GRUMPY OLD MAN

A British artist has mastered an ancient form of optical illusion to create these incredible 3D images inside people's homes - giving every house a stunning 'room with a view'.

Talented Janet Shearer, 56, produces beautiful murals known as 'trompe l'oeil' - trick of the eye - to give the dullest of rooms a breathtaking vista.

Each work is painstakingly created over weeks and sometimes months using tiny brushes to give the artificial view a startlingly realistic appearance.

Janet's murals includes stunning sea views, beautiful horizons, white sands, crashing waves, rolling countryside, city scapes, rooftops and sports matches.

Her colourful work often contain Tuscan views, Roman empires and scenes of ancient lands as well as people and animals such as dogs and peacocks.
Janet's work is found across the world and graces the walls of restaurants, pubs, hotels, private houses, churches and even a cross channel ferry.

Mother-of-two Janet, a former model and film set designer, charges around £5,000 for a 8ft by 5ft piece but says in can be cheaper - than redecorating.

This work was inspired by a cafe in Venice and features the faces people of local and international merit who were born or lived in St Austell and its surrounding areas. Well known faces include actor John Nettles, Daphne du Maurier, blind and deaf writer Jack Clemo, and footballer Nigel Martyn

(From the Daily Mail - Another example tomorrow)

More art from Rob Gonsalves. Shades of Mary Poppins.

Bedtime Aviation

You can see other examples of his work and purchase prints from his website:

http://www.discoverygalleries.com/ArtistGallery.asp?artist_id=23&category_id=2

The BBC has pulled an episode of "This Week" from the internet amid worries of a race backlash after host Andrew Neil compared Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo with a chocolate HobNob biscuit and a custard cream.

The political show was broadcast on BBC1 last Thursday, on the same night as BNP leader Nick Griffin's controversial appearance as a guest on "Question Time".

"This Week" began with Neil poking fun at Prime Minister Gordon Brown's reluctance to name his favourite biscuit.

Neil made a light-hearted joke that his two co-hosts were the ''chocolate HobNob and custard cream of late night telly''.

But concerns were raised by a handful of viewers that Neil might have been referring to race - and the episode was removed from the BBC's iPlayer on-demand service the following evening. A planned repeat of the show was also cancelled.

A BBC spokesman said: ''Every week the programme begins with Andrew Neil running through some of the political stories of the week.

''He then picks up on one of those stories and uses it to introduce Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo in a light-hearted way.

''On Thursday's programme Andrew made reference to the story that Gordon Brown was reluctant to name his favourite biscuit during a live web chat with parents from the website Mumsnet.

''It was in this context of Gordon Brown's biscuit preferences that Andrew introduced Diane and Michael as the 'chocolate HobNob and custard cream of late night telly'.

''Andrew's introduction chose two well-known types of biscuit at random but a few viewers have expressed concern that this might have been a reference to race.

''This was certainly not the case and the programme would like to reassure them on this point and apologise if any unintentional offence was caused.

''This Week and the BBC have no wish to upset any member of our audience and so the programme was removed from the BBC's iPlayer and the programme repeat was cancelled from BBC Parliament.''

Conservative MP Anne Widdecombe told the Daily Mail: ''The BBC are totally paranoid about some things and utterly dismissive of other incidents.

''I only wish that they would take such a hard line against swearing, rather than things like this.''

Culture committee chairman John Whittingdale MP told the newspaper:
''Nobody could seriously believe calling Diane Abbott a chocolate HobNob and Michael Portillo a custard cream to be racist.''

(From an article in the Daily Telegraph)

Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo have known each other since school, when they appeared in a joint school production of "Romeo and Juliet" (although not in the title roles), and "Macbeth" as Lady Macduff and Macduff respectively.

Despite their opposing politics, they work well together on the programme, which has been described by Jonathan Dimbleby as a "love in" between the two.

I have always supported the minority view on Climate Change and Global Warming, believing that many of the dire warnings are based on faulty scientific research.

I have always been an optimist!

Many people all over the world have been indoctrinated through government misinformation, exaggerated by the media.

Have we all been duped by a costly deception?

Christopher Booker, the Sunday Telegraph columnist, has written a new book on the subject.

Christopher Booker reveals how a handful of scientists, who have pushed flawed theories on global warming for decades, now threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages.

"Next Thursday marks the first anniversary of one of the most remarkable events ever to take place in the House of Commons. For six hours MPs debated what was far and away the most expensive piece of legislation ever put before Parliament.

The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition.

