Silly News 2

 Some True Tales From 
 The Newspapers. 

In Iowa a man out hunting was badly shot in his leg by a gun dog. The 37 year old man had laid his loaded gun on the ground to pick up a pheasant when one of the pack of dogs with the hunt trod on the gun catching the trigger and causing it to fire. The unlucky hunter had 120 pellets removed from his leg.

49 year old Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani has passed Bill Gates as the richest man in the world with an estimated fortune of nearly 31 billion pounds. He is planning to build a new "House" in Bombay that will be 60 stories high although it will only have 27 floors to allow his living space to have super high ceilings. His "House" will be home to 600 personal servants and staff as well as his wife and 3 children.

The West Midlands Safari Park proudly showed off their elephant that seems to be mastering the art of painting on canvas today on the local TV news station. The keeper described the colourful daubs as belonging to the "Impressionist" school of art. The bright reds and yellows reflected the bright colours of the berries ripening in the hedges and bushes around the elephants enclosure. Then some bright spark spoilt the moment by pointing out that elephants are colour blind!

A famous Australian cricketer had divorced from his wife, but was in the middle of a reconciliation attempt and they were hoping to get back together. He had promised to end his affairs and be faithful, so she was going to give him another chance. Unfortunately the cricketer decided to send an amorous text message to his lover. The problem was he sent it by mistake to his wife who was more than a little annoyed when she saw it. 

So much for the local "Bobby" going green and getting back on his bike to patrol the streets. The Health and Safety people have been to greater Manchester and now the Greater Manchester police authorities have told their officers not to ride their bicycles in case they fall off and hurt themselves!

Court cases get sillier and sillier with some criminals getting away with all sorts and other people being prosecuted for the most trivial of things at great expense to the legal system. One of the most ridiculous recently was when a 16 year old boy was dragged through the courts for criminal damage to a plastic bag. The judge asked the value of the damage and was told "One pence." The cost of the court case was about £5,000. The boy was ordered to be on probation for 6 months.

At a hospital near Congleton in Cheshire it has been the practice of many visitors and patients to borrow knitting needles from a box to while away some time by knitting squares that are then turned into blankets for local charities. However, the Health And Safety brigade have been round and ordered the "Hazardous" equipment to be kept behind the reception counter so that no one can be hurt by the dangerous knitting needles. As someone commented, "When was the last time you heard of a spate of knitting needle accidents?"

A 29 year old man who lectures in law had difficulties with the call centre for his bank. Several times he had tried to access details for his account via a call centre operator and was unsuccessful. Finally his account was suspended and he was told to go into his branch. The staff told him that his account would be reactivated, but the next time he tried to use the phone service his account was suspended again. He was told by his branch that a woman had been trying to access his account over the phone and he eventually twigged that it was because he was gay and had a high pitched voice.  The bank operator thought that as the account was a mans and the voice sounded more like a woman's there was doubt as to the authenticity of the caller. The Hallifax apologized and said that it was trying to prevent the mix up happening again. The customer is threatening to sue them for sexual discrimination.

A British Transport Police Inspector was charged with "Misconduct in a public office" after having sex with a woman he had met on an internet site that specialized in people in uniform. The inspector had arranged to meet the woman, at a railway station in his uniform, the next day after contacting her and he traveled to the tryst in his marked police car. After having full sex he returned to work and was arrested two days later. In his defense he said that he kept in his radio earpiece during the sex and could have responded to an emergency immediately. The inspector was found not guilty but will face a disciplinary hearing.

This was a letter seen in the Daily Mail.---Using cannabis as a teenager can cause psychosis in middle-age. The dictionary defines psychosis as “any form of severe mental disorder in which the individual's contact with reality becomes highly distorted.” With so many MPs and Cabinet ministers having confessed to using cannabis during their teens, this explains a lot.

A 16 year old boy had quite a surprise when he bought a second hand Play Station and 2 games on e-Bay for £95. The parcel arrived and the teenager excitedly opened it only to find the 2 games missing. In their place was £44,000 in notes. The boy told his parents and informed the police who duly took away the money. However, the boy was told that if the owner of the money could not be traced and it was decided that the money was not the proceeds of a crime he may be allowed to keep it under the "Police Property Act."

During a rugby match in Brisbane, Australia nearly 4 months ago two players collided which resulted in one of them losing several teeth. The other player received a bad cut above his eye that refused to heal up. Eventually he went to the Doctor who re-examined the wound and found a tooth still embedded in the wound in his head just above his eye. The doctor said the man was lucky it had not festered because teeth carry a lot of germs.

