Boris: Bus is in

The new alternative to the hated Bendy-Bus was seen on London streets today as LBC's Nick Ferrari, and former MP Michael Portillo put two very large bums on seats. 

Their verdict: a big thumbs up for Mayor Johnson's "Boris Bummer.".

The old Bendies never did find much popularity (except amongst fare dodgers) and if Ferrari and others are to be believed, the Boris Bummer is likely to bring in the punters due to its lighting and sleek glass design, which also manages to retain the heritage of the old much-loved Routemaster.

Will is be a success amongst the travelling public?

Fares ladies and gents, please.

The Rose Club Tipper

When newspapers recently reported the largesse of a mysterious hedge fund manager who is said to have frequented a London club where he spent £71,000 on a single evening out - TheBigRetort couldn't resist querying the bill...

The Evening Standard, together with the Mail and various additional newspapers of note recently carried a feature on the 13^th December that came in for a lot of scrutiny by we poor due to the amount of money that is said to have been spent, in a single evening, and by just one rich individual at a club styled 'The Rose'; and which (significantly) recently opened off Oxford Street.

On Thursday evening into the Friday morning the club is said to have played host to a big-spending banker and his cohorts - with more money than it seem sensitivity in what are arguably straightened times, for the many at least.

But is all as it seems in this remarkable story of riches to riches?

Apparently this right ‘banker’ (call him what you will) allegedly splashed out that night  like there were no tomorrows, or even mornings after for that matter. The Bachanalian soiree he threw for his grateful staff is said to have included a £10,000 tip to a lucky waitress, apparently hiding behind the nome de bottle “Margaux“. (More on which later.)

But readers can rest safe in the knowledge that this may be nothing more than a marketing campaign, a fiction, a leg-pull - with the sole aim of promoting what is ostensibly a new venue: The Rose Club.

In fact the questions the mainstream press should have asked--do they ever--is what was the name of this big spender, the real name of the lucky waitress who served this party, and why certain things on the bill do not, how shall we put it, tally? For instance, the receipt records a cover charge for ‘fifteen‘ guests and not ten. (Perhaps the group had additional ‘friends’ and the hedge funder and his team did not want their presence known. I wonder why?)

The Rose Club was founded by entrepreneurs Piers Adams and Nick House, who are no strangers to courting publicity for their various ventures surely. However, if the claim of a big-spending banker is to be believed, and it has been accepted as Gospel by many, the pair prove themselves to be maestros of publicity when it comes to new club openings.

Be that as it may....

Messieurs House and Adams claim the following was spent by the hedge fund individual that they did not name, and amongst his (just) nine guests (fifteen on the cover charge sittings note):

£44,400.00 on Ciroc Methuselah, Dom Perignon Rose Magnum £7,2000.00, Wahiki Coconut £1,120.00. Together with additional items and service charge £7,965.60 and a £10k tip to waitress ‘Marguax) (Apparently not her real name) the grand total was £71,000.60. Or the price of a garage in some parts of London.

But don’t be resentful…

A little birdy informs that this bill will fall under the scrutiny of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs because it contains the VAT number 107717911.

This number is registered to a company styled BLAYSET LTD and which was incorporated in December 2010. Blayset is yet to file accounts and the nature of its business is not supplied, but when it is HMRC would expect to see it ticking over quite nicely.

According to HMRC, the club, or Blayset, would have to register for VAT if its taxable sales were likely to be above the current VAT threshold. At the prices charged and achieved at the club this seems likely. The company will then have to apply VAT at the standard rate of 20% on the items it sells - such as food and drink - and the services it provides - this is known as 'output tax'. The company would then be able to reclaim any VAT it pays on purchases such as Dom Perignon - this is known as 'input tax'.”

The club’s owners will have to therefore send off to HMRC the difference between:

all the output tax it has charged
all the input tax is has paid on purchases

And the interest doesn’t end there...

What about tips? Well, that brings us to the elusive "Margaux".  The Inland Revenue takes a keen interest in tips, nevermore so than in a venue where high rollers drop fifty pound notes like confetti. The Tax Man is waiting to wash his boots in bubbly and will seek his cut from ‘service charge‘ (a tip or gratuity surely) and Marguax‘s £10k windfall, sadly.

According to Twitter, “Margaux” is actually the name of a waitress at the club. Remarkably though she makes no mention of such a thrifty group at the club that night, or the £10,000 tip the “Margaux“ on the receipt is said to have received.

In one Tweet she distances herself from the owners' claim by posting:
"Love my life , love my job, love my BF !!! What else ?? Nothing !! Amazing !! Hapiness (sic) thank (sic) to @TheRoseClub."

Nothing? Perhaps she is right.

