Friday 3 September 2010

Was August Aweful or Awesome. Grumpy's Alternative News.

Lets start with the idiots, they never seem to go away. Our so called 'rulers' get no better. I am less than impressed that Cabinet minister Cheryl Gillan has got back the £4.47 pence that she claimed for dog food during the expenses scandal. Equally pathetic, new MP Yasmin Qureshi, banned for using a mobile phone whilst driving. Not a first offence I might add. Plus she had no insurance. Add Rory Stewart's (MP for Penrith) pathetic comments that his constituents are pretty primitive people who walk around with trousers held up by baling twine and you realise, regarding parliament, nothing changes. Gruesome, greedy people out of touch with the real world.
Councils didn't let us down when it came to waste and stupidity. Brighton purchased a machine to count bicycles, cost £25,000. Only it can't tell the difference between a bike and a car. Brighton and Hove council paid consultants £300,000 to teach it 'value for money'. Binmen in Gloucester have had to have police protection from angry householders. The binmen have been ordered to leave bins where the lid won't close; it is alleged in one case the lid was only a centimetre from being fully closed. And a seventy four year old in Plymouth was banned from taking his two pet owls on the streets as 'they might attack someone'. A decision later rescinded.
I think the country of the month was undoubtedly France. Taxi drivers in Paris were voted worst in the world in an internet poll. Frederique Messmer, a Paris taxi driver's response said it all. 'I'm unpleasant and so what' was his answer as he enjoyed his cigarette in his taxi. (London's black cabs came out top.) Plus the French police had a busy month. They had to warn the public concerning holiday makers being being attacked by cows near Font- Romeu in the Pyrenees. They also had to deal with a woman in Lyons who put the body of her partner, still dressed in his pyjamas amongst the frozen peas in the deep freeze. And they are still looking for two nuns in their eighties who are on the run after refusing to move to a nursing home two hundred and fifty miles from the school where they worked. They sound hard pressed, the French police. No wonder they have abolished the height restriction of 5ft 3in (1.6m). Damn, I could have joined (I'm 5.4in). Any age restrictions chaps, I'm seventy? It's not that old, honest, even if British judges have suggested no-one should be allowed to sit on a jury after becoming seventy. Come on, we're not done for yet, Rod Stewart's wife is expecting and he's sixty six! (It will be his seventh.)
I notice animals were used by drug traffickers as guards thousands of miles apart; bears in the mountains of British Columbia and an albino python in Rome. I noticed also they are trying to get the two-toed sloth in London Zoo to breed. Mind you, its last partner they chose was also male. There's been no sloth born at the zoo for more than one hundred years, so don't hold your breath. But the animal story of the month was undoubtedly the women who put the cat in the bin in Coventry. Forty five years of age, a church going spinster who works in a bank, how ordinary is that. So she puts a cat in a wheelie bin in full view of a surveillance camera. How extraordinary is that. Something she will never forget, or be allowed to forget. A life changing experience in a split second. I wonder why.
Two mind bending morbid incidents from the month. A groom in Turkey lost control of a AK-57 as he fired it in celebration at the wedding, killing three and wounding eight others. And one of the only two competitors left in the World Sauna Championships in Helsinki died after suffering severe burns. Contestants had to sit in 110c (230F). Surprise, surprise, they are not going to hold the competition any more.
That's about it. But not wishing to end on a sombre note, two items that probably shouldn't, but made me smile. A woman is suing Walt Disney World, claiming that she was 'groped' by 'Donald Duck' at the Epcot theme park. Now I know its not funny if it did in fact happen. But surely there's a problem here. How on earth is she going to positively identify her assailant!

Finally, did you see the 'one liners', jokes submitted for the prize of 'best joke award' at the Fringe, Edinburgh Festival.
Entries include
As a kid I was made to walk the plank. We couldn't afford a dog.
Dave drowned. So at the funeral we got him a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt. Well it's what he would have wanted. Both Gary Delaney.
I bought one of those anti-bullying wristbands when they first came out. I say 'bought'- I actually stole it off a short, fat ginger kid. Jack Whitehall.
I picked up a hitchhiker. You gotta when you hit them. Emo Philips

And finally, the winner.
I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again. Tim Vine

14 comments:

Expat mum said...

You just crack me up. I might stop reading newspapers and wait for your updates.
I have just started on Twitter (I know - shoot me now) and if I can, I will Tweet this. (That means that some new people might come and read it.)
PS. I was in England for two weeks and it rained every day.

the fly in the web said...

Good for the nuns, I say!
The local guys are running round looking for the guy who sent local bigwigs copies of Nicolas Sarkozy's birth certificate....yes, the exact criminal nature of this escapes me too. I suppose it is one excuse for doing nothing about the annual wave of haystack arsonists and weekend car burners.

Sueann said...

I thoroughly enjoyed your updates. What would I do without them? The nuns on the run cracked me up. Where the heck would they hide if my question?
Hugs
SueAnn

Valerie said...

That's a good idea of Expat Mum, you're definitely better than any newspaper. The item which I found the most incredible was, of course, the 'cat in the bin' lady which I can only put down to momentary madness.

Dumdad said...

My favourite Fringe joke was:

"I'm currently dating a couple of anorexics. Two birds, one stone."

I enjoyed this update: you should have been a journalist.

Shammickite said...

Haha ah love those fringe jokes, even Dumdad's.

Grumpy Old Ken said...

Expat mum
You can 'tweet' this with pleasure. Mind you. i can't get my head round Twitter, you're both brave and talented!

Rosalind Adam said...

You can't make that sort of thing up can you... except for the one-liners of course. That bike counting machine has got to be the craziest.

Grumpy Old Ken said...

fly in the web
Smashing to hear your comments, my wife is half french!

Grumpy Old Ken said...

slommler
Thanks, good point!

Grumpy Old Ken said...

Valerie
I would love to interview the woman, one year on, to see how her life had changed.

Grumpy Old Ken said...

Dumdad
Thanks. Interestingly enough I always wanted to be a journalist but had no one to guide me so to speak. Instead had numerous odd jobs and finished up teaching!

Grumpy Old Ken said...

Shammickite
Who's your favourite comedian I wonder!

Grumpy Old Ken said...

Rosalind Adam
The funny thing is, it gets worse not better. Humans are so pompous. see the Leicester connection. Went to the Youth leaders College in 1964,(Humberstone Drive?0 Boy, was I green, a real village boy who thought he was going to change the world.