There are some thick bastards in Britain, which will be seen soon when there are figures released for some of the ways people have been injured and/or ended up in hospital throughout the year.

Some you would not believe, here is a few from the end of last year, along with my thoughts:

2,000 people, most of them children, were admitted to hospital after falling out of trees.

Well that’s fair enough, kids clime trees, always have done.

Another 3,000 people were admitted after coming into contact with a non-powered hand tool.

Well they should complain to Ann Summers

Powered lawnmowers landed 369 in hospital.

That makes the case for slabbing the lawn bigger.

2,718 needed medical treatment after striking against or being struck by sports equipment.

I’ll bet they were the fans who sit behind the goals at Wolves.

222 people needed treatment after being bitten by a rat.

That’s easily remedied, move out of London

35 people required medical attention after being bitten or set upon by a crocodile or alligator, venomous snakes and lizards.

Mother in Laws eh?

Another 190 people were hospitalised after coming into contact with plant thorns and spines and sharp leaves.

Sharp fucking leaves?

Four people needed treatment after accidental suffocation and strangulation while in bed.

The mind boggles

Following on from the chap who was flogging the pen that his ex-Mrs had given him the other week, here’s another classic that has ben put on Ebay after Referee Mike Riley handed Man Utd victory on a plate when they played Arsenal last week.

I like it.

You are bidding on a Mike Riley referee. He is available at this low low price after extensive use by his previous owner (one Mr A Ferguson, Old Trafford, Manchester) who has unfortunately left him in a rather worn condition. This may lead to Mr Riley missing professional fouls and potential leg breaking tackles but never fear! Simply put on your Manchester United shirt and he will blow his whistle whenever you fall over, no matter how comical the dive may be!

I have received the following glowing reports on the Mike Riley referee:

Wayne from Liverpool said:
"It didn't take me long to work out how to use Mr Riley, when you're wearing a Manchester United shirt it's as easy as ABC. For best results I’ve found that if you make your dive as dramatic as possible Mr Riley's "penalty to United" function never fails, I'd never consider going back to my old brand of referee...not now I’ve used Mr Riley"

Ruud from Holland said:
"I've been using Mr Riley for years. He's every strikers dream partner. Thanks to him I manage to stay near the top of the scoring charts. He's just so easy to use. All you have to do is fall over in the box and he'll automatically point to the spot. I recommend him to anyone. The stats speak for themselves: 8 games, 8 pens"

Unfortunately I can not guarantee Mr Riley's competence due to the amount of wear and tear incurred at Old Trafford.

I hate being sensible, but on this occasion I think the words of Birmingham’s finest sums up this whole fucking mess.

Generals gathered in their masses
just like witches at black masses
evil minds that plot destruction
sorcerers of death's construction
in the fields the bodies burning
as the war machine keeps turning
death and hatred to mankind
poisoning their brainwashed minds, oh lord yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away
they only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait 'till their judgement day comes, yeah!

Yesterday I went the whole day without shooting or kicking the shit out of anyone.

It’s not hard, if more people tried it we’d all be a lot better off.

….there was suddenly something more.

Sad day yet again today when the news broke that John Peel had passed on. John was 65 and left us after suffering a heart attack while on a working holiday in Peru with his wife Sheila.

Born in Liverpool in 1939, Peel moved to America in 1962 and got his first break in radio at Dallas's WWR. Peel moved to Radio 1 in the late Sixties, and remained with the station from its inception until his death.

"John Peel was a unique broadcaster whose influence on Radio 1 could be felt from its very first days," said BBC Director of Radio and Music Jenny Abramsky. "He nurtured musicians and listeners alike introducing them to new sounds."

In breaking the news of his death, BBC 1 interrupted programming to play Peel's favourite song, the Undertones' "Teenage Kicks."

I’ll always remember John in my earlier years, his shows were a good place to hear decent rock music and I spent many hours listening to his show on Radio 1 at ten o’clock at night. He had a passion for the offbeat, the eclectic and the obscure.

There was always a good chance that if a band was destined to make it to bigger things then you might have heard them first on a John Peel show. I never realised until today just what a lot of bands John gave the first step up the ladder to. I knew there was a lot, but I was surprised at just how many.

A great man and a fine servant to his chosen profession...Rest In Peace John.

The tribute below is from Pop Matters:

WHERE THERE HAD BEEN SOMETHING, THERE WAS SUDDENLY SOMETHING MORE:
John Peel 1939-2004

John Peel was the man. For the past 40 years he made sure that Britain didn't just listen to over-produced throwaway one-hit-wonders. He made sure we sat down and listened to the likes of David Bowie, Marc Bolan, The Sex Pistols, Jimi Hendrix, Captain Beefheart, Joy Division, the Undertones, The Fall, The Smiths.... Need I really go on? And I haven't even touched upon the sessions bands came to record for him.

John Ravenscroft was born near Liverpool in 1939 and thanks to Beatlemania and his Liverpudlian connections he managed to find work on WRR radio in Dallas after moving to the US in 1962. He returned to the UK in 1967 and joined the pirate radio station Radio London -- basically a studio in a boat built in 1944 and anchored just outside the Thames Estuary. That same year pirate-Peel joined the staff of the new BBC national pop music station Radio 1. He was the last surviving member of the original line-up before his untimely death at 65 today at 4am on holiday in Peru.

