NOT IN OUR BACK YARD

Hitachi has signed a £700m deal to build the UK's new generation of nuclear power plants.  David Cameron said that this is a major step for the UK.  It is also a major opportunity for Hitachi who are not allowed to build such plants in Japan........for safety reasons.

ALLO, ALLO, ALLO.

The Metropolitan Police are considering selling off the New Scotland Yard building, famous for  its revolving sign.  This is so that they can meet the governments cost cutting targets. They are also to cut the number of police station front counters in the London area. These are the locations where the ordinary citizen contacts the police to inform them of criminal wrongdoings and this will have the additional benefit of reducing the number of reported crimes.

  Amid all of this cost-cutting furore, the Met. is to investigate Mark Clattenburg, the FA referee, for the unspeakable crime of calling Chelsea players nasty names. I may be wrong, but I can see opportunities for further cost savings.

RED CARD

The latest person to be accused of the heinous, wicked and abominable crime of “calling someone a nasty name” appears to be FA referee Mark Clattenburg.  Clattenburg , it is claimed,  made an inappropriate remark to midfielder John Obi Mikel and accused Juan Mata of being Spanish.  We must be grateful that he didn’t call them "plebs" otherwise there would have been real trouble

ITS ALL BLACK AND WHITE

Peter Herbert, who chairs the Society of Black Lawyers, revealed yesterday that talks about the formation of the association for black football players (to be known as the Black Players' Association) are at a preliminary stage.  Presumably, there won’t be objections to a similar proposal to form a White Players Association.

JIMMY SA-VILE

The inquiry into alleged child abuse by Jimmy Saville has now become a formal criminal investigation, according to Scotland Yard, and the NSPCC said it is possible that Saville was "one of the most prolific sex offenders" the charity has ever come across. 

                                                       “How’s about that, then”

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

Home Secretary Theresa May has stepped in to halt the extradition procedure and save Aspergers sufferer Gary McKinnon from the malevolent and vindictive clutches of the USA. McKinnon has already admitted hacking into American military files looking for evidence of UFOs.  Perhaps, rather than persecuting the unfortunate McKinnon, the Americans should be employing him to show them how he managed to penetrate their supposedly top security military files. And as for Mrs. May, did she not use the Human Rights Act to justify stopping the procedure and is this not the same act from which we are proposing to withdraw ?

BITTER COFFEE

It was revealed today that Starbucks have paid no corporation tax on their UK earnings over the past three years and only a little over £8m since 1998. This has been achieved by loading costs on the UK company and declaring large profits in low-tax territories, putting local rivals in the UK at a competitive disadvantage.  This practice, whilst legal, is thoroughly reprehensible, and like the coffee leaves a bad taste in the mouth. 

JUST A POINT OF VIEW

Five British Royal Marines have been charged with the murder of an insurgent in Afghanistan. This was described, by a military spokesman, as the sort of action that gives the Taliban the moral high ground. Any high ground is important to the Taliban because it gives an improved line of sight when they shoot 14 year-old schoolgirls in the head.

HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN.

It appears to be the open season for debunking heroes, mostly through the medium of the national press.  A thousand page dossier from the US Anti-doping agency claims to show that Lance Armstrong, the multi-Tour de France winner and cancer survivor, was a sophisticated drug treat and that Sir Jimmy Saville, the lovable TV personality and charity worker, a predatory paedophile. In both cases the legal process has yet to be conducted and there are still unanswered questions to be addressed, such as why Armstrong passed a hundred percent of his drug tests and why there were no complaints against Saville during his lifetime.  It would appear that Jim managed to fix that.

A MAN OF HIS WORD

As we have already remarked, Ashley Cole has committed the grievous crime of “Tweeting” that the “FA are a bunch of twats” or to be more exact, in it’s actual grammatical context, “Hahahahaa, well done #fa I lied did I, #BUNCHOFTWATS. 

Let us now consider the wisdom of giving footballers, not usually  amongst the world’s greatest intellectuals, access to a system that allows them to put their immediate thoughts in writing and transmit them to thousands of people simultaneously.  It is equivalent to giving a baby a hand grenade to play with and telling him not to pull the pin.  No wonder explosions follow.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE...... T* * * S

Ashley Cole has committed the grievous crime of “Tweeting” that the “FA are a bunch of twats” or to be more exact, in it’s actual grammatical context, “Hahahahaa, well done #fa I lied did I, #BUNCHOFTWATS.”  

Let us start by considering Mr. Cole’s hypothesis.  The FA appear to be obsessed with minor misdemeanors such as in the Terry incident, expensively pursuing a case that had already been rejected in a court of law and instead retrying it kangaroo style.  Meanwhile what of the real issues: unsuitable, ultra-rich foreign owners taking over our clubs, the ridiculous wages being paid to the bladder kickers whilst the cost of tickets rocket, excluding the ordinary citizen from games, and the excess of oversees players in our leagues And what is the Association doing about these.  FA.  One to Mr Cole I think!

BACC TO THE FUTURE

Following the announcement by the omnipresent Michael Gove that the GCSE examination will be replaced by the English Baccalaureate or Eng Bacc, Ed Miliband,not to be outdone, has announced that Labour will introduce the Technical Baccalaureate or Tech Bacc if they win the next General Election. 

 These could be the first of several new qualifications such as those developed for the Retail Sector (The Money Bacc.), the Theatre (the Play Bacc.), Australian Studies ( the Out Bacc.), Classical Music (the J.S.Bacc) and Politics (Watch yer Bacc.)

THE WRONG TROUSERS

With the policies of Labour and The Conservatives so similar that it is impossible to distinguish between them, commentators have turned instead to characterising the party leaders and comparing them to well-known cartoon characters, old-Etonian, David Cameron to Lord Snooty,with his upper-class pals, and Ed Miliband to Aardman’s Wallace.  When asked what he thought of this portrayal Milliband replied “ It's just a bit of fun, lad. Now, fancy a nice piece of Wensleydale?”