PM's top tips

New Prime Minister Gordon Brown has fielded all sorts of questions from readers of the Independent, including this one:

 

Bill Hooper: Where would you recommend I take my girlfriend for a tasty but economical supper?

Gordon Brown: There's a great Chinese restaurant in Kirkcaldy called Maxin's.

- Independent, 27 June 2007

[Does he know a good fish & chip shop in London?]

I hope he doesn't get his mum to wash his socks

Does my gun look big in this?

 

'A motorist tried to hide his loaded gun in between his buttocks when he was pulled over by police in Tooting.  Reggie Sackey, 27, who was stopped by cops who saw him driving without a seatbelt, had an 8mm pistol jammed in his bottom and wrapped in a sock.  He was arrested on possession of marijuana and the gun was uncovered in a station search.  Sackey pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court to possession of a firearm and drugs. He will be sentenced next month'

 

- This Is Local London, 23 June 2007 

 

[Spotted in Londonist blog]

Creamed laboratory rat

'Easter [Island] is the sole known Polynesian island at whose archaeological sites rat bones outnumber fish bones.  In case you're squeamish and consider rat inedible, I still recall, from my years of living in England in the late 1950s, recipes for creamed laboratory rat that my British biologist friends who kept them for experiments also used to supplement their diet during their years of wartime rationing'

 

- Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Survive, 2005 

Or perhaps his brother

'Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein'
 

- Joe Theismann, former Notre Dame quarterback

The youngest consumer

'Despite the invisibility of our baby (except, of course, for the enormous bump protruding from Jennifer's midriff) it still manages to make its presence felt. In the manner of a dysfunctional ex-couple who communicate through their lawyer, the baby and I exchange information via Jennifer. For example:

Jennifer: The baby wants fish and chips for dinner.

Me: Can the baby wait until I've finished watching Top Gear?

Jennifer: The baby says no.

Over the past few months the baby's demands have become increasingly forceful, and have included requests to:

• Straighten pictures which are annoying the baby because they're crooked.
• Make midnight visits to the 24-hour petrol station to procure salt & vinegar crisps for the baby.
• Cook a "delicious pudding" for the baby.
• Buy the baby a 10 megapixel camera with 6X optical zoom'

- David Haywood, Southerly, 12 June 2007

More work needed on excuses for speeding

Foreign tourists speed due to lack of trees

Police in Hvolsvöllur, south Iceland, caught eight foreign tourists speeding yesterday, one driving at 134 km per hour in a 90 kph zone. Some of the tourists said they were tempted to speed due to the lack of trees.  Apparently, the fact that the ring road is broad in south Iceland and that no trees block the view led the foreigners to believe it was safe to speed up, Morgunbladid reports.

 

- Morgunbladid, 7 June 2007, quoted on www.hostel.is

Geek cats

Oodles of kitty pictures, and if the funny captions don't make sense, then read up at Wikipedia on the LOLcats craze, or maybe even in the Houston Chronicle... 

 

I Can Has Cheezburger?