[News just in... this was the same night as the Next Models' Christmas Party. See..http://blog.nextmodels.com/?p=4710]

Kepler 22b renamed: "Keptoo-toobe"

It was back in June 2010. The Kepler space telescope discovered over 750 extrasolar-planets culled from data that it had collected in its first 43 days of observations of the cosmos. Marked "candidates" - since then astronomers have gone on to confirm hundreds of planets orbiting alien suns light years beyond our own little solar system. But one planet alone has drawn the most excitement. We name it “Keptoo-toobe”.

The recent discovery by astronomers of an extra-solar planet designated Kepler 22b comes just one year after a treasure trove of stars was unveiled by the space telescope Kepler at NASA.

“This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened,” said scientist William Borucki at that time.

NASA expected only 50% of these so-called alien candidates to actually turn out to be real planets.

Kepler 22b, almost two and a half times the size of the Earth, has not only been confirmed as a real planet after moving through its third rotation around its parent star, it is also the most interesting, the crown jewel of planet hunting.

”Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet," declared NASA scientist Dr Borucki. "The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season.”

But why was this the most ‘phenomenal discovery in the course of human history’ - ever - kept from the world for 18 months? 

Did the Vatican have something to do with it?

Will world religions fall?

After all the newly discovered Earth has been around long before God uttered the words that his chosen species would record in a book and pass down through the millenia: 'Let There Be Light.’

So that would have the Church in a right flap, right? 

The Kepler team came under fire by others in the science community last year for keeping 400 candidate exoplanets to themselves for later confirmation by other telescopes used by the same team. To confirm a ‘candidate’ three transit observations were required of the target star.

But if this was the ‘defining’ third transit, why was its discovery only mentioned… now?

Could the “2010” third transit be a reporting error? Or could there be another reason why NASA was slow to reveal to the world that this new world had been discovered?

That said, it would be very interesting to see a maths wiz work out the date of the first sighting, and the date of the second, which would give us the exact date of the ‘third event’.

So what has NASA been doing since that date?

NASA was stumped for a new name having tried a number of them - ’Earth Two‘ - nah. ’Vulcan’ - forget it! 'Borucki?' -  y’know the way it goes at NASA it's all up in the air…

And that is the reason why we have rushed to name the planet Keptoo-toobe.

Get it?'

　

　

People Before Profit

George Hallam, an economist at Greenwich University, has been nominated as the London People Before Profit candidate in the forthcoming bye-election in Feltham and Heston. But can he do it?

The challenge by Mr Hallam follows the death of MP Alan Keen (Labour), who passed away this November aged seventy-three. Mr Keen had been ill with cancer for some time.

The London People Before Profit movement grew out of what was the former Lewisham People Before Profit (LPBP).

People Before Profit was set up, not by politicians, but by community campaigners in South London who were angry about Government and political leaders who simply put the interests of Big Business before community need.

The London People Before Profit Party brings together a broad group of people of varying political backgrounds who are united under one banner, the People‘s banner: Community Need Before Private Greed.

Such was the rush to meet the qualifying deadline for the bye-election that the London People Before Profit emblem was overlooked and so will not appear on the ballot paper.

However, as London People Before Profit spreads its message across the London boroughs, the choice of Hallam as its candidate looks set to cause election upset.

At Feltham and Heston, George Hallam will represent the only political party to support the 2 million public-sector workers on strike this week.

Simply known as ‘the candidate from nowhere’ Hallam is now gaining much ground, aided with the backing of local union branches and, due to a lack of coverage by the national media, via public engagement on blogs, Twitter and Email, together with Facebook. The message is clear: Hallam is the people’s choice.

But can George do it?

The bold move by Lewisham People Before Profit gives some Hounslow voters the chance to choose a candidate for London who may soon answer that question.

Vincent Tabak: pornographic films featured women being choked.

Vincent Tabak may have graduated from 'observer to perpetrator' after watching pornographic films, before going on to strangle Jo Yeates, 'for his own sexual gratification' detectives have claimed.

The six-man and six-women jury in Joanna Yeates murder trial had been deliberating for thirteen hours and 36 minutes, before returning to Court One at Bristol Crown Court and finding the defendant, Vincent Tabak, guilty of murder.

As the verdict was delivered, Tabak immediately sat down and put his head in his hands.

Mr Justice Field began sentencing by telling the jury: "I think there was a sexual element to this killing."

Tabak is said to have held a collection of pornographic films featuring women being choked.

Contrary to his image as a devoted boyfriend, it can also be revealed that he sought out the company of prostitutes while on business trips to Newcastle and Los Angeles.

The judge lifted an order banning publication after the 10-2 guilty verdict.



Members of the Yeates family were in court to hear the verdict but showed little emotion.

