BBC: Greece bailout: Large protests expected against cuts
Greece is braced for large protests against further budget cuts, following a 130bn-euro (£110bn; $170bn) bailout deal aimed at avoiding bankruptcy.

BBC: UK public finances in biggest surplus for four years
The government received more money than it spent in January leaving it with its highest monthly surplus in four years.

In summary, Greece is utterly broke, and we have money going spare. So here’s my modest proposal…

We put in a reasonable offer to the Greeks for the Parthenon, dismantle it, ship it over to London, reassemble it in the British Museum’s fancy new atrium, and re-attach the Elgin Marbles.

Everyone is happy. It’s a win-win-win-win-win situation:

• the Greeks get some much-needed money;
• the Elgin Marbles are returned to the Parthenon (the Greeks have been banging on about that for years);
• the Parthenon is finally protected from acid rain by being placed indoors;
• we get a new tourist attraction;
• the British Museum frees up an entire gallery, thereby enabling it to display yet more plundered treasure.

Sometimes, I impress even myself. I bet even Prof. Alice Roberts would have struggled to come up with that one.

I’m a one-man think-tank, me.

Far more illuminating reading, however, are some of the more unusual search requests which brought punters flocking this way. Here is a small selection:

• gay dog
• george clooney look alike
• bored shitless
• difference between kidney and liver
• spoops
• heart sausage
• dick biscuit
• mnmn
• run over cat
• monk fight
• albatross hat
• dead as a doorknob
• fire breathing rubber duckies
• pee too much
• porpoise cake
• scary duck
• rate my stump
• holding on to something that isn’t there
• owl communications
• what is ectoplasm
• you say france and i whistle angry men
• fat man waving
• perfect pubes
• is fent a word
• ginger tits
• freddie mercury vacuum
• she poo dogs
• bare botty
• anonymous helmet
• nudist beauty pagents
• evolution of genitals
• coat hangers
• my nurse uniform

Yes, I think that sums up Gruts pretty well.

Over ten years, I’ve lived in Yorkshire, and it’s finally starting to rub off. I’ll be rubbing cold lard on tut whippet next, mark my words.

‘appen.

Some Yorkshire folk yesterday.

BBC: Drought declared in south-east England
… [Environment Secretary] Ms Spelman said she wanted water companies to look at the possibility of connecting pipe networks so they could transfer water from wetter parts of the country.

For the record, the South of England isn’t the only place with low water levels at the moment.

Telegraph: Rupert Murdoch: arrested Sun journalists can return to work

This means a different thing entirely to:

Telegraph: Rupert Murdoch arrested; Sun journalists can return to work

(Unfortunately.)

Filming in Hebden Bridge yesterday.

… That would be the same Yorkshire Bank that closed its Hebden Bridge branch a couple of years back.

Telegraph: Britain being overtaken by ‘militant secularists’, says Baroness Warsi
British society is under threat from the rising tide of “militant secularisation” reminiscent of “totalitarian regimes”, a Cabinet minister will warn on Tuesday.

No.

These so-called militant secularists merely wish to remove all religious influence from official public life. This is a principle which seems to work reasonably well in other countries, such as the United States of America and France—neither of which, as far as I can see, are reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. Secularism is all about equality.

Secularists do not want to ban religion. What people get up to in their own private lives is up to them. Secularists merely think that it is wrong for the state to treat somebody specially on account of their religion—or absence of religion. For example, in Britain we allow children to be segregated into different state-funded schools on account of the professed faith of their parents. Secularists think this is wrong. Were children so segregated on account of the colour of their skin, it would rightly be called apartheid.

A totalitarian regime, on the other hand, to quote Wikipedia, recogni[s]es no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible (my emphasis added). Totalitarian regimes—like many religions—try to control what you get up to in private.

A totalitarian secularist regime is a contradiction in terms.

Guardian: What’s with all the ‘quotation marks’? – in pictures
The inappropriate use of quotation marks seems to be on the rise, but one noble blog – Smosh.com – has started naming and shaming these crimes against grammar and common sense. Please, ‘enjoy’ our selection of inadvertently hilarious signs, notices and labels – and try not to think too hard about what it all means.

I have to say, one photo in particular made stuff come out of my nose:

It turns out I needn’t have worried. This morning’s Sun shows absolutely no change in quality or impartiality:

Lags moan: Our hot chocolate’s too hot
PAMPERED lags are costing taxpayers thousands of pounds through trivial complaints like their COCOA being too hot.

