Divorce, DINK Style

DINK, for the uninitiated, stands for Dual Income, No Kids, which is the way more and more married couples live. And, predictably, when these marriages end, the custody hearings could become as unique and contentious as those involving couples with children. And more and more, dogs are caught in the middle of the new DINK divorces.

They are increasingly being asked to draw up legal agreements to set out custody and 'dog visiting rights'.

In some cases, feuding couples have spent up to £25,000 on court battles, which have involved calling in animal behaviour experts.

Partners who lived together but never married are also drawing up agreements after splitting.

Grant Howell, a family law partner at London firm Charles Russell, said one couple's row about access to their Jack Russell terrier had become so acrimonious the court felt it necessary to settle the dispute first because it was distracting from other points of the divorce.

'With animals it becomes very emotional,' he added. 'It's almost a peg on which to hang all the other frustrations and to try and get the better of the other person.'

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Maybe They Should Have Just Eloped

Maybe it's just me, but the idea of spending damn near $30,000 on a wedding, including, a horse-drawn carriage, is a tad pretentious. But, until this story, I never thought of it as dangerous.

Paramedics arrived and the bride's fiance, Karl Woods, was summoned from St Leonard's Church, in Bretforton, Worcestershire.

'I was waiting at the church when one of my friends came running up and said something terrible had happened to Sophie,' said Mr Woods, 36, who runs a clothes shop in Evesham.

'When we got there she was lying in the road covered in blood with a paramedic telling her not to move.' Miss Clarke, an accountant from South Littleton, was taken to hospital in a neck brace.

The £15,000 ceremony and reception for which she had spent years preparing, was cancelled. Reliving the experience, she said: 'Something spooked the horse. We thought we were going to die because we were heading for the railway crossing.

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No sale

...to anyone under 18 in the UK.  The product?  I'm going to make you click to see what it is.  And yes, the link is totally safe for work, unless you're a supermodel.

(h/t)

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 03:29 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Keep a better grip on that cigarette next time, citizen

The latest from the Nanny Fascists running Britain, a guy was fined Â£60 for having a cigarette knocked out of his hand when police were trying to apprehend two girls running out of a store.  The guy appealed and was threatened with a larger fine.  Here's how the council he appealed to responded,

Thanet council in Kent said it was happy with the way the incident in Margate had been dealt with.

'We take a zero tolerance approach to anyone who drops litter, including cigarette butts and chewing gum,' it said.

'No excuses will be accepted.'

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:32 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The problem is not the shoes

So. In the latest attempt to make sure that no one ever has to be responsible for themselves ever, cops in the UK are now going to give drunk women flip flops to walk home in.

Look, if you're going out drinking in kick ass heels, you are making a conscious decision to have your feet hurt like hell by the end of the night. You also know that there's a very good chance you'll have to walk home barefoot if you don't want to fall over.  I generally made sure to carry a pair of flats with me, tucked down in the bottom of the bag, so that when the time came, I could change into something more appropriate.  If a girl (because these sure as hell aren't women) can't handle her heels and her liquor, she should give up both.

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Brits putting together Volunteer Nanny Brigade speed traps

The police'll send you warnings if you get tagged by these rats, and can prosecute if your name comes up three times.  This effort to turn people against each other comes after local governments set up Volunteer Nanny Brigades to rat out people who didn't follow Airstrip One's various recycling and trash ordnances (like 96 year old war vets with poor vision, perhaps?).  I'm guessing that real reason they're doing this is that they're hoping that people are less likely to put gas filled tires around these particular speed traps. 

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 11:09 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Airstrip One council set to declare term "British" as offensive as racial slurs

And to think, this bullshit is here now.  We're going to have to fight like hell every step of the way to slow and stop this corrosive force, then reverse the damage done.  One more thing, why the hell are governments setting values of offense to spoken word?  Yes, that's rhetorical.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 11:36 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Obama effigy found at UK

Yes, this Obama effigy was found a few blocks from my apartment on the University of Kentucky's campus.

No, I didn't do it.

