Wot Swelter?

“As Britain swelters”, read the start of the ice cream feature in the Mail’s Weekend magazine. The perils of getting something printed weeks ahead become clear when you look out the window and see grey skies and rain.

Not prime-time

Did the world tune in to see some bloke sentenced at the Old Bailey live on TV last Thursday? Or did everyone else have something better to do than get involved with another gimmick?

You get what you pay for

Does anyone really care that some boffin sponsored by a breakfast cereal company has come up with a cod mathematical formula for the best way to start her day?
    Other people may have other preferences.

Idle thought

I notced there’s something called the Asian Le Mans Series on BT Sport, which left me wondering if a gang of Orientals have renamed one of their towns somewhere Le Mans to solidify the connection.

Another fuss

Just five deaths worldwide from monkey pox and the World Health Organization wants us to go into a global panic. Is there a basement big enough for all of them?

What was the fuss about?

Just a couple of weeks ago, we were being assured that life on the planet was coming to an end in a relentless heatwave. Now, we’re back to grey, overcast skies and it’s all a vague memory.
    Maybe if we just locked the alarmists in a cold, dark basement when they start sounding off, things would remain in proportion.

Turkey transformation

The Twitter row has taken an interesting turn. Mr. Musk doesn’t want it because of the lack of transparency over the fake accounts. And the people running it don’t want it either. The story seems to be that they just want to flog it off, overpriced, and dash off with the cash.

More mug than sense

A brick wall feature in a minor celeb’s posh flat is the ultimate delusion. All it means is that the estate agent has conned the mug who bought it out of a plaster & wallpaper job, and maybe also a coat of paint.

Premature blessing

“Have a great weekend,” gushed Dan Wootton on GB Views last night; on Thursday night. The weekend doesn’t begin until Saturday, mate. Some of us still have Friday to do. And we don’t need you reminding us you’re on a 4-day week!

The blind eye approach to policing

If some crook in Scotland swindles you out of the contents of your bank account and sends it to a bank in England, people are complaining that Police Scotland refuse to do anything about it because the money has been moved out of their area of operations.

Triple bluff?

Is sacked Labour leader O.J. Corbyn saying he’s not interested in being the next mayor of London in the hope of getting a huge campaign rolling so that he can eventually say, “Oh, go on if I have to!” and run for the office?
    Sounds the sort of thing a really sneaky politician could do.

No change?

The nation’s police forces are under orders to stop harassing people who get into a fight on social media and do something about real crime.
    Will there be a dramatic leap in the clear-up rates? Not without a lot of fiddling of the figure, I’ll be bound.

Just random noise

What’s the point of doing a poll of people who aren’t Tory party members? What they think is irrelevant to the outcome of the leadership election as they don’t have a vote.

Who needs the hassle?

Should people be studying how to survive holidays mayhem? Sounds like it would be a better idea to take a holiday from  having holidays and do your blood pressure a favour.

They don’t listen

When you switch on the TV for the BBC lunchtime news, the last thing you want is to be ordered to watch something else NOW on BBC iPlayer.
    Why do the dozy buggers keep doing it? Sheer perversity.

Advert Spacer?

The chatterers are excited about Mr. Zillionaire Musk going off the reservation, but why should anyone expect ‘honour among nerds’ if it’s not a universal rule?
    Why should nerds be denied the lusts of the cerebrally challenged?

Swindlers Charter Cancelled?

I notice that petrol and diesel prices are 5p or so lower than they were a couple of weeks ago. Have the petrol companies been shamed into doing a bit less profiteering? One does hope they’ve really been booted up the backside behind the scenes and threatened into doing it.

Attention Gap

I heard the phrase ‘sixty second birthday’ and I thought “a birthday lasts more than 60 seconds!” Then I realized the context was the complaint that the BBC gets rid of female presenters when they’re beyond 60 years old.

No panic yet?

The BIG cheese blocks of mature Cheddar in our local Aldi are still the same price they’ve been for ages and no security tags!

