News Archives

Don't Cry for me, Fiorentina.
It's finished now, so it's back to work, but for some Italian heroes it won't quite be business as usual, plonked as they will be unceremoniously at the bottom of Serie B. Still, I don't suppose we need to worry too much about the poor dears - there will be plenty of players' agents making phone calls and plenty of managers with fat wallets to come to the rescue.

m Not Quite The Holy Grail...
But mildly diverting nevertheless. Smithy Code Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought might not on the face of it be proof positive that judges sometimes have a sense of humour, but 'tis true. In the text of his judgement of the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case, Mr Justice Peter Smith left a Dan Brownish puzzle to solve involving Fibonacci number sequences and other such mullarkey.

More Music Download Scandals
This time it's not feckless, greedy consumers doing the poor, honest record companies out of an honest dollar. No, it's news of corporate behaviour that casts a light on why illegal downloading came to be so popular in the first place. And if you don't want to click the link, well let's just say we're talking price fixing.

It's Hard to Say... "What Were You Thinking, You Idiot?"
In a curious reversal of the normal etiquette in such matters, lawyer Harry Whittingham has apologised to Dick Cheney and family for being shot in the face and chest and having a heart attack. We'll leave it to other commentators to make the inevitable comparisons. Celebrity Big Blubbers
In the crying sense, that is. Tears galore already after just a week, and Jodie has been kicked out - more sinned against than sinning in my humble opinion. As someone of, shall we say, more mature years, I must say that my fellow oldies this year are letting the side down big style. They are foul, the lot of them. It's the youngsters, Preston and Chantelle in particular, that I'm routing for. And is there a Helen and Paul scenario brewing?

Cruising or Bruising
Further proof, if proof be needed, that our relationship with the stars of the silver screen is ambivalent, to say the least. Leading Scientologist Tom Cruise has simultaneously been voted top movie star of all time and most irritating actor by film buffs at Empire Magazine. Well, they got one right, I suppose.

They're Dear, Them iPods
About six and a half grand if you're not careful. If you - or more likely your kids - are among the fifty percent of consumers who have resisted the lure of legal downloading in favour of it's more nefarious and considerably cheaper (ie, free) counterpart, beware, the BPI are unlikely to leave you be come the new year. And it's no use bleating about stupidly high prices, rip off Britain, the fact that illegal downloaders buy more music than any one else and any number of legitimate arguments - you are the reason the multi billion pound music industry is dying on its arras and you MUST PAY.

Lions 42, Midgets Nil
We know we're a bit late to the party on this one, but well, Narnia's on and Ricky Gervais mentions it in his new podcast, so for those of you who didn't see it first time around, take a look at this story and put your hand on your heart and say you wouldn't have been taken in for a moment. I mean, Cambodian midget fighting league - you wouldn't catch us interwebnet thingy savvy folk excitedly passing it on in email round robins, would you? Would you?

So You Think You're British, Then?
Then take the test. We're not going to reveal our scores, but suffice to say we don't qualify for a seat on the throne. Some of the questions are open to interpretation, though. Question 8, for example. Whoever thought that one up clearly doesn't drink down our local.

And It's Goodnight From Him
I know we don't usually do sad or bad news and I know the headline's so obvious that everyone'll use it, but we can't let the passing of comic genius Ronnie Barker go unremarked. We've all got our favourite line, mine's from the Two Ronnies' version of Scotland the Brave: "Come where the jocks are strapping..."

Pull Up a Chair, Gran
Nearly a third of parents and grandparents have been encouraged by 13 to 16 year olds to get online. And now BT has set up a website to encourage youngsters to become "Internet Rangers." Mike Hughes of BT is particularly enthusiastic about it, in his position as head of digital inclusion. Now there's a job.

They Are Not Amused
The fans are getting restless with Sven after England's embarrassing defeat tonight at the hands of Northern Ireland. And to top that, we have got maybe five days of torture to endure as England's cricketers try to wrest the Ashes from a full strength Australian team.

Towels at Dawn - 2
Hot on the heels of the story revealing that even some Germans get infuriated by the habit of reserving sun loungers with a towel, comes hard evidence that teutonic passions can be raised to fever pitch by the practice. A woman, irritated, and possibly emboldened by the recent revelations that it is not legal, removed an offending towel only to be pitched headlong into the pool by the irate reserver, a 76 year old German pensioner.

Bottom of the Barrel Watch
We at Kudoshops pride ourselves on our strict neutrality regarding party politics, but this story in the Daily Mail caught our eye. The Tories are criticising the Prime Minister for having a three week holiday in Barbados. Excuse me? Say what you like about Tony Blair, but a quick perusal of photos of the bloke over the time he has been in his current employment hardly suggest that he has been slacking on the job.

One for the Goat
Travel is a wonderful thing, but there must be many old travellers who wake up sweating in the middle of the night with images of being driven at crazy speeds through packed Asian streets jammed in the back of an auto rickshaw, or tuk tuk, with two families and a goat. Now we can relive those crazy nightmares in the comfort of our own country, because the tuk tuk is coming to London.

Fundamental Questions Revisited
A cow has been imprisoned in Colombia for causing a road accident in a surprising reprise of the common medieval practice of trying animals as if they were human. Seen by historians as manifestations of one of humanity's great moral dilemmas, hundreds of years later the Columbian Police Spokesman has re-opened the debate:"If it was a person who caused the accident, he or she would be behind bars, so why not a cow?"