Even the Government had to concede that the expense of doing this – which it now admits will cost us £18 billion a year for the next 40 years – would be twice the value of its supposed benefits. Yet, astonishingly, although dozens of MPs queued up to speak in favour of the Bill, only two dared to question the need for it. It passed by 463 votes to just three.

One who voted against it was Peter Lilley who, just before the vote was taken, drew the Speaker’s attention to the fact that, outside the Palace of Westminster, snow was falling, the first October snow recorded in London for 74 years. As I observed at the time: “Who says that God hasn’t got a sense of humour?”

By any measure, the supposed menace of global warming – and the political response to it – has become one of the overwhelmingly urgent issues of our time.

If one accepts the thesis that the planet faces a threat unprecedented in history, the implications are mind-boggling. But equally mind-boggling now are the implications of the price we are being asked to pay by our politicians to meet that threat. More than ever, it is a matter of the highest priority that we should know whether or not the assumptions on which the politicians base their proposals are founded on properly sound science.

This is why I have been regularly reporting on the issue in my column in The Sunday Telegraph, and this week I publish a book called The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the obsession with climate change turning out to be the most costly scientific delusion in history?.

There are already many books on this subject, but mine is rather different from the rest in that, for the first time, it tries to tell the whole tangled story of how the debate over the threat of climate change has evolved over the past 30 years, interweaving the science with the politicians’ response to it.

It is a story that has unfolded in three stages. The first began back in the Seventies when a number of scientists noticed that the world’s temperatures had been falling for 30 years, leading them to warn that we might be heading for a new ice age.

Then, in the mid-Seventies, temperatures started to rise again, and by the mid-Eighties, a still fairly small number of scientists – including some of those who had been predicting a new ice age – began to warn that we were now facing the opposite problem: a world dangerously heating up, thanks to our pumping out CO₂ and all those greenhouse gases inseparable from modern civilisation.

In 1988, a handful of the scientists who passionately believed in this theory won authorisation from the UN to set up the body known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This was the year when the scare over global warming really exploded into the headlines, thanks above all to the carefully staged testimony given to a US Senate Committee by Dr James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), also already an advocate for the theory that CO₂ was causing potentially catastrophic warming.

The disaster-movie scenario that rising levels of CO₂ could lead to droughts, hurricanes, heatwaves and, above all, that melting of the polar ice caps, which would flood half the world’s major cities, struck a rich chord.

The media loved it. The environmentalists loved it. More and more politicians, led by Al Gore in the United States, jumped on the bandwagon. But easily their most influential allies were the scientists running the new IPCC, led by a Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin and Dr John Houghton, head of the UK Met Office.

The IPCC, through its series of weighty reports, was now to become the central player in the whole story. But rarely has the true nature of any international body been more widely misrepresented. It is commonly believed that the IPCC consists of “1,500 of the world’s top climate scientists”, charged with weighing all the scientific evidence for and against “human-induced climate change” in order to arrive at a “consensus”.

In fact, the IPCC was never intended to be anything of the kind. The vast majority of its contributors have never been climate scientists. Many are not scientists at all. And from the start, the purpose of the IPCC was not to test the theory, but to provide the most plausible case for promoting it. This was why the computer models it relied on as its chief source of evidence were all programmed to show that, as CO₂ levels continued to rise, so temperatures must inevitably follow.

More and more eminent scientists have been coming out of the woodwork to suggest that the IPCC, with its computer models, had got it all wrong. It isn’t CO₂ that has been driving the climate, the changes are natural, driven by the activity of the sun and changes in the currents of the world’s oceans.

The ice caps haven’t been melting as the alarmists and the models predicted they should. The Antarctic, containing nearly 90 per cent of all the ice in the world, has actually been cooling over the past 30 years, not warming. The polar bears are not drowning – there are four times more of them now than there were 40 years ago. In recent decades, the number of hurricanes and droughts have gone markedly down, not up.

As the world has already been through two of its coldest winters for decades, with all the signs that we may now be entering a third, the scientific case for CO₂ threatening the world with warming has been crumbling away on an astonishing scale.

More and more eminent scientists have been coming out of the woodwork to suggest that the IPCC, with its computer models, had got it all wrong. It isn’t CO₂ that has been driving the climate, the changes are natural, driven by the activity of the sun and changes in the currents of the world’s oceans.

The ice caps haven’t been melting as the alarmists and the models predicted they should. The Antarctic, containing nearly 90 per cent of all the ice in the world, has actually been cooling over the past 30 years, not warming. The polar bears are not drowning – there are four times more of them now than there were 40 years ago. In recent decades, the number of hurricanes and droughts have gone markedly down, not up.

