How times change...

When I was a lad, I could go to the local shops with 50p in my pocket and come home with a bag of sweets, three gobstoppers, a packet of crisps, The Beano and a bar of chocolate.

You can't do that anymore.

Fucking CCTV.

Acid Quickie - Thatcher's Personal Notes

Thatcher - with some eggs. Look, it's Sunday morning. We can't think of anything better.

The recent publication of ex-PM Margaret Thatcher's personal notes has turned up some interesting facts'n'figures. We hear, for example, that prior to her historic election win back in 1979 she religiously stuck to a high protein diet that included 28 eggs per week. Oy vey - that makes the idea of finding oneself under the Thatcher bedclothes an even more horrendous prospect - no wonder the poor old sod had to turn to the G&Ts.

Thankfully for Sir-to-be Denis' misfortunate nose, his good lady wife was able to give up the eggs following her election win as it placed her in a position to satisfy all of her protein needs by sucking the blood out of the country and its working class for the next eleven and a half years.

Other striking news, such as whether it's true that Maggie slept in a coffin filled with Lincolnshire soil, just as soon as we make it up.

Acid Quickie

An airliner from Mumbai was forced to turn around and head home after a passenger's curry powder set off smoke and fire alarms.

The Air India 747's pilots- en route to Frankfurt - activated the aircraft's built-in fire extinguishers, reports the Mumbai Mirror newspaper. Once safely on the ground, a bag containing between 2 to 3kg of the powder was removed and the plane set off after a 12 hour delay.

Now, that's what we call curry...!

Acid Quickie: Ads on this page (message from Acid Rabbi)

Just wanted to take the opportunity to point out that we have no control over them - they're chosen by Google and are no indication of our opinions.

AcidQuickie

Got the 'flu. It sucks. Back soon.

Nom nom nom! I can has stuffs paid for by tax-payers?

Here's a good one. A Tory backbencher - not yet named by the Daily Telegraph - claimed £230.17 for food in February 2007. That's the precise amount that was left available to him for that year.

Another MP claimed for an electric shaver, but it was refused because personal items are not allowed. Surely food counts as a personal item? After all, it wasn't vital to the MP's work, and it's not like he couldn't afford to pay it out of his own wallet. Perhaps he goes round bribing people with biscuits to vote for him.

AcidQuickie

Mrs. Rabbi, who works for a well-known charity, just made a good point. All the talk in the press just lately about MPs lining their pockets with dodgy expense claims and they talk about cutting benefits for those who - through no fault of their own - are unable to work due to illness...

Mysterious Suffolk earth tremors explained

Residents of the largely rural county of Suffolk have reported a number of mysterious earth tremors in the last few days, some of which have been sufficiently powerful as to cause damage to buildings including the shattering of a stained glass window at Bury St. Edmunds Cathedral and damage to its historic tower.

C of E authorities predict that repairs to Bury St. Edmunds Cathedral tower
will run into many millions of pounds and plan on asking God for a loan.

"I've never known anything like it in my 90 years," says Mrs, Myrtle Haddock, who has lived in the county all her life. "I spent some time in London during the Blitz and it reminded me of that, when the Jerries were dropping bombs on us. It was weird."

Seismologists have been at a loss to explain the tremors. "Earthquakes are not entirely unknown in the area," Dr. Keith Jenkins of London's University College told Acid Rabbi, "but they're very, very rare and have never been enough to cause problems." The epicentre of the tremors was traced to Great Finborough, a tiny village three miles from Stowmarket.

However, local amateur geologist and music fan Neil Smith has solved the case. "Like any music fan, I was a regular listener to John Peel's show on Radio 1 for many years," he says, "right up until his death. Living in Great Finborough, so close to his grave, I go down once a fortnight or so just to clear any litter and place new flowers on his headstone which is what I was doing yesterday when one of the tremors struck. I realised that it seemed much more powerful than any of the others we've had."

It was then that he noticed that the soil over the grave appeared to be rippling. "I was kind of freaked out at first," the young man reports, "not least of all because I watched a George A. Romero film on the telly the other night. But then I heard John's distinctive voice coming from underground - it said, "Ah bugger, there goes all the value that ever had."

Later on, at home, Smith sat down to watch the news on BBC1 which featured a story about Labour Culture Secretary Andy Burnham. During the sequence, Burnham was seen playing the guitar to seminal Undertones hit Teenage Kicks, accompanied by the band's once-talented singer Feargal Sharkey. "I realised that Burnham would have been playing the tune at the precise moment I had my strange experience in the graveyard," says Smith. Peel, considered quite rightly by many to have been the Greatest Man That Ever Lived, often said the song was in his opinion the finest ever recorded and played it during every one of his radio shows from the song's release in 1978 to his death in 2004.

"Mr. Smith contacted me by e-mail after he had seen me on television speaking about the tremors," Dr. Jenkins explains. "He told me all about what had happened and I put two and two together - the quakes were caused by John Peel turning in his grave. It's a classic case of the so-called Cool Vicar Syndrome, in which a desperately uncool figure attempts to be down with the kids, sometimes with devastating consequences. I strongly urge all politicians to immediately cease pretending to have anything in common with the British People and to stop trying to convince that they are in any way like us before somebody gets hurt."

AcidQuickie - Swine Flu Update

Regular readers (do we have any of those yet?) may have noticed that we've not had any of these updates for a while. That's because not much happened in the wonderful world of H1N1.

SWINE FLU UPDATE...SWINE FLU UPDATE...SWINE FLU UPDATE...

World Death Toll = 61.

(from a world population of approx. 6,706,993,152)

PANIC!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! EVEN THOUGH 6,706,993,091 PEOPLE DON'T SEEM TO BE DYING OF IT!!!

AcidQuickie

A British woman has told of her upset and despair after her husband of just six months was killed during active duty in Afghanistan.

Don't worry. In six months he was going to put on loads of weight, start knocking you around and having affairs.