An author who was having difficulty in getting his work published decided to see if publishers could recognize real talent when they saw it or if it was just pure luck that a book got published. So, he typed out the opening chapters of 3 Jane Austen novels, Northanger Abbey, Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion. All he changed were the character's names and the titles.  Then he sent them off to 18 publishers including Penguin, Bloomsbury, Harper & Collins and Hodder & Stoughton. Only one actually recognized the works with rejections from all the others. He said he knew getting a book published was difficult  but he had no idea of the rejection Jane must have suffered. (It's no wonder that some works are plagiarized though.)

The live Earth concert was to raise public awareness on environmental issues and to that end facilities used during the concert were made as environmentally friendly as possible. Many of the vehicles used to ferry people about ran on Bio-diesel and the packaging boxes that the Burgers were sold in during the concert were made from Sugar Cane fibres. One of the older and more cynical darts players always used to say that burgers as a food were rubbish and there was more nourishment in the boxes that they were sold in. Perhaps he was right after all!

A woman considered herself a dab hand at making cakes so she entered a cake into a competition at her local fete. When she discovered she had come second she was delighted. However a friend laughed when she told her that she had been the only entry in the competition. The Judges had thought the cake was very good but did not deserve to carry the distinction of being awarded first prize. The competitor said afterwards that it was not the first time something like that had happened, because 11 years earlier she had entered some scones in another competition and come third, again she had been the only competitor then!

R.A.F pilots have been in the habit of decorating their bombers and fighting planes with risqué pictures of attractive young ladies since the Second World War but they have just been instructed to scrub off the pictures in case they offend the Afghans or Muslims in the Countries that they are bombing.

An anti A.I.D.S. drug has just been withdrawn because prolonged use might cause cancer. (If you have A.I.D.S. you are unlikely to be worried by the fact that the medication keeping you alive might give you cancer in 10 or 20 years.)

A Vietnamese woman married an Englishman in South Africa and had a daughter. His job has brought him back into Great Britain. He is English, the daughter has a UK passport but the wife has been refused an entry visa 3 times in case it was a marriage of convenience. They have been married 19 years.

A young lady had a party at her flat and as it was a warm night the party moved out onto the flat roof of the building to get some of the night air. In her drunken state the young women stepped onto a glass skylight and fell through onto the floor below hurting herself. She is suing her Landlord for not warning her that it was dangerous to walk on the glass skylight on the roof.

A 90 year old woman had an expensive flat in the centre of Paris and was friendly with a well to do solicitor. He wanted a flat in Paris so she gave it to him on the understanding that he would pay her a pension as long as she lived. As she was 90 he must have thought he was on to a good thing, but she outlived him. He died 30 years later and she lived another 32 years to die as the oldest woman at 122 years of age.

A man has just set a new record for being the oldest person to ever take out a mortgage. He is 102 years old and has been given a 25 year mortgage. Nothing like being hopeful is there.

The Israeli consulate in New York is trying to persuade American men to visit their country by issuing photos of female Israeli ex-soldiers in bikinis to be published in a men's magazine with the headline, "They're drop dead gorgeous and can take an Uzi apart in seconds." Talk about cynical blatant use of sex to get a message across. What next, the Gaza Strip?

Is the Millennium Dome still jinxed? A new concert arena has been constructed in the Dome along with other new concepts in a attempt to breathe life into it. An event was organized and 12,000 local people were invited for a trial run to test the arena for problems. They found one immediately- technicians could not locate the light switch and the arena was stuck in darkness for 20 minutes.

Police "arrested" a scarecrow for impersonating a Police Officer. A village called Mickle Trafford held a competition to make the best scarecrow recently and one enterprising individual made a scarecrow from straw, dressed it up in an old fluorescent jacket with Police on it, black trousers and gave it a "Speed Gun" made from  an old hair drier. A motorist complained to the Police saying that it was causing drivers to brake when they saw it as they thought it was a real officer and this might cause an accident. (If they weren't speeding they would not break anyway?) Police investigated and threatened to arrest the "Artist," for impersonating a Police Officer, if he did not remove the scarecrow.

A young Lady moved out of a block of 6 flats and asked for meter readings of gas, electric and so on to finalize her occupancy. The bills were paid and she moved out. Some time later the gas company hounded her for an unpaid bill saying that she owed £20 due to an incorrect reading and threatened her with court action. She disputed the claim saying that she oversaw the reading and it had been correct. Eventually because all 6 meters belonging to the flats were next to each other tests were carried out to identify which meter belonged to which flat. It was discovered that the meter she thought was hers and which she had been billed on since she had moved in, in fact belonged to someone else altogether. She received a new bill when the mess was sorted out and a refund of £242 that she had been over charged.