As the world has already been through two of its coldest winters for decades, with all the signs that we may now be entering a third, the scientific case for CO₂ threatening the world with warming has been crumbling away on an astonishing scale.

Thanks to misreading the significance of a brief period of rising temperatures at the end of the 20th century, the Western world (but not India or China) is now contemplating measures that add up to the most expensive economic suicide note ever written.

How long will it be before sanity and sound science break in on what begins to look like one of the most bizarre collective delusions ever to grip the human race?"

'The Real Global Warming Disaster’ by Christopher Booker (Continuum, £16.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £14.99 plus £1.25 postage and packing. To order, call 0844 871 1516 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk

HOW COULD THEY CONFUSE THE TWO?

"We apologize to our readers who received, through an unfortunate computer error, the chest measurements of members of the Female Wrestlers Association instead of the figures on the sales of soybeans to foreign countries."

Dog-owners should consider doing without their pet, exchanging it for a goldfish or even eating it to help save the planet, according to a new book.

It claims that the carbon footprint left by domesticated animals is out of proportion to the size of their paws.

A medium-sized dog has the same impact as a Toyota Land Cruiser driven 6,000 miles a year, while a cat is equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf.

But rabbits and chickens are eco-friendly because they provide meat for their owners while a canary or a goldfish has little effect on the environment.

At the same time a pair of hamsters do the same damage as running a plasma television, suggests the book "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living."

New Zealand-based authors Robert and Brenda Vale base their findings on the amount of land needed to grow food for pets ranging from budgerigars to cats and dogs.

They say an average Collie eats 164kg of meat and 95kg of cereals a year, giving it a high impact on the planet.

But a pair of rabbits can produce 36 young annually, which would provide 72kg of meat and help decrease the owner's carbon footprint.

Mr Vale, an architect who specialises in sustainable living, said: "There are no recipes in the book. We're not actually saying it is time to eat the dog.

"We're just saying that we need to think about and know the (ecological) impact of some of the things we do and that we take for granted."

He explained that sustainability issues require us to make choices which are "as difficult as eating your dog".

Mr Vale added: "Once you see where cats and dogs fit in your overall balance of things, you might decide to have the cat but not also to have the two cars and the three bathrooms and be a meat-eater yourself."

(Daily Telegraph)

Five-year-old Giuliano Stroe shows off his impressive physique

A muscle-bound boy has been entered into the Guinness Book of Records after performing an incredible physical stunt.

Romanian Giuliano Stroe, five, has been training since the age of two in Italy - where he lives with his family - and now the hard work has finally paid off.

He was entered into the record books earlier this year after performing some impressive 'hand-walking' skills to a panel of judges and an astonished audience on an Italian TV show .

The exceptional pre-schooler performed the fastest ever 10m hand walk with a weight ball between his legs to the delight of the studio audience.

Father Iulian Stroe, 33, said: 'He has been going to the gym with me ever since he was born. I always took him with me when I went training.'

He added there is no danger of the youngster harming himself, saying: 'I have been training hard all my life myself..

Giuliano, the oldest of four children, says his stardom has not gone to his head and he still enjoys normal kids stuff like painting, watching cartoons and playing in the park when he is not weightlifting.

But it seems he has picked up a taste for fame during his incredible exploits, revealing he enjoys it when he is applauded after performing.

(From http://believe-or-not.blogspot.com)

Lilith with Adam in the Garden of Eden

On Wednesday I posted on http://picturepost.blog.co.uk/
Dante Rossetti's painting "Lady Lilith" and noted that she was "Adam's first wife".

Mojacar added a comment:

"Am I missing something? Did Adam have a first wife, I thought Eve was the first? "

The subject is fascinating and I think the following from Yahoo Answers will interest a wider audience:

In some old Judeo-Christian traditions, Lilith was the original wife of Adam. She was offended when he attempted to have her lie beneath him during sexual intercourse, and would not meet his request.

She demanded equality with Adam, because they were created together in the image of God. When equality was refused her, she left in anger and made her home in caves on the shores of the Red Sea, taking demons as lovers.

Adam complained to God, who sent three angels (named Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf) to bring her back to Eden.

The angels ordered her to return, threatening that they would kill her children if she didn't go back. Exclaiming that even this was better than returning to submission, she refused.

The angels carried out their threat. God created a second wife for Adam- the docile Eve.

Lilith was written out of the Bible along the way by one of the many, many translators."

I am reading a book about "Catastrophism", the theory that the Earth is periodically afflicted by spontaneous, short-lived and cataclysmic events with global ramifications.

This view of the world developed from the idea that catastrophes were acts of God, inflicted upon humans by a vengeful deity - for example Noah's flood.

