I think I ate here once!

A man between the ages of thirty and forty cut off his own penis (it hurts just to type those words!) in Zizzi's restaurant on the Strand in London on Sunday evening. Police had to use CS gas to restrain him before taking him to a South London hospital where he is in stable condition. Doctors were, however, unable to reattach his member. A spokeswoman for the restaurant relates the events (those with tender sensibilities may wish to look away now):

"At around 9pm on Sunday, a man walked into the Zizzi restaurant on The Strand, down the stairs to the basement restaurant area and tried to enter a kitchen.

"Members of staff stopped him, at which he ran into a second kitchen area.

"The man then picked up a kitchen knife and slashed himself across the wrist and groin areas before running back into the restaurant, where he continued to stab himself.

"This happened in a matter of seconds and was obviously extremely frightening and distressing for the many customers and staff in the restaurant at the time."

"Apart from the man, we understand that no-one else suffered any physical injuries."

I think some of the witnesses to events might have to take a trip or two to the shrink I reckon.

Good luck with this one

Dr. Aric Sigman, a prominent psychologist, told a group of British MPs yesterday that the television viewing habits of children should be severely restricted by the adults responsible for them. He believes, citing recent research, that watching as little as one and half hours a day at a young age could be a trigger for attention-deficit disorder, autism or obesity. He believes that children under the age of three should watch no television at all and that from the ages of three to seven it should be restricted to thirty minutes to an hour daily. Then from the ages of seven to twelve he suggest no more than one hour a day, from twelve to fifteen one and a half hours a day and over sixteen only two hours. He believes that children should not have tellies in their rooms.

This will be a very hard sell in Britain and in America, well you may as well just forget it!

"Hey buddy - wanna buy some fighters?"

I don't know about you but I find the lengths to which the Blair government is willing to go to shield the actions of British "merchant of death" BAE from any sort of scrutiny whatsoever absolutely awe inspiring. They ruthless crushed any attempts by the legal authorities to investigate allegations of bribery and corruption in BAE's deal to sell EuroFighters to Saudi Arabia. Now that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has stepped in to see if the UK might be in violation of its treaty obligations related to corrupt practices the UK government is trying to out the OECD's anti-bribery head, Mark Pieth, claiming that his is to "outspoken" or honest or investigative or something.

Gone-zo watch (day 36)

In order to make it appear that the controversy surrounding him is not affecting his meagre ability to do his job US Attorney General and Bush succubus Antonio "Gone-zo" Gonzales yesterday announced a bold yet lacklustre plan to combat identity theft. At least that is what is seems on the surface but what if Gone-zo is cleverly planting the seeds of his own defence here. What if he is planning to claim that in any situation where wrong doing by the AG is alleged it wasn't actually Gone-zo who did it but rather some sad loser who chose to steal Gone-zo's identity? Dumb like a fox a say!

There is not much to report in the case of England football manager Steve "I've never really coached a winning team and it doesn't look like I'm going to start now" McClaren who would appear likely to keep his job until at least sometime in June as the side won't play again until then. However sometimes England keeper David "Calamity" James saw fit to criticise McClaren for watching nature videos rather than James's matches at lowly Portsmouth. I don't think we can really blame McClaren for that, can we?

(To be continued...)

Living in a world seen through a Faux News filter

Not only has the Decider(TM) decided to decide to spend a small portion of his valuable time today putting in a plug for "Gone-zo" Gonzales ("This is an honest, honorable man, in whom I have confidence") but he went so far as to say that the earnest young Mexican American's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week "increased [his] confidence" in him.

What bloody channel was he watching?

Breaking news

Boris Yeltsin dead at 76!

1001 reasons to be a (British Republican) - number 137

Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II of England and Wales and Elizabeth I of Scotland supports the Arse.

Bad news from home

Situation worsening in City of Ballistic Love: at least ten dead in a weekend orgy of violence. Fortunately Newt Gingrich has fortunately told us that none of these people, despite the fact that they were all shot, were killed by guns; they were killed by liberals!

