91Èȱ¬

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Placa George Orwell in Barcelona is covered by CCTV.

2. Television presenter Fern Britton has a gastric band.

3. Nearly all animals are banned from the grounds of the Houses of Parliament - except dogs and horses.

4. Many businessmen believe biscuits are key to clinching deals.

5. Public drinking is socially acceptable in Denmark.

6. Syria has the world's largest restaurant, seating 6,014 diners.

7. George Lucas's daughter Amanda is a mixed martial arts fighter.

8. London's broadband is the fastest in the UK.

9. T-shirts featuring rude words, bombs or cartoon guns can stop you getting on planes from British airports.

10. Getting caught cheating at a British university does not get you expelled.

Seen 10 things? . Thanks to Kate Shaw from California for this week's picture of 10 kites (two are overlapping slightly).

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Regarding the Chinese having to teach people how to clap (); if only we could get them to sing the chorus to Queen's We Will Rock You at the same time, it would be wonderful.
Steve W, Southampton, UK

I saw six cars flying the England flag today. Two points to these car owners a) England are not in Euro 2008 and b) your petrol consumption will increase.
Helen, Leicester

Was Kevin Rudd to that ever-popular destination, "Not In Service"?
Nigel Macarthur, London, England

Regarding Alexandra "famous in her home town of Croydon" De-Gale (). I've never heard of her.
Michael Hall, Croydon, UK

Does it count as reverse nominative determinism that the spokesman for the UN children's agency should be ? And surely such a talented bunch of flexicographers as Monitor readers should be able to come up with a snappier phrase than "reverse nominative determinism"?
Adam, London, UK

Actually Stuart Taylor (Thursday's letters), you can divide by zero, the same as you can multiply by it, there's just not much point.
Helen, Luxembourg

Stuart Taylor, impressing the ladies by baffling them with mathematical equations? I'm much more won over by the men claiming to be Mourhino. Yes please!
Felicity, Cheltenham

Please tell Ian C of Kent (Thursday's letters) that I don't understand the question. I do respond to "darling" though (and, being a Northerner, to "love").
Pix6, Vienna, Austria

(Red faced) I just got it - it's a pun on Pi. I gave up maths after I scraped through it at O-level.
Pix6, Vienna

Re . Great achievement, now can someone tell me why he's wearing a traffic cone on his head?
Stuart, Croydon

Stuart Taylor of Bromley says "I hate to nitpick" (Thursday's letters). You're reading the wrong blog, mate...
Tim Barrow, London, UK

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Winning entries in the now-returned Caption Competition.

The competition is now closed.

George Bush presents the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with a Segway.

Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. nigelmccc
The Scary White House Experience.

5. Snaggers
George couldn't understand why Ehud couldn't get the pogo stick to work.

4. Tekaniet
George couldn't help but feel smug - he'd told his speech-writer he'd spelled segue wrong.

3. ruddigore
Bush was rather pleased with his choice. This gift was even better than the space hopper he presented to Pope Benedict XVI.

2. SeanieSmith
"Don't you go givin' me no bad feedback y'hear or I'll lose my Powerseller status."

1. stigmondo
Things were about to get a whole lot worse; Ehud and George had only sold one all morning and Sir Alan Sugar had just entered the room...

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Britain used to be a religious place. Now it appears religious people can only generate confusion in the heathen masses.

The coverage of Big Brother in the papers shows how things have changed.

In the Guardian, Mark Lawson says: "The 16 includes two Catholics, two Muslims and a Christian." Paper Monitor is no theologian but isn't Catholicism a denomination of Christianity?

Lawson suggests the move represents an "Armageddon strategy" and over in the Daily Mail there's also angst.

They say: "In an apparent effort to create religious tension, a devout Christian, a Muslim convert and a Buddhist have also been included in the mix."

So let's get this straight. Putting people of different religions into a room together is, in and of itself, spoiling for a fight?

But both the Mail and Guardian are models of sensitivity compared with the Sun which labels the Christian Sylvia as a "BIBLE BASHER".

Over in the Mirror it's more restrained but there's still some interest in the spiritual aspect. The competitors' zany qualities - such as looking like Sylvester Stallone or being famous in Croydon - are highlighted with pink bubbles on their pictures. Lisa's says "BELIEVES IN GHOSTS" while Sylvia's says "CHURCH ON SUNDAYS".

Zany, eh?

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See the Quote of the Day every morning on the .

