Orca kills trainer

A trainer at the SeaWorld wildlife park in Orlando, Florida, has died after being bitten around the waist, violently shaken and held under water by one of the park's orcas. Read the BBC's report here.

The orca - also known as a killer whale and named Tilikum - has also been linked to the death of a man at the park in 1991, though it transpires that the man was found floating naked and dead in the orca's pool and is believed to have either crept into the park at night or hidden until closing time. Authorities put his death down to hypothermia rather than a fatal case of orcas and one can only suspect that, due to his nakedness, he might well be a candidate for a Darwin Award if we knew more. Other - as yet un-named - orcas are said to have attacked trainers in 2004 and 2006.

An orca, that happened to be passing Acid Rabbi's flat as we wrote this article.

Public domain image from Wikipedia.

Orcas, while weighing a respectable 5,450kg and equipped with the sort of teeth that scare dragons, are not generally known to attack humans despite the fact that for an orca to eat a human would be no more hassle that it is for an obese teenager to eat a Big Mac (and we probably taste better too). There a number of cases, in fact, in which wild orcas have shown what can only be interpreted as a friendly interest in the humans with which they come into contact.

If wild orcas, which need to spend time thinking about where their next meal is coming from rather than sitting back and waiting for the next bucket of herrings, rarely attack humans why would a captive orca want to kill its trainer? After all, it'd be used to human contact and you don't drown the hand that chucks the herrings into your pool.

Doesn't it suggest that SeaWorld is doing something wrong? Zoos have their purpose - there a several species of animal that today only survive because of specimens in zoos, some of which have been used to establish new wild populations - but an animal as undoubtedly intelligent as an orca is never going to take to captivity too kindly unless provided with a suitably vast pool (when the entire ocean has been your playground you're not going to like swimming around inside what in comparison isn't even a molecule of water) and will require a vast amount of stimulation.

We hope SeaWorld will look at why their orcas are attacking humans, rather than blaming the orcas themselves.

New Tory adverts

Advert (with alteration) reads: "I've never voted Conservative before because I'm not a cunt."

Anti-semitic Tonges are wagging

Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Tonge, a politician who in the past has been known to make a number of distinctly shifty comments on Israel (including stating that, if she lived there, she'd be a suicide bomber - a comment for which she refused to apologise despite its undoubted bad taste and likelihood of offending those civilians of Sderot and other towns close to Gaza that live their daily lives under a near constant hail of Qassam rockets fired by Hamas), has been wagging her tongue on the subject of the Middle Eastern state once again - and looks set to create just as much outrage as she usually does.

Baroness Tonge. If there was any justice in the world, she'd be looking down at the shattered remains of her political career.

Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with GNU Free Documentation Licence.

Though she recognises Israel's honourable and impressive attempts to help the earthquake-hit Haitians, pointing out that the country is “to be commended for their fantastic response to the Haitian earthquake," her thoughts on the ridiculous claims that IDF rescue teams harvested organs from victims are extremely misguided and offensive. “To prevent allegations such as these — which have already been posted on YouTube — going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti,” she says. Is she unaware that these claims started life on websites that in many cases don't even try to disguise their rabid hatred of Jews, Judaism and the Jewish state? Has she not heard of blood libel, the centuries-old accusation made by just about anyone who seeks to destroy Jews and Jewish communities, of which the recent allegations of organ harvesting are simply the most modern version?

By stating that Israel needs to investigate the claims, she suggests only that the allegations are legitimate when in fact they are nothing more than a spectacularly offensive and ridiculous example of anti-semitism. As Ed Fordham, LibDem candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn points out, “It’s abhorrent that anyone should suggest that something as perverse and sick as this should be investigated.” (We'll just have to hope this is his true and heart-felt opinion on the matter and that he's not just saying it because there's a healthy Jewish community in what he hopes will become his constituency).

Meanwhile, party leader Nick Clegg refuses to discipline the peer; though a spokesperson admits that "we understand why the idea would be offensive to the Jewish community,"obviously making the all-too-common mistake of assuming the Jewish community and Israel are one and the same. When disaster struck Haiti, many of the world's nations came together and worked side-by-side to save lives. It was not a time for individual nations to achieve glory, but a time when humanity in general earned praise - for that reason, Baroness Tonge's statements are offensive not only to Israelis and Jews, but to everybody who donated money or physical help to Haiti.

In the past, there has been a question over whether Baroness Tonge is an anti-semite - an accusation regularly made against her; but those that defend her have argued persuasively that she was merely expressing views and opinions to which she is entitled. Baroness Tonge is an intelligent woman, whatever her views when it comes to ethnicity, and she cannot have failed to understand the overtones of what she has said. Her recent comments, it seems, confirm that her accusers were correct all along.

