Another slow day in history. The Second Defenestration of Prague took place on this day in 1618 and in 1934, Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed near Black Lake, Louisiana. Joan Collins, Luka Bloom, Phil Selway and Jewel are celebrating birthdays today. It's World Turtle Day.
World Turtle Day? Sounds like a slow day for those sorts of things as well. How would one celebrate Turtle Day?
ReplyDeleteAha - first comment for once! Am I early? Where is everyone?
Sob.
World turtle day...?
ReplyDeleteHmmm I like it...got a ring to it...kinda snappy.
Bit lame that, wasn't it...and in fairly poor taste...you shouldn't mock turtles.
Why did the turtle cross the road?
To get to the Shell garage. baddabing!
A turtle gets mugged by a couple of tortoises. He wakes up in hospital to find a detective by his bed. He asks him if he remembers what happened.
"Not really, it all happened so fast"
That's it. Thank you, you've been a great audience.
Apparently there's a turtle fan club in Ohio called The Goffles
ReplyDeleteAnd a website called 123 greetings does world turtle day ecards.
ReplyDeleteTurtle's everywhere celebrate your day by trying to keep out the soup.
ReplyDeleteI gather so many were lost to the exotic sounding turtle fin soup - which supposedly tastes of not very much at all.
I hope poor old George the most famous shelled beastie in the world is enjoying the day - tough when your as old as he is and all of the females of your species are gone.
So lets have it for Lonesome George with nothing left to shag
Perhaps monkeyshark's next reincarnation could have a turtle theme in homage to George - there's lots of turtle stuff on Youtube but me cut and paste is broken.
Darwin's turtle:
ReplyDelete'Harriet, the world's oldest tortoise, dies aged 176; Fri Jun 23, 2006
SYDNEY (AFP) - A 176-year-old giant tortoise believed to have been studied by famed English naturalist Charles Darwin, has died in Australia after a short illness.
The extremely elderly tortoise, Harriet, was hatched on the Galapagos Islands in 1830 but lived out her final years at Australia Zoo in southeast Queensland where she was the star attraction.
Senior veterinarian John Hangar said the 150-kilogram (330-pound) reptile died on Thursday night after a short illness.
Harriet was originally named Harry, as she was mistakenly identified as male, an error which was not rectified for more than a century.'
Crash helmet tortoise
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5348869/Tortoise-fitted-with-crash-helmet.html
I was just disappointed that it isn't an excuse to eat lots of these.
ReplyDeletePart One
ReplyDeleteCould we have an article about Nadine Dorries and the fact that The Telegraph's lawyers have used the hosting provider's AUP to remove her blog because she has posted a comment critical of the Barclay brothers - the secretive billionaires who own The Telegraph?
This seems to be the problem, from her blog:
...........................
Winners or Losers?Posted Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 17:04
Just park a couple of facts for a moment, which you may not agree with but are factual.
The first is that MPs have always been encouraged, by whatever means possible, to draw down their ACA allowance in full. This is because it was upped in place of an appropriate pay rise.
The rules surrounding the ACA were deliberately sloppy in order to maximise the opportunity that MPs had to draw.
This was always felt to be the safest political method to remunerate MPs, rather than face the media backlash of a pay rise.
Parliament is in chaos. The public are angry. The Telegraph has upped its circulation.
There are 650 members of Parliament. In any walk of life, in whatever profession, you will find people who are dishonest. It will always be thus as long as we are all human!
The Telegraph are uncovering a few cases of fraud, but not enough, so they are more than slightly embellishing some of the stories. I write as a case in point.
Enter the Barclay brothers, the billionaire owners of The Daily Telegraph.
Rumour is that they are fiercely Euro sceptic and do not feel that either of the main parties are Euro sceptic enough. They have set upon a deliberate course to destabilise Parliament, with the hope that the winners will be UKIP and BNP.
A quick online check of the Barclay brothers and their antics on the Island of Sark is enough to give this part of the rumour credence.
Another rumour is that the disc was never acquired and sold by an amateur, but it was in fact a long term undercover operation run by the Telegraph for some considerable time, carefully planned and executed; and that the stories of the naive disc nabber ringing the news desk in an attempt to sell the stolen information are entirely the work of gossip and fiction.
...