"The screws no longer wear studded boots... they wear moccasins and gel their hair" - Notorious inmate Charles Bronson on how prison has gone soft.

In a letter to Inside Time, Bronson says inmates today don't realise how well treated they are with "TV, radios, CDs, carpets, curtains, flasks, own clothes, open visits, phone calls, gym, pool, canteen - even the food is not so bad". After 34 years behind bars - 30 in solitary confinement - he counts himself as an authority on the matter.

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An MEP represents ""? Don't parts of a constituency have to be adjacent? Is this the South West England that includes Madrid?
Nigel Macarthur, London, England

Re . So Professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi was surprised that "the patterns of people's movements, over short and long distances, were very similar: people tend to return to the same few places over and over again." Presumably most of the time these same few places will have been the home and place of work of each of the studied individuals. Not really that surprising is it?
PS, Newcastle, England

I hate to nitpick, Edd of Cardiff (Wednesday's Letters), but you can't divide by zero. You won't impress the ladies with that little fallacy!
Stuart Taylor, Bromley, Kent

Re David comb lately (Paper Monitor). Yes, and parting is such sweet sorrow.
Candace, New Jersey, US

So the lady who hoped to make her kept it in an incubator and gave it "a little bit of help"? One wonders whether she just wanted to be in the news or had a craving for a very meaty omelette indeed...
Sasarai, Newcastle-under-Lyme

Pix2x3 (Wednesday's Letters), do you also respond to 18.84955592?
Ian C, Kent

Re Today's quote - what were the astronauts doing while they waited for a plumber? Cross their legs? Go outside?
Rob McKay, Banbury, UK

Sorry Andrew (Wednesday's Letters), but I'm Mourinho, and so is my wife.
Keith, Dartford

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Today being Thursday, and so the day after Wednesday, it's that time of the week when political reporters and sketch writers sharpen their pencils and report on the Punch and Judy show interrogation and debate in Prime Minister's Questions.

Road tax, Northern Ireland, Robert Mugabe... all topics of notable gravitas. Their coverage in today's press? Minimal, or at least in comparison to the interest in David Cameron's new hairstyle (or "follicle reshuffle" as the Daily Telegraph so eloquently puts it).

Using the parting of his hair as a metaphor for his political views is nothing new. Since he became leader in 2005, it's gone from right to left to fall straight bang in the centre, and with each new quiff, analysis has been made. Vogue has nothing on wily lobby hacks when it comes to a style critique.

Ann Treneman of the Times compares the said 'do to that of Demi Moore, adding that it was the only talking point in the corridors of power. Her verdict? "Billy Bunter goes to Eton".

The Daily Mail's Quentin Letts describes it as "a wind-blown David Cassidy-style centre-parting".

The Sun seeks the advice of its associate fashion editor, who scathingly brands it "a throwback to dodgy barnets popular 10 years ago".

But it's the Independent to the rescue to solve to the conundrum of David Cameron's centre parting. The reshuffle has no political significance. "A Tory MP said: 'He was late for PMQs and it may be he lost his comb'." Phew, panic over. The lobby reporters can get back to the day job.

Following on from yesterday's assorted methods for choosing a team to follow at Euro 2008, Frank Skinner in the Times has solved the dilemma for once and all - don't pick a team to support, choose one to hate.

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"Let's start using it" - Music to the ears of astronauts as the space station's broken urinal is finally fixed.

It's no easy thing getting a plumber in when circling the Earth. And so when the Russian-made toilet on the international space station broke, it took two weeks to repair. Spare parts had to be rushed from Moscow to Florida, to be blasted into space aboard the shuttle Discovery. Once repaired and tested, Russian crew member Oleg Kononenko announced that the job was done.

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Is it me or is the coverage, both British and German, of the holidaymaker twisting the facts to make it more tub thumping? I holiday in Turkey in a small town where most of the rest of the tourists are German, we keep going back there and have met some lovely people. However if I had booked a holiday through a UK company with lots of activities included - and then found out those activities weren't open to me because they were in a different language - I'd think about asking for some of my money back too.
Lee, Manchester

So is costing the economy £9bn? That's a pretty big number - I wonder who worked it out?
Pix2x3, Vienna, Austria

If a=1 and b=1 then:
a^2 -b^2 =0, and
a^2 - ab =0, therefore:
a^2 - ab =a^2 -b^2, factorising:
a(a-b)=(a+b)(a-b), dividing by (a-b):
a=a+b
1=2
You have to love maths...
Edd, Cardiff