Not our problem

Should we be bailing out Pacific islanders whose ancestors chose to settle on a piece of mid-ocean land that’s just above the high tide mark?
    Of course not. If they’re blaming their plight on climate change rather than ancestral stupidity, they should be presenting a bill to India, China and all the rest of the major carbon dioxide emitters, and we should just switch the lights off and pretend to be out if they come round rattling a collecting tin.

More dishonesty

We’re having the hottest summer for 125,000 years? Really? Just how daft do the global warming fraudsters think we are? No one believes they have any actual data to back that up. And have none of the fraudsters noticed that we’re back to not so warm and pretty wet?

Dishonesty Rules

It’s interesting to see who’s quoting opinion polls putting Sunak ahead of Truss taken from people in the street and who’s polling Tory party members, the people who actually have a vote, and who seem to prefer Truss.

Wise move

Should we take any notice of the outbursts of a cross party committee of MPs? Or should we wait until they calm down, dears?

Done & Dusted

We got a roulade of ritual in Paris to end Autour de France once the bloke in Yellow had been escorted to a winning position. Then it was all about a stage win.
    How come the Sun was shining on France when it was raining here? Brexit is probably getting the blame.
    Five off the front. Down to four. Then none. The winner was the only sprinter to take 2 stages, so not anywhere near Mark Cavendish’s league.

Climate lipstick

Whether or not the UK achieves/confects zero emissions by 2050 is irrelevant. Compared to what the rest of the world is pumping into the environment, especially China and India, our emissions are insignificant.

Never learn nothing?

Something very peculiar is the looney notion that all politicians are born with a complete set of views on everything and changing these views based on new evidence or changing circumstances and priorities is somehow catastrophic for their credibility.

It’s all in the detail

Rereading Dune by Frank Herbert is a bit like reading a historical novel at this remove from the creation of the work. You know things will go horribly wrong for some of the characters but you can still appreciate the details of the catastrophes and how the survivors dealt with them.

Red in tooth ‘n’ claw

You’re reminded that cats are still wild animals every time you have to get the tongs out to deposit a corpseless head of a field mouse in the black bin for burial.

Almost Done

The penultimate stage of the TdF is a time trial, where the bikers just have to do asbestos they can and hope no bugger does better.
    The Danish bloke in Yellow looks secure but there’s still the kudos of winning the last stage up for grabs.

Campaign of Destruction

Not being glued to the BBC during the week just gone seems to have been a wise move. According to the Dead Ringers on Radio Four, everyone who was glued was smashing their radios & TVs over all the bleedin’ obvious ‘advice’ on how to stay cool issuing from the State’s nannies.

Damage Already Done

Now they tell me! “You shouldn’t drink wine until after thirty-nine” is the message from the medical industry now. There’s always someone with a way to rain on your parade.

A sense of wonder

That’s what you get when you go out and find that everywhere hasn’t been destroyed by wildfires and 75% of the population hasn’t dropped dead because of three hot days on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of this week.
    One does get the distinct impression that the alarmists were chuntering on excessively and just seeing how much attention they could gather. And distracting our attention from the things that count, like Putin’s attempt to destroy Ukraine for some psychopathic reason.

Relax, we’re saved!

The world is about to be saved from global warming. This will be achieved by importing some European bison to turn a part of Kent into a muddy swamp, which will capture enough carbon to rescue the planet. Hooray!

One for the host country

A large chunk of the peloton, which included some favourites, just vanished during stage 19 of the TdF. Mass alien abduction? No, the crosswind was blamed. A puncture for Pesky Pogacar to show him the Universe hates him!
    176 didn’t look like he had the legs to stay out ahead. Three more who went off the front were caught and finally, there was a French stage winner.

What about all the emergencies?

Despite the constant state of emergency the government, the media and global warming fraudsters would have us believe is on-going, some boffins have discovered that dogs have a distinctive tail-wag as people have a distinctive gait after studying several thousand dogs.
    Okay, so what? And why didn’t they do something useful like zapping some GW Fraudsters?

Well, maybe

The SciFy TV channel used to be irresistible but I can’t think of the last time I watched anything on it. Will rebranding it as Sky SciFi make things any better? Not holding any breath.
    Although, Sky is showing the Stargate SG-1 series on what used to be Sky One before the name got cute, so there is some hope.

