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Jeremy Corbyn sat on train roof because service ‘too packed’

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EXCLUSIVE
By Casey Jones, Railways Correspondent

jeremy corbyn sitting on train

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has claimed a Greater Anglia train service from Ipswich was so packed that he had to sit on the roof.

Mr Corbyn claimed he could not find a seat on the 7.30am commuter service from Ipswich to London, so he climbed up on top of the engine and sat there instead.

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He then got one of his aides to take a photograph, and released a statement alleging the “overcrowded” train was symptomatic of a broken rail service that should be nationalised again.

But Greater Anglia hit back, saying there were plenty of spare seats on the train, and Mr Corbyn was simply trying to make political capital.

The row comes just a day after Virgin Trains denied its service from Kings Cross was so packed that Mr Corbyn had to sit on the floor for part of the journey.

An Ipswich commuter said: “I arrived at the station and couldn’t believe my eyes – Mr Corbyn was sitting on top of the engine in Platform 2. I thought I was still drunk from the previous night.”

A British Transport Police spokesman was not impressed. He said: “It was totally irresponsible. We do not recommend passengers sit on top of the roof because they might fall off.

“Plus they are likely to be decapitated the moment the train enters the tunnel just outside Ipswich Station.”

Labour leadership rival Owen Smith told the Suffolk Gazette: “That bloke is a lunatic.”

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Join the fun and discussion on our Suffolk Forum.

Brave cop decorated after recovering stolen paint

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By Rob Banks, Crime Editor

A brave cop who caught a lorry packed with stolen paint has now been decorated.

PC Matt Coates was on duty on the A14 near Stowmarket when he received a call about the theft of a blue Scania truck and 50,000 cans of Dulux from nearby Claydon.

He spotted the stolen lorry moments later and managed to overtake it and then block the carriageway before forcing the driver to give himself up.

A spokesman for Suffolk Police said: “The owners of the paint were grateful and nominated PC Coates to be decorated for his bravery.

“PC Coates is a modest chap and tried to gloss over it, but we could tell he was quite emulsional because it was his first arrest.”

The spokesman added that PC Coates, 28, later celebrated his award by “getting plastered” with his mates.

And following his brush with the law, robber Derek Smith, 63, from London, was jailed for six months at Ipswich Crown Court.

 

Realistic new map of Suffolk boosts tourism

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By Suffolk Gazette Staff

Tourism chiefs are delighted with a new map of Suffolk that helps visitors navigate their way around the county.

The map, which was produced by the Suffolk Gazette’s crack team of graphic designers and cartographers at a cost of £10,000, includes the good (rich farmlands), the bad (farmers shooting burglars) and the ugly (Haverhill).

It highlights where people can enjoy a caravan holiday, where they can find some slot machines – and which part of the county has lots of wonky houses.

For those looking to retire to Suffolk, it highlights Woodbridge as the perfect place.

And for rich Londoners looking for a Suffolk home, they need only search along the coast.

A county official said: “We are grateful to the Suffolk Gazette for making the new map, which will go a long way to, er, putting Suffolk on the map.

“It seems to sum up the county in an easy-to-understand way.”

A spokesman for the Suffolk Gazette said: “We think it’s a fair representation of our county.

map of suffolk

“Hopefully people in Haverhill will still speak to us, although some of them sent us death threats after we unveiled the Suffolk version of Monopoly and they were in Old Kent Road.”

The county map is one of a stunning trilogy that will be on display in London to help tourists understand what is available in East Anglia.

It goes with the Norfolk map, and with the Essex map.

 

Olympic dressage horse Valegro joins Strictly

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By Arthur Pint, Entertainment Editor

Olympic gold medal winning horse Valegro is the latest contestant to be added to this year’s Strictly Come Dancing line-up.

Valegro stunned the Olympic judges in Rio with an excellent display in the individual dressage, and is hotly-tipped to win this year’s Strictly trophy.

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It is not yet clear who will partner the horse, but Charlotte Dujardin, who rode him to success in Rio, says whoever it is will be the “luckiest woman ever”.

She said: “He is a natural dancer and we didn’t need to train much. In fact, I feel a bit guilty about getting the gold medal as I didn’t really do a great deal.”

valegraPrancing about: Valegro goes for gold

Although initial reports suggested Valegro would retire after the Olympics, Strictly producers made an offer that his team could not refuse, including a timeshare stable in Sheikh Mohammed’s plush yard in Newmarket.

