Can’t resist a pissing contest. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser.
Articles with the Tag Culture
Is It Balls Or Not?
All this week it’s been rumoured in UK political blogdom that the known troughers and married Cabinet Ministers Education Secretary Ed “So what” Balls and Treasury Secretary Yvette Cooper were so worried about public reaction to that greed being exposed that they’d obtained an injunction to stop the publication of their expenses; the implication being that despite the dishonesty that had already been exposed to public disgust, there was an even worse crime Labour’s golden couple were trying to hide. Which of course leads one to ask the inevitable question, “What! Worse than this?”
So have they or haven’t they got an injunction? The press have been remarkably quiet on Balls and Cooper this week, considering their past history, so reports that they’d obtained an injunction haven’t seemed at all unlikely, though impossible to confirm.
Now it’s rumoured they have applied but they haven’t succeeded:
Balls Fails to Prevent Expenses Revelations
News reaches me that Brown protégé Ed Balls has been fighting a rear-guard action to prevent publication of the expenses he and his wife Yvette Cooper have been claiming over the last few years. Rumours have abounded for a while that the Daily Telegraph had a devastating story on the couple but I have been informed that Balls sought a High Court injunction to prevent the Telegraph publishing what it knows.
This morning the High Court rejected Balls’ pleas to cover up his expenses record and I am told that therefore there will be a very damaging story published shortly. Balls has been suggested by some to be Gordon Brown’s preferred successor and if he is damaged goods it will further reflect badly on the Prime Minister’s judgement.
‘News reaches’ him from where? How does a Reading conservative have an inside track on Labour? Has the Councillor a mole in Downing St, or is his source in the High Court, or one of the chambers acting for the couple? If not where are these rumours coming from? Of course it could just be a deep Labour plot, an attempt to nobble Brown’s anointed successor Balls ahead of any leadership battle – hence the propagation of the story in Tory-leaning blogs. You can say virtually anything in a comment thread.
I don’t expect source-revealing. I’m not just nosy (well, I am, OK I admit it), merely trying to pin down whether the injunction story’s true or not. Obviously if the source is a court official, Councillor Willis can’t name names – contempt and all that -but ‘news reaches me’ is just a little fuzzy.
So I reluctantly have to conclude – because I do loathe Cooper and Balls, who personify everything vile about New Labour in one easy to hate package – that at the moment the whole injunction story’s still just a rumour.
Damn. It could have done for them politically for once and all. One can only live in hope.
What, Me Worried?
Pity the rich, tossing and turning on their Porthault sheets. How they suffer.
Forbes Magazine is so worried about a backlash that they’ve published an allegedly tongue in cheek guide on how to avoid the pitchforks and flaming torches by not flaunting, but hiding your wealth. While still keeping up your lifestyle, obviously.
It’s tough out there when everyone hates you–or at least suspects you had a hand in the collapse of the global financial system, the shredding of trillions of dollars of assets and the issuance of 5 million pink slips since January 2008. Have you hired a security firm yet? At least get a lawyer: The feds may be coming after you, combing through the wreckage of your business, looking for evidence to send you up the river. If Barack Obama doesn’t raise your taxes, your populist state legislators will.
What’s a strapped hectomillionaire (to say nothing of a billionaire) to do? First off, relax. Don’t do anything crazy, like build a bomb shelter or open a Channel Islands trust with a dummy trustee to hide from taxes (it’s illegal). Like the recession, the angry mob clamoring for your head will pass on. It’s still good to be rich.
Yes, I expect it is.How can the poor suffering oligarchs hide their money?
– “Trusts for children are nearly impossible to crack…”
So nice to see tradition still counts for something.
And how can one avoid taxes when the oiks in the revenue come knocking?
“Store all the diamonds or gold bullion (but not gold certificates) you want in a Swiss bank without reporting it to the irs, since the investments don’t pay interest. (Another option: raw land, which doesn’t require reporting until it generates income.)
Ahh, the old ways, always the best. The authors go on to advise their readers to keep their chins up, stay upbeat and think of uncertain times as an opportunity, not a threat:
….the recession provides a good smoke screen for disposing of a servant you don’t like anyway.
That’s what’s most telling about this cover piece; the tone. It tries hard for charming insouciance but the real worry still shows through, because it’s it’s studded with nuggets of thoroughly specific advice, like
If your worry is creditors, not tax collectors, buy a flat in London and go there if things get too hot. “As long as it’s not criminal, you won’t get extradited,”
Haha. So very droll. Though a commenter didn’t find it all amusing:
Forgive me for sounding like a member of the “POPULIST MOB,” but this article strikes me as being in profoundly bad taste. People are losing their homes and lining up at food banks, and you’re offering instructions on how to evade taxes?? And offering condolences to people whose yacht builders went out of business? Is it really okay to even joke about this?