About 65 million years ago, dinosaurs and most other giant reptiles died out - possibly from a massive meteor strike.

Another act of God? If so your insurance company would not pay out for the loss of your T.Rex.

In modern times the gloom merchants tell us that life on our planet is threatened by Global Warming, Global Cooling, Bird Flu, Swine Flu and many other possible misfortunes.

From early days,almanacs contained predictions of the future based on the position of heavenly bodies. Some of the predictions became so frightening (foretelling the deaths of kings, for example) that in 1579 King Henry III of France forbade almanac makers by law to make prophecies.

The best known 'prophet of the future' is probably Nostradamus (Michel de Nostredame 1503 - 1566), a French apothecary and reputed seer who has been credited with predicting many major world events.

However, most academic sources maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's predictions are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations.

In 1938 Orson Welles caused panic by broadcasting a radio adaptation of HG. Wells book "The War of the Worlds".

The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast was presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested to many listeners that an actual Martian invasion was in progress.

Since then Hollywood has fed the public's demand for even more disaster movies.

Roland Emmerich, the German film director, screenwriter and producer, has specialised in the genre, giving us 'Independence Day" about the destruction of the world by aliens and "The Day After Tomorrow", a warning about Global Warming.

His forthcoming movie "2012" is inspired by the theory that the ancient Mayans prophesied the world's ending on December 21, 2012.

That's not long to go, is it? Perhaps we should all spend our money, if we have any, and enjoy ourselves.

Or not!

We have heard it all before, haven't we?

BUT NOT NEXT WEEK!

(Telegraph Online - "Sign Language")

A bearded face, with long flowing hair, is plainly visible on the wooden door of the men’s toilet in the Braehead outlet of the Swedish furniture giant IKEA.

Some debate over whether the face truly represents the Son of Man, or whether it is in fact Gandalf out of the Lord of the Rings, or even a member of ABBA.

One shopper said: "It takes you by surprise. It is really clear in the wood.

"I was only heading to the toilet and found God.

"My wife thought He looked like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings but it is definitely more like the Turin Shroud.

"It's certainly not what you expect to find in an Ikea store. Mind you, you need a little divine intervention to get out of here sometimes."

In a further twist, Ikea bosses claim that the image is really Benny Anderson, of the Eurovision Song Contest-winning Swedish 1970s Europop outfit ABBA.

A spokeswoman said: "Swedishness is engrained in every part of our stores."

If the image is agreed to be Jesus, rather than a fictional wizard or a bearded, middle-aged pop singer, it may be the oddest place for a vision of the Saviour since a Welsh woman spotted His face in the lid of a jar of Marmite during breakfast in May this year.

(Telegraph Online)

In Tokyo, many restaurants tempt in customers by displaying plastic versions of their menu in the window.

And as Roland Buerk reports, what started as a marketing ploy is now almost an art form, as skilled workers recreate everything from a bowl of soup to an ice-cream sundae.

(BBC)

Play the video at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8310560.stm

Of course, some real food often tastes like plastic.

PM WARNS OF 'CLIMATE CATASTROPHE' - 50 DAYS TO SAVE THE PLANET

The UK faces a "catastrophe" of floods, droughts and killer heatwaves if world leaders fail to agree a deal on climate change, the prime minister has warned.

Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the "impasse".

He told the Major Economies Forum in London, which brings together 17 of the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, there was "no plan B".

World delegations meet in Copenhagen in December for talks on a new treaty

(BBC News)

However, it is important to consider the minority view of the sceptics:

Some scientists disagree with the global and UK predictions for climate change, mainly because the climate had changed naturally before. In addition predicting changes to our climate is very complex and the use of computer models has raised some criticism.

On top of that, some experts believe it is impossible to be certain about how our climate will change as it can be very unpredictable.

They also believe, the climate is supposed to change and it has done before. Many believe activities from humans can not be to blame for changes in the climate.

Some sceptics have criticised the reports of the IPCC as being based on unknown assumptions about the future and based on computer models which are not adequate for such a job.

Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the University of London, Philip Stott summed up his thoughts on the issue in a newspaper article in 2005.

“Climate change has to be broken down into three questions: 'Is climate changing and in what direction?' 'Are humans influencing climate change, and to what degree?' And: 'Are humans able to manage climate change predictably by adjusting one or two factors out of the thousands involved?'

The most fundamental question is: 'Can humans manipulate climate predictably?' Or, more scientifically: 'Will cutting carbon dioxide emissions at the margin produce a linear, predictable change in climate?'