Year to date: 127 homicides - 112 days.

FDA knew about spinach and peanut butter problems...

...but did nothing. Whatever happened to "trust but verify"? The FDA seems to have forgotten the second bit.

Packing heat

This argument simultaneously befuddles and frightens me. According to this bloke, and trust me he is not alone in thinking this way, the tragedy at Virginia Tech (he doesn't mention NASA) would have been unthinkable if only everyone in the classrooms, the dormitories, the locker rooms and the cafeterias been armed.

Madness. Madness. Madness.

Losing his cameo

British billionaire and owner of Virgin Atlantic airlines Sir Richard Branson, as well as many other Virgin things, has a cameo appearance in the most recent Bond film Casino Royale unless, of course, you see the film on a British Airways flight, in which case he doesn't! Virgin and BA have a relationship that is mostly defined by enmity going back to the early 90s. In addition to the disappearance of the face shot of Sir Richard Virgin Air planes appearing in the film have had their tail fins altered as well. A spokesperson for BA is quoted as saying:

"All films are screened. We want to ensure that they contain no material that might upset our customers."

I reckon they don't want to upset the board either!

In Fahrenheit would this be a twelve step programme?

Today's Guardian contains a handy little guide to what we can expect as the Earth heats up degree Celsius by degree Celsius entitled "Six steps to hell". The article is essentially a précis of Mark Lynas's book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, now out in paperback apparently. Some lowlights -

One degree C:

Drought in the American grain belt - as bad as or worse than the Dustbowl years of the thirties

The snows of Kilimanjaro are gone

Alpine glaciers are melting with significant impact due to rock slides as the ice that holds the mountains together disappears

Coral reefs and plankton at serious risk - their extinction or significant reduction could turn the world's oceans into a desert

Two degrees C:

European suffering under extreme summers similar to the one a few years ago in which 30,000 people died

The Greenland ice sheet is disappearing or gone leading to a rise in sea level of somewhere between half a metre and seven metres.

Andean glaciers will shrink causing severe drought

Loss of snow pack in the Sierra Nevada will create significant problems for Los Angeles and may turn it back to desert

Global food supplies for humans will be dramatically reduced but survivable. Other species will not fair as well and bio-diversity will be severely effected.

Three degrees C

Increasingly large areas of the planet would be rendered uninhabitable by drought and/or heat

Large areas of southern Africa and Australia reduced to desert

The most powerful hurricanes and typhoons would become have an upper limit half a level beyond today's Category Five

Hundreds of millions of refugees will be driven from their homes and their countries by climatic conditions or rising sea levels

Europe and North America seeing a cycle of summer drought and winter flooding with serious impacts on agriculture

Four degrees C

Hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 locked up in permafrost, primarily in Siberia, are released into the atmosphere accelerating the greenhouse effects

The Arctic ice cap disappears and along with the last of the polar bear and other arctic species that rely on the ice

Europe will see the return of deserts to Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey; glaciers in the Alps will be reduced to only the highest peaks. Southern England could see summer temperatures of 45C. (Note: I start to complain about the heat at around 25C!)

Five degrees C

Bad; very, very bad

Six degrees C

Trust me you won't want to be there

This is first time I think I've felt that my age is an advantage. I pity the kids though.

Undoubtedly it was the Iranians

The armour of a British Challenger tank has, for the first time, been penetrated by a bomb in Iraq. Demonstrating a gift for understatement Professor Michael Clarke from King's College's Defence Studies centre said:

"Most of the things on a battlefield are not much of a threat to a tank, usually. ..This is worrying, because if there are many of these sorts of very heavy penetrative Improvised Explosive Devices around in the area then no vehicle is safe."

Guns don't kill people, bullets don't kill people...

...liberalism kills people. Just ask Newt.

