Asleep at the wheel!

How necessary are pilots on a modern aircraft with an autopilot that does most of the work? Not all that much if the story about the el cheapo Dutch airline Transylvania is true. Apparently, a co-pilot went to the toilet, locked himself out of the cockpit and couldn’t get back in because the pilot was too deeply asleep to hear him banging on the door! No damage done, though, because he “managed” to get back into the cockpit – and, presumably, resumed sitting in his seat, doing nothing much.

Total tosh!

Is film of Adolf Hitler taking power 80 years ago “chilling”, as the Daily Disaster would have us believe? Of course, it isn’t. It’s just a piece of film. Now, Tony B. Liar strutting into Downing Street with a chorus of New Labour stooges presented as real people cheering him on – or pictures of that dictator surrounded by his henchmen – that’s chilling.

Daftest story of the month?

The police in Devon tried to fit up a 60-year-old grandmother for having a dead body in her car! Some woman reported the unfortunate lady for having “blood pouring from the boot”. Big let-down for the cops when they got to the lady’s home, however. The “blood” was blackcurrant cough syrup from a broken bottle and the “body” was just bags of shopping squashed together.

Another test we’ll all fail!

The Minister for Certain Thinks has decides that we need a new Britishness test for foreigners who hope to become citizens. Something full of things that the average native wouldn’t know but a foreigner who has been cramming should. Out will go New Labour’s questions about how much an illegal immigrant can expect in benefits and in will come stuff about Monty Python and The Two Ronnies? [Does anyone remember them? Wasn’t Ronnie Reagan one of them?] There will be other questions like “What is the title given to the person who chairs the debates in the House of Commons?” [Berko the posturing moron?] Sounds like the sort of idea you get from a government minister who doesn’t really have much to do to fill up his day.

Give it a “W” for weirdness!

There’s a lot of weird stuff happening in the world but the gas-masked bank robber who got himself croaked whilst trying to rob a bookie in Plymouth has got to take this week’s biscuit.

And Justice For All

I am boggling over the story of the cheating ball boy, who got a Chelsea player banned for 3 matches. It would appear now that for justice to be served, Swansea should be chucked out of the League Cup for cheating and bringing the competition into disrepute, as the ball boy is the son of Swansea’s biggest shareholder, and the noxious kid should be done for something akin to slander for impugning the Chelsea player’s good name.

There’s always a catch

Dave the Leader has made a big thing of his announcement on how he’s going to sort out the European Union Monster. It has only a few drawbacks. The EU will have to give him some of what he wants, and the British people will get a referendum only after the next general election and only if Dave is still prime monster. So don’t get your hopes up!

Managed melting is the way forward!

The Environment Agency has come up with a brilliant plan to prevent floods when the temperature goes up at the last weekend of the month: everyone has to build lots of snowmen so that the compacted snow will melt more slowly than snow just left lying around on the ground. It’s nice to know that the government has such lateral thinkers in its employ!

Self-interest always wins?

Today’s Daily Disaster offers the story of an Irish councillor in County Kerry, who got his council to allow drink driving in rural areas to prevent his constituents from becoming depressed. Kerry county council approved the motion by 5 votes to 3 (everyone else abstained). The guy who proposed the motion, and most of his supporters, own rural pubs . . .

How curious!

Apparently, with Dave the Leader about to do the speech he’s been putting off for over a year about reneging on his EU referendum promise, there has suddenly been a poll showing that the number of voters who want to stay in the EU has suddenly overtaken those who want out. No doubt the result will switch back as soon as Dave has taken this as an endorsement.

A to-be-ignored lesson from history

I could hope that Dave the Leader has learnt something from telling the Algerians how to handle their terrorist crisis and practically ordering them to step aside and let the SAS take over – only to be told, “Thanks, Dave, we’ve got it covered.” But seeing that politicians are such arrogant and ignorant beings – Ted Heath, Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg, in fact, about 639 of the present crew at Westminster – he’ll just go on being the same old, same old blinkered Dave.

Don’t move a muscle!

This week is going from bad to worse. Yesterday, the Daily Disaster was promising us four inches of snow on Friday. Today, the ante has been upped to 10 inches(!!) and we’re being ordered to stay put. On the other hand, my local council says it has all the grit and gritting lorries it needs to keep the roads clear. I guess we’ll find out just how (mis)placed the confidence is tomorrow.

Don’t Panic!

The German government is saying it has no worries but it is bringing back most of its gold stocks from the foreign banks, in which they were stashed whilst the communist regime in Russia was an invasion risk. Could it be that the Germans are worried that gaps might develop in the ranks of stacked gold bars due to hard-up Yanks or Frogs borrowing a few on the sly?

Don’t mention the war!

