The Shropshire Pumpkin Scandal

Please enjoy this shocking piece of news from last summer. The plot thickens, though, as related in this Have I Got News for You episode. Something's rotten in the county Shropshire...

 "

Champion Shropshire pumpkin grower confesses to cheating

Monday 20th June 2011, 11:05AM BST. 

Scandal has hit a Shropshire village after the champion grower of its annual allotment association pumpkin competition claimed he filled his 186-pound prize-winning squash with water to win.

Barry Truss, 57, of Ryton Road, Beckbury, near Shifnal, has won the competition, which is held at the village’s Severn Stars pub in October, for four years in a row and walked away with a trophy and a £50 prize.

At last year’s contest, which is run by Beckbury Allotment Association, judges could scarcely believe the size of the 13-stone pumpkin, and following Mr Truss’s revelation on Saturday they were right to.

Other allotment holders have lost the plot at his cheating, and even accused Mr Truss of sabotaging rival pumpkins.

The culprit, his wife and his dog caught scheming

Mr Truss, a lorry driver, said his deception was uncovered after he was overheard telling a friend in a bar.

He said: “This kind of skulduggery goes on with everybody. I only did it for a bit of fun. I’ve been doing it for about 10 years and won it four years in a row.

“I haven’t cheated any other of the years, I haven’t had to. We’ve all had a bit of a laugh. I’m scuppered now, no-one will believe I haven’t cheated. There’s one thing for sure, I won’t get away with it again.”

Mr Truss’s wife Carol, 56, was an accessory to the swindle after she spent hours rolling the pumpkin around the garden at last October’s contest to empty it of water to stop organisers discovering his attempt to cheat.

“I was on a night out at the time when I heard that the sponsors wanted to pick it up so I phoned Carol and told her to let the water out,” added Mr Truss, who has had his allotment for 30 years. I was scared there would be a tsunami in their kitchen when they cut it open.

“I asked Carol to take the bung out of the bottom then role it around the garden until it was empty.”

Mrs Truss said: “I was rolling a giant pumpkin around the garden for hours, it was making gurgling noises.”

Mick Scriven, allotment association chairman, said today: “He’s an absolute rogue."

“As things stand he is able to take part in future competitions however there will be heightened security, and we might have to invest in some specialised equipment."

“It’s all very tongue in cheek.”

By Paul Mannion

Comments 

andrew finch
June 20, 2011 at 11:10

Every one who likes to grow big pumpkins for show cheats , they do not grow to a massive size naturally 

alex
June 20, 2011 at 12:06

Except for Jim’s on the vicar of Dibley !!!! 

Joanne Garner
June 20, 2011 at 11:53

To read our stories in full, log in to the premium 24 website….

*sigh* 

Chris
June 20, 2011 at 17:32

What’s the problem, Joanne? Do you feel you should be able to see the whole story online for free when readers of the paper have to pay 42p? The Shropshire Star is a business and can’t just give its product for free. 

Rob, Telford
June 20, 2011 at 12:49

I blame the judges – surely they could tell that it was actually a dog and not a pumpkin…. 

lisa
June 20, 2011 at 13:37

that really made me laugh rob, how funny. x

"

Source: Link

A More Sensible Approach to Journalism?

On Monday, the Guardian presented their new angle on journalism. Every day, they will  publish a newslist including upcoming articles, events and speeches and the twitter page of the journalist in charge of that particular element.

The new system is an experiment meant to last for a fortnight but which might become a permanent fixture. The idea is not only to provide insight into the inner life of the newspaper but also to preempt complains after publication. Readers will be able to tell the journalist about what to include or not include and even point out stories the newspaper might want to cover. This system is based on the paper's earlier, positive experiences with twitter.

The Newslist

Of course, not all stories will figure in the list. Some, which the paper might want to keep exclusive or which need to be kept unpublished due to source concerns, will be kept from the list. The national news editor of the Guardian, Dan Roberts, said that the risk of news leakage to competitors would be far outweighed by the benefits of reader opinion.