Today's talks about people breaking INTO prisons. I'm guessing that this is a criminal offence (unlawful entry), but the mind boggles as to how you punish it: "Right, this is your third attempt at getting into prison and so we are going to have to impose a custodial sentence this time and ... what are you smiling at?"
Christian Cook, Epsom, UK

Must be a quiet news day if the headline filling almost half my screen is about a man claiming to have won a competition which, if he has, will entitle him to enter another competition ().
David, Romford, UK

"The first in a, hopefully short, series about what Magazine readers do when they're not reading the Magazine." Hopefully short? Hmph! Am I to take it our meandering non-media based lives are effectively meaningless when compared to the glitzy, high-falutin' existence of your average monitor of papers? I would be offended if it were not for my easy-going nature. Unfortunately for you, I spent this weekend performing an impromptu cancan with the embattled remnants of Blazin' Squad and former Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, atop the greatest peak of them all, Everest. I have, of course, a multitude of high-definition photographs, but shall now be withholding them as a matter of principle.
Dylan, Reading, UK
Monitor note: That's a shame.

I think Eleanor Chalkley should worry more about Terry Wogan suing her - she's made him look like Ricky Gervais.
John R, London

On a recent stag do in Norfolk, we spent some time one afternoon in an "alcohol restricted area" of a park (). We thought this might scupper our plans somewhat until we read the sign: "You may be liable to prosecution if you continue to consume alcohol in this area when asked by a police officer to stop." This struck as a such a sensible idea. We weren't hideously drunk - that came later - just having a drink in a quiet park on a Friday afternoon. Harmless.
Luke L, Woking, UK

David Richerby might like to know that public drunkenness is already illegal (under section 12 of the Licensing Act 1872). The law is just never enforced.
Peter, London

Does anyone else think it's funny that there is an article about the in an online news source?
Rachael, San Francisco, CA, US

Ah, the power of the ellipsis. If you'd put in the full quote, QJ in Stafford (Tuesday letters), it makes perfect sense. "The content became broader... [AND SHALLOWER], with a more restricted... [AND LESS DEMANDING] syllabus". I predict a lucrative career in editing reviews for film posters. And haven't I read some of your academic papers? I particularly enjoyed "Study backs up... my results."
Adam, Belfast, UK

Feadon Farm in Portreath must have flipping big enclosures if is soaring at heights of up to 70ft and yet can never be released into the wild. I hadn't realised 70ft up was still captivity.
Aqua Suliser, Bath

Definitive evidence of the ?
SH, Oxford

Dear Magazine, your article on has made me very upset - all these years I thought I was an efficient multi-tasker when actually I've been pottering all along.
Emma Daw, Rockville, MD, US

I'm Mourinho.
Andrew Burnip, Newcastle

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Eyes pop. Tension mounts. Hearts pound. Teeth grind. It's always a fraught affair when one's national team takes to the pitch and, inevitably, attempts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

So no moaning about how none of the UK's flag carriers have made it into Euro 2008 - just relax and enjoy the beautiful game, says Martin Samuels of the Times, who argues that this tournament will be good for those old-fashioned enough to simply love a good game.

But a big event is about so much more than just the sporting action. Buy the shirt, the flag, beat the chest, feel the partisan pain and glory. "That is why newspapers have been full of articles on who to support," says Samuels.

Including his own - yesterday Simon Barnes adopted Turkey because his favourite book is by a Turkish author, Carol Midgley opted for Spain because of pretty-boy Fernando Torres, and Caitlin Moran chose Austria because, well, someone had to.

The Guardian threw the question open to its readers, conducting a poll from a shortlist of Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and Spain, complete with celebrity endorsements and a vote rigged by the Dutch, who garnered 96% of the vote. Since they would have won without cheating, the paper decided not to disqualify the team.

Regular readers will know that the Independent has no truck with rigged votes, and so has devised an elaborate biometric test to determine which team to support, with questions such as "Do you follow the throng... rate yourself on a sliding scale from 1 to 16 where 1 = entirely populist and 16 = utterly on the margins".

One can safely assume that for the Sun it will be whoever is playing Germany on the day.

So who will those at Monitor Towers be supporting? Why, San Marino, the tiny nation that is home to just three Britons and that gave us points in Eurovision. It's the least we can do... what do you mean they're not in the European Championships either?!?

