Free Barmy Britain by Jack Crossley Page B

visited Pat Robbins’ Berkshire game hatchery he saw a ladder propped up against a 10-foot high grain bin and said: ‘I don’t want anyone climbing that ladder until it has been secured from the top’. The inspector left, somewhat discomfited, after being asked: ‘How do we get up there to secure it?’
    Sunday Telegraph
    The Queen is a confirmed non-smoker, but she is also a great libertarian and has no time for political correctness. She always makes cigarettes available for guests. She also refuses to wear a hard hat when she is riding and she refuses to wear a seatbelt when she travels by car.
    Sunday Telegraph
    After visiting Sunningdale Ladies’ Golf Club a Health and Safety official said the sand pits would have to be fenced in. The sand pits to which the official referred are known to golfers as bunkers.
    Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail
    Tracey Barnes from Claverham, Somerset, was told by the Passport Office that she could not use a photograph of her nine-month old baby son because it showed him bare-chested.
    Daily Telegraph
    Police called in to investigate the vandalising of stained glass windows at Middleton Parish Church near Rochdale didn’t get close-up pictures of the damage because ‘they didn’t have specialised ladder training’.
    Daily Mail
    Children were banned from taking part in a 2007 Llandudno Donkey Derby. Instead, cuddly toys were tied to the donkeys and the children ran behind. ‘Absolutely ridiculous,’ said donkey owner Phil Talbort. ‘The races have been held here for 40-odd years and no child has ever been injured. The donkeys enjoy the Derby so much that they’ll just go on their own.’
    The glamorous granny and bonny baby contests went ahead without any recorded fatalities.
    North Wales Pioneer and others

    Reactions to the widespread smoking ban which came into force in England on 1 July 2007 included:
At the Old King’s Arms at Horsforth, near Leeds, the landlord said: ‘We’ve had one or two regulars vowing that they won’t come back. But give it a week or two of them sitting at home staring at the wife. They’ll be back.’ The Times
In London, comedian and writer Liam Mullone bought a converted hearse and spent the day driving from pub to pub offering shelter to smokers shivering in doorways. The Times
The Daily Mail had a picture of three men smoking at the Smokers Arms in Grimsby – outside in the cold.
£2billion is the estimated cost of smoking to the NHS. £9.5billion is the profit to the Treasury made from tobacco taxes in 2006. Daily Mail
Lap dancers in a Brighton club slipped outdoors in their undies for a drag and Arabic smokers took their hubble bubble pipes outside in London. Sun
Strippers will dance at the Crown in Knaphill, Surrey, to entice smokers to keep using the pub. News of the World
Llanelli cemetery in South Wales became a no-smoking area because it is a workplace for gravediggers.
A quote from the Guardian: ‘I smoke 100 to 120 cigs a day. The ban will kill us’.
    Firemen were barred from taking down festival bunting in Ampthill, Bedfordshire because they were not allowed to use ladders to under Health and Safety rules. A local fire chief said: ‘The world’s gone mad’.
    Sun (which printed the story alongside its ‘You Couldn’t Make It Up’ logo.)

CHAPTER 11
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
    A diner at a Slug & Lettuce found a slug in her lettuce…
    Oyster grower is besieged with orders after claiming that he feeds Viagra to his bivalves.
    Independent on Sunday
    David Dimbleby revealed that he had a great aunt who added her cigarette ash to her porridge. It improved the taste, she said.
    Sun
    Eamon Butler, of the Adam Smith Institute, declares: ‘Bismarck said that if you like laws or sausages you should never watch either being made.’
    Daily Mail

    Anthony Danson, 43, won the World Pie Eating Championship in Wigan in 2005. He demolished seven large meat and potato pies in three minutes (that’s one in every 25.714 seconds). This was after eating