I can't tell if this post is racist or not. 

Posted by: It's Vintage, Duh at 10:16 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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You can't have your healthy substitute for pudding if you don't eat your organic fair trade free-range vaguely meat-like soy substitute

Sorry, you're just gonna have to quit drinking so much milk and eating as much meat and junk foods in order to save Gaia.  Yes, this is another ZOMG COW FARTS AND MODERN AGRICULTURE RUIN TEH ENVIRONMENT!!1!1eleventy!1one!1 study.  Here's the obligatory statement from the head of the study, calling for dictatorial control over the citizenry,

Tara Garnett, the report's author, warned that campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail and urged the government to use caps on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing to ensure changes were made. "Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit and other influences," the report says. "Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campaigns alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes."

This is in the UK, so I'm guessing the Nanny government will be happy to oblige.   The National Farmers' Union response? 

However, the National Farmers' Union warned that its own study, with other industry players, published last year, found net emissions from agriculture could only be cut by up to 50% if the carbon savings from building renewable energy sources on farms were taken into account.

The NFU also called for government incentives to help farmers make the changes. "Farmers aren't going to do this out of the goodness of their hearts, because farmers don't have that luxury; many of our members are very hard pressed at the moment," said Jonathan Scurlock, the NFU's chief adviser on renewable energy and climate change.

Moar subsidies pleez!

The article has a before and after of what your weekly menu would look like after Nanny put it's foot down...on their throats.  Let's just say, maybe it'll take the government denying the Brits their bangers and mash and their clotted cream to make them take back control of their government.

Exit question:  You think Vice-Chair of the Minnesota GOP will swipe this story, too? 

(h/t)

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Publisher's home torched

Gibson Square is going to publish The Jewel of Medina, a book about Mohammed.  You may remember that another company was to publish the book, but caved after Muslims objected to it.  Well, they're still pissed about this book and decided to torch the Gibson Square chief executive's house. 

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Something Tells Me This Dude Is Not Happy With The State Of Affairs In His Country

And he thinks he has an idea of who should be running the show.

And that begs a question. Do we want a man with neoprene hair running the country? Or would we be better off in these difficult times sticking with the man on his right. Someone who seems to be in genuine pain whenever he’s told to smile. All week, the Labour Party conference has been full to overflowing with commentators trying to get an inside track on who’s doing what to whom and where and what the implications might be. And you know something? It doesn’t make a ha’porth of difference. Honest to God, you could put a horse in Downing Street and your life would either be exactly the same . . . or possibly a little bit better.

Ok, so what's your solution?

So, how’s this for a plan? Instead of being asked to vote on who runs the country, we should ask instead how we want it running. Instead of 650 ruddy-faced old crones bouncing up and down on their secretaries and their sense of self-importance, why don’t we all just take it in turns to pop in once a week to respond to things that have cropped up. That way, we’d have someone from a carpet shop in Huddersfield one week and then a trainee vet from Bude the next. Would they do a worse job than the 650? I doubt it. And because they’d only last a week, they wouldn’t be able to do much damage. Or get the impression that what they thought might actually matter. That said, when it was my turn, there’d be a bit of a hiccup. Because you’d wake up on Tuesday to find the M4 bus lane had gone, all the nation’s speed cameras in the bin and a letter saying I’d gone to the pub to turn all the money I would have put in a pension scheme into urine, via beer.

Well played, sir. Well played.

Posted by: eddiebear at 10:38 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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World's. Worst. Spy. Evah.

Dude, you would think that MI6 would be better able to disguise their agents.

Here is what happened during the taping of some show on BBC:

Beeb journo Justin Rowlatt was questioning the spook, identified only as "John", when it became clear that all was not well with the government-issue fake face fungus sported by the incognito intelligence officer.

"He was sitting behind a rather grand desk at the Foreign Office and everything was going fine," Rowlatt told the Telegraph.

"Then I noticed that he was touching his upper lip occasionally ... the edge of the moustache was peeling away ... he was aware of what was happening."