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"I am Mourinho - period" - Jose Mourinho drops the "Special One" tag he gave himself at Chelsea.

When he arrived at Chelsea, so full of swagger and promise, Jose Mourinho called himself the "Special One" in his first press conference. Now boss of Inter Milan, he has used this platform to declare that it is the club which is special. But rest assured, the confidence remains: "I believe I am a great coach but I don't want to be special."

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Monitor note: A bumper crop. And rest assured that the underling responsible for the non-appearance of yesterday's letters has been summarily told off.

Re : Only dogs and horses are allowed in the House of Parliament grounds? I could have sworn it was full of rats and cockroaches.
Stuart, Croydon

Talk of fundamentally misses the point. The problem is not public drinking but public drunkenness. Criminalizing the drinking of a bottle of wine with a picnic, or a beer with a sandwich in the park does nothing to encourage responsible drinking.
David Richerby, Leeds, UK

I work at odd times at the weekends, and often catch late-night tubes if I'm staying with friends, and welcome the alcohol ban. It only takes one drunk vomiting, wetting him/herself or being aggressively friendly to make it hell to get home. I like a drink as much as the next person but can't see any reason why a ban on drinking on public transport should be the subject of such woes. The way it's being reported I wonder if I've overlooked some human rights violation...
Fee Lock, Hastings

Why does conjure up images of someone pointing to different bottles and saying "This is WKD, this is Smirnoff Ice, this is cider ... "?
Paul Greggor, London

Having just had a fantastic evening watching Bruce Springsteen, only for it to be spoiled by the lack of decent transportation, ridiculous policing and anti-social behaviour. Why can't extra transport be laid on when concerts and football matches are held? We pay enough money for the tickets - would it be too much to ask for more transport to get us back to mainline stations so those of us living outside of London can make our last trains? 60,000 leaving the Emirates stadium - and what do the police do? Barricade the exit of one road so people are filtered into single file queues. No explanation, just obstinacy that anybody dare question it. Inside the stadium we witnessed several people escorted from the premises because of too much alcohol. Why sell it in the first place? We witnessed a man more than old enough to know better escorted out by 10 stewards, when a stern word would have worked. Nobody seems to have the common sense needed to deal with these situations any more.
Margaret Waterfield, Rochester, Kent

I hate to be a bore, but that Terry Wogan is crocheted, not knitted. Good job though.
Anna, Flitwick, UK

So maths exams have . According to the think tank involved "The content became broader... with a more restricted... syllabus." It sounds like they dropped logic completely.
QJ, Stafford, UK

Re - have I missed something in this report, that 8,000 people are banned from working with children. So TEN MILLION law abiding people have to register and pay £64? Wouldn't there be an easier solution to keep tabs on the 8,000 rather than the 10 million?
Mike, UK

"David Walker, head of fulfilment at the Times" - what a job title (). Or is it just my dirty mind?
Sturge, UK

. As opposed to brushing their hair as well, presumably?
Paul Greggor, London

Today's fix of nominative determinism: the new 100m world record holder is called .
Paul Greggor, London

And , challenger of laws against inter-racial marriage.
Laura, Cumbria

Was anybody else slightly freaked out by the ghostly greenhouse gardeners in ?
Michaela, Runcorn, UK

I did love the article on pottering. Monte is a man after my own heart. GPs please note: prescribe gardening to reduce stress.
Miranda Andrews, Amersham

The phrase "rogue chevrons" alone was worth my licence fee this year - Monitor, will you marry me?
Chandra, London

Those wouldn't be paper cuts that the Daily Mail inflicts thousand-fold would they (Paper Monitor)?
Caroline Brown, Graz, Austria

Speaking of makeovers, every time I look at the today I get this urge to scream NEWS! Don't know why.
Steven, Loughborough, UK

- hardly newsworthy, surely? I've yet to see a leopard that wasn't spotted.
Edward Green, London

I was shocked by - you wouldn't be trying to brainwash us, would you? In the top picture Samantha is shown larger than the other girls', and in the second set she is given about as much room as the other two girls put together. Looks decidedly dodgy to me...
Joe Ball, Nuneaton, England

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...in their spare time.

The first in a, hopefully short, series about what Magazine readers do when they're not reading the Magazine.

First up is Eleanor Chalkley, who has disregarded the furore about by knitting Terry Wogan instead.

The photographic evidence is here (more pictures in ). Presumably the 91Èȱ¬ lawyers will be contacting her later in the day.

