The Airpod - a car powered by compressed air

French auto engineer Guy Negre had developed an emission-free car, called the Airpod, which runs on compressed air alone. The car is made of fibreglass and stores its "fuel" in a thermoplastic tank. Able to reach speeds as high as 30mph, the tank can be recharged either overnight or in 1 minute using a special high-pressure pump also invented by Negre and can travel up to 65 miles on a single refill. He is also developing a hybrid fuel version which he says will be able to achieve 100 mph and travel 900 miles on a single gallon of petrol. Deals have been signed to produce the car in the USA, Latin America, several European countries and - after a £30 million agreement with Tata - in India, but as of yet not in the United Kingdom. Probably because in this country you'd get bricks chucked at you by chavs for driving what looks like a cross between a PC mouse and a sellotape dispenser.

Most ridiculous expense claims

Acid Rabbi would like to apologise for the continual references to the Daily Telegraph, but feels it deserves a couple of weeks enjoying all this attention as it has been completely worthless and read only by inconsequential demi-fascists for all the rest of its 154 years. However, for a little light relief, they've come up with a list of what they call the 20 most bizarre examples of MP expenses claims so far. They say bizarre, we say piss-taking.

John Reid (Lab, Airdrie and Shotts) - £1.50 for an ice cube tray (You should have asked! I've got about ten of the things in the kitchen cupboard, you could have had one for nothing!)

Sian James (Lab, Swansea East) - 59p for a chocolate Father Christmas ("Hmm, I don't feel like paying 59p even though I get over 64 thousand quid a year - I'll charge it to the tax-payer. Merry Christmas, one and all!")

Alan Rosindell (Con, Romford) - £1.51 for jellied eels (FFS, mate - you've all had the chance to have whatever you want and get the tax-payer to cough up the cash for it. I'd have been eating truffles and caviar, even though I don't like them)

Margaret Beckett (Lab, Derby South) - £600 for hanging baskets (you've been well ripped off, Maggie. They're only a few quid in B&Q...or did you buy hundreds of them?)

Cheryl Gillan (Con, Chesham and Amersham)- £4.47 for dogfood. Acid Rabbi would not particularly object were he asked to finance a cat's diet, but not a dog's. ;-)

Nick Clegg (LibDem, Sheffield Hallam) - £1.19 for tealights (still, he's a LibDem. Probably needs them for his mediation or some other hippy nonsense.)

Steve Webb (LibDem, Northavon)- 99p for a feather duster. More than one, apparently. I'll bet he doesn't use them personally and we pay for his cleaner too.

Most MPs probably have little idea what a feather duster looks like, since they have cleaners (paid for by us) to look after all that sort of stuff. Here's an example for future reference.

Tory does the decent thing shock

Conservative MP for Bracknell Andrew MacKay has had the decency to resign from his position as Parliamentary aide to David Cameron after the Tory leader said that all his MPs would be expected to be able to defend their expenses claims, despite having earlier told the GetBracknell local news that he had "checked through all my expense claims over the past four years and there is nothing that stands out – I am confident there is nothing unreasonable in there at all." Which sounds a bit ironic now.

Mr. Mackay also says that "Last year I was well down in the bottom third of MPs based on what I claimed and I am still determined to make more savings in the next financial year." He claimed £22,575 for his London home during 2008 and said that he was looking at ways to reduce costs.

However, following Cameron's demands that all Conservative MPs satisfactorily explain their expenses, he voluntarily submitted his claims to party officials and then stepped down due to what a Tory spokesman referred to as "an unacceptable situation that would not stand up to reasonable public scrutiny." He has also agreed to appear before a panel so that how much of the claim - or claims - should be paid back.

Mr. MacKay has not resigned as an MP, but his constituents will doubtless let him know what they think of him come the elections. He'll save us all a lot more money once he's voted out and has to pay his own way.

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...

Who put the Cunt into Scunthorpe?

Elliot Morley, Labour MP for Scunthorpe, is the latest politician to bolt the door after the horse has been frightened away by the Daily Telegraph in admitting that he claimed a total of £16,000 expenses to cover the mortgage on a property in the town even though he'd already paid it off. Morley continued claiming £800 per month for nearly 18 months after the mortage was paid on 1st March 2006, later changing his designated second home to one in London in November 2007, which he had previously declared to be his main residence and which he had been renting out to another MP.