The answer is 'No'. In so complex a coupled, non-linear, chaotic system as climate, not doing something at the margins is as unpredictable as doing something. This is the cautious science; the rest is dogma.”

Gordon Brown has finally revealed his favourite biscuit - after 24 hours of dithering.

The Prime Minister did nothing for his reputation for indecision when he refused to give a straight answer to the vital issue during a live web chat. But yesterday he tried to bring the 'Biscuitgate' controversy to an end by announcing that he was partial to chocolate ones.

Even then, he would not be pinned down and declined to say whether he preferred Bourbons, chocolate digestives, Jaffa cakes or American-style chocolate-chip cookies.

The Biscuitgate row started when Mr Brown answered questions on the Mumsnet website on a wide range of issues, including his recent eye problem. But it all went wrong when he repeatedly failed to respond to enquiries from parents about his favourite biscuit.

With a determination worthy of Jeremy Paxman, the question - a staple of interviews on the site - was put to Mr Brown no fewer than 12 times. Time and again he refused to answer.

One member, MadameDefarge, said: 'Maybe he needs to consult with his advisers on what would be the most vote-winning biscuit to admit to liking?'

Mr Brown left the hour-long session with the question unanswered, and afterwards Downing Street still refused to comment.

But finally at midday yesterday, he answered on his Twitter web page, writing: 'I missed Mumsnet question about biscuits: the answer is absolutely anything with a bit of chocolate on it, but trying v hard to cut down.'

Mr Brown had spent an hour answering Mumsnet members' questions on subjects from childcare to Afghanistan.

But things had started to go badly when he was asked if he thought he had been an unlucky Prime Minister. 'Not when I'm sitting here at Mumsnet!' he answered.

'That has to be the cringiest thing I have ever read,' came one reply.

(Abridged from an article in Mail Online)

P.S. For any of my overseas readers who may not know - Gordon Brown is the present British Prime Minister. But for how much longer

Check out my new blog at: http://ME-TALKING.blog.co.uk

Tesco is to introduce "buy-one-get-one-free-later" deals to help shoppers cut down on food waste.

Under the offers, consumers will be able to postpone getting their free second promotional product until a later shopping trip.

This would avoid perishable items sitting in the fridge or fruit bowl and then being thrown away if they are not eaten on time.

A Tesco spokesman said: 'The new arrangements will likely apply to perishable products, such as fruit and vegetables.

'Customers will still be able to get two packs for the price of one on things like apples, just as they do at the moment.

'But we will also allow a new option. They may decide to take only one pack of apples now because they won't eat two.

'Then, when they get to the check out, they will get a voucher to go back and get a second pack free when they next go shopping.'

The vouchers, which would carry a deadline to ensure items are in stock, are expected to be introduced before Christmas.

GOOD FOOD GOING TO WASTE:

*Average annual value of good food dumped by each family: £610

*Value of good food dumped each year: £10 billion

*Weight of good food dumped each year: 6.7m tonnes

*Value of dumped food that has never been opened/used: £6 billion.

*Value of dumped food that is still 'in date': £1 billion

(From an article in the Daily Mail)

If you're like every other ordinary Internet user, you browse the Web incessantly every day and/or night, visiting dozens of websites and blogs each day.

When you open up a page you probably expect to get the information you're interested in and then close the browser window or tab, without leaving more than a trace of that fact in the server log. After all, you're not typing in your personal information on just about any website, so why would it know anything about you?

Little do you know, but virtually any website you point your browser to has the ability to look inside your Web browser's history and detemine which websites you visited, allowing it to not only figure out your browsing habits, but also discover your personal preferences.

This potentially includes such data as your search engine queries, the location of your and your friends' Facebook or Twitter profiles, your political affiliation, some information about your medical history and other sensitive and private data.

The data could also, with a bit of luck, reveal your real name and location. At the very least, it will provide some information about the news websites you frequent and the on-line stores and products you're interested in.

Check this out: http://whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com/all

Also: http://whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com/cute_kitten

P.S. Both these websites are safe to look at.

Britain is the worst place to live in Europe (despite our big pay packets)

*British workers retire three years after the French

*UK life expectancy is two years less than in France

*Fuel and food costs in UK are above European average

Britain is the worst place in Europe to live despite offering the biggest salaries, a study revealed today.

High incomes in the UK are cancelled out by long working hours, poor annual leave, rising food and fuel bills and a lack of sunshine.

Researchers weighed up official data for ten European countries, including France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Poland.

It found that Britons enjoy the highest after-tax household income, which, at £35,730-a-year, is more than £10,000 above the European average.

But most of it was spent keeping a 'roof over our heads, food on the table and our homes warm', according to the uSwitch.com European Quality of Life Index.