Part Two
ReplyDelete...
These rumours do have some credibility given that this has all erupted during the European Election Campaign and turn out is expected to be high with protest votes, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph, or should I say the Barclay brothers.
Now, if this is all a power game executed by the BBs, how would they do that?
It is a fact that these men are no fools and are in fact self-made billionaires.
I would imagine and believe that if any of this is true, they know the British psyche well enough to whip up a mood of public anger, hence the long running revelations in the DT.
Where do I get this from? Well, at heart I am just a cheeky scouser. I like to go into the rooms of the faceless and nameless in Parliament, sit on their desk and ask pertinent questions like: who are you? What do you do? I've made friends with one or two. One in particular I am very fond of. He is a mine of very astute information; and whilst in his office yesterday, we chunnered over the 'what is this all about?' question.
He reckons this is all a power game. That the British public are being worked like puppets by two very powerful men. Whipped up into a frenzy to achieve exactly what they want.
His very poignant words to me were “if any of this conjecture is true, Parliament will become full of racists, fantasists, and has-been celebrities. We will be rendered impotent and may never again regain the authority to withstand the pressure, opinion and whims of the overtly wealthy.â€
Scary stuff!
...................................
By some strange mischance, Google kept a copy at:
http://209.85.229.132/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.dorries.org%2FBlog.aspx&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=0&oq=cache%3A+
Still, perhaps the Barclay brothers are rich enough to also take on Google.
Of course, if we all kept a little copy on our own computers or posted it on other sites, that would all look a bit foolish, wouldn't it?
Now, what were we all saying about the need for democracy and people having a voice?
Or is that all over now - finished before it started?
Dorries is a fucking hatstand. I read some of her blog before she posted that particular piece and the thing got shut down. Pretty embarassing stuff - and she didn't seem to think it was at all unbecoming of a public servant. Totally unselfaware. If people can no longer read her nonsense, she should be grateful for small mercies.
ReplyDeleteShe is certainly as appalling as nearly all of the others - probably worse in many ways, as she seems to give interviews like a pouting, fading starlet from her sofa, much like that perky little red squirrel always seems to use her motorbike leathers to pretend she is a person of action.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if we are to believe that politicians are not as honest and altruistic as we had been led to believe, are we to imagine that The Telegraph and its owners could not possibly have had any other motive than public service in releasing the data.
Let's not get too dewy-eyed about the trusty shield and sword of the media.
Well, the Telegraph released the data to make money - no surprise there. And I reckoned the Tories got Dorries' blog closed when they saw how embarassingly damaging it was to the party.
ReplyDeleteThey had to read her blog to find that out?
ReplyDeleteWhoops, clicked the wrong button. Meant to correct that to ...
ReplyDeleteThey had to read her blog to find out she was an embarrassment to the party?
Well, obviously not, LordS, but on top of everything else? Have you ever seen her blog? Teenage schoolgirl stuff laced with complete loony tunes.
ReplyDeleteNo, I've not seen her blog. I'm a rare reader of the Torygraph (only if they've got a good free DVD) and her public statements have never encouraged me to want to hear more. Perhaps I'll try and see one before they drop off their website. They should a bit of a laugh.
ReplyDeleteApropos of very little, and anyone who has anything to say, please do ... the forthcoming EU elections have me in a quandry. I'm planning to vote for a non-mainstream party but haven't made up my mind which one.
I was wondering what the general opinion of Bob Crow's No2EU was?
Having just read their leaflet they appear to be anti-EU on the grounds that the EU as it stands is an anti-democratic, labour unfriendly gravy train.
I'm not against the idea of a European state personally, but I'm less than impressed with the EU's vision of it so No2EU seem to be a more sensible choice than UKIP's 'no to bloody everything' alternative to the mainstream 'yes to the lot' approach. Unfortunately No2EU's website says little more than the leaflet and Bob Crow himself is someone I've always had mixed opinions about.
Any opinions?
That Blogg contains information that is mad enough to be true.
ReplyDeleteWho knows?
Approach with caution though the lady is a loose cannon!
Thanks for the info. Always handy to know who holds the purse strings ... and how far across the sea they stretch!
ReplyDeleteAmen to that!
ReplyDeleteI've no time for this habit of doing business in one place and registering for tax elsewhere.