A week in mild amusement
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The chief executive of Currys/PC World and Carphone Warehouse is leaving to join high-street chemist chain Boots. Sebastian James joined the company in 2008 and is a friend of both David Cameron and George Osborne in the most difficult game of ‘kiss, marry or kill’ in history. Mr James told reporters that after a decade of selling iPhones for up to £1000, he’s used to more reasonable pricing policies than will be expected for toothpaste in his new position. This comes from a study, this week, revealed that in wet weather, it’s actually cheaper to shield your hairdo with your MacBook than to buy a new bottle of L’Oreal from Boots.
Dignity, the UK’s only publicly-owned funeral business, is cutting the price of funerals by 25% amid growing competition. This is presumably Theresa May’s plan to eradicate poverty; to make dying cheaper. ‘Need a cheaper alternative to life? Why not try death?’. Who would have thought that in the age of austerity, Brexit, and Trump’s America that the death industry would have such a boom? Experts predict that at the current trajectory, it may well be the last competitive industry in Britain. Unfortunately, with the 25% cost cut comes a few compromises. Instead of a hearse to each deceased, corpses will now be stacked into refrigerated trucks like Tesco delivery vans on a routine patrol. Coffins will now be made of recycled crisp packets. And instead of booking a crematorium, the body will simply be placed in the fireplace to heat the flat.
Coca-cola has pledged to recycle all it’s packaging by 2030. This is part of their ‘World Without Waste’ campaign. For more information, go to www. www.com. The company admitted its part in littering the environment which is a bit like the Pope admitting his faith or the World Union of Bears admitting their lavatorial practises. The company is aiming to increase the amount of recycled materials in its products. Certainly every bottle of coke I’ve ever drank contains a great deal of recycled material, that being the swilled saliva of my entitled circle of friends.
The appropriately named TalkTalk is the most complained about broadband provider in the UK, Ofcom revealed. At least I think that’s the story. I’m with TalkTalk and the wifi cut out before I could finish the headline. The watchdog received around 250 complaints a day about communications services in three months. Meaning that either that figure under-represents the true figures of dissatisfaction, or it’s only me that complains.
A monkey with a ‘handlebar moustache’ from Ethiopia and Sudan has been identified as a different species, confirming my suspicions about men with handlebar moustaches in human society. The Blue Nile patas monkey had previously been thought as such in 1862 but German zoologist Erst Schwarz, in a typical 20th century German attitude to genetic differences, decided to lump them in with another species. The patas monkey is among the fastest moving ground-dwelling monkeys, able to reach speeds of 34 mph. Biologists describe the effect of their moustache on high speed movement as ‘hilarious’.
Adolescence now lasts from age 10-24, pushing the boundary back from 19. This came as a shock to me as I had to dig up my old love on N-Dubz and ill-informed political opinions to match my restored adolescent status. Apparently, the brain continues to develop past the age of 20, making the presence of life-affirming exams at the age of 16 an even more ridiculous notion than it already was. According to experts, it was very easy to define the point at which adolescence ends, they simply took a standard deviation of the ages of recent labour voters.
Scientists say a type of onion could help in the fight against tuberculosis, presumably because it improves the taste of culled badger stew. A drug resistant strain of TB infected 490,000 people in 2016, and apparently this didn’t result in enough tears so we’re bringing in shallots. Reportedly, similar studies are being taken on the closest members of the onion family, including garlic, leeks and ogres.