Important news of the day thread

[JellyBelly 1]

Are they mates with Dr Evil?

[Alexander L 80]

You guys have obviously never met a Tongan, trust me in that you wouldn't make fun of their country to their face. Not if you wanted ever eat solid food again.

 

After taking 4 pints of liquid food, I'd be hard enough to don myself a Toga.

[hellyer 216]

TERRORIST

SET FREE &

GIVEN A CAR

What in the world is going on?

Releasing a terrorist and giving him money and a car - what next?

[Chriselle 158]

That looks like fun actually........for about 1.5 seconds.....

[grungy-gonads 54]

[@tokyo 14]

One World Trade Center has been officially crowned as the tallest building in the western hemisphere after a row that threatened to embarrass the building's designers and see it demoted to second place.

The debate centred over whether the 408ft steel structure on top of the New York skyscraper was a spire or an antenna. Supporters of the Willis Tower in Chicago argued it was an antenna, and so the building was only 1,368ft, rather than its stated height of 1,776ft.

But the 30 members of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's "height committee" who met on Friday, ruled that One World Trade Center reaches 1,776ft and its claim to be the tallest building in the western hemisphere is legitimate.

 

Sounds like a tough, but extremely important, job.

[Curt 1]

Nailbiter!

 

Seriously, did anyone think they would vote "One World Trade Center" number 2?

[Alexander L 80]

1776, the founding of the U S of A.

[Tubby Beaver 209]

Cheesetastic

[kokodoko 67]

A plane was diverted from its path and forced to land, after a woman passenger started lighting matches to cover up her flatulence.

 

The escalation in America’s War on Farting came on an internal flight between Washington and Dallas, which was forced to land in Nashville when passengers told cabin crew that they could smell burning matches.

 

After an emergency landing, passengers were evacuated from the plane for security screening, the luggage hold was cleared, and bomb-sniffing dogs were sent onto the plane.

 

The dogs eventually found a number of spent matches under one passenger’s seat.

 

Under FBI questioning, the woman admitted that she was lighting matches –which is illegal on a plane – in an attempt to conceal ‘body odour’.

 

Reports claim that the woman has ‘a medical condition’.

 

The plane eventually took off again, without the smelly woman, who an airline spokeswoman said had been banned from their flights ‘for a long time’.

 

sourc: metro.co.uk (sounds like a joke site to me, similar to viz ? )

[gifugill 0]

No, it's just shite.

[Alexander L 80]

I'm surprised she wasn't done for terrorism.

[kokodoko 67]

No, it's just shite.

 

a la news of the world etc..

[Alexander L 80]

no. Just shite.

[SKI 15]

Isn't it like a free paper?

 

They're always great aren't they?

[kokodoko 67]

The UK and France are perceived to have the worst problems with anti-social behaviour in Europe, a survey suggests.

People in six nations were asked where there were big or moderate problems.

Some 76% said the UK faced concerns, followed by France on 75%, with the Netherlands - cited by 44% - seen as the least-affected.

But the survey of 7,047 people by TNS for security firm ADT showed all nations saw themselves as having "significant" difficulties.

Criminologists said governments would need to scrutinise crime survey data and police records to determine whether the survey was reflective of a "real and growing" problem across the European Union.

 

source: BBC (not one of your shite free newspapers)

[Tubby Beaver 209]

The UK and France are perceived to have the worst problems with anti-social behaviour in Europe, a survey suggests.

People in six nations were asked where there were big or moderate problems.

Some 76% said the UK faced concerns, followed by France on 75%, with the Netherlands - cited by 44% - seen as the least-affected.

But the survey of 7,047 people by TNS for security firm ADT showed all nations saw themselves as having "significant" difficulties.

Criminologists said governments would need to scrutinise crime survey data and police records to determine whether the survey was reflective of a "real and growing" problem across the European Union.

 

source: BBC (not one of your shite free newspapers)

 

No wonder Holland has such a low rating....they are all too stoned to give a shit

[Alexander L 80]

The UK has big probs. and more one the way.

 

 

Roma in Sheffield: 'When it goes off, it will be like an atom bomb here'

 

 

A curfew is in place on the streets of Sheffield, but nobody appears to be paying much attention. It is past 9pm, the designated time when, since August, gangs of under-16s are banned from being out in the city’s Page Hall area. A police van trundles past.

 

 

“You! How old are you? Time to go home now,” says an officer pointing out of the window at a large group of youths clearly in their early teens. The children laugh and scatter into the alleys, before appearing back behind the van further up the one-way road. They resume their play: shouting, smoking, fighting, practising backflips against the walls of houses and kicking the ubiquitous piles of rubbish. Basharat Ali watches wearily from his doorstep. Tonight, the 26-year-old says, is a quiet night.

 

“At least in the winter they go home at some point,” says Ali, a team manager at the phone company EE who lives with his wife and 18-month-old daughter. “In the summer they were having parties all night, young children dancing in the street. We would have to go out at 11pm to try and move them away. Every night it was the same.”