On to victory?

TdF stage 18? Must be more mountains. Three of them, with blokes on motorbikes crashing riders off!
    Pogacar was playing silly buggers again and fell off. And he cracked. Vingegaard rode away from him for a stage win and over a minute more on the time gap. And a win in the Tour barring assassination.

Not entirely a Bad Thing

The Royal Mail has been outed as not making deliveries all that often any more. We can confirm that the amount of junk mail and unwanted leaflets going into the blue recycling bin is just a trickle now.

A bit confused

The time stamp on the Cheers: your order has been delivered! email was 10:28.
    The time stamp on the Smile: we have shipped your order email with the tracking data was 12:37.
    Okay, 1/10 for making an effort, 10/10 for not succeeding in doing anything useful!

Another Break

Whose totally daft idea was it to keep having whittling down elections every other day for the Tory leadership? The whole thing could have been done quietly and discreetly by giving MPs a couple of weeks to pick their favoured two to offer to the party at large. Would have done a lot less damage.
    No chance of the party at large saying ‘none of the above, thanks’ and getting the MPs to pick two more mugs?
    Thought not.

Give us a break

Rain last night! Now the worst heatwave in the whole history of the universe is over, will the government stop being our nanny and will the BB bloody C stop telling us we’re all going to die?

Lots of grit still needed

Four mountains at the end of TdF stage 17, the last positively lethal, according to the experts. Lots of shredding of the peloton for the comms to jaw about. More damage done than you can shake a stick at. McNally’s day, the comms agreed.

Not sold

Is it really possible for a ‘storyline that captured the world’ to be totally unknown to me and everyone I’ve asked about it? Sounds like some journo telling porkies again to bamboozle the reading public.

On The List

Things to do before you die: Read all six of the Dune novels by Frank Herbert. A pleasant excursion started today after I’d located all of them in the library.
    I started at the back, reading the appendixes, to remind me what everything is about. About 150 million tons of religion, sounds a fair assessment!

Canada Day

Two killer climbs faced the TdF bikers at the end of stage 16. Pesky Pogacar was playing silly buggers again. Would anyone off the front stay there? Downhill with a lead for the bloke right at the front and a Canadian 1st & 3rd at the finish.

Tedious Hype

Wildfires sweep Britain? What bollocks! Some small bits of it, that’s all.

Daft Idea

The RSPCA wants people to put sun-screen on cats? Try that on the Mansion cat and there would be a lot of spitting & growling & clawing & bad language, and she’d be off into the bushes to lick the stuff straight off.

Let down

Don’t you get the feeling that the DoomBuggers are bitterly disappointed that we actually got through yesterday in fairly good order?
    Still, maybe half the population will croak today and cheer them up a bit.

Just not true

It’s not a ‘Race for No. 10’ if it’s July now and the winner won’t be picked until September. Unless we’re talking snails with a 10 kg backpack.

Feeling Excluded

If you’re not involved in voting for the next Tory leader, there’s not much point in watching them slagging each other off in ‘debates’. Life’s too short.
    You’re going to be stuck with whoever the party picks even though BoJo is still the People’s Fave, according to the polls.

Fair point

If some nurk starts demanding if a politicians can offer a definition of a woman, the response should be that there are much more important things to think about than nurk knee-yerkery.
    What was it? The Female Sex has a double X. If it’s XY, it’s a Guy.

No problem

That was a the attitude of the TdF bikers yesterday; they’ve ridden in hotter conditions and they were up for a bunch sprint challenge.
    More looney protesters on the road, more crashes; lots! The two out front gave the sprinters’ teams problems and one of them lasted to just 400 metres from the finish line. But he couldn’t prevent an actual sprint finish.

Dealing with it

Despite all the hysteria about 40 deg.C being the default every summer from now on, it hasn’t been uncomfortably hot here. Lots of clouds about, not constantly sunny, and a bit of a breeze to dilute the warmth outdoors.

Cycles, not always welcome!

