News Round Up
by Patrick O'Connor
OH dear, we Brits haven't fared too well in a new survey, according to the Daily Mail.
The poll, commissioned by security company Yale, revealed that when there’s a bump in the night, one in five men is happy to send their wife downstairs to investigate and a quarter of men pretend to be asleep if they hear a strange noise.
And it seems that a fifth of the men questioned reckoned that their wife is braver than they are.
Four in ten of the 2,000 adults surveyed said they had been woken by a noise in the dark, convinced someone was breaking in but the most common nocturnal disturbances are thunder, heavy rain, car alarms, cats fighting and phones.
Nine year old Curtis Elton is certainly in tune with his musical side, says the Daily Mirror.
Not only has he already passed his Grade 8 music exam in piano but he has now become the youngest person in the world to receive a degree-equivalent diploma, gaining an ATCL diploma, equivalent to a first-year degree, for his piano playing skills. It does seem to run in the family for his concert-pianist mother Hayley Elton was the youngest person to gain entrance to the Guildhall School Of Music when she was just eight.
Never lost for words! The Daily Express reports that whilst Eskimos might have 50 words for snow Brits have the same number for the TV remote control, with some calling it the flipper, clicker or switcher and others labelling it as yeti, melly and even Trevor!
Other names to crop up in a survey by shopping site NetVoucherCodes.co.uk included the stick, the ’mote, oojimeflip, thingy, whatjamacallit and the doflicky.
More research, this time reported in the Daily Mirror, claims that we are becoming a nation of Italian drivers with poor road manners.
A study by insurance firm More Than says Mediterranean holidays are to blame for one in three motorists blasting the horn, parking badly and never saying thank you to a fellow driver.
More Than spokesman Dan Robinson said: “It would seem that the notion of the classic British driver is fading fast and in their place, we’re seeing a brasher, more vocal and much more impatient driver.”
The wanderer returns! Tabby cat Poppy is back home with her owner Jane Holland in Bradwell, near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, after managing to stow away on a ship on its way to an oil rig.
The Daily Star reports that two weeks after Poppy disappeared Janet got a call to say that the
cat had made her way to Yarmouth and sneaked onto an offshore supply boat bound for the North Sea oil rigs.
It seems that the crew were 30 miles out to sea before Poppy was discovered but they kept her safe and well until they returned to shore.
Another animal in the news was black Labrador guide dog Jet who saved the life of a baby by shoving the little boy's pram out of the way of an out-of-control car in Leigh, Greater Manchester.
According to a story in the Daily Mirror, Jessica Cowley was crossing the entrance to a car park with one year old Jacob in his buggy when a car was shunted from behind and knocked Jessica over.
Jessica, who is registered blind, said: “Just after we stepped off the kerb I heard a screeching of a car and it banged into me sending me flying. Just before it hit me Jet pulled her harness out of my hand and actually pushed the pram out of the way. The pram toppled over but Jacob was out of danger. It doesn’t bear thinking about what might have happened if she hadn’t have done what she did.”
Another example of political correctness gone mad in the Daily Express who claimed that children at Langley Hall Primary Academy in Slough have to get on a bus for just 35 seconds to get their lunch after council bosses refused to create a zebra crossing.
I know it sounds hard to believe but minibuses ferry the 678 pupils across a busy road because lights on a 25-yard pelican crossing outside the school do not stay on red long enough to walk the children over the road to a former pub which has been converted to a canteen.
Headteacher Sally Eaton said: “The council told us that it was not possible for them to alter the traffic lights so that they stayed red for longer during the lunch period.”
We Brits are going crazy for halloumi, reports the Daily Mail, with UK citizens eating more of the cheese than any other nation besides the Cypriots who make it.
Tesco’s sales of its own-brand halloumi are up by 132 per cent and more is also being sold at restaurants, with Nando’s recording a rise of 138 per cent since 2010.
Tesco cheese buyer Ashleigh MacFarlane said: “Demand has really been boosted by celebrity chefs such as Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay who have featured these cheeses on their TV shows and in their recipe books.”
Reference links:
The Express(www.express.co.uk)
Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk)
Daily Mirror ((www.mirror.co.uk)
Daily Star (www.daily star.co.uk)