The scheme is known to have worked well in newspapers such as The Atlantic Wire and the Swedish Norran. Hopefully, this makes for the open, more transparent form of journalism needed after the News of the World debacle.

To visit the Guardian's newslist, click here.

Sources: The Guardian Online, last visited 12.10.2011, Pic.

Which is the Most Depressed Country on Earth?

The WIN-Gallup International Association and its Expert Group on Opinion Research have recently (22.12.2010) released what they call their Global Barometer of Hope and Despair for 2011. In this survey they have conducted interviews of more than 64.000 people from 53 countries all over the world. They have studied the relationship between income per capita and hope for the future. From their findings it is possible to determine which country is the most depressed and which is the happiest one.

Here are some of those findings:

• Western Europe is the most depressed region of the world. They have a net hope score of -23
• Africans, on the other hand, live on the happiest continent with a net hope score of a whopping 67, suggesting that wealth and material goods are not the key to happiness. The comparative levels of unrest in the two regions make this all the more astounding.
• Of the G7 countries, only Germany manages to get a score above 0. Their score of 3 is 61 more than the most depressed G7 country. More on this later.
• Afghans, with a score of 24, are a lot more happy than Americans with their measly -9. The USA heads the income per capita ranking of nations with 46.730 $. Afghanistan occupies the 52nd place on this list with 1.500 $. That is roughly 1/31 of the USA.
• The happiest country in the world is Nigeria with a score of 70. This is despite them being the fifth poorest country in the survey.
• The most depressed country in the world is...

France

Ahead of Romania (-46) and Iceland (-51) France is the most depressed country in the world with a net hope score of -58. Whether the recent passing of legislation to expel Romanian beggars was an act of jealousy is not known. Iceland has of course been through some rough patches economically, but what can a country whose population either riots, shrugs or skips work possibly have to be depressed about?

The further to the right, the richer.
The further up, the happier.

Sources: Gallup Pakistan: Global Barometer of Hope and Despair for 2011 on link, last visited 16.01.2011.
Pictures: 1, 2.

The Least Bad System, Pt. 1 - Nick Clegg's Disproportional Democracy

In a speech before the House of Commons in 1947, Winston Churchill said that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"(i) and recent events from the British Isles bring those ominously relevant words to mind.

On the 11th of May, Tory David Cameron was confirmed by the Queen as the new PM of the United Kingdom ending the hung parliament through a coalition deal with Lib Dem Nick Clegg. Indeed, the identity of the future occupants of no. 10 Downing street has hung very much in the balance as Lib Dem negotiators have spent long hours in talks with both sides. With 306 seats for the Conservatives and 258 for Labour there was no overall majority and the initiative fell to Clegg's 57 Liberal Democrat seat. Although the first-past-the-post system admittedly gives Lib Dems fewer seats than a popular count should suggest and several voters did not manage to cast their ballots due to long queues, this reveals one of the flaws which might have figured in Churchill's mind in November 1947.

Tory PM David Cameron and Lib Dem Nick Clegg

(source: BBC)

The basic principle of democracy was perhaps best put into words by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address; a "government of the people, by the people, for the people". However, this principle might be unattainable in real life. In the UK some citizens did not get to vote because of queues. Those who voted for the Tories probably did not expect them to compromise on some of their issues or abandon some of their candidates to make room for Lib Dems. Likewise, although many Lib Dem voters will rejoice in the cabinet seats gained, there is bound to be some protests in the electorate of a party which traditionally is more enamoured of Labour than Conservative ways(ii). The rub, though, is that the party, which by the current system got the fewest seats and at least in theory the fewest votes, is the one which decides the immediate political future of the country.

William Hogarth's 1758 engraving from "Chairing of the Members"

Admittedly, the UK form of democracy is an awkward one and has been for some time, as the Hogarth engraving above can satirically testify, but this political twist is not exclusive to the isles. In Switzerland for one, the concordance system has lead to constant coalition governments from 1959 onwards (iii). Coalition governments are responses to situations like the British one, where no party gets a clear majority in parliament and must broker a deal with other parties in order to achieve political legitimacy. They occur mainly in states where parliament is elected on a proportional basis rather than through electoral colleges, as is the system in the US. However, a number of issues arise in such a power constellation.

