So many quirky stories

My back feels better, thanks for asking. The doctor says I have an inflamed or torn something in my shoulder. He said take Ibuprofen. I don't like things medical much and I tend to trust doctors without question, my theory being that they have spent years training and therefore must know more than me. I apply the same theory to accountants and lawyers. I do whatever they tell me because the consequences of doing it myself and getting it wrong are potentially catastrophic.

We went to Bourton on the Water this weekend. They have a very good little motor museum there. I was somewhat dismayed to dicover that the car I learnt to drive in, A Mk1 Triumph Herald, is apparently a museum piece now. It smelt the same as I remember. I think we will be returning. There are other attractions there, Birdland for instance. Though I don't know what that is. Also, a perfumery, and a model railway exhibition.

Loads of quirky stuff in the news today. The Telegraph seems to have moved into Sun territory with two lead stories, Students eye UFO degree, and Braille pornography launched.

The UFO degree story is actaually quite boring. An academic from the Niagara County Community College thinks we should investigate UFO sitings because there are so many of them. There really isn't enough material there for a degree though is there. You might be able to do something interesting investigating why nutters think they see things that don't exist. That might even be a PhD thesis.

I'm more interested in the braille pornography story. Apparently it's not a magazine, it's a book with raised images of naked people. There are 17 images it seems. It's the idea of Lisa Murphy from Canada who claims it fills a gap in the market. She claims that visually impaired people have been excuded from a society saturated with sexual images. The book apparently costs £150. That strikes me as a lot of money for 17 dirty pictures. I'm not sure what the going rate for a lady of the night is in my town, but I'm pretty sure you could run your hands over a real live woman for a fraction of that cost for half an hour, which seems like a much better deal to me.

Apparently a lorry load of pigs turned over on the M4 yesterday, spilling livestock onto the road and closing the motorway. The boy was super interested in this story when I told him. He wanted to go and see the pigs running around I think. There were however three hour delays and 20 mile tailbacks, so we didn't go site seeing.

Oh there are many more quirky stories in the news today, but I shall not list them all here. I want to mention something more serious. Three Labour MPs and one Conservative peer have found themselves in court over fraudulent expenses claims. The peer, Lord Hanningfield, is accused of claiming falsely for travelling allowances, the others have been accused of claiming for rent or mortgage expenses that didn't exist, and services that weren't carried out. All sounds pretty dirty doesn't it. Well, it turns out that the three MPs have all denied any wrong doing, but are also claiming parliamentary privilige. Parliamentary privilige is supposed to protect MPs from slander or libel laws. The idea is that they can say anything in Parliament without fear of prosecution. It's funny though that they are all claiming they are innocent, but would rather use parliamentary privilige to avoid court than go to court and clear their names.

A judge must decide whether they can use parliamentary privilige. If they can't they must go to court and they would face up to seven years in jail for theft by false accounting. This has been kicking aorund in the news for some time but emerged again today because all three MPs have been granted legal aid, meaning the taxpayer must fund the court case. They have no shame.

Oh, and the pope appears to be in very deep smeg indeed for his alleged part in the cover up of abuse by a Catholic Priest. It seems that Richard Dawkins is calling for his (the pope's) prosecution. Now wouldn't that be something?