After taking into account 17 quality of life measures, the study put Britain at the bottom of the list, with Ireland second from last. The best quality of life could be found in France and Spain.

Britons can expect to work three years longer and die two years younger than their French counterparts.

We also have to contend with a higher cost of living and pay more for most basics such as fuel, food, alcohol and train travel.

With a litre costing £1.08, the UK is the second most expensive country for unleaded petrol and the most expensive for diesel.

Meanwhile, a basket of food items that costs £134.48 in the UK will be £124 in Europe and only £118.76 in France.

Annual household energy bills come in at £1,239 on average, with Britons paying the third-highest electricity charges.

Only Ireland and Sweden pays more for a round of drinks than the UK, and only the Irish pay more for cigarettes.

Life expectancy is also slightly lower than the European average, according to the study, which was carried out in conjunction with Research Insight.

While Britons can expect to live to 78.9, the French can expect to reach 80.9.

And while the average European retirement age is 62 years, UK workers can expect to carry on six months longer.

Although workers in Spain, France, Italy and Poland work longer hours per week, they benefit from more days off.

UK workers get the least annual leave in Europe, with 28 days a year, compared with 41 in Spain.

As a result, UK workers can expect to work an average of five days a year more than their European counterparts and 13 days more than the Spanish.

The UK also spends a smaller percentage of its national wealth on health and education, despite evidence linking education with longer life expectancy.

Only Ireland and Poland spend less on healthcare, but Ireland has more doctors and hospital beds and Poland has more beds than the UK.

France spends the most in Europe, and has 3.4 doctors and 7.3 beds per 1,000 people, against 2.1 doctors and 3.9 beds in the UK.

The figures pre-date the recession, and there are fears UK quality of life will suffer even more as the Government reins in public spending to tackle our national debt.

(Mail Online)

Having said all that, I still prefer to live in the UK

A week ago I posted an article here about full-body scanners being used at American airports. Now they have come to the UK.

The BBC reports:

A human X-ray machine that produces "naked" images of passengers has started a trial at Manchester Airport.

The authorities say it will speed up security checks by quickly revealing any concealed weapons or explosives.

But the full body scans will also show up breast enlargements, body piercings and a clear black-and-white outline of passengers' genitals.

The airport has stressed that the images are not pornographic and will be destroyed straight away.

Sarah Barrett, head of customer experience at the airport, said most passengers did not like the traditional "pat down" search.

At Manchester Airport's Terminal 2, where the machine has been introduced, passengers will no longer have to remove their coats, shoes and belts as they go through security checks.

Ms Barrett said: "This scanner completely takes away the hassle of needing to undress.

Ms Barrett said the black and white image would only be seen by one officer in a remote location before it is deleted.

She said: "The images are not erotic or pornographic and they cannot be stored or captured in any way. Passengers can refuse to be scanned."

See more at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8304000.stm

Greenpeace activists climbed onto the roof of the Houses of Parliament today, unfurling banners which read: 'Change the politics, save the climate.'

At least 30 environmental campaigners occupied the roof of the building in the shadow of the clock tower.

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said: 'We've got to raise the temperature of the debate because we are really running out of time. We are at a minute to midnight and there is so little time left but so much to do.'

(Daily Mail)

This comment online made more sense to me:

"Global Warming, Climate Change, 1 minute to midnight. Is it really?

Who to believe, that's the question - after all, the global temperature has actually not increased for 11 years now, and this was not something that was forecast by the Climate Change models currently in use.

Research indicates that the global cooling that took place from 1945 to 1977 coincided with a decrease in temperature in the Pacific Ocean. Professor Easterbrook believes that there is a 30 year cycle related to solar energy and the temperature of the earth.

It's just that this does not suit the activist agenda and so they would like to hide this opposing view from the public so that they can carry on their protests.

We need to see a balanced argument from proponents of both sides, not hysterics ffrom one camp and near invisibility from the other.

Johnny, Simpletown, UK, 11/10/2009 17:03

Prince Charles has warned that farmers and other businesses in rural Britain face severe handicaps because their internet connections are slower than the rest of the country.

In a newspaper article yesterday, he made an impassioned plea for broadband access to be extended to even the most remote locations to help rural businesses promote their goods and overcome an economic crisis.

CONSERVATIVE LEADER STRIKES OPTIMISTIC NOTE, BUT WARNS OF TOUGH TIME AHEAD"

"We'll put Britain back on her feet."

"I want to get straight to the point. We all know how bad things are - massive debt, social breakdown, political disenchantment."

"But what I want to talk about today is how good things could be."