It came as quite a surprise to realize that the Hamilton Tiger Cats had won just their first match of the season at the weekend. But that’s the CFL for you: Beast of the East one minute, Bums in the Slums the next.

Yeah, right

I keep getting asked if I’ve hired an agency to introduce me to some working class people, which is now supposed to be essential for Mansion dwellers. Not knowing some of the worst off in society, apparently, is destroying my credibility, is the story.
    But not with anyone who matters, I reckon.

Two hours wasted

Ad Astra (2019) is supposed to be a serious-minded Sciffy mystery film. One in which most of the characters are idiots and the SETI obsession itself is pretty idiotic, too.
    Like the god obsession. Poor old Roy. All the way out to Neptune to find the father he’s not seen for 30 years, only to find that Dad is a total nutter.

One in the eye for climbers!

A good workout for the contestants in Saturday’s TdF stage, with Pogacar playing silly buggers with the bloke in Yellow. Matthews, a sprinter, staged a stunning performance on the last climb to sock it to the bods who think they’re mountain experts and win the stage.

Fairy History

Why would anyone but a journalist assume that a skeleton of someone who was killed in the battle @ Waterloo is that of a hero? See a conclusion, leap to it with the brain switched off.
    If the skull’s mouth is open, that was a dying battle cry? Equally daft. It’s just something that happens to the jaws of the dead.

Scrape, scrape the barrel

That’s what ITV’s enemies are doing with the mental health issue over trash like Love Island – according to what’s in the papers, never having seen it myself. According to reports, the people on it are clearly mental and getting paid for it. And taking their ham acting seriously is also mental.

It’s biting

Penguin biscuit inflation – was 6 for £1, now 6 for £1.25. That’s 25% inflation and time to stop buying them to show the grabbing bastards what we think of them.

Sad time for sprinters

Mr. Pidcock (British) got a celebration of the day before’s win to start yesterday’s TdF hilites. Nothing too disastrously mountainous for Day 13 but 30 deg.C.
    7 off the front eroded to 3 with the peloton not bothered about catching them. A first ever stage win in a major for a bloke whose name sounded like Max Peloton; something he should think seriously about changing it to if he’s not already called that!

More Moot

Was not fining the notorious boozer Bier Starmer a favour to him from the Durham police or a bigger propaganda favour to the next Tory leader?

Profligate, yes, Tory, no

Let us not forget the BILLIONs the sacked Chancellor Mr. Sunak threw at fraudsters whilst the rest of us were locked in.

Also, not bought

What could be more unrealistic that someone in a TV advert pushing a vacuum cleaner nozzle under a bar stool and not moving it aside to do a proper cleaning job?
    Like you’d get away with that in the real world.

Nor this

Do I throw away 100 billion bits of plastic per year? Joke. It was only one piece of plastic for me yesterday. No, make that two pieces. Must do better?

Mix things up again

It was chuck more mountains at them for stage 12 of the Tour. An impatient bloke broke the breakaway up into a collection of individuals by riding off ahead in search of a stage win.
    Mr. Pidcock had around 5 minutes to play with over the peloton and, despite having no hope of help from other riders, it was more than enough. Hooray!

Don’t buy it

Weather event? Deadly heat? Not where I live. Clouds and a cold wind giving the trees a good shaking, more like.

Sounds about right

Where Boris went wrong, it has been pointed out, was by showing loyalty to people who didn’t deserve it. Not that common in the world of politics, showing loyalty.

Lots about

The demise of the government in Sri Lanka, with mobs of rioters making free with the presidential palace, is being blamed on the sort of idiotic green farming policies being followed by the regimes in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and . . . the UK.

C’est Le Tour

It was ‘chuck mountains at them’ day for the France Tourers yesterday. The bloke in yellow blew up and everyone rode away from him. Tough but he’s a ratbag, so no worries.

Not Bliddy Trying!

If the worst they can say about S. Braverman is she said “Boris must go” without quitting her government job, then we’re scraping under the skirting boards of Quibble Corner.

Pointless Pillockry

What’s so great about diversity anyway? How many matches against proper teams would a team win if half of its players had to be no good at the sport on diversity grounds?
    How many patients would the NHS kill if half the doctors & nurses had to be incompetent on diversity grounds?