 

Their home, he says, has been burgled three times in the past three months. On the first occasion the burglars kicked down his front door at 2am and stole his car keys. The other two times they smashed a back window stealing cash and a laptop. The police are investigating, but it is clear where he feels the blame lies. And he is not alone.

 

The spectre of the race riots that blighted the North 12 years ago has this week reappeared over the narrow terraced streets of Page Hall, the former estate of 19th-century magnate Mark Firth, one of the kings of this steel city. David Blunkett, a former Labour home secretary and MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, has warned that the antisocial behaviour of the thousands of Roma migrants who have moved here has resulted in “understandable tensions”. If the Roma do not change their ways, it is feared, the community could “explode” as Bradford, Oldham and Burnley did in the summer of 2001.

 

The riots (one night of violence in Bradford left 326 police injured and caused £11 million of damage) left lasting scars. To invoke their memory is a sign of how serious the situation has become. On Thursday, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and MP for Sheffield Hallam, warned Roma communities they must avoid “intimidating” locals and be “sensitive to the way life is lived in this country”.

 

But on the streets of Page Hall – the second most deprived part of the city – there are few signs of that. Battle lines are being drawn between the Roma (the city council says 1,500 Roma children live in Sheffield but do not know the exact number of adults) and the locals – predominantly Pakistani families who arrived to work in the mills in the 1950s and have laid down roots among the post-industrial rubble.

 

The atmosphere is poisonous, a breeding ground for trouble. Roma youths and adults hang around in groups, dozens at a time throughout the day and night. Rumours swirl between them and the Pakistani and white community, with each blaming the other for fuelling drugs, prostitution, and the increase of rubbish. There have been numerous reported fights. One Pakistani shopkeeper’s wife had her hand broken in a recent altercation with Roma youths. “It is all over now,” her husband says.

 

After dark on Hinde Street, the centre of the area where the Roma live, a furious Pakistani man runs out of his house screaming at the children who have been pelting his walls with a blue Manchester City football. He grabs the ball, and leads me inside.

 

On the television in the living room, his 34-year-old wife and four young children silently watch footage from CCTV cameras positioned outside their modest home. “We have four cameras,” says the 36-year-old baker, who does not want his family named. “A lot of our neighbours do as well. Every day it is the same. We regret ever buying a house here. It cost £50,000; it was all we could afford. I’m always ringing the police but if they come the children just go and hide in the alleyways. We just want one quiet night.”

 

A report published last month estimated that there are 200,000 Roma in Britain; in 2011 the Government claimed that “relatively few” had settled here. The Page Hall Roma come from a clutch of four or five towns and villages in eastern Slovakia. They started arriving after Britain opened its borders to EU migrants in 2004, something which Jack Straw, another former Labour home secretary, admitted this week had been a “spectacular mistake”.

 

Whole extended families have moved over, fleeing from the prejudice and hostility to which Europe’s estimated 10 million Roma have long been subjected. They are also attracted by Page Hall’s cheap rents (£400-£500 a month).

 

One landlord, who has Roma families in two properties, tells me they are excellent tenants, but says other landlords cram several families into small two-up, two-down terraced homes where “seven or eight children” end up sleeping on the carpet.

 

According to residents, in recent months the Roma numbers have rocketed. School places are in short supply and the Page Hall Medical Centre lists 860 Slovak Roma on its books (11.7 per cent of the total). Farzhad Khan, 72, who moved from Pakistan 39 years ago to work in the mills, says: “My health is suffering. Every time I go to the doctors now I’m told they are full up.”

 

 

 

Over Styrofoam cups of sweet black tea, I sit in on a private late-night meeting between 20 members of the more-established Roma community. All are men and say they were among the first wave to arrive in 2004. Their families followed. They are devout Christians – they rent out a hall to worship twice a week and show me video clips of congregations. Despite living and working here (in factories, supermarkets and as delivery drivers) for nearly a decade and their children going to local schools, most speak through a translator. “People don’t send the money back home to their families,” says Thomas, a father-of-two who earns £230 working 40 hours a week in a food-packing factory, “because they are already living here as well.”

 

The Roma say they are proud to live in England and want to work, an opportunity denied in Slovakia. It is an attitude not shared by all. Throughout the day, hordes of young Roma men pack out the gambling machines at a nearby betting shop. Others simply walk the streets, content to pick up benefits to which nationals from EU countries are entitled.

 

A 22-year-old teaching assistant at a nearby school says: “They bring the forms for me to translate and they are getting £500 a week in benefits for just sitting at home.”

 

Those that are working, though, feel they are being victimised for their race. Last month’s case of the blonde-haired Maria – where a Greek Roma couple were charged with child abduction – has not helped.

 

This week, one chip shop owner, Colin Barton, told me that a Roma man recently tried to sell him a baby over the counter for £250. The police have interviewed him twice, but found no evidence to support the claim.

 

Barton is one of the few white faces I came across in the area. Others stare into pint glasses at the nearby Firth Park Working Men’s Club. Here too, the community feels polarised; the language incendiary. “There is going to be a battle eventually,” warns Pete, a 50-year-old construction worker.