After flying back from Brazil, he is enjoying a few days rest to recover from jet lag before beginning training for the show, where he will be up against the likes of former Chancellor, and current Norwich City chairman Ed Balls, who is not a horse – but does look like one.

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Dwile flonking team wins another Gold for Britain

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By Our Olympics Staff

Suffolk was celebrating today after its dwile-flonking Olympians added yet another Gold for Team GB in Rio.

The awesome foursome from Beccles beat Albania in a nail-biting final to clinch Britain’s first Gold in dwile flonking since it was reintroduced as an Olympic sport in 1968.

Sadly their victory will not be seen on television because the sport, which began in rural East Anglia in the 17th Century, involves alcohol and heavy drinking.

But photographs from Brazil show Rodger Smith from Beccles successfully tossing his beer-soaked dwile at hapless Albanians.

The elitist sport remains popular in many countries across the world, although America disappointed by crashing out in the qualifiers to Kazakhstan.

Dwile flonking involves two teams. One stands in a circle around an opposition flonker, who has a cloth – or dwile – which he soaks in a bucket of beer at his feet and drapes over a stick.

He then spins around and tries to release the dwile so that it strikes one of the other team. If he fails, he has to drink the contents of the bucket (traditionally Adnams).

This continues in rotation until the last team standing wins. In rare circumstances it is settled with a points system.

Beccles in Suffolk is the world headquarters for dwile flonking after the sport was revived there in the mid 1960s.

Smith, 67, competes for Team GB with fellow Beccles farmers Tim Smith, Dave Smith and Bill Smith.

He said: “Winning gold is a dream come true, and is reward for hours of hard training in pub car parks across East Anglia. It’s just a shame my wife Liz was not able to be here to see it. She was at home getting the harvest in.”

There are moves to add Dwile Flonking to the Winter Olympics as well, because the sport is an all-year pursuit.

My crack is getting very big

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in my lady garden

Just look at the size of my crack! It’s getting bigger by the day despite all the showers we had earlier in the season, and I know many of you are in the same situation. I keep worrying that there will be a sinkhole, devouring me, my perpetual spinach, folding chair and bottle of Adnams’ Prosecco.

It is vital that you keep watering the soil at the root of your crops.

And when it does rain, try to get your butt filled. The environmentally-minded are right to tell us to re-use water when we can. I do when washing the lettuce and swishing the slugs off.

But then there’s what they call “grey water”, such as washing up water and bath water. I’m sorry but I don’t want to tip curry-sludge Fairy Liquidated water over my night-scented stocks. Or have my radishes smothered with Avon bubble bath with pomegranate and lily leftovers.

I poured some dishwater in our fountain once and it created more froth than a foam party in a Romford nightclub.

big crack in the groundMy crack is getting so big you could fit a broom handle in it

Of course we all have a responsibility to preserve water, which is why my husband and I feel duty-bound to drink alternatives like wine, beer and Aspall Cyder.

In fact, few could do more in that respect, to save the polar bear.

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After seeing my crack, I have no doubt the authorities will introduce a hosepipe ban. We’ll all have to hide our hoses, including Olympic water sports people like Tom Daley in their skimpy speedos. The Suffolk Gazette suggested it was wee-wee that turned the water from blue to green at the Olympics. My own view is that it was fake tan chemicals. What a relief that Dale Winton and Donald Trump don’t paddle in the same pool.

It’s a pity that the BBC don’t cover the minority sports. You won’t have heard this anywhere, sadly, but my husband and I got bronze in the Synchronised Dishwasher Stacking. We would have got the Silver but he kept undoing all my efforts. We lost vital seconds as he moved saucers to a different rack, put the knives in the other way round and put the plastic utensils on the top layer. Proud though we were of our medal, we were both left exhausted by the feat and had to retire to different bedrooms with a bottle of beer each.

This week I availed myself of an offer at Lidl, and I urge you to do the same. They had six healthy little lavender plants for £4.59, and a clematis for £8.99, as well as other garden essentials: a whole salami sausage for £1.29, chorizo flavored crisps, extendable loppers at £7.99, and vino rosado at £2.99. At that price you could use it as weed-killer.

I have spent much of the week weeding and hoeing and my shoes split. I discovered AFTER I had trodden on a nettle and had to shove a dock leaf in my loafer in the manner of a spongey Odor Eater. I wouldn’t mind but the shoes had cost me ten quid for two pairs from a Spanish market only 17 years ago. We are living in an age of built-in obsolescence!