Yeates's boyfriend, Greg Reardon, maintained his composure.

Linda Ann Weston: Abductor escaped prison

TheBigRetort: ringleader of a gang who kept mentally disabled people in cellar escaped jail term.

Linda Ann Weston, 51, was convicted in 1983 for keeping a man in a closet and starving him to death.

Although found guilty in the 1983 abduction and murder, Weston did not serve time in prison.

Venus Weston, younger sister of Linda, was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison. Linda the elder was ruled ‘incompetent to stand’. Even though the plot was originally hers.


A fact not picked up by the American media who continue to report: 'It is not known how long she served in prison.'

TheBigRetort exclusive....

Linda Ann Weston shock: escaped prison first time round

Police in Philadelphia recently discovered four abused and vulnerable adults shackled together in a dank cellar where they were being held captive, with dogs for cell mates. Officers also discovered a teenage girl. Three people have been arrested. It has been widely claimed that one of the captors, Linda Ann Weston, 51, served time in prison for a similar crime. TheBigRetort… but she didn’t.

In November 1981, Bernado Ramos was reported missing by his mother.

His body was found in a closet two weeks later.

Linda Weston, 23, and Venus Weston, 21 his lover, were later charged and convicted with his captivity and murder.

Apparently Bernado had been the father of Venus’s child but refused to support it. It was his last mistake.

The Weston sisters had beat him with a broomstick and eventually starved him to death in the cupboard.

A remarkably similar modus operandi when compared with the current charges.

However, Linda Weston, now charged with abduction and enslavement in the more recent case, is said to have done time in 1983 for murder and imprisonment.

In fact, in one paper it was stated, “Before Philadelphia police found Linda Ann Weston with four disabled adults chained in her apartment cellar, before those same adults lived with her at a home in West Palm Beach, the 51-year-old woman had already done time for another horror in her closet: the death-by-starvation of her sister's lover.”

But Linda Weston did not ‘do time’ for the murder of Bernado Ramos: her sister did.

Venus Weston, the younger sister of Linda, was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison. Linda the elder was ruled ‘incompetent to stand’. Even though the plot was originally hers.

(See Herald Journal, October 18, 1983 for further reading.)

Edgington: Mental health unit linked to previous double slaying

Edgington knife attack linked to previous double slaying at New Cross. TheBigRetort… exclusive.

An urgent probe by the NHS may wish to focus on the mental health unit where a knife attacker sought refuge, prior to going on a rampage that left one woman dead and another seriously injured.

The patient, Nicola Edgington, 31, was from the same mental health unit where a previous patient also went on to commit a frenzied knife attack that left two foreign students dead.

TheBigRetort previously revealed that Edgington had been ordered by a judge to be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act after stabbing her mother to death in 2005 - but was conditionally discharged in 2009.

The 31-year-old recently admitted herself into Oxleas House in Woolwich, and fled the unit prior to her second and third attacks. Although a warning was put out by the unit to police, Edgington went on to stab one person to death and seriously injure another.

The probe might scrutinse the treatment offered to patients by the Oxleas unit and the conduct of its doctors because... it has happened before.

In 2008, Nigel Farmer appeared at the Old Bailey and was convicted, along with associate Dano Sonnex, of murdering students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez at a flat in Sterling Gardens, New Cross.

Farmer was a patient at the Oxleas Foundation Trust. He signed himself out of the unit a few weeks prior to committing his frenzied knife attack on Bonomo and Ferez. Mr Bonomo was stabbed 196 times, including almost 100 times in the back after he was already dead. Close friend Gabriel Ferez, also 23, suffered 47 stab wounds and "bore the burnt of the fire".

A spokesman for Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust confirmed that Edgington was a patient and that British health officials were conducting an investigation.

TheBigRetort can reveal that Oxleas Trust has failed to confirm if a link may have also existed between either patient. Or if any other related cases exist following admittance to the unit.

Sally Hodkin: who is responsible, patient or state?

Sally Hodkin was on her way to work on Monday morning when she was murdered in a busy shopping street in south east London. Her assailant (pictured) is unable to appear in court due to "extreme" mental health problems. So who is really responsible for the death of Sally Hodkin?

TheBigRetort...

Sally Hodkin's assailant is Nicola Edgington, 31, of Ambedkar House, Flavell Mews, Greenwich, south east London. Edgington also attempted to murder 23-year-old Kerry Clark, who was attacked with a knife as she waited at a bus stop. However TheBigRetort can reveal that Nicola Edgington is unlikely to stand in a courtroom charged with the murder - ever. Because she has already been deemed in the past not guilty of murder due to diminished responsibility.

