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Something to make your flesh creep

Wednesday, June 02, 2010
From KCNA:

"Kim Sun Yong, 36, residing in Central District, Pyongyang, told KCNA that her children owe many things to the state, more than to their parents".

Warned you all, didn't I?

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Downright odd French survey of the day

Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Well, not the subject so much - premature births and so forth - but the oddities in the demographic data.

Asked 'Would you say that you feel very concerned, somewhat concerned, not very concerened or not at all concerned by premature births, i.e. a childbirth before eight month of pregnancy, whether impacting you directly or not?'


And this is how it breaks down by party affiliation.  CSA has a tendency to cluster the Trot parties together as the 'extreme left', while classing the equally extreme Greens, Communists and Left Party as just 'Left'.  The FN is not tracked for some reason.





CSA gives a health warning for the PC and PdG figures owing to limited numbers.  Even ignoring those two parties, why are the Trot voters so sanguine, relatively speaking?  One would expect them to fear that The Man was going to do them wrong.  Greens and Liberals fret the most, unsurprisingly.      


Elsewhere, Greens are the likeliest to think smoking & drinking hike the risk of a premature birth, and MoDem voters the least.  Blimey.  Trots are the least likely to think that working conditions contribute and Greens - bar the PdG - the least.  The Left Party voters polled would appear to have an awful lot of planks represented, as nearly a quarter could not answer the smokin' and drinkin question, so I'm ignoring them, bunch of mouth breathers that they clearly are.  As to being over 40, Greens are most likely to think this a factor (69%) and Trots (53%) the least.  And finally, the Left parties are all more likely to think using public transport frequently risks things than do Gaullists.  Well, well, well....  

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A Tuesday morning jaw dropper

Tuesday, September 15, 2009


See what I mean?  More of the company's range here.

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If you really hate your children....

Wednesday, August 12, 2009
..make haste to Geneva for Sunday 6th September, as the WTO has an open day, and,

"Throughout the day, children will be able to participate in face painting workshops, enter a drawing contest where the challenge will be to “Draw me globalization” and/or “Draw me the WTO”, and there will be the chance to play in an inflatable castle (outdoors in the park)".

The mind boggles. And I thought that the obligatory visit to a reservoir every family summer holiday - yes, really - was as bad as it got.

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Foolish idea o' the day

Friday, July 17, 2009
It's that man Dykes again:

"To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will introduce special codes and colours on food labelling for use by schoolchildren".

The answer, fortunately, boiled down to 'no'.

However always supposing Dykes had his druthers, there would be the scope for all sorts of unintended amusement - rugrat-friendly traffic light symbols on gourmand-sized pots of beluga caviar, and at the other end of the scale, blended gunk for babies.

Further submissions would be most welcome.

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A rather late Hansard trawl, featuring wallets, idiots in Sussex and what they read over lunch at the DWP

Tuesday, June 30, 2009
What do you want your wallet / purse advertsising, allegiance-wise? I'm a big fan of plain leather myself, but other folks possibly feel differently:

Mr. Maude: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office pursuant to the answer of 13 January 2009, Official Report, columns 581-82W, on 10 Downing Street, how many Downing Street-branded wallets have been sold by the gift shop in the last 18 months or nearest equivalent period for which figures are available.

Angela E. Smith: I have nothing further to add to the earlier answer.

I have rooted around in the Hansard for the 13th and turned up nothing, not that that is of any great import. However, suppose you were a shopkeeper, hotelier or whatever, and the customer you are dealing with whips out a Downing St wallet, wouldn't you check the details carefully and compare them against those of known dodgy cards?

A noble, if perhaps fruitless endeavour:


Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what recent steps his Department has taken to combat homophobia in developing countries.

Chris Bryant: I have been asked to reply. The UK believes that every state has an obligation to protect the rights of all its citizens, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) people, without discrimination of any kind. We regularly raise this with governments of countries where the rights of LGBT people are violated. In countries where same sex relationships are illegal, we continue to press for decriminalisation.



Somehow I dount that 'our friends the Saudis pay much heed', although having spoken to a gay Saudi a while back, he found the UK scene a bit disappointing, as he reckoned there was far more going on in Riyadh etc. Hey ho... As an aside to an aside, it was only in 1981 that the French legalised these things. True story.

Erm, a bit late, this one:

Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether the Government has made any representations to the Portuguese authorities on pursuing its investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in the last six months.

Chris Bryant: Our embassy in Lisbon has continued to raise the case with the Portuguese authorities. The head of the Portuguese Criminal Investigation Police has made clear to the embassy that he is ready to consider any credible new leads mat come to light.

Am I missing something here?:

Mr. Joyce: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what steps her Department is taking to assist older people during the recession.

Angela Eagle: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave the hon. Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) on 22 June 2009, Official R eport , column 683W.

If older is a euphemism for pensioners, don't said folk have rather less to worry about than the rest of us?

Quite an eclectic reading list at the DWP, compared to other dpartments. Bar the usual selection of dailies, news weeklies and Private Eye, they also get The Voice, Eastern Eye, Asian Woman and Gay Times. Maybe they are checking their adverts, although the DWPs ad agency ought to be doing that for them.

Unnerving statistic 0f the day:

Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what proportion of schools staff have been admitted to hospital as a result of violent behaviour by pupils in the last 12 months.

Primary and nursery education teaching professionals - Non-fatal major injuries - 4, Over-three-day injuries - 13.

We all know that secondaries can be a warzone, but the figures for those teachers were 5 and 49 respectively.

Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many incidents of... (c) hoax calls to emergency services...were recorded by each police force in 2007-08


I would have guessed London led, followed by the other conurbations, but no. The Met/CoL had 969, but Notts and Sussex got to five figures - 10,412 and 12,478. Alas the otherwise good people of the West Midlands led with 17,903. Why the shires, for Heaven's sake? Do they just like seeing fire engines, or are there a lot of very foolish people there / a smaller number of hyperactive idiots? There may well be issues of definition, rigour in reporting etc at work too, but even so.

Further unexpected stats
: London (7,995) leads for begging / vagrancy (fancy...), followed by Gtr Manchester (1,387) and then Dorset (1,351). I suppose the pickings might be quite rich there. Only 51 requests of 'ten pee for a cup of tea guv' in Warwickshire though.

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Then the pig got up and slowly walked away

Tuesday, June 16, 2009
From the Croatian Times:

"Muslim extremists have banned Peppa Pig dolls from a shopping centre claiming the children's cartoon character breaks Islamic laws.

Hardline religious leaders told shopkeepers in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, that because the dolls were based on pigs they breached muslim food laws which ban pork, reports local news website Bljesak.info".

Oh well done people. It isn't looking good for a Muppets revival.

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Come on down and name that vegetable....

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Great surveys of our time dept (requires registration):

"Tootsies [a restaurant chain] asked 200 children between the ages of 11 and 13 if they were able to name 40 items commonly available from a greengrocer's stall".

And they were not very good at it. Carrots topped the table at 94.5%, while there was single figure recognition for artichokes, aubergines, spinach and turnips (good job they didn't include rocket and sweet potatoes, eh readers?) The differential between boys and girls was sharpest with cucumbers - 90% of girls recognised it but only 67% of boys. Boys were better at identifying tomatoes and cauliflowers.

As to fruit, apples, bananas, oranges and strawberries secured 90% + recognition, with the poor gooseberry languishing on 1%.

Two things to note - only 200 children were questioned, and they were selected from diners at the chain's restaurant, so it may well be a woeful reflection on the parenting of its patrons rather than an indictment of small people overall.

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