With all the weeding, watering and planting, I decided to get a helping hand in my lady garden from gardengigolos.com

I asked for a Poldark scything gigolo but they made a mistake and sent me a bold, dark psycho giggler.

Poldark toplessThis is what I wanted: Ross Poldark

Man with scythe in gardenBut this is what I got: Dross Poldark

He swept through the long grass on the allotment like a madman with a golf club, laughing his head off maniacally with every swish. I told my husband that I was not very good with the scythe. He replied sardonically: “Nobody was. That’s why they invented strimmers.”

This is the time to plant some more salad seeds. Simply buy packets of butterhead or loose-leaf style lettuce seeds, cress, or little gem or cos. Plant them fortnightly for a constant supply (yuk!) or less often if you prefer chips. As long as the slugs or birds don’t eat your tender seedlings, it is a simple enough job. It’s not rocket salad.

Your Sweetcorn plants (jollyius greengiantum) should be thriving now. When I checked ours on the allotment I thought Boris Johnson, the Foreign secretary, was hiding out there with one of his kids.

PLant looks like Boris JohnsonBoris Johnson found hiding in my allotment with his son

Jobs to do this week

* Harvest your beans regularly while they are tender and to encourage fresh growth. They go very nice with pie and mash. Save the water you cooked them in for veg stock.

* Pull out your beetroot. Boil, steam or roast or pickle them like Mrs Beeton.

* Grab the dried seed pods from your Hollyhocks so that you have more Hollyhocks. The knack to this us to grab your stalk with one hand, while pulling off the seed pod downward with a quick CS jerking action. Sprinkle the dried seeds around or save in an envelope marked Hollyhocks as a clue for when you might need them again.

* Prune your shrubs, like lavender and rosemary using your new secateurs from Lidl (£2.49 a pop).

Your problems solved

* Jennifer from Stowmarket: I do believe you when you say you read it in a book, but the majority of us don’t count nettles as perennial vegetables.

* Mr T F from Creeting: No I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s illegal, and anyway the police helicopter will know you are growing those plants in your HIGHLY lit attic.

strawberry hullerFuity: gadget not to be mistaken for an altogether different product

* Mr J K from Ipswich: Thank you for sending the photo of your mystery gift (see above). I did a little research and found this is NOT a butt plug from Ann Summers, but a strawberry huller from Lakeland. Have fun with it.

See you next time!

anita-bush-signature

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Giant octopus attacks Olympic swimmers

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By Our Olympics Staff

Fishermen are hunting a giant octopus which attacked Olympic swimmers as they trained in the sea off Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Top athletes including America’s Michael Phelps were nearly dragged to their deaths as the giant sea creature wrapped fifteen-foot tentacles around their bodies.

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The swimmers managed to escape when their support teams, watching the training from a boat, freed them from the grip of the fearsome octopus, and frightened it away.

Despite being left with horrific scars from the tentacle suckers, Phelps and Chinese swimmer Wang Qun were able to compete in events the next day, with the American bagging his 21st gold medal in the 200-metre butterfly.

giant octopus attacks Olympic swimmersHorrific octopus attacks left Phelps and other swimmers scarred and scared

Suffolk marine expert Martin Brody said the octopus was a giant cephalopod mollusc found commonly in the South Atlantic Ocean. “This one does sound quite large,” he said. “Normally they feed on the ocean floor but they have been known to go to the surface to hunt.”

Bartholomew Quint, a fisherman in Rio, said: “We have been offered a large bounty prize to catch the octopus before someone gets killed. But I think I’m going to need a bigger boat.”

The news omes just a day after Olympic chiefs admitted they were trying to identify the diver who peed in the Olympic diving pool, turning it green.

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Olympic diver’s pee turned pool green

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By Our Olympics Staff

Olympics organisers have revealed their diving pool’s water turned from blue to green after an athlete urinated in it.

Similar chemicals are used routinely in public swimming pools to deter bathers from relieving themselves in the water.

But this is the first time the system has been used at the Olympics, and organisers in Brazil were horrified when the water went green last night.

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They are now trying to identify the culprit, although Britain’s Tom Daley and his partner Dan Goodfellow, who won bronze in the synchronized diving, are believed to be in the clear.

olympic diving pool turns green

“It is not really a health issue,” an Olympics official said, “because any bacteria in the urine is killed off by the chlorine. But we had hoped the dye would be a deterrent.

“Clearly someone got a little too excited after their dive and couldn’t hold on.”

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