Feb 25th

Wales

An inquest is being held into the death of a man who collapsed during a fairy-cake-eating competition at a nightclub in Swansea. Reporters asked officers from the local constabulary if they had found any clues. They replied “hundreds and thousands”.

Education

In a survey 71% of school children admitted being bullies. Which does mean competition has hotted up in the search for suitable victims. A few years ago you had to be ginger, dressed in ADSA clothing and have a lisp to expect to have to trade in your lunch money to avoid a kicking. Now even a hole in your jumper or a lack of a comprehensive knowledge of text slang is enough to see you begging not to be given a wedgie. The news, though worrying for pupils and parents alike has been hailed as excellent news by captains of industry who have seen middle management ranks depleted over recent years.

Travel

Motorists will be targeted by a new generation of road cameras which work out how many people are in a car by measuring the amount of bodily fluid it contains. The rather sinister idea uses cameras which work by sending an infrared beam through the windscreen of vehicles which detects the unique make-up of blood and water content in human skin.

The idea is to catch out lone motorists who use car-sharing lanes and try to fool existing CCTV road cameras by placing mannequins in passenger seats or fixing photographs to windscreens.

The technology, originally developed by evil vampire armies, means that while the mannequin-photo strategies will no longer work, you can still use the car-sharing lanes if you have a corpse in the boot.

Iraq

A suicide bomber in a wheelchair killed a top policeman and wounded four others in an attack on the police operations centre in the Iraqi city of Samarra today. You know your security is lax when a dude in a wheelchair slips through.

Health

A care worker has lost her job over claims she used her mobile phone to film two old ladies fighting in a nursing home. Bolton council bosses have confirmed a full investigation has been launched and the carer is no longer employed at the home.

Now, as a legal precedent, what does this mean? Companies using CCTV seem to be allowed to film just about anything, as do the government and the police, but individuals who film stuff will get in trouble?

I can just see it now, Al Qaeda demanding punishment for all the people who filmed the airplanes flying into the World Trade Center. Or more likely it’s just the care home covering their tracks after realising somebody might notice the appalling conditions they in which they keep their patients? Surely the investigation should be into the care home who let two elderly women end up fighting.

Finance

Nine senior American directors of top international companies are preparing to quit Britain over the controversial "non-dom" tax proposals, the Daily Mail reported. The directors work for companies including Bank of America, McDonald's, Ernst & Young, and Bear Stearns and earn well over a million pounds a year and don’t pay taxes on it. So frankly I think at very least we’d all feel better about ourselves if we didn’t have to share our public spaces and services with them.

The nine are all threatening to move back to America, where they would actually have to pay a lot more tax on their earnings than the proposed £30,000 rate being proposed.

The Mail claims: "They are going to sell their houses in Mayfair or Kensington and Chelsea , dumping them on the market at an already difficult time. Then they will take their business overseas. Well, if they actually own multi-million-pound houses in Mayfair or Kensington, they can afford to pay as much in taxes as a highly-qualified an experienced hard-working UK-based professional who earns £90,000 a year. And anyway a drop in the housing market would be great news for all the young families finding it hard to get on to the property ladder.

The Mail adds, "Competing cities such as New York , Geneva ... and Frankfurt , would welcome these wealthy non-dom businessmen with open arms." That’s because New York , Geneva and Frankfurt would love to tax them.

You would think anyway given their usual coverage that the Daily Mail would be in favour of foreigners leaving British soil. Or could it be that the owners of the Daily Mail are all non-dom tax-dodgers...? You decide...

Feb 20th

Science

And a group of US-based scientists say the first stars in the universe may have been dark. Fair enough but I think I might need to go and check my definition of “star”. I think it has to be bright and shiny to be a star, I think what they’re talking about are vast lumps of anti-matter. It’s like Kylie Minogue is a star but Michelle McManus is a vast lump of anti-matter. Aww mean.

Nature

A 70-million-year-old fossil of a giant frog has been unearthed in Madagascar by a team of UK and US scientists. The creature was the size of a "squashed beach ball" and weighed about 4kg (9lb). “It’s a real shame it’s extinct”, said a French researcher brandishing a knife and fork.