Bad taste it may be but it’s not a joke, it’s whistling in the dark. The rich are worried and are right to be worried – the climate change exodus has begun already, food and water riots loom and because of an unprecedented access to information which has exposed their leaders’ corruption, electorates worldwide have lost faith in democracy. The world is in a dangerous place and it’s mostly the rich’s fault.
But hey, stay upbeat, oligarchs. Why not make hay while the sun shines? The authors forgot the best advice to the rich who want to keep activities quiet while still making shedloads of untaxed cash: put your money in pitchfork production.
‘Be Off Oiks, Or I’ll Set The Wallabies On Yer!’
I was very tempted to have titled this post Bouncing In The Borders. Or maybe Leaping in The Lupins, or Jumping On The Jasmine, or Hopping on The Hostas or Boinging in The Buddleia …. I could go on and on.
So I thought the The Times was remarkably restrained with the headline on its report that shire landowners are are increasingly choosing wallabies as pets:
Home-grown wallabies hop in to help gardeners keep their lawns trim
Thousands of miles from their native Outback the marsupials are replacing sheep, horses and geese in scores of country gardens and fields.
All prospective owners need to keep their lawns clipped are half an acre of land, a lot of grass and a large fence.
Oh, is that all. Let’s all get one! They’re pretty expensive though, in addition to the land requirement:
The wallabies cost £150 for a male and £600 to £700 for a female, while the sought-after albino wallabies fetch £1,000 for a female and about £500 for a male
Ah, so it’s posh people buying them then? Thought it might be.
On a waiting list for wallabies is Richard Sheepshanks, who lives at Rendlesham Hall, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. He has 10 acres of land.
“I have a wife, four children under the age of five, and we already have a menagerie with seven dogs, five sheep and four peacocks. I could use sheep to keep down the grass but they are messy and stupid,†he said.
He added: “We have a walled garden separated from the main house which has a 25-foot outer and 10-foot inner wall but it’s a bit wild and the grass needs keeping down.
That’s not a trend, it’s just J Random Posh Bloke who has an unusual pet. Typical Times puff piece. But who cares, wallabies are cute and not at all aggressive either. Just the opposite.
They would be useless as security guards, though. Mr Lay said: “They’d run a mile from a burglar or stranger. They are timid creatures and really harmless but adults will growl if their young are threatened. And they don’t like dogs.â€
(They don’t like pigeons much either.)
It’s almost a shame they’re not aggressive – I do like the ridiculous mental picture of an irate, tweedy, posh bloke threatening to set the attack wallabies loose.
If they were, and wallaby ownership were an actual trend, then given the propensity of suburban landowner wannabes to ape the gentry, it wouldn’t be long before marsupial ownership percolated down the social scale from the shires to the stockbroker belt to aspirational Barratt home land and thence to the outer ring estates. Given the price of wallabies, before long pitbull-wallaby breeding farms’d pop up and we’d see drug dealers pimprolling along with snarling wallabies in studded collars bouncing threateningly by their sides. Or what if they escaped? Imagine hungry, feral wallabies attacking beloved domestic pets before bounding off into the dark.
I Expect Gordon Brown Already Has His Complimentary Copy, Not that It’ll Do Him Any Good
North Korea’s video instructions to the populace on how to vote:
See, apathetic UK voters, it’s easy. Step up, bow to the nice party officials, and don’t forget to vote overwhelmingly for the Dear Leader. It certainly works for Kim Jong Il, who got 99% of the vote in the last North Korean election: it could work for Gordo too. He could put a copy through every letter box along with the swine flu leaflets.
It’s the only way Labour under Brown will ever get elected again anytime soon, despite their members’ best efforts to subvert the vote.
Labour MPs know this. They see the gravy train rapidly steaming out of the station. That’s why there are so many carefully placed rumours Charles”I’m ashamed to be a Labour MP” Clarke is plotting for the leadership as a Blairite ‘safety’ candidate, just to get rid of Brown.
Prepare for mean, stalking safety elephant on a media rampage and worse; like the once-laughable Squirrel Nutkin Hazel Blears and the lightweight James Purnell being touted as actual contenders for PM.
But the Blairites’ve tried it numerous times before, and like the Dear Leader Brown’s still there, despite being universally loathed by the public and his own party alike.
They’ve all failed to dislodge Brown; despite every failure, every disaster, every mismanagement and however many Nokias and printers he’s attacked in temper, the bugger’s still bloody there. It’s at least a year until the general election. We may yet get the instructional voting videos in the post.