I Don't Know What I'll Use it For, But I want One
Clever Russian Scientists have invented a keyboard where every key is a little video screen. How cool is that? It has, apparently, a perfectly good reason de etre, which amounts to glorified shortcut keys, but the true value lies in a huge geeky wow factor. "Monitor? Oh I got bored with just the one. Look, I've got over a hundred now."

It's Just Not Football
With the Premiership getting underway, you might expect the back pages to be Rooney this and Henri that, but not a bit of it. England's amazing performances on the cricket field have ushered in a new interest in the game. Channel 4's excellent coverage has played its part, too, which makes it a tad ironic that the game has succumbed to Murdoch's shilling for next season. All star tiddlywinks, anyone?

Towels at Dawn
Whilst not in any way wishing to inflame emnity between the English and German peoples, we feel it is only right to highlight the findings of Ralf Hocker, a German lawyer. He maintains that the practice of reserving sun loungers with a towel is not supported by anything in either German or Spanish law. Furthermore, the practice infuriates many Germans, too.

For Better is Worse
Well, we think that's what the spokesman for the mobile network, 3, meant, when he said that one reason for their phones being more faulty than anyone else's in a recent Which? test was that their network was more advanced than it's rivals. Don't you just pine for the days when more advanced meant better?

You'd Think, Wouldn't You...
... that a government intent on stopping someone from protesting about something, a government prepared to go to the lengths of passing a law specifically to stop that person from continuing his protest, would take care to make sure the new law actually applies to him? You would, wouldn't you?

Never Mind the Statistics
Despite the fact that people who illegally download music on p2p platforms also spend 4 times as much on legal downloads as their law abiding counterparts, the music industry is not letting up on pursuing the miscreants in the courts. So far, the chairman of EMI - who recently said it was "b*******" that illegal filesharers would use legal means to download music if it were more available - has not, as far as we know, commented on the findings.

The High, Rarified Air of Political Expression
Amid the predictable Gallic contempt for British cuisine is the startling admission by Jacques Chirac that the origin of France's difficulties with Nato lay in him being forced to try Haggis by George Robinson. Maybe we should now re-appraise history in the light of this information. Being an optimistic sort, I now like to think that the beginning of the end of the Cold War lay in a banquet of caviar and maccy dees.

I Had One Like That
German firefighters took hydraulic equipment to a teenager's first ever car because they thought it was scrap. The car had not even been driven by its new owner because the poor lad was waiting for an MOT test. It won't get one now. The firefighters' insurers will now have to fork out, ooh, at least fifty Euros for a replacement.

Fired up Over the Web
10% of websites don't work properly in Firefox, a new study shows, including the government jobs website, jobcentreplus.gov.uk. As Firefox is making inroads into Internet Explorer's market dominance, this is starting to annoy real people nowadays as well as us geeky types. Here's hoping there's no unfound glitches on this site for non IE users. We're sure you'll let us know in no uncertain terms if there are.

The Free Market Rules
If you are one of the nearly 2 million who tried to get tickets for Live8 but didn't make the cut, the good news is that you can still get there, courtesy of Ebay. Pairs of tickets are going for £1,000 and we wonder if the lucky bidders will think, as they wave their lighters around, that they have betrayed the very essence of the event. At least Ebay have done the right thing and offered to donate their profits from the deals to Live8. Update EBay have caved in to pressure listened to customers concerns and banned the sales.

Internet Peril No 6,000,002 - Being Fined by The Music Industry
A campaign by the children's charity Childnet is being aimed at parents to alert them to their offspring's music downloading activities. Only 10% of parents are aware of how their children are bleeding the likes of EMI (pre-tax profits for year to April 2006 - £91.8 million) dry with their p2p activities. Fewer still, probably, are aware that the main danger from all this is a hefty fine from the British Phonographic Industry.

We're Nice, We Are
According to the rest of the world, anyway, and who are we to argue? We Brits are seen as intelligent, polite, trustworthy and honest, if a bit boring, while Americans are ignorant and the Russians violent. Admittedly all this comes from an international branding expert, whatever one of them is, but it's not often we get a pat on the back, so we think it's only fair to graciously accept the compliment.

Hearty Congrats to Price William
Clarence House has announced that Prince William achieved a 2:1 MA in Geography from St Andrews University. A quick bit of research informs us that posts filled in the past by Geography Honours Graduates include Community Re-cycling Officer, Housing Assistant, Planning Assistant and Youth Co-ordinator. King in Waiting was not on the list, prompting fears that the Young Windsor might now be seen as over qualified for the role.

Not Afraid
We've laid off the light hearted look at the news these past few days, for obvious reasons. Our hearts go out to the victims and families of the terrorist attack in London and we would like to express our admiration at the way Londoners have responded to the outrage. For those of you who have not heard of it yet, this website is a must see place.

The Cat's Out of the Bag
He was a purring feline and a stirring orator. At first avuncular and strangely drawn to a cross-dressing misanthrope, he remained defiant to the last, oleaginous as ever in his many post eviction interviews. We will all have our own abiding memory of this curious event, but mine is of him sitting back, puffing on a cigar, trying to look dignified, with a cactus sprouting from the top of his head.

June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
Feb 2005