One such is the issue of voter fidelity. The coalition government should ideally be composed of as few fractions as possible. This is in order to avoid internal struggles which weaken the government by estranging their electoral bases and leave the coalition open to votes of no confidence. As is the case in the UK, future conflicts on issues like how to deal with the economy and the for now largely ignored issue of voting reforms might estrange voters and leave the road open for a Labour comeback.

Another issue which could arise is the one of political effectiveness. While coalition governments perhaps reflect the political composition of the electorate, they also present a veneer of unity. Two outcomes might result from any disagreements within such a coalition; either the issue at hand is not properly dealt with because of internal discussions, often prolonging the government's response time or the issue is not properly dealt with for the opposite reasons. The need to present a united front silences any necessary discussion and leaves the issue haphazardly handled. In both cases both government and state suffer from such occurences, and Mr. Clegg and Mr. Cameron will have to tread very carefully to avoid this in the times to come.

UK national seats, coalition on the right

(source: BBC)

Finally, coming full circle to what I above defined as the rub, there is the issue of proportional division of power. As I will discuss in the next instalment in this series, as soon as the voter has cast his vote political power has effectively moved from him to the elected representative. This means that ideally decision power in the new government should reflect the populace. In the recent UK election, however, the basics for this decision power proved to lie in the hands of the roughly 7 million Lib Dem voters. They indirectly got to choose whether the voice of the 8.6 million Labour electorate or the 10.7 million Conservative electorate should be the dominant in the UK political future. This way, each Lib Dem voted effectively ended up with more political power than any other voter.

What remains to see now is how the Lib Dems will act on issues where they politically stand closer to Labour. Will they openly oppose the Tories or will they bury their hatchet and preserve the appearance of unity? If so, for how long will the hatchet stay buried? In many aspects the political future of the UK now very much rests with the Lib Dems and their disproportionally powerful electorate.

Stay tuned for Pt.2 in this series

Endnotes:
(i) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill
(ii) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8669991.stm
(iii) http://www.vimentis.ch/d/lexikon/299/Zauberformel+.html

Sources
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/070.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8675265.stm
http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/05/11/nyheter/storbritannia/utenriks/11682523/
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/buruma37/English

Images
http://declarationsandexclusions.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345239a669e2010535d9fa82970c-800wi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8675265.stm

The Ig Nobel Prize

On the 10th of November last year Barack Obama recieved his Nobel Peace Prize with a lot of people, including himself, asking why. However, since 1991 a similar prize has been awarded, originally to discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced". Although the Ig Nobel Prize's mantra has later changed to "research that first make people laugh and then think" the prize remains essentially the same. Originally thought as a parody of the Nobel Prize, hence the wordplay on ignoble, it has become an acclaimed phenomenon in its own right with an award ceremony every year. As the 2010 ceremony is five months off, some previous winners are included below to keep us until then.

2009

Chemistry: Javier Morales et.al. for creating diamonds from tequila

Peace: Stephan Bolliger et.al. for determining by experiment what is better; being smashed over the head with a full beer bottle or an empty one.

Veterinary Medicine: Catherine Douglas et.al. for showing that cows with names produce more milk than nameless ones.

Literature: Irish police for issuing more than fifty traffic tickets to Prawo Jazdy, Ireland’s most notorius traffic offender whose Polish name means “driving licence”

2008

Peace: The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee for Non-Human Biotechonlogy and the Swiss for adopting the legal pinciple that plants have dignity.

Archaeology: Astolfo G. Mello Araujo et.al. for showing how the contents of an archaological dig site can be scrambled by a live armadillo.

2007

Literature: Glenda Browne for her study of the ways the word "the" creates problems for people wishing to arrange things in alphabetical order.

2003

Physics: Jack Harvey et.al. for their treatise "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces".