Weather Wazzocks!

Extreme heat yesterday? We didn’t see the Sun until teatime. The deal was extremely far from big, temperature-wise.

Substitute Needed

Bic ballpoints are suddenly crap. I get 1" to 2" of ink cartridge use out of them then I spend as much time scribbling on a sheet of scrap paper to get the ink flowing as I do actually writing stuff.

They’re everywhere

Yobs with red smoke flares wrecking Autour de France? Shoot to kill okay in these circumstances. The comms seemed to be obsessed with which of the break-aways would do the dirty on the rest. And it went to a photo-finish to give the bookies a fright.

Not us any more

There’s going to be quite a fall in the Conservative vote around here if Sunak is made the party leader. That’s people staying at home and making their protest by withholding their vote. That said, expecting someone like him to know working class bods is like expecting Angela Grot, the Labour deputy, to know a few dukes.

They all do it

Despite all his protestations about being a wonderfully decent bloke, I see Starmer is proving he can be as slimy as the best of them. He’s ruling out a coalition with the Liberals, who’d have a job filling a taxi, at the moment. But not one with the SNP, who could make a difference. But only until they get to rig an independence vote as the price of their co-operation.

Brilliant idea

Endless queues at airports despite the alleged cost of living crisis and the customers in uproar. What to do? Some bright spark has suggested a government ban on foreign travel to put an end to all the chaos!

Annual event

You can tell it’s summer again. All the meteorological bods are going wild, trying to confect a new temperature record to ‘prove’ that the planet is melting and about to turn into unslightly mush.

Not on

Why would a Conservative government with an 80-seat majority hold a general election after swapping out the party leader? Especially if Starmer’s coalition of losers is on offer as the alternative.

Apt comparison

I see the Westminster herd of Tories is being compared to a herd of lemmings. And their dash off the edge of a cliff will probably be met with the same indifference as those of real lemmings. Or mythical ones.

Not-at-all entities

I happened to see a list of the names of the mass resigners from government jobs. Despite all the hoo-haa about it, they’re all bag-carriers; apart from the Javid/Kish Axis, and people you’ve never heard of.
    They never will be missed. And they all copped for £10K for losing the job, so they won’t be bothered.

Welcome to the Jungels

Hills to climb in the TdF yesterday and a swap of the polka dot jersey. There was some testing to destruction going on. One, one, two off the front ahead of the MJ group. The guy in second got all the attention from the commentators but the Luxembourger out front got the win.

One rule for the English . . .

Pointed questions were asked in the Sunday Post yesterday about why the SNP leader in the commons hasn’t resigned for making a sex pest the party’s chief whip if Boris had to.
    No principles for the mob north of the border?

Wow, gosh? Not really

Starmer & his sidekick Rayner get away with their Beergate antics? No surprise given that police forces fail to do anything about 93% of crimes at the moment.

TdF Daily Fact

The bikers have to pee on the move and the organizers make a mint out of fining them for doing it!
    Yesterday’s break of 3 became 2. Would it defy the peloton? When Fred was left on his own, the answer became obvious. The last killer climb did for him, as well as a lot of the peloton, and the bloke in green got to win.

BT Sport – Bonehead Tools

They’re not showing the first two matches of week 5 of the CFL but the third match got a live showing at midnight on Saturday and then it’s repeated twice; once on Wednesday and again on Thursday.
    What’s stopping the clowns at BT from showing all three matches in full, even if two of them are days late? Just sheer wilful boneheadedness is the only conclusion.

Sheer enjoyment

I must say, I’m really enjoying the trip through the annals of Stargate SG-1 on Sky Max and seeing how many of the episodes I remember from earlier showings. Shame it’s not on at the weekend, too.

All in the ending

A nothing-much stage of the TdF full of past conflicts and water under the bridge as fillers. But there was a killer climb finish that finished off the lone bloke doing the breakaway and gave the bloke in yellow another stage win.