Kudos due to the New York Daily News

For they have done something that almost no other American paper has done, including all those dangerous lefty rags that so outrage the right wingnuts such as the NY Times and the Washington Post, by calling a terrorist a terrorist in the form of Luis Posada Carriles!

Well done - now back to work!

Rizagate - the plot thickens

On Friday the World Bank broadened the scope of its investigation into the affairs of the Bank's President Paul Wolfowitz to include the employment contracts of a number of neo-con advisers that he brought into the Bank when we took over. In fact things are going so bad for poor Wolfie that he's Bill Clinton's former lawyer. There isn't a dress somewhere that we are about to find out about is there? Does anyone know the whereabouts of Linda Tripp?

There are a number of folks who are defending Mr. Wolfowitz and by extension Ms. Riza, saying that he did all that he could do when he was hired by revealing his romantic relationship with Ms. Riza and arranging for her secondment (with a considerably improved wage packet) to the US Department of State. Why has no one suggested that, if he wished to continue his relationship with Ms. Riza, and truly loved and respected her that he refuse the job and look elsewhere for employment? Surely that would have been the correct thing to do instead of trying to have his cake etc etc.

"We've got a warrant lady - your womb belongs to us!"

The Bush administration has in its sweaty little hands a shiny brand new United States Supreme Court decision that allows it ban what it calls "partial birth abortion", even though no such medical term exists. Some members of the pro-choice community are concerned as to what methods they will choose to use to enforce it.

Now where could they have learned to act like this I wonder?

Hundreds, perhaps more, of men and women across Africa are being handcuffed, blindfolded and transported to other countries for "interrogation" as evildoers in an obvious imitation of the illegal American tactic of "extraordinary rendition". Many of these victims are refugees who are fleeing war and disorder in places such as Somalia or elsewhere. Authorities in both Kenya and Ethiopia have admitted complicity in these acts which in some cases has included providing those in dentition to American agents for interrogation. Ethiopia has admitted continuing to hold as many as thirty six "suspected terrorists" but has refused to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross access to them. The Kenyan government has said that anyone who feels that the law has been broken is "welcome to file an official complaint".

Those detained have included nationals of Tanzania, Sweden, the Sudan, and the Yemen.

Mum's the word

Is the government of Jordan* guilty of censorship after seizing an al-Jazeera videotape on which the former Crown Prince and uncle of the current King, Prince Hassan accused the United States and Saudi Arabia of "destructive" policies in the Middle East? According to a government spokesman

:"We cannot afford to have any misinterpretation of Jordan's stand at this delicate stage...Remember, we live in the Middle East where media outlets are sometimes employed to serve political purposes."

Unlike America of course where "news" outlets could never be used for political purposes.

*Note to tabloid readers in this case we are refering to this Jordan as opposed to this Jordan.

101 techniques to get you out of prision - number 45

Get a mate to send a fake fax from the corner shop. It worked for nineteen year old Timothy Rouse as it managed to get him released from the Kentucky Correctional and Psychiatric Center in LaGrange where he was under psychiatric evaluation. The fax, which was not even sent of letterhead and contained a number of misspellings and grammatical errors, was purported to be from the Kentucky Supreme Court. Young Mr. Rouse managed to stay at large for a fortnight before the mistake was noticed and the police found him round his Mum's place.

One wonders if Mr. Rouse is a Guardian reader or perhaps is related in some way to Mohamed Al Fayed.

Who in their right mind would drive in Manhattan anyway?

New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with whom I occasionally find myself agreeing - on guns for example, has used the occasion of Earth Day to announce a number of "green" measures including, in emulation of London, the imposition of a congestion charge for motor vehicles in lower Manhattan.

In emulation of the American embassy in London I can only hope that the British consulate in New York is preparing plans to identify this pernicious charge as what it truly is, a tax, and therefore refuse to pay it. Hopefully some of the money that is saved in this way will be passed on to London as recompense for amounts that the Yanks refuse to pay and therefore go to lower my council tax!

Time will tell how the Americans, who assume a God given right to drive anywhere they wish, will take to this.

