Acas

Dispute mediator votes for strike

Staff at labour conciliation service Acas have voted to go on strike in a row over pay.

Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) voted by almost two to one for a rolling programme of one-hour strikes. Union members say the service failed to make a pay offer last year.

Publicly-funded Acas works to resolve workplace disputes. Unions warn that failure to resolve its own workplace dispute could embarrass the government. [BBC]

Since no comment I could make could possibly add anything to this story, I'll confine myself to complimenting the Beeb on its choice of accompanying photo...

Strandbeest

Eerie handmade windwalking beach creatures. Enormous multi-limbed skeletal robot frames stalking across bleak flatland sandscapes. Reclaimed coastline relinquished to the clumsy grace of skittering future ghosts.

Bloody hell, these are good.

Website here: Strandbeest.com

Misprints of mine that I caught before they actually got published #3,006

Lord Woolmer of Leeds: ... the distinction between the [international] movement of people and the movement of gods and services.

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that the noble Lord apparently thinks it’s possible to move services by freight, surely providing “gods and services” is a whole Neil Gaiman novel, right there?

If you suspect it, report it

The Met have unveiled their new terrorism awareness campaign.

(no subject)

Incidentally, the category and URL for this Peter Brooke entry are slightly odd. “Singing politicians”? Is that exclusively a BBC classification, or is it an international standard?

The Shag

It’s no good. It doesn’t matter how well established it is in the States; the fact remains that in the UK the fact that there’s a dance called “the shag” will, at least during my lifetime, remain hopelessly amusing. It really doesn’t help that what claims to be the most popular instructional shag DVD on the market is hosted by nine-time shag champion Charlie Womble.

Honestly, it might as well have been called this:

Polite rebuke

The House of Lords encourages elegance and politeness, which I can’t help but enjoy.

Lord Tordoff (LD): My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me if I draw his attention to the Companion. Paragraph 4.44 states:

In debates where there are no formal time limits, members opening or winding up, from either side, are expected to keep within 20 minutes. Other speakers are expected to keep within 15 minutes.

I fear that the noble Lord has now been speaking for 23 minutes and a number of us who are in support of him will find ourselves less so than when he started.

More defence

Further to the second story here, the accused has been been given life (minimum 30 years) for murdering Kate Beagley, despite a second impressive bid for “worst defence ever”:

With only a month to go before his trial, Taylor came up with a new story. He now claimed that Kate had stabbed herself to death.

Bizarrely he claimed he himself had brought the knife that night because he felt suicidal but when it fell out of his sleeve and onto the floor Kate picked it up and started “prodding” herself in the neck.

When Taylor entered the witness box Peter Clarke QC, prosecuting, coolly unpicked his nonsensical story. Under cross-examination Taylor became flustered and argumentative.

Mr Clarke rolled up a piece of paper to make a “knife” six inches long and asked Taylor to use it to show the court just how Kate had killed herself. Taylor refused, claiming he was “not in the right emotional state”, but Judge Giles Forrester told him he was a witness and must answer the question. The defendant reluctantly agreed and gently prodded himself in the neck with the paper “knife”. Among the 31 injuries she received were blows which severed her carotid artery and her jugular vein, but Taylor insisted she was standing throughout.

Mr Clarke then asked him why, as a fitness instructor with martial arts training, Taylor had not stepped in to disarm Kate and save her life. Taylor said it was an “awkward situation” and he did not know how to intervene safely. He accused Mr Clarke of being “outlandish”. “"What is outlandish about suggesting that you try to save her life?” asked Mr Clarke. Taylor sidestepped the question and added: “I didn’t know this girl. I just didn’t know what to do.” [BBC]

His story seems to have been unduly influenced by Chris Morris.