Bossy Buggers

The BBC can’t do sensible continuity. You switch on for the news and what do you get? Some bozo telling you to watch something else on the iPlayer NOW! Then ordering you to listen to something else on Sounds NOW!
    What about the programme you wanted to watch? Or doesn’t that count?

Some good sense

Nice to see Dr. Max, the Mind Doctor, grotting on the idea of post-persons acting as makeshift care workers for the elderly. It’s reassuring to know that there are still people with more than 2 working brain cells in the NHS.

Could do likewise

I read that the Tesco supermarket chain is getting tough with suppliers who shove prices up recklessly by leaving them off their shelves. Doesn’t look like Sainsbury’s is doing the same if they’re charging nearly 10 quid/kilo for Lurpac spread.

Good Script

The survivors are still getting over them cobbles? Throw the longest stage of the TdF at them! Test them to destruction.
    Worked on the bloke in the Yellow Jersey. He went off with a break and blew up. And the odd crash to give the TV comms something else to get excited about. And an actual sprint finish for a change.

Tossers, the lot of them

Now would be a good time to just forget about politics until we get some politicians who are worthy of our support.
    Boris getting the chop doesn’t make Starmer and his crew any less unelectable and unfit for office.

Not that great

Today’s Great White Hunter is someone who shoots animals bred for it in a special enclosure. With the full approval of the African hosts, who will see their native wildlife vanish without this trade because any animal that gets in the way in the wild is wiped out.

Hissy Git defined

Sometime Tory leadership hopeful R. Stewart (5th in 2019) has admitted having to go into retreat boiling with rage for five whole days because he didn’t win. Shame!
    So that was zero value for money for the taxpayer during those five days, too?

The Politics of Pointlessness

“When I was prosecuting rapists,” Sir Starmer told the Commons. Didn’t happen that often, though, on his watch, given the current sorry state of policing.
    Didn’t happen at all in the case of Jimmy Savile, who got a free ride on Starmer’s watch.

Logical move

How long before AEW turns itself into a three-ring circus? That will give the production crew some real headaches and make life even more difficult for viewers struggling to keep up with wrestling going on in two rings. Especially when there’s a huge battle royal going on.
    The Young Schmucks are rather wearing. Not a top of the bill act at all.

Inspired touch

Get some interest back into Autour de France! Throw some cobbles at them and generate some crashes for the TV cameras.
    And a dust storm? Wow!

Lost cause

Without the glue of hating or appreciating Boris, the Tory party will descend into the pit of non-entity where it was under Dave the Leader & Mrs. May.

It’s true, it’s damn true!

Have prices gone crazy? The cat’s boxes of dried food with chicken pockets used to cost 3 quid a time. Today, they’re £4.25 each. Q.E.D.

Irrelevant!

You know you’ve led a virtuous life when you can scan a list of alleged celebs at some do or other and realize you can’t put a face to any of them.

Daft Sciffy

Subtitles for what the giant ants were saying? Really? I don’t think the gang who made It Came From The Desert (2017) were taking the genre all that seriously.
    And giant ants boozing beer out of aluminium kegs? Definitely extracting the Michael.

Varied Viewing

Two sporting catch-ups yesterday. The first was the Monday night CFL match and the Argos staging a comeback against the Champion Blue Bombers, reaching the verge of a tie and a chance to win in overtime.
    Only to see their kicker miss the vital extra point after a touchdown.
    Could the Tour de (back in) France top that? How many filler can you shove in the summary programme? And no dramatic sprint finish as the Yellow Jersey shot off into the distance to show the rest who’s the boss.

Brainstormer!

Is it uncanny that the actress who played Princess Di in an American fiction about the Royal Family looks exactly like her, as Richard Kay in the Mail wants us to believe?
    Looks like his sense of wonder has gone wonky if he doesn’t know it’s just good casting.

Oops!

Fatal flaw in the latest episode of McDonald & Dodds. Who put the surgical lines on the face of the actual murder victim? Sergeant Dodds kept that to himself.

In sameness there is strength?

Supergirl seems to be rather a repetitive and lacking in new ideas serial. When I switch on early for Stargate SG-1, there’s usually some bunch of superbozos knocking 7 bells out of some other bunch.
    And usually at night.