For a while the cameras rolled, obtaining some no doubt priceless footage, but then Rowlatt took pity.

"When we had a break in the filming I said to him, 'John, the old moustache is coming off.' He said, 'Oh God, I thought that might happen.'"

The luckless spy was apparently a veteran Secret Intelligence Service (aka MI6) officer who had tangled with enemy counterintelligence operatives on many occasions. According to Rowlatt, he recovered well from what could have been (but evidently wasn't) a sticky situation, nonchalantly trousering the shoddy government moustache and maintaining a stiff (though now unclad) upper lip.

"He was very good about it and just said, 'I'll take it off completely'", said Rowlatt.

Why is it I am having flashbacks to Get Smart?

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Obamalot!

Just when you thought our election season couldn't get any more ridiculous, the Brits step in to disabuse you of that notion:

Having set alight the race for the White House, Senator Barack Obama is about to work his magic on the London stage.

Written and produced by the Ohio-born Teddy Hayes, The Obama Musical focuses on the personalities behind the Democratic candidate's campaign.

Songs in the show, due to receive its premiere at Barons Court Theatre next month, include Obama and Me, which is sung by an obsessive member of his team and includes the lyric: "We are a pair/like chocolate and éclair".

Please.  Please.  Please let the McCain team hammer home the fact that Obama is the subject of a musical theater production (which includes a song sung by "an obsessive member of his team") in a foreign country. Because I'm pretty sure that doesn't help Michelle's kids. Especially in states like Ohio and Michigan.

Posted by: Sean M. at 05:39 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Put down that cigarette, citizen

The Brits find newer and more creative ways to abuse people and invade their private lives.  This time, they've created a foot patrol that runs around and tests people with breathalyzer type gadgets, then tries to make them sign up for anti-smoking groups and counseling.

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FAIL Brittannia!

Could these people be any more clueless about firearms and human nature?  Via The Drawn Cutlass, we get this report about the rampant illegal gun trade in the UK. 

Weapons are pouring in from Eastern Europe (Poland in particular), soldiers and others are smuggling them in from Afghanistan and Iraq, some are smuggled in from lesser or non-Nanny States, and there's a pretty solid homegrown illegal gun trade too. 

Apparently a lot of deactivated guns in Britain are now being sold on the black market and are rebuilt to fire in clandestine workshops.  Shotguns and sawed-off shotguns are the cheapest to acquire and are less popular because they are often awkward to carry and don't offer the street cred of a semi-auto pistol or even a full auto firearm. 

I have to laugh at this,

"Everyone wants to be a gangster now, mainly the kids. You have five or six in a little crew and one of them will be carrying. They want handguns - shotguns are too big and bulky. The sawn-off doesn't look so good but use a machine gun and you get known as a heavy guy. They have them just to be a chap on the street, to pose. Some of them walk around all day with a .38. It's 16-year-olds at it and it's getting like America, silly as it sounds."

Yeah, except if a 16 year old pulls a gun on one of us in Silly America, we at least have the right to have our own to defend ourselves and draw our own pistol, your life is completely in the hands of some stupid teen gangsta wannabe chav with a pistol.   Pretty silly to live at the mercy of common street thugs like that if you ask me,

The Guardian's source said that guns were becoming a first rather than a last recourse. "A gun used to be used as a mediator; now everything is revolved with a gun. It's brought the heat on everyone. Before you would get a two [years jail sentence], now it's a five. It's getting like the US now, like The Wire. It's like a prediction of what will happen here. I think they all think they're playing Grand Theft Auto. It's madness out there."

Yeah, except we weren't dumb enough to give up our guns.  Hope you Brits enjoy living at the mercy of street thugs and your increasingly fascistic government, because that's where things appear to be headed.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 08:00 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Attention Limey Morons!

I don't know if there are any British Morons who read this blog, but if you happen to be one, or if you're a Moron from any other country who's planning on visiting the UK, you'll have to be careful about the vodka you're swilling (or putting in your eyes) because apparently, there's some bad stuff out there.

Drinkers in Stirling are being warned to be on the lookout for fake vodka containing potentially harmful levels of methanol.