 

Some £55,000 of taxpayers’ money has been invested in the Pakistan Community Advice Centre to help new arrivals settle. It also helps train Roma volunteers to become teaching assistants and organises Roma-led community evening patrols. In August, South Yorkshire Police introduced the dispersal order ban to large groups congregating and prevent antisocial behaviour. Residents say it is ineffective, but yesterday it was extended until February.

 

But Migration Yorkshire, which coordinates EU Roma inclusion, says Sheffield is actually one of the best examples of integration at work; out of the estimated 25,451 Roma spread through Yorkshire (the third largest number behind the North West and London). Residents, however, still feel the authorities have got their head in the sand.

 

As I walked the rubbish-strewn streets with one council cabinet member – where every hole dug up for roadworks has been turned into a mini-landfill site – he suggested that the litter levels were as a result of it being a windy day. At that moment, two young Roma children were kicking a cardboard box to pieces directly in front of us.

 

In reality, the council says there is not much it can do without better national direction and acceptance of the problems, particularly with Britain’s borders opening up to Bulgaria and Romania next year.

 

But for those who live in Page Hall, the community feels at breaking point. “When it goes off, it will be like an atom bomb here,” a shopkeeper warns as he picks up a broken glass bottle from the street.

 

A group of Roma youths swagger past. Nobody looks anybody in the eye.

 

[seemore 66]

seems like a nice place to live

[pie-eater 207]

OK I'm going to look here, but what/who is "Roma"?

[HelperElfMissy 42]

Roma is the term used for a gypsy.

Romany gypsy, romany ethnicity, travellers...

[pie-eater 207]

I thought as much but why didn't they just use the word 'gypsy'?

Perhaps not an acceptable word now?

[Alexander L 80]

traveller > gypsy > gyppo > pikey > romany > roma

[Tubby Beaver 209]

because its not acceptable. A funny thing (IMO), in Scotland we say "gadgie" to mean someone who is poor, not well dressed, dirty etc etc, and which is used a lot against the travelling community........and its actually the word that THEY use to mean non-travelling people!!

 

we think they are gadgies and they think we are gadgies!!

[kokodoko 67]

 

French nickers cause a stink down under

 

Badly behaved French backpackers in Australia, who have been accused of shoplifting, getting drunk and showing disrespect for authority, have French officials worried about their country’s reputation.

 

The consul-general of France in Sydney, Eric Berti, has written an open letter to French citizens in Australia and has asked them to set the backpackers straight.

 

"Do not hesitate to sensibilise young French people around you to the behaviour which is expected from them, in a country where honesty, respect of the values and the authorities is of prime importance," the letter pleads.

 

The outpouring from the consul-general follows an incident earlier this year in which a Frenchman was charged with damaging the cenotaph at Sydney’s Martin Place.

 

Police described the man as a "disrespectful knucklehead".

 

French backpackers have also been accused of shoplifting in tourist areas, including the Western Australian towns of Exmouth and Carnarvon, where the problem stretches back to 2011 when 20 were arrested in just two months for stealing, mainly from supermarkets.

 

Western Australian police this week could not provide specific figures on recent French arrests.

 

"We do not keep any information regarding the nationality of the person committing a crime," a police spokesman said.

 

But anecdotally, behaviour problems persist.

 

The French online newspaper "Le Petit Journal" recently speculated that young French people come here ill-prepared to deal with the Australian reality.

 

It said they are hit by high costs of "life and lodging" and some find it tough to get a job with their working holiday visa because of a lot of competition among backpackers.

 

"There is the handicap of language, and it is easy to lose grip if you are not street smart or cluey,” the Mebourne-edition of the paper said on May 14.

 

"Luckily this problem is not as widespread as it seems, the cases mentioned in the media are isolated unfortunate events," a consul spokeswoman said.

 

She said Mr Berti’s letter was written as a "reminder" to young people to behave appropriately.

 

"It is not something isolated to the French. The same may happen with young Australians in Bali or the Chinese (recently criticised by a top Chinese official for talking too loudly in public places, jaywalking and spitting while travelling).

 

"Sometimes young people don’t behave well when suddenly they have freedom and are away from their family," the consul spokeswoman said.

 

This is a translated excerpt of the letter posted by Mr Berti earlier this month:

 

"The general consul’s attention has been drawn to the bad reputation of French youth in some touristic areas of Australia, linked to the incivilities of some French backpackers (noisy behaviour, alcoholism, disrespect for the police and authorities) and to shoplifting in stores, frequently referred to as ‘French shopping’.

 

"Even if they remain sparse, these behaviours can affect the whole French community in Australia. They can also hamper young working holiday visa holders in their job search."

 

Tourism Australia says the youth market represents 26 per cent (1.6 million) of all international visitors to Australia, with many arriving with working holiday visas.

 

France is fifth for working holiday visa, only behind the UK, Taiwan, South Korea and Germany.

 

The consul reports that there are currently 22,000 French youngsters in the country on working holiday visas.

 

The French backpackers are worse than the gadgies.