60 stone British man is fattest in the world
A BRIT weighing nearly 60 stone has become the world’s fattest man — after the previous record-holder went on a DIET.

Pizza diet could kill me, says scared Claire
A WOMAN who has eaten only cheese and tomato pizza for 31 years has been told she could DIE unless she quits her bizarre dining habit.

New dog food advert is mutt-see television
VIEWING figures will go through the woof tonight — with a telly commercial only DOGS can hear.

Witch-hunt puts us behind ex-Soviets on Press
THE Sun is not a “swamp” that needs draining. Nor are those other great News International titles, The Times and The Sunday Times. Yet in what would at any other time cause uproar in Parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners, its journalists are being treated like members of an organised crime gang.

We can all sleep soundly in our beds, knowing that the Fourth Estate is still holding the world to account on our behalves.

Fascinating stuff, though. Do you think that, if Claire were to give up pizza, she really might live forever?

BBC: UK sent nuclear sub near Falklands, says Argentina
Argentina’s foreign minister has accused the UK of sending a nuclear-armed submarine to the South Atlantic, after making an official complaint to the UN over the Falklands dispute.

This one has manufactured Olympics boycott written all over it. Remember, you heard it here first.

Incidentally, have you noticed how every time the BBC reports on the Falkland Islands, it feels compelled to explain that they are known in Argentina as the Malvinas? What’s that got to do with the price of penguins? Whenever they mention Germany, they don’t feel the need to explain that the country is known in France as l’Allemagne.

A three-legged cow yesterday.

Who says I can’t show a girl a good time?

Stense at the Charnock Richard Service Station (M6) yesterday.

We had planned our tryst with military precision. Stense was heading down the M6 from Scotland. If she let me know as she was passing Killington Lake Services, I could drop everything and bomb down the M65 for an illicit liaison midway between junctions 28 and 27. We only had an hour or so, but we had to seize the opportunity while we could.

It was just like that movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Brief Encounter, only relocated 40.4 miles south from Carnforth Station to Charnock Richard Services. Stense, obviously, was reprising Celia Johnson’s role, and I was Frankie Howerd.

Who says romance is dead?

You can currently take out a subscription to 12 monthly editions of their excellent magazine for just £20. The usual cover price is £1.60.

That’s a yearly saving of −80p.

BBC: Why is Hebden Bridge the lesbian capital?
… There’s a stereotype that big cities are more tolerant while rural areas can be more closed-minded. It’s not necessarily true, as the existence of Hebden Bridge – a small town with a significantly tolerant community – might suggest.

Tolerant: you can see how I managed to fit in so easily around here.

No, they weren’t. When you coin a phrase, you invent a phrase that nobody has ever used before. For example:

• degaussing the ocelot;
• unfolding the Queen Victoria;
• seeing the back of one’s forehead;
• hat, kettle, dumpling, bun-bun-bun!

(Don’t bother Googling them, I’ve already checked.)

What Heston and his cronies were really doing was employing a cliché. And, if I wanted to be really pedantic, I would point out that “Here’s one I made earlier!” isn’t a phrase at all; it’s a fully formed sentence!

Yes, I know, everyone—including myself—says to coin a phrase when they really mean to employ a cliché. The people who originally used the phrase in this way were probably being ironic. But nobody seems to think about it these days; to them, to coin a phrase actually means to employ a cliché! Which is the exact opposite of its original meaning. How ironic is that?

Anyway, I’ve had enough of this nonsense and confusion! I am inventing a brand new phrase which, from here on in, means to invent a brand new phrase. And you are not allowed to use that phrase ironically, because I have copyright on it, and only permit you to use it in a totally non-ironic sense. And that phrase is:

• to Carter a phrase.

(Don’t bother, I Googled that as well.)

Immortality at last!

I don’t think it would be overstating things to say that our enjoyment of these otherwise excellent series was totally spoilt by the unfeasibly large lips of both of the leading male actors:

Unfeasibly large lips.

“Who the hell do these pretty boys think they are, with their ridiculous, fat lips: Burberry models or something?” I complained, sounding frighteningly like my dad.

It turns out that both of the actors concerned, Douglas Booth and Eddie Redmayne, have indeed been Burberry models.

I do hope this isn’t the start of some regrettable new trend.

A cloud sea yesteday.

More cloud sea photos »

… Well, good pictures at least.

[via Dangerous Minds]

BBC: London 2012: Isles of Wonder is Olympic ceremony theme
London 2012′s Olympic opening ceremony is to be called Isles of Wonder, organisers have revealed.