Military

The coroner investigating the deaths of four British soldiers in a roadside bomb blast in Iraq has called for better protection for troops. The Ministry of Defence responded saying there was "no such thing" as perfect protection. Oh well that’s all right then – we’ll all be using that excuse next time. “I ran over your kid, but hey, no-one’s perfect!”. Also there is a way offering perfect protection to our troops in Iraq. That’s by not marching them off to an illegal war in the first place.

Internet

A San Francisco court has ordered the closure of the website, Wikileaks.org This is the whistle-blowing website which allows people to anonymously post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behaviour” by corporations and governments. The site has been doing a fantastic job so far of sharing documents revealing information about torture at Guantánamo Bay, and of what must be called for legal reasons, “possible evidence”, by which I mean “clear obvious irrefutable evidence” of companies colluding, polluting and thieving.

Now a case has been brought against the website by a Cayman Islands-based bank. Now before I explain the case any further lets play “guess who the good guys are”. Is it (a) the tax-haven-based private investment bank? Or is it (b) someone else. Scores later.

The bank claimed that a “disgruntled ex-employee” stole documents violating banking laws on confidentiality. Since when did banks have laws? I mean employee guidelines, sure, but laws are supposed to be set by governments aren’t they? And why would a bank need confidentiality “laws”? What exactly are they hiding?

The documents “allegedly” (i.e. really) detail how the bank helped people evade taxes and launder money. The first of these is a way of ripping of ordinary tax-payers and the second is used by criminals and terrorists alike to move their money around and make it untraceable. But for some reason the courts have decided that the breaking the banks internal confidentiality code is the bigger crime.

This is a bit like if you were filmed murdering someone or shagging a child and you managed to get off scott free and instead sue the owner of the camera for filming you without your consent. If that’s ever happened to you then thanks for listening to the podcast, Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson.

Wales

And you really have to ask how dim the police are in South Wales. A seventeenth teenager has been found dead in Bridgend, having taken her own life. At the ensuing press conference Assistant Chief Constable Dave Morris told reporters “We have found no suggestion of any suicide pact”. Right – what about the seventeen dead bodies. Surely that’s a clue. He went on to say “I would like to put to bed any suggestion within the media that we are investigating suicide pacts or suicide internet links”. No? Well you should be mate. Thinks it’s worth at least checking isn’t it? Before anyone else dies.

Feb 6th

Politics

A police reform report due out this week claims time and money wasted on red tape could put 3,000 more officers on the streets. A follow-up report is expected to explain that a further 50 could be on the beat if they stopped spending money on police reform reports. The author of the report Sir Ronnie Flanagan has spent a year compiling the report, a year he could have spent like Bob Geldof organising a big charity rock concert. The government is expected to face harsh questioning on why Live Aid 9 never happened.

The main culprit in the alleged overspend is the forms officers have to fill in when they perform a stop and search. These forms were brought in to monitor whether ethnic minorities were being unfairly targeted. So all that money being wasted making sure the police aren’t racist. What a waste eh? Let’s just assume they’re not and save all that money...

Crime

And in response to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s claims that she didn’t feel safe walking the streets at night a group of four Labour MPS went for an after-hours wander around Hackney, right near where I live. This was notable among local residents as the first time people had ever wished there was more gun and knife crime in their area.

Intl News

Osama bin Laden's son, Omar, and his British wife are in Rome in an effort to meet with the Pope on their self-proclaimed mission to promote world peace. Was the pope ever likely to go to war? Are they worried about a reprise of the 1527 sack of Rome by the Swiss Guards? How ironic that after your Dad’s army flies planes into the World Trade Centre you should be advising a group of guys dressed as court jesters to “put down those halberds”.

Celebrities

Glamour model Jordan has spoken out to warn other women about the dangers plastic surgery. This is significant a break from the past where just looking at her warned women about the dangers of plastic surgery. She is unhappy with her recent boob reduction surgery because, and this is a direct quote: "When I saw my boobs I was disappointed because they looked big … But I still want people to think I've got big boobs." The surgeon’s failure may well be down to his insistence on using a scalpel rather than an improbability drive.

And finally in Wales

A brass band that won an award contains five married couples. I don’t know why this is news, unless of course they’re a six-piece band. Maybe they just kept giving each other the horn...