(David Cameron)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2009/oct/08/david-cameron-main-speech

Students who moan about the massive debts they rack up should blame their luxurious lifestyles, a professor has claimed.

The modern student existence is a far cry from the 'fleapit' one portrayed in the 1980s student sitcom 'The Young Ones' and more like the spendthrift life enjoyed in 'Friends', according to Professor Kevin Sharpe, an expert in renaissance studies at Queen Mary, University of London.

Writing in the 'Times Higher Education' magazine, the 60-year-old, who has toured campuses around the country, revealed he had been struck by the contrast between his own relatively frugal existence as an undergraduate at Oxford in the 1960s and modern student life.

While his own student digs were furnished with carpets 'held together by accumulated grime', Professor Sharpe said these days they are 'posh pads' with two bathrooms and the latest TVs and gadgets.

'Students pour not from Aldi but from Waitrose, with bottles of wine and champagne as well as bottled water... expensive foods and. . . smoked-salmon sandwiches,' he wrote.

While students lament the rise in tuition fees to £3,000-a-year, and protest at further hikes, Professor Sharpe said he would like to 'suggest another cause of student debt - a luxurious lifestyle'.

'While for many that is doubtless financed by the bank of mum and dad, for those less well off but understandably anxious to keep up with their peers, the inevitable consequence is debt – and substantial debt at that.

'Years ago the inequality felt less pronounced as even (most of) the wealthy seemed as concerned to fit into what was then a modest student lifestyle, rather than flash their cash.

'We should not ask our students to return to the fleapits of an earlier age, but a bit less luxury might mean a lot less debt.'

(Abridged from an article in the Daily Mail)

The Christmas post could be hit by a national strike, union members have warned, as Royal Mail has been forced to hire special warehouses to cope with the backlog.

(Times Online)

What lies beneath? The dilemma is that explosives inserted into body cavities like the stomach or rectum, or even implanted surgically, cannot be detected by regular airport checks.

Air travellers could face even more intrusive security checks amid fears that Al Qaeda is planning a terror campaign using suicide bombers carrying explosives hidden in their bodies.

The body bomb method was tested for the first time by 23-year-old Al Qaeda militant Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, who got through several security checks with military grade plastic explosive in his rectum and detonated them during a meeting with the Saudi anti-terrorism chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in August.

The prince only escaped serious injury because the terrorist’s body absorbed much of the impact of the blast and was ripped into seventy pieces.

The bomb is believed to have been triggered by a signal from a mobile phone text message.

The concern now is that a similar small explosion could be disastrous in the pressurised cabin of an airliner.

Although the bid failed, it has sent shockwaves through the world’s airline industry and US and French anti-terrorism experts are urging increased security to safeguard against future attacks.

The dilemma is that explosives inserted into body cavities like the stomach or rectum, or even implanted surgically, cannot be detected by regular airport checks.

Body scans have been carried out at several US airports for some time, but there are growing protests.

In April a Utah congressman said that he will introduce legislation to limit airport security's use of full-body scans, saying they are too intrusive and akin to "TSA Porn."

"I want the planes to be as safe as possible, but this is just going too far," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R), a first-term Congressman from Provo.

"The name of safety is overtaking personal privacy and I think that's wrong."

Salt Lake City International Airport in Chaffetz's home state is one of six airports nationwide serving as testing ground for the full-body scanners.

The millimeter wave scanning machines replace the need for pat-downs of travelers going through airport security checkpoints, but they introduce a different sort of privacy invasion that is unpalatable to some... namely, a nearly naked digital image that Transportation Security Administration officers analyze from a cordoned-off area.

Passengers step into a glassed area at the security checkpoint and place their arms in two different positions as the digital images are taken. Within a few seconds, passengers are normally free to go, unless the images reveal something suspicious.

Currently at the test airports, passengers can opt out of the body scan, but this provision may be removed as the scanners become more widespread.

TSA is quick to point out that the security officials greeting the passengers never see the digital centerfolds, nor do those reviewing the images see the corresponding people in the flesh. According to the agency, the images are not printed or stored. While this could be 100% the case, no one would be faulted for questioning whether the government will keep its word.

Chaffetz doesn't just have the flying public in mind with is bill. He is also concerned about the TSA officers who must spend their days looking at thousands of ribald robotic pictures.

"I don't think we should be subjecting TSA employees to sitting around looking at naked bodies all day," he said. "There's got to be a point where you say, 'We've gone too far.'"

(From Mail Online and ohmygov.com)

From The Times "The Great 'Kitsch Conference Souvenir' Competition."

"Stuffing the Nation since 1997".

