seasonal but they are too dangerous to children to be imported legally into the U.S. The problem is the small plastic toy inside the Kinder Egg. While sold in many countries, this product is banned from the U.S. because young children can choke on it.

Does anyone have any figures as to how many children have choked on the surprise inside of a Kinder Surprise? I would be surprised if the figure were even as high as 1 in 100.

Can someone please stop the world, I wont to get off!

“A politician walks into a bar…”

At some point during of the premiership of Gordon Brown, the following joke crossed my radar once or twice. You may yourselves have seen it.

In the spirit of recycling, I present it to you again. All I’ve changed is the names.

A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the M25. Nothing is moving.

Suddenly a man knocks on the window. The driver rolls down his window and asks, ‘What’s going on?’

‘Terrorists down the road have hijacked a coach containing the Prime Minister David Cameron and his top aides Nick Clegg, George Osborne and Theresa May. They’re asking for a £10 million ransom. Otherwise they’re going to douse them with petrol and set them on fire.. We’re going from car to car, taking up a collection.

‘The driver asks, ‘How much is everyone giving, on average?

‘Well, most people are giving about a gallon.’

The three types of robbers

Found via twitter and presented without comment.

The three types of robbers

Separated at Birth

Francois Baroin

Daniel 'I'm now rich enough to be a Socialist' Radcliffe

Daniel Radcliffe

Francois '9 Eurozone nations will implement a Tobin Tax' Baroin

Uncanny, yes?

Happy birthday sweet 16 M25

London’s ‘Orbital Car Park’, better known as the M25 (or, for those in the know, the sigil odegra*), turned 25 today.

Encircling London, aside from the six mile stretch on the east side where the road crosses the Thames at Thurrock (this stretch is designated as the A282**), the 117 mile behemoth was built over a period of 13 years and is the second longest ring road in Europe as well as being one of the busiest roads on the continent.

The first section of the road opened in 1975 between South Mimms (now junction 23) and Potters Bar (now junction 24) with the last section between London Colney (junction 22) and South Mimms being officially opened by the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on this day in 1986.

Traffic levels on this new motorway were soon far beyond designed capacity leading to plans to widen it to four lanes each way being considered. Those never fully come to fruition but some widening has taken place with the stretch between junctions 12 and 14 being 5 lanes in each direction and that between junctions 14 and 15 having 6. The sections between junctions 16 and 23 and junctions 27 to 30 are in the process of being widened to 4 lanes and this work should be completed in 2012.

For me the M25, for all of its annoyances, is almost unavoidable because there is simply no other road to use if I wish to head south or west. As for going north, it is potentially avoidable but that depends on how far north I am heading.

Join me then by lifting a glass or two of your favourite tipple and saluting the birthday of this most frustrating of roads – before drowning the rest of the bottle as you think of how much hassle it will cause you in the next 25 years.

* If you haven’t read ‘Good Omens’ by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett this will mean nothing to you. MG politely suggests that you may wish to remedy this failing.

** If it wasn’t then non-motorway traffic wouldn’t be able to cross the river at any point further east than the Woolwich ferry. Imagine the fun that would cause.