(By the way, if you click on Nick Clegg's name in the paragraph before last, you will be whisked as though by magic off to his very own homepage where you can find details allowing you to contact him - so you can tell him what you think of Baroness Tonge's comment and encourage him to withdraw her party whip. Please do!)

Four MPs face criminal charges

Disappointingly, only four MPs face charges over their dodgy expenses claims - however, four is better than none, which is how many Acid Rabbi was predicting would find themselves subject to possible prosecution. It remains to be seen whether or not, if you happen to earn a basic salary of very nearly £65,000 a year and have a seat in Parliament, punishment will take the same form - each of the errant Members could face up to seven years in the nick if found guilty. Note the could - though not given to placing bets, we're willing to put at least a quid on none of them getting anything like that.

It's been a while since we last had a look at Elliot Morley, the MP for Scunthorpe, who finds himself subject to two counts of dishonestly claiming expenses (which is legalese for "being shamelessly on the fiddle"). The first alleges that, between 2004 and 2006, he falsely claimed an extra £14,428 on his mortgage allowance and the second that between 2006 and 2007 he had a further £16,000 on the same property . What do you think would happen to you if you were found to have claimed nearly thirty and a half grand you were not entitled to in Housing Benefit? Prison, in all likelihood, or at the very least you'd be ordered to repay the lot and complete a hundred hours or so of community service - which would be precisely what you deserved. Not the slap on the wrist that Morley's probably going to get. To be fair, he'd be asked to resign too - but he's been planning to step down at the next election anyway.

Elliot Morley faces prosecution over the £30,428 he allegedly dishonestly claimed to cover his mortgage. If found guilty, he probably won't go to prison for seven years like most other people would.

Then there's David Chaytor, another member for whom we reserve an especial loathing. The Bury North MP is alleged to have dishonestly claimed £1,950 for IT expenses and further amounts of £12,925 and £5,425 to cover the costs of renting two properties. "OK, fair enough," you may think, "claiming for rental costs sounds like legitimate use of the accommodation allowance." One small problem there - it appears that the two properties were owned by Chaytor and his mother. Mr. Chaytor also faces a possible seven years, but once again we suspect nothing of the sort will actually happen.

Jim Devine's case is unusual in that he faces prosecution for none of the allegations made against him when the expenses scandal first broke, when it was alleged that he had claimed £2,157 to pay for electrical work, using an invoice with a fake VAT number and address. Instead, he is charged with false accounting - namely that he used fake invoices to claim £3,240 in cleaning expenses between 2008 and 2009, £5,505 for stationery in 2009 and £2,326 for shelving. In the last case, the invoice was later shown to have been supplied by one Tony Moran - the landlord of a pub in Mr. Chaytor's Livingstone constituency.

Last but not least in the dock is Tory peer Lord Hanningfield, who has been suspended from the Parliamentary Conservative Party and who plans to step down as shadow Transport Minister, faces an impressive six counts of false accounting including "numerous" occasions when he falsely claimed for overnight stays in London - documentary evidence shows that he was, in fact, chauffeured to his home in Essex. Lord Hanningfield received a Rural Vision award in 2009 from the Countryside Alliance (an organisation for which we have very little affection, due to their apparent inability to recognise the many country-dwellers who support the ban on hunting with dogs) in recognition for his opposition to the highly unpopular proposed second runway at Stansted Airport and the closure of rural post offices; which, the Alliance claimed, demonstrates that he is a politician with the countryside's future at heart. If found guilty, it will be plain that his own wealth is actually the issue closest to his heart, as has been confirmed of most politicians in the wake of the scandal.

So what is likely to happen to this motley crew of reprobates? Seven years in prison is so unlikely as to be laughable (though in no way as laughable as seeing the whole lot of 'em locked up would be). I doubt we'll be seeing them cleaning up the dog crap and discarded syringes in their local parks, either, as we were hoping would be George Osborne's punishment were he found guilty of his own dubious expenses claims. The original and widespread furore that surrounded the whole debacle when it was first outed by the Daily Telegraph died during the Parliamentary summer recess, when a large percentage of the Great British Public decided to concern themselves with the X-Factor/Pop Idol instead and the baying for MP's blood has diminished to a whisper. Will they even be forced to pay back the money - which, despite the high sums, is unlikely to be the punishment it would be for anyone on the dole (or indeed, earning an average British salary) caught fiddling their benefits since all four are independently wealthy men who will not be forced into a life of drudgery as they try desperately to meet the repayments every month. Slaps on the wrists all round, before they shuffle quietly off to high-paying jobs on the lecture circuit/in finance?

Could it be there really is one law for the poor and another law for the rich and powerful? We shall soon know once and for all.