Barmy Britain (3 page)
Authors: Jack Crossley
- Because they make love more than anyone else.
- On average that’s 137 times a year.
- We manage only 119.
Daily Telegraph
A
Daily Telegraph
leader said of the rugby that it was a noble defeat which should be inspiring to every Briton.
Daily Telegraph
The
Sun
tried to cheer up its readers with a page one headline:
O
H
W
ELL
, T
HERE’S
A
LWAYS
D
ARTS
Sun
Discussion about New Zealand rugby players performing their pre-match Haka war dance produced the suggestion that the English team should respond with Morris dancing. Peter Croft, of Cambridge, thought that such a response would fall foul of international human rights conventions prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.
Sunday Telegraph
A woman arrested for shoplifting had a whole salami in her knickers. She said it was because she was missing her Italian boyfriend.
Manchester Evening News
Isobel Whatrup, of Gillingham, Kent, tells of a friend who decided to sell some surplus vegetables from a table outside the house, relying on an honesty box. Someone stole the table.
Daily Telegraph
Karim Allison, of Middlesbrough, reported his wheelie bin missing and got a letter from Victim Support offering him emotional support.
‘What I need,’ he said, ‘is just a new bin.’
Guardian
A set of traffic lights was stolen in Reading and police said: ‘Some thieves will stop at nothing.’
Southend Evening Echo
A life-sized cardboard cut-out policeman – set up as a crime prevention measure – was stolen from a supermarket in Ripon, North Yorkshire.
Daily Telegraph
It seems to be becoming a national pastime. Shortly after the above theft another cardboard policeman failed to deter thieves – this time in Long Eaton, Derbyshire. The life-size figure of PC Bob Molloy, who had previously been credited with keeping shoplifters away from the local Co-Op, was seen on CCTV being carried away – tucked under a man’s arm.
Sunday Times
The law banning anyone from dying in the Houses of Parliament topped a poll on Britain’s most absurd rules. Second was the one banning the sticking of a postage stamp upside-down. More than half of the 3,931 taking part in the poll admitted breaking the law that bans the eating of mince pies on Christmas Day.
Sun
Some like it hot:
Police closed a street in Soho, London, for three hours amid fears of a chemical attack. But the acrid fumes hanging over the street came from a spicy dip with extra chillies being cooked in a Thai restaurant.
Sunday Times
At Woolwich Crown Court Mr Justice Openshaw asked: ‘What is a website?’ This joins a list of comments that are forever trotted out in support of the legend of judicial ignorance. The list includes:
- What are the Beatles?
- Who is Gazza?
- What is Linford Christie’s lunch box?
- What is a Teletubby?
- What is B&Q?
(Next day the judge said he had played dumb ‘to assist the jury’ and was seeking an explanation ‘in the interests of justice’)
The Times
A supermarket till operator in Aberdare, South Wales, overheard a customer say ‘Battle of Hastings’ as she tapped in her PIN. Using the customer’s debit card he tapped 1066 into the store’s cash machine and plundered £170.
The Times
Ipswich Crown Court gave a driving instructor a 12-month supervision order and 80 hours unpaid community work after hearing that he had told a 17-year-old girl pupil: ‘Your breasts would make a good mobile phone holder.’
Daily Mail
19-year-old Kyle Little was arrested under the Public Order Act for barking at two dogs. His name was cleared in Newcastle Crown Court in a hearing that cost £8,000. Judge Beatrice Bolton said: ‘I don’t think Section Five of the Public Order Act applies to dogs.’
The dogs’ owner said: ‘They were not upset by it at all.’
Daily Telegraph
PC 1064 of the Norfolk Constabulary is a local hero in Lithuania and has been awarded a medal for the way he helps Lithuanians over here. The
ever-helpful
Guardian
filled a page with the story of PC Gary Pettengell and included vital translations of essential phrases:
- Hello, hello, hello (Labas, labas, labas)
- Move along there please (Vijeok deasi prasau)
- Let’s be having you (Kilosek minas)
- Evening all (Labanakt)
Guardian
A man who crept on to the roof of a tanning salon in Wiltshire to spy on a naked woman was caught when the roof collapsed under him.
The Times
Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales, famed for cracking down on errant motorists, revealed in his web journal, how he spent a day off.
While his wife was away, he wrote, he had the opportunity to ‘sneak off and have some fun.’ He got back into uniform and spent a 12-hour shift on the A497 on the outskirts of Pwllheli along with a camera that ‘read 5,891 number plates from which we had 321 hits, resulting in us stopping 109 cars. During the course of the day the team arrested 22 people, mostly for possession of relatively small amounts of cannabis.’
Daily Telegraph
A senior police officer who admitted having sex while on duty was cleared of any offence after he told the court he was always poised and ready to respond to an emergency… because he had his earpiece in.
Daily Mail
A woman from Paisley, near Glasgow, was threatened with an Asbo unless her 13-year-old son stopped practising on his bagpipes at home.
Daily Telegraph
Following claims that police officers were being forced to make ludicrous arrests in an attempt to meet Home Office targets, a Police Dossier of Dubious ‘Offences’ was produced. It included:
- West Midlands woman arrested on her wedding day for criminal damage to a car park barrier when her foot slipped on the accelerator pedal.
- A child arrested in Kent for throwing a cream bun at a bus.
- Cheshire man cautioned for being ‘found in possession of an egg with intent to throw’.
- Kent child who removed a slice of cucumber from a sandwich and threw it at another youngster.
- Two Manchester children arrested under firearms laws for being in possession of a plastic toy pistol.
