My round-up of news, events and stuff and nonsense from the last seven days –
if it’s news to me, it must be news to you!
Truth-teller of the week: More people trust their hairdresser to tell the truth than they do priest and clergy and the police according to the Ipsos MORI Veracity Index. Doctors head the truth-tellers list, while bankers are trusted less than builders – unsurprisingly, politicians remain rooted at the bottom of the league table.
Truth-twister of the week: Although scientists are also high on the list of trusted professions, you have to wonder why. A study conducted by Bristol University suggesting that people trying to lose weight would do better to drink Diet Coke than water was part-funded by, er… Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. The study considered more than 5,500 papers on the subject, but used only three – and two of those found no difference.
Game of the week: Play Top Trumps with Donald and his Republican buddies. (The Combover’s special power: defies political gravity)
Late arrival of the week: Betarix Potter story of a cross-dressing, pro-gun lobby cat is finally published more than a hundred years after it was written.
Tax dodge of the week: Google stumps up £130 million to cover its tax bill for the ten years up to 2015 which seems a tad on the derisory side since one figure I saw estimated UK profits of £6 billion in that period. If true, that is a tax rate of a little over 2% which is particularly galling in the week of my own tax self-assessment which has me paying 25% on my own meagre earnings.
Get rich-quick-scheme of the week: How to make £33 million, but you will have to get in the queue. The eventual winner wants to remain anonymous though.
Get-rich-quick-scheme of the week 2: Dust off your Kodak Brownie. Irish photographer, Kevin Abosch, sells a snap of a potato for €1 million to an unamed businessman.
News just in: The world is flat according to rapper BoB. The ball-shaped earth theory is just a conspiracy made up by a cabal of globe manufacturers, but we must hang on to our faith in gravity otherwise we shall all float away into space. Which doesn’t exist, obviously.
Brief lives: Oxymoronic Tory grandee and philanderer Cecil Parkinson who might even have been PM had he kept his hands off his secretary; explorer Henry Worsley dies 30 miles short of achieving his bid to be the first man to walk across Antarctica unaided.
Philosophical question of the week: Why DO so many celebrities have knobbly knees?
Word of the week: Contumelious – adjective (Of behaviour) scornful and insulting; insolent. As in this from Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,
And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonised me from head to foot,
With a stony British stare.
Money for old rope of the week: Academics at Oxford University confirm what we always knew – having a local makes us happier. Bottoms up.
Kitty in Boots was always intended to be about a black feline, proving that Beatrix Potter was ahead of her time in the business of promoting harmonious race relations. If it is ever made into a blockbuster film, I hope that Idris Elba gets to play Kitty. 10 out of 10 for the research and the links Mr Pee.