The recent attacks by Nicola Edgington were forewarned - and could have been prevented. In 2006, Edgington, then aged 26, admitted stabbing her mother to death in a frenzied attack. She struck on the eve of what was supposed to be a happy family reunion.
.
At her 60-year-old mother's home Marion had lived in fear of her own daughte. She had cut her out of her will. She was worried about her mental state.  A regular churchgoer, Marion chillingly predicted her own death - at the hands of her "wayward" daughter. Just days before being killed by Nicola  her mother wrote to social services stating: "She is the most unstable I have ever known her to be and for the longest period too."

Nicola Edgington was apparently angry at having a child taken into care. On the night of the killing she had been to a pub with her brother but had been thrown out because of her bizarre behaviour; which included doing karate chops and punches. Her brother noticed she had a notebook in which she had scribbled the names Bin Laden, George Bush and Reggie Kray. The court also heard that she had an obsession with a cousin who had also stabbed someone to death.

Once inside her mother's cottage in rural Forest Row, East Sussex, she attacked her with a knife. She stabbed Mrs Edgington nine times and left her body on the fold-up bed she slept in, with the bloodied knife lying on her chest.

Edgington, a schizophrenic, admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Lewes Crown Court. She was ordered to be detained ‘indefinitely‘.

She was not... Yet again we see another person in need of care... in the community... one of a growing band of 'crazed' individuals who emerge on the streets - usually in the south east London region - and who  now looks set to be taken off the streets and out of the courts 'indefinitely': which is convenient for social services.

Nicola Edgington may have wielded the knife: but it is the state that is the real assassin.

Are neutrinos faster than light? No, is the answer

Scientists have made the recent ‘discovery’ that neutrinos may travel faster than the speed of light. A short trip back in time may spread light on the findings. TheBigRetort…

Scientists at the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment in Gran Sasso, Italy, found that beams of neutrinos sent to its detectors from Cern, 730km away in Geneva, arrived earlier than they should have. But TheBigRetort can report that the claim is not ‘evidence’ that the speed of light barrier has been broken, and with it the genius that was Albert Einstein, but a manifestation of events that link back in the stellar pages of time… here on Earth

Twenty-four years ago detectors in the US, Japan and Russia observed a burst of 24 neutrinos which originated from a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

About 2 hours later, an experienced New Zealand amateur astronomer observed the area of the supernova, but noted nothing unusual.

About 3 hours after the neutrino burst however, the first visible sign of a supernova was captured on a photograph taken at a telescope in Australia. It is known as Supernova 1987A.

What was then seen as curious is that the neutrinos arrived two to three hours earlier than the light from the star. Did this mean that the neutrinos had travelled faster than light?

No: it simply meant that the neutrinos had a head start.

The core of a massive star has enough gravity to squeeze the matter in it so tightly that protons and electrons combine to form neutrons. This transformation also produces an enormous number of neutrinos. The neutrinos are able to pass through the star’s outer layers and escape into space before the star shows any outward sign of trouble.

As far back as 1987, astronomers predicted that neutrinos from a supernova would arrive before its light.

Could this be why neutrinos appeared to travel faster than the speed of light in the earthbound experiment at CERN?

If so, Einstein can rest in a steady state.

[For further reading see Robert Bigelow. http://www.clarkplanetarium.org/blog/neutrinos-and-supernova-1987a]

New Dutch film spells big opportunity for girl with English connection. TheBigRetort profiles rising star Pippa Allen.

Originally titled "Patatje Oorlog“ - “Patatje Wars” [War Fries] is based on the acclaimed book "A Little Chance" by Marjolijn Hof, and traces the lonely life of nine-year old Harriers (Pippa Allen) who constantly worries about her father, a doctor who has left home to work in a war zone. What if he gets a disease? What if he stands in the way of stray bullets? What if? Just a few of the fears that beset young Harriers on her angst-ridden journey towards an inevitable conclusion.

In order to reduce the risk that something bad may happen to her father Harriers journeys into the strangest corners of her mind.

Her fantasies are portrayed in stop-motion animation combined with live action; extraordinary for a Dutch film. It is due for later release with English subtitles - hence the title “War Fries“.

But what of that English connection?

Pippa, who is bilingual, was chosen for the role amidst thousands of Dutch hopefuls. Her grandparents live in Brockley, southeast London.

Rising starlet “Pip” is a regular visitor to their Manor Avenue house with father Paul and her equally talented brother Tommy, a gifted little comedian and break dancer.

War Fries is directed by Nicole van Kilsdonk (How do I survive Saddle Pain ).

In the roles of Harriers parents are Johnny de Mol and Rifka Lodeizen .

War Fries will premiere at the Cine Kids Festival in Amsterdam from the 12th-20th October, and is then intended for wider general release.