Every…Single…Year!

A seven-year-old girl was left with horrifying chemical burns and scars after getting a black henna tattoo on a holiday in Egypt.

Gosh! Here's a familiar story. It's like the first swallow of summer. Or the first near-drowning of summer.

Do we have chavnames and inadequate parents? Reader, of course we do...

Madison Gulliver was on holiday when her father Martin allowed her to get the temporary tattoo on her arm at a four-star hotel.

/facepalm

Mr Gulliver, 50, a Royal Mail manager from the Isle of Wight, said: 'She is potentially scarred for life after getting a black henna tattoo.

'The tattoo was done in the hotel's salon and they claim it's not the henna and that it's my daughters skin.

'She has blisters from her finger to her elbow and is in so much pain.

'We were entirely unaware of the dangers and I think they should warn of this in the brochures. 

'I think it's partly my fault because I didn't know about it, but also the fault of the salon because they are using dangerous chemicals on children.

'We would have thought that the travel agents would have had concerns about this.

'We want to get the message out to other people.'

Jeez, where to start?

The Criminal Justice System At ‘Work’…

Forsythe was known by police as an “aggressive beggar” who frequented Barking and Ilford town centres.

He was stopped by officers while riding a bicycle he had just stolen on June 8 but managed to run away from the scene.

How? Were they the recipients of the XXXL trousers, or something?

Forsythe was arrested a few weeks later by officers about a series of thefts from mailboxes and was subsequently charged but failed to turn up at court.

When he was stopped by police in Ilford Lane on July 17 for this exact offence, he kicked a police officer and lashed out while trying to evade arrest.

The next day, he was convicted of the two offences at Barkingside Magistrates’ Court and was given a three-month suspended prison sentence.

And we can see how well that worked!

He was also banned from entering Barking town centre, begging and having an open alcoholic container in a public place after being given a CBO.

However, 10 days later PS Schoorl discovered Forsythe had broken into a car after spotting him in Ilford Lane.

Then just two days after that, he was also seen begging in Ripple Road. As officers attempted to arrest Forsythe for breaking his CBO, he violently resisted and and kicked an officer. He was subsequently charged with these additional offences before being convicted last month.

And this time, he got a sentence commensurate with his crimes?

He was sentenced to four months and two weeks’ imprisonment on the same day.

Oh.

Just What Southend Needs – Yet Another Bar & Restaurant!

A proposal has been submitted to replace independent department store Ravens on Clifftown Road, Southend, with a bar and restaurant.

The applicant, SKArchitects, located in London Road, Westcliff, proposed to convert the property from into an eatery.

Oh, praise the lord! Now there'll be somewhere to grab a bite to eat in Southend!

We're saved from starvation!

The proposal was welcomed by Southend councillors who believed a bar and restaurant could drive business and more footfall to the borough.

Have the other 30-40 bars, restaurants and cafes not done that then?

The Mysterious Case Of The 'Troublemakers' In The Seaside Town...

A seaside town reportedly went into "lockdown" on Saturday night as disorder forced pubs and bars in the resort to shut.

Venues in Cromer, Norfolk, closed for the "safety of customers and staff". Some remained closed on Sunday.

The 'Mail' blames 'troublemakers'.

So is it football hooligans? Car cruisers? Mods & Rockers?

The wife of the owner of the Masala Twist restaurant said she was pinned behind a door by six women shouting abuse as she screamed that they were breaking her arm on Saturday night.

Aryun Nessa said she and her husband, together with their young daughter and nephew, had been trying to get up to 40 people to leave their restaurant after they started shouting and stealing bottles of beer.

"The door was shut on my arm - I am quite badly bruised and it's very painful," she said.

"It's a lovely town - calm, quiet, with lovely people, but after last night's experience it has got me thinking what are we doing here."

More to the point, what are they doing there?

North Norfolk MP Norman Lamb said: "Certainly from the people I've talked to in the town, what happened yesterday was pretty intolerable and it is really important that the police deal very firmly with the perpetrators of this."

Well, quite! So what have they been doing?

Supt Malcolm Cooke of Norfolk Police said: "We acknowledge there have been a number of incidents in Cromer over the weekend, which will understandably cause concern.

"However, I can assure residents these incidents have been dealt with appropriately and are of a nature routinely dealt with in towns such as Cromer on a busy August weekend."

Really? Pull the other one, Mal ol' chum, it's got bells on it. Any arrests? No?

Gosh. I wonder why?

H/T: wiggia via email

Ay Karimba!

...as Bart Simpson doesn't say:

You'd think if they'd Googled it to know it was the world's biggest lake, they'd have spelled it right.

H/T: Stephen Brown via email

"Hey, Ever Read This Book, Or Watched This Film?"

"'Tarka The...' Errr, no?"

"Never mind, you can do the obit anyway..!"

Sunday Funnies...

Today's 'Well, I never knew that!' moment...

Cheap Food = Cheap Alcohol = ?

With more than two months to go before Philip Pullman’s long-awaited new novel from the world of His Dark Materials is published, pre-orders have sent La Belle Sauvage flying up bestseller lists.

But with booksellers already slashing the cover price in half, the award-winning author has spoken out about how cheap books devalue the experience of reading, and called for an end to the “pernicious” doctrine of “market fundamentalism” if literary culture is to survive.

Well, seems the answer is 'cheap books'.

Wait.Seriously?

“It’s easy to think that readers gain a great deal by being able to buy books cheaply. But if a price is unrealistically cheap, it can damage the author’s reputation (or brand, as we say now), and lead to the impression that books are a cheap commodity and reading is an experience that’s not worth very much.”

Maybe it isn't? There's thousands upon thousands of available books. They can't all be best sellers.

Maybe some are the equivalent of junk food, some the equivalent of cheap plonk. Isn't it up to the consumer to decide which is which?

He suggested the government should coordinate a search for new ways of working, involving representatives from across the book trade.

Oh. Of course. Leave it to the government, they'll sort it out!

Pullman said that he was “not blaming any one of the parties involved in the book trade in particular” for the current situation, because “I want the whole trade to prosper”. Instead, he looked to “a simple villain – the doctrine of market fundamentalism, that the market knows best, and that a free market is the best of all possible states”.

Maybe you're right, Phil, 'ol son...

*cancels pre-order of Pullman's new book on Amazon*

That feels better!

Vale, Vale....

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

Silence the pianos...

The news we'd all been dreading was broken yesterday by Old Holborn on Twitter:

Fare thee well, wherever you are...

Then Nick Them, Don’t Whine About It!

PC Ian Risden, from the Castle Point and Rochford community policing team, was one of the police officers who attended the scene.

Soon after the incident, he tweeted to say that abuse had been hurled in his and his team’s direction when dealing with the situation.

He tweeted: “My team and officers from Essex Police roads policing unit have been trying to deal with a crash with injuries this morning in Benfleet.

“We have been subjected to abuse by a member of the public.

“This is not acceptable someone is injured and needs help.

“Disruption unavoidable.”

Is this what the police have come to? Is this what they use social media for? Whining that people were mean to them, like a teenage girl?