Load Of Bull

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90,000 sleep on the streets as biggest quake for 50 years hits medieval town

Spain ‘united’ to help residents

By Dave Bull in Lorca

As I walked the streets of Lorca yesterday morning the eerie quiet, which had descended on the town since the second of the two devastating earthquakes that killed at least two pregnant women and up to eight others on Thursday evening, remained. People stood around on the streets either stunned or with nothing else to do. Their home, business or job gone there was nothing left for these poor people to do other than wait. What they were waiting for nobody seemed to be sure, but the hope that the authorities would somehow organise the essentials that we all take for granted normally, such as water and power and food. Read the rest of this entry »

Reading (and writing) the story of the couple terrorised by the car-jackers near Madrid made me think of something. These guys have been at it now (robbing foreigners) for a couple of months or so and they haven’t been caught. The Guardia haven’t even got a sniff of them. And, they’ve car-jacked or attempted to rob foreigners in their cars some 90 times! And the police miss them every single time. Read the rest of this entry »

You can’t call a pasty Cornish unless it comes from Cornwall. It’s the same with Melton Mowbray pork pies, Devon cream and Essex girls. And that’s got to be right hasn’t it? Following a challenge in the EU to call some fizzy wine Champagne – which was kicked out – Europe has decided to make official what we already knew; if it doesn’t come from a place you can’t say it’s from there. In other words, you can’t make wine with bubble in it and call it Champagne. The same now applies to Cornish Pasties and the many other regional, and unique, dishes and foods produced around the world and bearing the name of their place of origin.

A firm in France had contested that it baked pasties in exactly the same way as is done in Cornwall and there fore it should carry the ‘Cornish’ name but that doesn’t work, does it?

If somebody asks what country I come from I don’t answer ‘Germany’ just because we came from the same basic ingredients years ago and find me a Scouser or a Manc who will proudly share their heritage with their nearest neighbour.

If I’m born in Newcastle, I’m a Geordie – I cant then move to France and say, actually I’m the same as these, so I’m French (as if you’d want to, but work with me here) but overall, looking at the big picture it seems to work in general, although I wouldn’t mind betting that not many of the poultry that ends up in a cardboard bucket has ever seen Kentucky

So can I still call my cheese on toast ‘Welsh rarebit? Or not.

I see Berlusconi’s in court again, but then again when isn’t he? This time it’s the underage-sex-with-a-prostitute charge, which of course he denies. The same as he’s denied mafia links, bribery, fraud, deception and spying. Still, innocent until proven guilty they say so we’ll give him the(huge) benefit of the doubt and wait for the courts to find him innocent (again) of getting rude with young Ruby. But can you imagine any of this happening in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter? Apart from a few rogue Arab states with dictators (and France, of course) any other country would have got rid of him years ago but there’s either something very appealing about Berlusconi for the Italian public or, the opposition are really, really bad.

Or perhaps it’s the ‘bad boy’ thing they go for? Think about it. If you get caught doing a ‘Ron Davies’ with your trousers around your knees on Clapham Common with a friend called ‘Spencer’ looking up at you – you’ve had it. Claim a few grand extra on your second home – which is actually your mums and you’ll find yourself wearing stripy clothes for 18 months courtesy of her maj’ or even take a holiday abroad when your country is in recession and you’ll get a serious ticking off. But chuck a ‘Bunga Bunga’ party and invite all your mates, along with the Italian equivalent of the Girl Guides and get set for another four years in power. So you see he must be doing something right, albeit quietly, but just to ram my point home about the ‘bad boys’ consider John Prescott for a minute would you? Ok, I grant you not the most pleasant of images to fill your head but think back a few years to when he was the most unpopular MP on the planet, and then what happened? He thumped someone, became the ‘peoples’ hero overnight and his popularity soared. And then there’s Clinton. Yes he got impeached (and I still don’t know what it means) but when the American public realised that he was a bit of a ‘lad’ (and after they met Hilary I wouldn’t mind guessing) they thought, ‘aw, what the heck, he only ruined her dress…’

So my advice to Cameron and Bean, I mean Zapatero, is to get bad, boys.  Throw a few parties, break a few things and get yourselves a rep’. Trouble is with these two it’d have to be a Tupperware party…if that’s ok with the wife?

So now I’m on Twitter (@davejbull). That’s a good thing apparently but looking at some of the more offensive ‘Tweets’ I’m beginning to wonder whether free speech has gone a little too far.

As you know there are certain rules and regulations (and plenty of laws) about what can be printed in the press but it seems that in the cyber world – you can say what you like?

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the many forums that can be accessed allow anonymous people to say whatever they wish and a lot of the time they can get away with. So is that freedom of speech? Is it freedom of speech when someone can say anything they like about, say, your business and then hide behind anonymity? Possibly doing their best to wreck it, or maybe your reputation before slinking back under their cyber-rock? We can’t (and wouldn’t) print a lot of the stuff that is allowed to go online in social networking sites. Especially those that are poorly monitored, or in many cases, not monitored at all!

But it looks like things are changing with a landmark case in the UK that looks set to be introduced into European law. In a test case, a man who had his character tarnished, unfairly, on a forum managed to change the privacy laws and access the details of an anonymous ‘poster’ who had been writing about him and trying to persuade potential customers not to use his business. The courts ruled that the man’s anonymity was not protected in anyway under law and the forum had to give up his details. He later received a fine and a warning from the judges about his future behaviour. The anonymous writer who didn’t want to face his adversary in court was last spotted heading off to try and find a back-bone…