A STUDENT who spent seven years collecting Butaan lizard excrement in the Philippines for a PhD thesis is suing his university after it was thrown away. Daniel Bennett is taking legal action against Leeds University following the blunder which led to 5st 7lb of excrement being incinerated.
“My team and I studied the animals by searching the forest floor for their distinctive faeces,” said Bennett. “By the beginning of the third year of my PhD, I knew more about lizard faeces than I had ever thought possible. Returning to Leeds from fieldwork, I was surprised to find my desk space occupied by another student and to see that photographs of my daughter, my girlfriend and my favourite lizards had been removed from the wall.
“My personal effects had been carefully stowed in boxes, but there was no sign of my 35kg bag of lizard sh*t.”
The university said sorry – “lessons have been learnt,” said a spokesman – and offered £500 compensation.
*****
Update: That dream job on a Great Barrier Reef island, mentioned here twice before, has attracted an interesting applicant – Osama bin Laden.
Well, if you search YouTube using “Island Reef Job Application by Osama” that’s what you might believe. In the cleverly subtitled 30-second clip, “bin Laden” describes the qualities that make him the best choice. He boasts of a “love of the outdoors and sandy areas”, being “good at delegating” and “organising large-scale events”.
He’s up against more than 10,000 other applicants; closing date remains February 22nd.
*****
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has denied attending a secret Abba tribute band concert. He prefers The Beatles, said his spokesman. Bjorn Again, an Abba tribute band, claimed they did a private gig for the him and eight friends at a Russian holiday resort. But Putin’s spokesman has taken the unusual stop of writing to the Times (of London) to deny the reports.
“I don’t know who their audience consisted of, but Vladimir Putin was not one of them,” wrote Dmitry Peskov. “Mr Putin is more of a Beatles fan than an Abba one, as you can see if you read an interview by Andrew Lloyd Webber with Mr Putin on our website.”
Magpie assumes that his favourite Fab Four number is Back in The USSR'cos Georgia's always on his mind. . .
*****
US president Barack Obama got there first but Kazakhstan’s prime minister, Karim Kajymqanuly Massimov, really cuts the mustard when it comes to sticking it to the bankers. The head of government of the central Asian gulag, sorry state, has capped bank executives salaries at 700,000 tenge (€3,670) per month in order, he says, to prevent social unrest.
Sounds about right for here. . .
*****
This week’s further disclosures about dodgy dealings between banks trying to hoodwink us as to the real state of their balance sheets brought back for one Magpie aficionado happy memories of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward five-year plan launched in 1958. Readers of a certain age will recall that the massively successful GLF was responsible for the famine deaths of between 20 and 43 million people who were, nonetheless, joyously happy to sacrifice themselves for the cherubic mass murderer of Beijing. The link? Anglo’s balance sheets now seems to our reader not unlike those giant papier-mâché pigs paraded through Chinese streets, to be admired as evidence of enhanced agricultural productivity by the Chairman’s devoted peasants.
*****
And finally, a little perspective. . .
A Florida man has been charged for dialling 911 to complain Burger King had run out of lemonade. Jean Fortune (66) did it because he was “unhappy with his order”.
He became angry when he received it and threatened to call police. The cashier told him to “go ahead”. He did. They came. He’s due in court any day now. . .