And we're all winners, because it means we can learn the word amigurumi, which is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

"Oh Fern! Why DID you have to fib about your gastric band?" wails the Daily Mail through its mouthpiece Amanda Platell.

The diatribe that follows is reminiscent of that old joke about Baby Balloon trying to squeeze into bed between Mummy and Daddy Balloon - "you've let me down, you've let your mother down, and worst of all you've let yourself down" is the gist.

It's so very symptomatic of the Mail's bipolar attitude to its female readership that at the end of the piece is a trailer to a first-person "I did it too" piece, complete with the predictably unflattering pre-op and equally predictably glamorous post-op pics. How awful that women feel the need to put themselves through painful and potentially risky procedures just to feel better about themselves... don't you look lovely now you can squeeze into a size 10!

What's behind the attraction between the Mail and the women of Britain has exercised Paper Monitor for some time. And now the light has dawned. The Mail is a toxic bachelor, the type made familiar by Sex and the City, who expertly woos as he inflicts a thousand cuts. Come now, ladies, you know the type.

But aren't toxic bachelors entertaining, able to spin an amusing yarn from any old rope? The Mail is like that too, and today unashamedly fills two pages with scenes from famous films depicted in stick figures. The Guardian's Weekend magazine has done this before, but a toxic bachelor will never let some sandal-wearing, heart-on-sleeve type to get in its way.

By the by, Paper Monitor has got its colour charts out and noticed that the newly redesigned Times decorates its news pages with a familiar shade of teal blue - the same teal blue the Magazine sports each and every day. Something in common...

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"We will play football without you this summer" - Germany's Bild newspaper finally has a cutting riposte to all those beach towel gags.

After a Brit won compensation because his Greek holiday had too many Germans, the mass circulation Bild newspaper - which shares much of its DNA with the Sun - equalises with a guide to resorts overly-populated by the British, liberally spiced with gibes about drinking habits and penalty-taking ability. The paper adds that those keen to avoid Brits this summer should head for Austria and Switzerland... the hosts of Euro 2008. One-nil to the sun-lounger hoggers.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Following on from the Telegraph's recent re-innovation of the slogan "WAS, IS & WILL BE" above its leader column, it's now the turn of the Times for a makeover.

The most eagle-eyed reader will have noticed that ever-so-subtle change on the cover with the mini weather forecast graphic below the title. However, for the more bleary-eyed of Monday morning Times' readers, a turn of the page is what gives the game away.

Page two - known in downmarket tabloid-land as "the graveyard page" because nobody reads it - is most commonly home to those "continued from page 1" stories and the less scandalous of political reports. But it has a new resident in the form of the paper's leader columns.

Daniel Finkelstein extols the virtues of the leader article over two pages further in, reminiscing its past glories and achievements: "Lincoln said that only the Mississippi had more power than the Times." He credits The Thunderer with freeing Mick Jagger from the confines of his Brixton prison cell, and luring Queen Victoria from her isolation following Prince Albert's death. But, knowing the low expectations of page two, why the move for a column of such high-regard? It leads (how appropriate) Paper Monitor to ponder: who actually reads newspaper opinion columns? (Send your comments using the button below.)

Another part of the new-look Times is the colour-coding of the various sections: Blue for news, red for opinion, pale browny-grey for international, grey for obituaries, green for sport and so on. Should Gordon Brown breath a sigh of relief that it's red for opinion, or could too much be read into these mere re-designs?

In fact, the paper's new opinion section looks very similar to that very bastion of opinion, the Independent - but with colour, so ultimately superior. A welcome move for lovers of trivia is the promotion of the Daily Universal Register, with all you need to know on topics like Travel, You bet, Your bid, Day out, Staying in, A dream home..., Happy birthday etc.

And now, a bit like Schott's Miscellany but not in tiresome unwieldy book format, are titbits like this: a cheetah can run at 71mph, a horse at 45mph, and new 100m world record holder Usain Bolt at 25mph. Approximately.

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"It only started it as a joke. I didn't realise some people were actually going to do it... they're idiots" - Laura Morgan one of the instigators of the Facebook groups that led to a party on the Tube

What, at least in the words of Ms Morgan, started as a bit of a laugh on Facebook, ended with thousands gathering on London's Tube network to mark the last night before an alcohol ban came into place. Police arrested 17 people, six tube stations were closed, and numerous services were cancelled because of damaged trains.

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