Sign in Thailand

(Picture posed by model)

SCHOOOLBOY, AGED 13, BECOMES ONE OF BRITAIN'S YOUNGEST FATHERS

The boy, from Manchester, was 'chuffed to bits' after his 16-year-old girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl this week, according to his family.

'My son is mature for his age and will make a good father. He will make a better dad than most 25-year-old men would,' his father told the Daily Mirror.

The young couple's identity cannot be revealed for legal reasons.

They are said to have been in a relationship for some time, although they did not go to the same school.

His father added: 'He isn't bewildered about about what has happened. He was a bit shocked at first but now he's chuffed to bits.'

Earlier this year another 13-year-old, Alfie Patten, from Eastbourne in East Sussex, was believed to have become a father after his 15-year-old girlfriend conceived.

But DNA tests later showed that another 15-year-old was the father.

Britain has the worst teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, with an estimated around 43,000 teenage mothers created in England every year.

This latest case comes after new measures to deal with teenage pregnancies announced by Gordon Brown this week.

He said teenage parents on benefits would be forced to live in 'supervised homes' instead of being given council houses.

'It's time to address a problem that for too long has gone unspoken: the number of children having children,' he declared.

(Mail Online)

IN DENIAL

The majority of people in Britain are in denial about the risk of global warming in our lifetimes, according to a new study into the psychology of climate change.

The Met Office has warned that if the world continues to burn fossil fuels at the current rate temperatures will rise above four degrees C in the next fifty years.

This will cause sea level rise, droughts, floods and mass collapse of eco-systems.

However Clive Hamilton, Professor of public ethics at the Australian National University, said the majority of the population is still in denial about the risks of climate change.

He compared the situation to the psychology of the British and German populations before the Second World War and said the only way to make people change their behaviour is to "ramp up the fear factor."

Prof Hamilton applied traditional psychological reactions to the threat of future risk.

In a paper presented to an Oxford University conference this week, he said people react in three different ways to a frightening situation: denial, apathy or action.

In the case of climate change, he said a minority of people in Britain are in complete denial and refuse to believe man-made greenhouse gases are causing the temperatures to rise.

He said a smaller minority are taking action by lobbying Government and adapting their lifestyles through driving less, not eating meat and generally living a low carbon lifestyle.

Prof Hamilton said scientists have played down the risks of global warming for fear of overloading people with information.

"There is a widespread belief in the scientific community that the public cannot handle the truth and so they have been pulling their punches. Global warming is unique amongst environmental problems - which are often exaggerated - in that it is now clear that the scientists have been understating the true implications.

In December more than 190 countries will meet in Copenhagen to try to thrash out a new international deal on climate change. For any agreement to be struck it is likely that rich countries will have to agree to cut carbon emissions by consuming less energy.

Prof Hamilton said scientists now have a duty to inform the public about the risks of climate change so action is taken and people are ready to adapt their lifestyles.

"There is a view we should not scare people because it makes them go down their burrows and close the door but I think the situation is so serious that although people are afraid they are not fearful enough given the science," he said. "Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor."

(Daily Telegraph)

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat
Please put a penny in the old man's hat
If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do
If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you!

Only two days into October and with an Indian summer still hanging in the air, window displays at a John Lewis store are already packed with Christmas trees and other seasonal items.

With Christmas Day more than 12 weeks away, the store in Southsea, Hampshire has started selling baubles, giant stockings and mini Santas.

Like it or loath it, there is no escaping the sound of jingle bells as the major retailer clears the decks to make way for its most sparkling stock of the year.

And, if you want your Christmas cards to arrive on time, the postal union is advising that you should mail them NOW.

(From Mail Online)

Blue is the colour of success for homeowners

People with blue houses are more successful than those living in homes of any other colour, a survey found.

The average owner of a blue home earns £38,000 a year, and takes at least two holidays abroad. He or she will have achieved two significant promotions, and half describe themselves as a director or manager. Most have at least three people working below them, according to the survey for Sandtex paints, in which 3,000 homeowners took part.

The average “blue” homeowner is in a long-term relationship and has two children and four close friends.

Fourteen per cent pay for a cook when entertaining, 11 per cent have a regular cleaner, and 8 per cent employ a nanny. Owners of green houses are the worst off, the survey found, earning only £13,100 annually. They were found to be happy, however.

The study found that annual earnings by house colour were: blue, £38,000; red, £23,500; white, £23,400; magnolia, £23,100; beige, £20,800; orange, £20,000; purple, £19,600; grey, £19,000; yellow, £18,500; brown, £18,400; pink, £14,500; and green, £13,100.

(From The Times)