For more, see my Sources:
http://improbable.com/
http://improbable.com/ig/winners/
http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/ignoble
http://circuit.ucsd.edu/~curts/courses/ECE284_F04/references/Har02.pdf (last visited 5.5.2010)

Government Reports in Layman's Terms

(23 December 1991, Florida) This account of an aircraft accident is quoted directly from the National Transportation Safety Board report, with my translations added in [closed brackets] for clarity.


Aircraft: PIPER PA-34-200T, Registration: N47506

Injuries: 2 Fatal.

The private pilot and a pilot rated passenger [that's two pilots] were going to practice simulated instrument flight. Witnesses observed the airplane's right wing fail in a dive and crash. Examination of the wreckage and bodies revealed that both occupants were partially clothed and the front right seat was in the full aft reclining position. [the pilots had turned the co-pilot's seat into a makeshift bed] Neither body showed evidence of seatbelts or shoulder harnesses being worn. [they were lying on the "bed"] Examination of the individuals' clothing revealed no evidence of ripping or distress to the zippers and belts. [the clothes seemed to have been removed voluntarily]

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:

The pilot in command's improper in-flight decision to divert her attention to other activities not related to the conduct of the flight. [the pilots were distracting each other, so there were no one to fly the plane] Contributing to the accident was the exceeding of the design limits of the airplane leading to a wing failure. [as there were no one to fly the plane, it didn't]

As they said in "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"; "that was seen as a nice way to go"

Blast from the Past: "World's Wittiest Lonely Hearts Ads"

In 2006 I added this news story to my MSN space. It bears revisiting:

World's Wittiest Lonely Hears Ads

A collection of witty and eccentric lonely hearts ads from the London Review of Books have been brought together for a new book.

David Rose, the review's advertising director who launched the personal ads in 1998, is behind They Call Me Naughty Lola.

It features some of the most brilliant and often absurd ads from what's been billed as the world's funniest - and most erudite - lonely-hearts column.

Here's a selection of the funniest, beginning with the one which inspired the book's title:

'They call me naughty Lola. Run-of-the-mill beardy physicist (M, 46).'

'I've divorced better men than you. And worn more expensive shoes than these. So don't think placing this ad is the biggest comedown I've ever had to make. Sensitive F, 34.'

'List your ten favourite albums... I just want to know if there's anything worth keeping when we finally break up. Practical, forward thinking man, 35.'

'Employed in publishing? Me too. Stay the hell away. Man on the inside seeks woman on the outside who likes milling around hospitals guessing the illnesses of out-patients. 30-35. Leeds.'

'I like my women the way I like my kebab. Found by surprise after a drunken night out and covered in too much tahini. Before long I'll have discarded you on the pavement of life, but until then you're the perfect complement to a perfect evening. Man, 32, rarely produces winning metaphors.'

'My ideal woman is a man. Sorry, mother.'

'Your buying me dinner doesn't mean I'll have sex with you. I probably will have sex with you, though. Honesty not an issue with opportunistic male, 38.'

'Not everyone appearing in this column is a deranged cross-dressing sociopath. Let me know if you find one and I'll strangle him with my bra. Man, 56.'

'Are you Kate Bush? Write to obsessive man (36). Note, people who aren't Kate Bush need not respond.'

'Stroganoff. Boysenberry. Frangipani. Words with their origins in people's names. If your name has produced its own entry in the OED then I'll make love to you. If it hasn't, I probably will anyway, but I'll only want you for your body. Man of too few distractions, 32.'

'Ploughing the loneliest furrow. Nineteen personal ads and counting. Only one reply. It was my mother telling me not to forget the bread on my way home from B&Q. Man, 51.'

'Mature gentleman, 62, aged well, noble grey looks, fit and active, sound mind and unfazed by the fickle demands of modern society seeks...damn it, I have to pee again.'

'Slut in the kitchen, chef in the bedroom. Woman with mixed priorities (37) seeks man who can toss a good salad.'

'Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53, seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.'

'Romance is dead. So is my mother. Man, 42, inherited wealth.'

Source: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2057296.html, last visited 23.2.2010