Daily Mail
Extra police are to be deployed on the streets of Brighton when the moon is full. Neil Rogers, of Deeside, Flintshire, wrote that to counter the effects of a full moon on some of the populace officers should be issued with a garlic flavoured pepper spray and a silver truncheon.
The Times
Two policewomen sped to arrest an attacker in pedal-powered rickshaws. They flagged down two pedicab riders after learning that fellow officers needed help. The pedicab drivers told how they rode them through Hereford rounding corners ‘with a motorbike sidecar lean.’
Daily Mirror
The Times’
version of the rickshaw raid said that the WPCs ‘sat in the back urging their drivers to go faster and encouraged pedestrians and other vehicles to move out of their way by yelling “
Nee-naw
, nee-naw, nee-naw” at the top of their voices. The rickshaw men said: “We like to think of ourselves as cowboys riding down the bad guys.”’
The Times
Martin Hallam, of Oxford, writes about the 1960s when he was a policeman in Winchester. TV personality Hughie Green, of Opportunity Knocks, reported his car had broken down and asked the police to arrange a lift for him to London. A gnarled old policeman advised: ‘Go to the bypass, stick up your thumb, and see if opportunity knocks.’
Daily Telegraph
John Chatfield, of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, saw a report about fake £20 notes being in circulation, along with a quote from a police sergeant: ‘About three weeks ago we saw a rise in fake £30 notes, and that is something that is more serious.’
Daily Mail
The
Financial Times
ran a series questioning the behaviour of lawyers:
- Why did the lawyer cross the road? To distribute his calling card to the victims of a five-car pile-up on the other side.
- What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start.
- How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? How many can you afford?
- What is the difference between a lawyer and a rat both lying dead on the road? There are skid marks in front of the rat.
Financial Times
In Stroud, Gloucestershire, a man was given an Asbo banning him from yelling abusive and racist comments at his TV.
Sun
A woman who was tied to a refrigerator door at gunpoint by two raiders has been praised for her coolness by Tonbridge police.
Kent and Sussex Courier
David Wills, of Southampton, wrote about solicitors’ charges and revealed the following extract from a Bill of Costs raised by his firm in 1907:
To attending you when asked if we had your mother’s will.
We replied that we would search. 6s 8d
We searched but did not find it. 6s 8d
Suggested you should see if the bank had it. 6s 8d
Letter to the bank asking if it was there. 3s 6d
Ultimately finding the will in our safe and attending the reading of it. 13s 4d.
Mr Wills ends his letter with: ‘We are happy to say that our procedures are considerably more efficient nowadays’.
Daily Telegraph
David Spark, of Great Ayton, Yorkshire, recalls an (apocryphal) solictor’s bill:
To crossing the street to say good morning to you. 6s 8d
To crossing back on finding it was not you. 6s 8d
Daily Telegraph
The Rev. W. N. C. Girard, of Balsham, Cambridgeshire wrote to the
Daily Telegraph
about a lawyer’s bill sent to the estate of a man whose will he had drawn up. It included the item: ‘To attending on you for your signature, but you were dead.’
Daily Telegraph
Police appealed for witnesses after a woman put her toddler into a pushchair on display in a Plymouth store – and walked out with it.
Western Morning News
Clive Anderson, former practising barrister turned successful comedy writer and TV and radio presenter, was rueful about his day job: ‘It’s just 99% of lawyers who give the rest a bad name.’
Guardian
Retired vicar’s wife Ann Laycock, of Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, who was shot at by youths in her local park, was advised by police to walk her dog somewhere else in future.
Daily Mail
A gunman attempting to hold up a Tesco petrol station in Cheltenham did not allow for the formidable 51-year-old Linda Faulkner behind the counter. Instead of surrendering the cash from her till she told the raider that she was too busy to deal with him. ‘I just got on with it,’ she said later. ‘British people don’t stop work just because someone is trying to bully us with guns.’
Daily Mail
A thief who tried to hand herself in at her local police station in Kent for stealing £3,000 was instructed to go to a police station nine miles away in Canterbury. She was told ‘We can’t do it today – it’s a Bank Holiday. Come back later.’
Sun
In the relentless war on villains, the Serious Organised Crime Agency set up a confidentiality hotline for the public in October 2006. In November 2007 The Times reported ‘it is manned five days a week and, thus far, has taken 16 calls. One reported the theft of a bicycle. Another complaint was that someone was smoking in a bank.’
The Times
A woman from Aberavon, South Wales, falsely claimed that she was living apart from her husband and fiddled benefits totalling £8,832. She was ordered to pay it back at £10 a month and she will be 109 if she ever gets to make the final payment.
Sun
(This recalls the story of the man in a similar predicament who protested that he was already over 80. ‘Just do the best you can’, advised the kindly magistrate.)
UKTV Gold invited viewers to nominate the most ridiculous law on English statute books. Strong contenders included:
- Oliver Cromwell’s attempt to combat gluttony by banning the eating of mince pies on Christmas Day.
- A 19th century London by-law which allowed pregnant women to relieve themselves in a policeman’s helmet.
- The law that will find you guilty of treason if you stick a postage stamp on an envelope with the monarch’s head upside-down.
Winner of the contest was the law which bans you from dying in the Houses of Parliament. Anyone who manages to break this law is technically entitled to a state funeral.
Independent
A newly recruited policeman of Swanage, Dorset, recalls walking the beat with an experienced colleague when they came across scrumpers clambering over a wall with their pullovers bulging with stolen apples. His mentor ordered the boys to empty their booty on to the grass, gave each miscreant a sharp slap on the hand with a leather strap, and said: ‘Don’t let me catch you again.’ The scrumpers ran off and the old-fashioned bobby said: ‘Stick a few in your pockets – pity we can’t take ‘em all’.
Daily Mail