Who is in charge? (You get two guesses)

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered the illegal American occupation forces to stop building a wall around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad which the Americans suggest will "unite" the Sunni and Sh'ia. The new American ambassador has said, in reply, that the US will "respect the wishes" of the Iraqis but did not say whether the construction would be halted.

A new religious crack on the Iraqi scene?

An inter-religious elopement appears to have led to the massacre of twenty three members of a small religious sect in Mosul in Iraq. Those killed were members of the Yazidi faith, an ancient but little understood belief system which contains elements of Judaism, Zoroasterism, Islam and Christianity.

Nigeria on the brink

The oil rich state of Nigeria (are you listening Mr. Bush?) is teetering on the edge of widespread unrest as the results of charges of vote rigging and corruption are levelled against the process by both parties in opposition to the current government and by independent observers both local and international.

The Nigerian government's response is to say "nonsense".

We await further developments. I assume this is making oil traders nervous.

Bishara flees Israel under threat

Israeli Member of the Knesset Azmi Bishara, chairman of the largely Arab Balad party, has resigned his legislative seat and left the country. Mr. Bishara is the subject of a secret Israeli government investigation against him, believed to focus on his meetings with Syrian officials and might include "consorting with the enemy". As an Israeli Arab leader Mr. Bishara has long been vilified by right wing parties and has faced charges before. By resigning his seat in the Knesset he surrenders his immunity to prosecution.

It is hard to tell what the next step will be but it is likely that Israeli authorities will move quickly to prefer charges against him, in part to deflect attention from their own difficulties with the law, as both the Israeli President and the Finance Minister stand accused.

Lolly for Lordships

The British Attorney General and friend to the Prime Minister Lord Goldsmith has repeated that he will not step aside in the decision as to whether or not charges will be made and against whom they might be made in the "Lolly-for-Lordships" Labour funding scandal. Of course we needn't worry about this cosy relationship at all because, in Lord Goldsmith's own words:

"I can assure you and everyone else that, if I am consulted, any decision will be taken objectively, on the evidence, independently of government, because my first duty is to the law, not to party politics."

Well that's that settled then!

Victory is bitter

Since this past December drinkers in Lewes, Sussex have been boycotting the Lewes Arms after it was taken over by the Greene King Brewery and the new landlords replaced the local tipple Harvey's Bitter with Greene King IPA. Well to boycotters can now celebrate, at the Lewes Arms if they so wish, as the brewery has now given in and the local speciality is back on the rack. According to one Harvey's loyalist:

"It's wonderful. I've just been back in and it's like getting your home back after wrongful eviction. It was hippies versus suits and we won."

Get pissed - get healthy!

It would have thought it could be so easy. I have finally found lifestyle advice that I am willing to follow in the news that fruity cocktails might count as health food! If this turns out to be true getting my five a day allotment of fruit and veg could be as easy as trundling down the pub.

Tiny cocktail brollies optional.

The Firth of Filth

The picturesque Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, familiar to golf fans as the body of water you see in the distance when the Open Championship is held at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, is facing an environmental disaster as millions of litres of raw sewage are being pumped into the water. Local folks have been told not to enter the water, as if the fact that the water is absolutely fucking freezing weren’t disincentive enough, or to pick up dead fish. So my advice is to stick to whiskey and dead fried Mars bars until further notice then.

Gone-zo watch (day 35)

Given the state of play in the Bush administration these days with scandals everywhere and the Decider's approval ratings heading into "I'm a Big" Dick Cheney territory I feel it is a bit harsh to suggest, as some currently are, that the fact that US Attorney General and Bush succubus Antonio "Gone-zo" Gonzales is continuing to desperately hang on to his job is "damaging the White House". Nonetheless he remains the favourite for second place in the who-will-get-sacked-first competition over England football manager Steve "I've never really coached a winning team and it doesn't look like I'm going to start now" McClaren.

(To be continued...)