No favour

Is it really doing anything helpful for a tennis player if the writer of an article reminds everyone that she’s 118th in the rankings and 117 players are better than her?

No excitement on the Sabbath

Just a routine flat stage to a sprint finish with no Mark Cavendish to cheer. Yawn on TdF Day 3 in Denmark. But at least they managed a crash with 10 km to go to generate a bit of interest.

Everyone relax

What a relief! Nothing awful is happening in the world if all the usual suspects can find to moan about is Mr. Groper the Pincher.

Academic nonsense

There are alleged academics; usually with a book to sell; who want us to believe that knocking down statues and splashing paint onto monuments is some sort of popular theatre and public art. Which puts Nazi book-burning into a new context.

Sold as cheaper!

In the good old days, diesel fuel was supposed to be cheaper and better than petrol. It’s now just 0.1p short of two pounds for a litre where I live; 10p dearer than petrol.

Biking suicide?

Denmark is a great place to have bicycle race crashes. That’s the conclusion from the mass pile-ups on Day Two of the Tour of Denmark + France. It’s a wonder there’s anyone left for a Day Three!

Lax standards

I see the Sunday Telegraph’s proof reader is on holiday. A front-page story about Pincher the Groper ends in the middle of a sentence at the bottom of column 2.

Making an effort

That double ring inside a HUGE steel cage was very impressive. All Elite Wrestling beats the pants off the boring WW – unless they’ve managed to improve since I gave up on them.
    No wonder a whole gang of the WW crew have emigrated, including the Swiss Superman of the Black Hole Combat Club, whick defeated the Jericho Depreciation Society on top of the cage!

Simple logistics

Sarah Vine in the Mail has a fair point to make about her dad’s reservations about Prince Chuck’s loot from an Arab prince. 3 million euros is 6,000 x 500 euro notes.
    Stacks containing 1,000 notes would be 5½" high and arranged in a 3 by 2 spread, they’d occupy less than the area of a laptop.
    One bag would be more than enough for the whole lot rather than the collection of suitcases and carrier bags claimed by media hysterics.

Wet as Ottawa!

Where does Autour de France start this year? Well, a time trial in soggy Denmark. Where else?

Really?

Where do Labour and the Liberals think we are, in Russia? If they don’t have an electoral non-competition pact, how come their candidate lost his/her deposit in the recent by elections in the seats they didn’t win?
    They really do think we’re mugs.

Early efforts

No prizes for guessing where they got the idea for episode 4 of SG-1, series 1 – a blatant Romeo & Juliet rip-off. But no royalties for Mr. Shakespeare or his heirs, of course.

Sounds sensible

Nice to see the government getting something right for a change, like junking biofuel gestures and using agricultural land for food production while there’s not that much about.

No joke, really

Seen in the Mail this week: INTRIGLUE – sinister plot that sticks around.
    Sounds like a perfect description of what the PM is up against over his leadership.

New alibi needed

Any suggestions for what the Labour leader Starmer can claim when he does a Gordon Brown and disappears when the trouble starts? He’s starting to realize he’s overworked pretending to have a dose of the Chinese plague.

So what?

Are we amazed that make up & costume can turn an actress into a monstrous villainess called Matilda in a Roald Dahl story? Or should we be amazed that anyone would think it’s something extraordinary and worth mentioning.

Daftest of the Daft

Air Collision (2012) has Air Force One and a commercial airliner caught up in a major failure of all sorts of automatic systems; on the aircraft as well as ground control
    The commercial flight nearly crashes onto a city with the passengers yelling their heads off and the audience at hope hoping they do crash, the big, fat bloke croaks of a heart attack and the looney runs amuck. And then a missle fired by the Air Force crashes a hole in the plane but doesn’t explode. So the passengers heave it out and it blows up a building on the ground!
    Meanwhile, the president’s plane is in lockdown. No doors will open, no controls will work. A ludicrous attempt to get the president off nearly gets his wife killed, and he ends up a hero by having to land the plane because the insane control system has zapped the flight crew!