The Department of Culture & Sport wants to commemorate the whole of World War I without upsetting the Germans. So no mention of who started it, who introduced poison gas to the trenches and who dropped bombs on civilians from Zeppelins, and who was beaten to a standstill in 1918. The DCS would have us believe that a war started for no apparent reason in 1914, millions of people died mysteriously over the next 4 and a bit years, and then it all just stopped in 1918 and everyone became pals again.

Joke Justice

Last April, a woman called Renee Slater was arrested for entering a candidate called Helena Torry in the Aberdeen city council elections. “Helena” was a shop display dummy and Renee was done under the Representation of the People Act. Her case came up this month. A sheriff actually sat through two days of “evidence” before he deciding that there was no case to answer and setting Ms. Slater free without a stain on her character. Pity he couldn’t have sent the jobsworths who brought the case to gaol for a decade or two to encourage others.

Sledges back into the garage

A foot of snow over the weekend, said the Daily Disaster. All we got was a heavy frost. Not that anyone is complaining, of course.

Spin is not enough any more

Was J. Savile a vile monster? Probably. But he’s dead and his tombstone has been junked, so what can anyone do about it now? Well, the police have chosen to come up with absurd sound bites, like: “He groomed the nation.” and “He spent every minute of every waking day thinking about abusing children.” (Really? He never thought about what he would have for his tea and he never ever though about his dear old mother?)
      Sadly, what the police aren’t providing is an explanation of why they did nothing while J. Savile was alive and up to his monstering; with a lot of help from his friends. But we don’t really expect much from the police any more, do we?

Persistent, if nothing else

If there’s one thing that Britain’s MPs are not – it’s afraid to grab. They’re now demanding a 32% pay rise to compensate them for the money which they used to be able to swindle from their expenses in the Good Old Days, when they weren’t required to produce a receipt for most things.

Another day, another “expert”

Lots of doom ‘n’ gloom in today’s Daily Disaster, including the “news” that some “expert” has decided that we as a nation throw away half of the food that we lug home from supermarkets and any surviving small shops! When questioned, the catering staff at the Mansion strenuously denied being so wasteful and offered the previous day’s small biodegradable bag of peelings and scraps as proof. Which tends to support the conclusion offered later in the article that the “expert” is wrong by a big margin. But what else is new?

Recycling gone mad?

Watching the latest Davie Bowie music video for what? A century? I was left wondering why he and his ladyfriend went in for the Zaphod Beeblebrox look. Is our old and very tired-looking performer running out of inspiration? Or did he hope no one would notice a blatant rip-off of the much-loved HGTTG character?

Plump is out of the question?

Following on from my remarks of 3 days ago: we’re now being told that two bad harvests in a row, and the wet weather in 2012, mean that food prices will soar, no one will be able to afford to over-eat, obesity will become a thing of the past, saving the NHS a fortune, and everyone will die about six years sooner, doing wonders for the public sector pension deficit. Isn’t it amazing how the universe solves our problems!

Half a dozen of the other

David Cameron asks, in today’s Sunday Telegrope: “Do you want to hand the keys back to the people (Labour) who crashed the car (economy)?” To which the obvious answer is: “Dave, if you’re just as useless as a driver, then it doesn’t really matter who’s at the wheel because we’re screwed either way.”

Anything to avoid tackling real crime?

I’d be terribly interested to know exactly what was in the bags of “evidence” the police strolled off with after turning over much-loved (and much-loathed) comedian Jim Davidson for alleged crimes committed 25 years ago as part of their Savile Job Creation Scheme.
    A pound to a pinch of the proverbial that the “evidence” is nothing of the kind. But I suppose the coppers felt they had to put on some sort of a show for the meeja vultures invited along for the occasion.

Plump is perfect?

How curious it is that after the sustained propaganda campaign by the Fatness Fascists, someone has actually “proved” that pleasantly plump people live longer. Mind you, these “studies” tend to reach diametrically opposite ends with ease and, no doubt, the Fatness Fascists will come along with a counterblast before long. In fact, the latest shot in their campaign is to demand that benefits be withdrawn from obese people who refuse to make the effort to get slim. Even if they’re cutting 6-8 years off their life.

“Fix” as in swindle rather than cure

The world’s stock markets are celebrating America’s failure to trip over Cliff Fiscal but all that’s happened is that most of the problem has been postponed to March. So it’s a solution in the same way that the EU has “solved” the euro crisis but done nothing about the vast debts accumulated by its southern members.

Falls Over In Amazement (and not from the booze)

Should one be surprised that doctors are complaining that government guidelines on the daily amount of alcohol which can be safely consumed is based on numbers “plucked out of the air”. That the numbers are of the “think of a” sort is not surprising. The much quoted “Five A Day” campaign has no basis in science, it’s just a product of an advertising agency working for fruit ‘n’ vegetable producers. That the doctors have taken so long to realize that the numbers are made up says nothing reassuring about the medical profession.