Trading standards officers in the city are hoping to raise awareness after counterfeit bottles of Spar Imperial vodka were found in shops in England.

Fears are being raised that the fake vodka may be making its way north.

Experts have warned the high levels of methanol in the bottles can cause serious illnesses and blindness.

Brian Wilson, trading standards officer with Stirling Council, said: "It should be noted that no counterfeit bottles have been found in Spar stores and there are no concerns associated with authentic bottles of Spar Imperial Vodka.

[...]

The organisation warned that the only legitimate route of purchase for Spar Own Label 70cl is via a Spar store and that any Spar vodka offered for sale via any other means should be deemed suspect.

So, if you see some guy (or "bloke") selling vodka out of the back of his van, you should probably pass, no matter how good the bargain is. Come to think of it, that's generally sound advice when it comes to people selling anything out of the back of a van.

Posted by: Sean M. at 11:05 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Land of confusion

The results of a new poll are out, documenting just how ignorant our cousins in Dear Old Blighty are about, well, us.  First off, an old chestnut:

Asked if it was true that "from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons," 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam's arsenal to him, compared to Russia's 57 per cent, France's 13 per cent and China's 12 per cent.

"Ideas get around. Perhaps it's that old picture of Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam," suggested Mr Montgomerie, whose website includes a petition against anti-Americanism.

I'm not exactly surprised about the Saddam Hussein thing, seeing as how you could probably get the same results from a poll of, say, a group of Kos Kiddies.

But, more surprisingly, for some strange reason, more than half of them also seem to think that polygamy is legal here. What the hell, Limeys?

(h/t)

Posted by: Sean M. at 11:59 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Obesity in the UK

The following comes from an article about growing problems with obesity in Great Britain:

The number of lap-dancing venues in Britain has doubled to around 300 since 2004 and in a letter to ministers, the Local Government Association will call for an urgent amendment to give authorities more control over the situation.

The 2003 Licensing Act puts the clubs in the same category as bars and cafes rather than considering them as places of sexual entertainment.

Poor Limeys. There's nothing worse than an epidemic of obese strippers. Well, if you're not in the construction industry, anyway—I'm told there's good money to be had in reinforcing stripper poles. I bet the lap dances are like a glimpse of the tortures of hell.

Posted by: Sean M. at 07:53 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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What ever happened to just lying back and thinking of England?

Somehow, I don't think the old stereotypes about English women being frigid and sexless apply here:

A British woman was fined nearly $600 by a Brighton and Hove City Council for being too loud while having sex with her boyfriend.

Neighbors of Kerry Norris, 29, complained that the 29-year-old woman yells out obscenities and screams during the all-night love-making sessions with her boyfriend Adam Hinton.

Neighbors in the three-story apartment building, who had been complaining for two years, said Norris’ headboard would bang so hard against the wall until 6 a.m. that the occupants of adjoining flats would have to sleep in other rooms.

Now, I'm not sure, since the article doesn't include a picture of Ms. Norris, but since it says that "Complaints against Norris also include that she sunbathes naked in the garden in full view of workmen," I'm guessing she's not a super-attractive woman. That, or she lives in a neighborhood full of gay workmen.

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:58 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Finally: A hotel garunteed to give you crabs!

Usually you have to stay in a Hilton (har-de-har-har) to get crabs.  But, if you're in England you could always just drop $21 and stay at England's new sand hotel:

The 1,000 tonne sand sculpture on Weymouth Beach, Dorset, took a team of four sculptors a week to build, and will set you back just $21 a night.

A twin and double bedroom is on offer, while the roofless structure gives guests the chance to "star-gaze" at night, said hotel creator Mark Anderson.

Good, right?  But wait, there's more!

But guests are being warned that there are no toilet facilities available and the hotel is definitely not for those that hate having sand between their toes.

There's some video at the link if you're interested.  I'm not posting it here because, frankly, I didn't see how it would help Michelle Obama's children.

Posted by: It's Vintage, Duh at 12:23 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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