For four months after the change, he claimed full mortgage interest on the London property while the MP who had been renting it from him - Ian Cawsey, Labour vice-chairman and MP for Brigg and Goole - claimed the same property as his own second home and claimed £1000 per month in rent expenses, which was then paid to...you guessed it: Mr. Morley. An extra £1800 on top of your £64K + a year salary? Very nice.

Elliot Morley MP - "forgot" to mention his mortage was paid off, netting
him £800 spending money a month. Image: Wikipedia, used under
terms of Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.

The Torygraph claims to have seen several other instances whereby ministers and MPs put in doubtful claims related to mortgages, but seems to be saving the details to ensure their recent sales increase can be eked out for a bit longer.

The former Government whip and Agriculture Minister stated that, in his opinion, no offence has been committed. "I have reported this to the finance department and chief whip," he says. "I have made a mistake, I apologise for that and I take full responsibility. My priority was to repay and if I suffer financially as a result of that, I have only myself to blame."

Well, we all make mistakes. However, if you or I were lucky enough to get our mortgages paid for us and then conveniently forgot to inform whoever was responsible for paying it - resulting in an overpayment of £16,000 that we then kept quiet about for two years - what do you think would happen? Yep, that's right - we'd be done for fraud; because ignorance - be it real ignorance or bullshit ignorance used as an excuse to get out of trouble (not that we're claiming anyone told a fib, you understand) is no defence in law. The Telegraph carries a quote from lawyer Steven Barker, who specialises in similar fraud cases. "The Fraud Act was designed to deal with these types of offences," he states. "There is also a possibility of an offence of false accounting under the Theft Act." Let's hope so.

Remember that old joke, "Who put the cunt into Scunthorpe?" It remains unanswered - but whoever it was, he lives in London now.

Milk ad "not racist"

An advertisement for Cravendale milk, which shows a black and white bull sliding down a chute as its black patches steadily vanish during a "purification process" has been deemed not racist by industry watchdogs.



The Advertising Standards Authority received 11 complaints about the commercial, which has been shown on television and on YouTube, where user Majestic9 says, "I think it is damn out of order, what are they trying to say? When the cow is all white that it is sane and when it has black spots on it, it's violent."

Erm...I think what they're saying is that milk should be white. Milk with black bits in it might be considered contaminated with something and not very appetising. If you don't like racism, concentrate on something like educating people on why they shouldn't vote BNP, not milk FFS.

Mmm. Cow juice. Yummy.

"I might have promised you a rose garden" tra-la-la

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, stated publicly that although he had claimed £680 expenses to pay for a rose garden his intention was to later sell the property and pay any profit to the public purse.

"I've always said," he said, "well before these controversies: when I sell that home, the money, the profit, it all goes back to the taxpayer .... I will give it back." In doing so, he even managed to concoct a vaguely believable excuse, unlike all the other MPs who are currently scurrying around like chickens when the chicken shagger comes to town screeching, "Shit! They're onto us, lads - run for it!"

Now, Acid Rabbi - a lifelong LibDem voter, due to his belief that they're the least rotten apples in the barrel and that the vast majority of the population are just too stupid for anarchy to ever work - may have gone a bit easy on old Cleggy earlier today when reading his claims. Perhaps we gave him the benefit of the doubt, thinking, "Hmm, yes, maybe he did say that. Can't remember when, but just maybe the Libs are come out of this not quite so coated in and full of shite as the others. Fingers crossed. Right then - it's 10.30am...pub?"

Of course, after two decades following British politics, we all should have known a lot better and remembered that they're all as bad as each other. It goes without saying that increasing the value of a property for such altruistic reasons would be an honourable action, especially as he could quite easily pocket the cash like some MPs have been doing.

Have the LibDems been shitting on us too? Yeah - 'course they have!

The Guardian has raised the point we didn't want to bring up though. Precisely when did Clegg say this? He claims it was several months ago, but you can't help but wonder if he's just another liar, trying his hardest to wriggle his nasty little way out of trouble.

Still, we've learned our lesson. Never, ever trust the bastards.

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

Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh, made an expenses claim for 79p to cover the cost of a packet of Hob-Nob biscuits.

FFS.