This is going to sound like a cliché, but I do remember the first time I listened to John Peel on BBC Radio 1. I was 15 and he was playing "My Biggest Thrill" by The Mighty Lemon Drops. Okay, so the Wolverhampton lads weren't the definitive band of a groundbreaking genre, but that night I decided to buy the album and indeed buy the all the records of all the artists he ever played. Needless to say I didn't manage to stick to this task, but more than any band and indeed any other music journalist, he formed my musical taste through his wit-driven critiques and complete disregard of commercial trends and the Establishment, believing as he did musical experimentation is always good regardless of the occasional mistake. We could legitimately question whether punk, reggae or hip-hop would have crossed over into the UK mainstream if it weren't for him.

John Peel said that everything changed for him when he first heard Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel", adding "where there had been nothing there was suddenly something". Well, for anyone seriously interested in popular music either side of the Atlantic, thanks to John Peel kicking open doors where there had been something, there was suddenly something more.

The man represented inclusion -- as a fledgling band you knew that in John Peel you would always get a serious audience for your demo (even if it didn't guarantee airplay), but as he demonstrated more recently with his BBC Radio 4 programme "Home Truths" (which proved that the mundane is never bland or boring by dealing with the very personal trials and tribulations of people's every day lives simply through listening), he was also deeply humanely inclusive.

So, give thanks to this man and take five minutes out to listen to his favourite song, "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones. You may or may not have heard of him, but one thing is for sure your record collection has.

You would have thought it would have been between ‘Towel’ and ‘Lounger’ wouldn’t you? But it’s not, the two favourite words in Germany are Habseligkeiten and Rhabarbermarmelade.

Habseligkeiten - which means 'property' - has been voted the most beautiful word in the German language.

And rhabarbermarmelade - 'rhubarb jam' - has been singled out as Germany's coolest word.

Germany's Goethe Institute and the German Language Council, which are the guardians of the language, organised the contest to highlight beautiful German words.

They wanted to show that the German language could be every bit as romantic and glamorous as Italian or French.

(What? “Do you want a Gondola ride in this dirty, smelly canal” or “Here, have a bite of my frog’s legs and a swig of this wine my mother has had her feet in” is not exactly what I’d call romantic or glamorous.)

Anyway, thousands of German speakers from all over the world took part and the winner was chosen after 22,000 entries from 111 countries were considered by a panel of experts.

"We wanted to reignite the joy of discovering the German language," said Limbach.

The winning word was sent by Doris Kalka, a secretary at the University of Tuebingen. The runner-up was geborgenheit - 'security' - while lieben - 'love' was third.

Rhabarbermarmelade was submitted by Frank Niedermeyer who said:

"What a wonderful feeling overtakes me when on Sunday morning I can say to my sweetie: "Barbara, could you please pass me the Rhabarbermarmelade?"

That just makes my day!"

What a twat!

I was thinking about things the other day and my mind went back to when I used to be a part time gravedigger to supplement the lousy wage I used to get as an apprentice stonemason.

I wasn’t that old when I started doing it, my Grandad used to dig graves and he taught my Dad and of course, the pair of them taught me. Before I left school, I could dig a grave to any size you wanted and often did them on my own.

My Grandad used to only dig in the Churchyard of the village that we lived in, I and my Dad would travel further a field and dig them anywhere they needed digging, if you wanted to earn any decent money at it you had to. The village we came from was only small and waiting for somebody to pop off so we could earn a few bob was just silly and going around knocking people off left, right and centre would have no doubt ended in us getting caught before long.

I remember one time in Tean Churchyard, around 1979, grave needed digging and I was unable to start it straight away because of work commitments, so I decided to dig it the night before and fill it in after the funeral on my way home from work.

It was a re-opening, (that means there was already somebody buried there and the spouse had then passed on so they were to be buried on top) so the ground was always easier to dig out than a fresh grave so it wouldn’t take long.  So there was I, seven o’clock at night, in winter, digging a grave in a churchyard with no lighting except for an extension lead which we ran from the Church to the grave. That was nothing more than a mile of cable with a plug on one end and a 100 watt light bulb on the other, nothing fancy.

Anyway, it took a little longer than I thought it would because as I reached the old coffin already in there, part of the sides of the grave fell in. BOLLOCKS! That was going to stop me getting a pint at last orders (10:30pm closing in those days), but I soldiered on.

I finished around 11, got everything nice and tidy, the sides shored up with planks and that imitation grass crap hanging down the sides, then started to pack up before chancing my arm round the back door of the boozer for an after hours pint.

Now earlier that night I thought I had heard somebody walking down the gravel path of the churchyard, but by the time I had climbed out of the grave, there was nobody in sight. Spooky! And you don’t need that in a dark churchyard.

So, work next day, clocked off and headed for the churchyard to fill in. No problems had been had, when I moved back the covers, the coffin was there and it was a good fit, so I set about filling it in, tidied up and went home for tea.

Friday night came and I was out in the local boozer when I was asked how my mate (we’ll call him Kevin to save embarrassment) was. I told them alright as far as I knew, I was waiting to meet him.

Then they told me how he had been in there earlier in the week going on about a ghost in the churchyard digging its way out of the grave. He had to pass the churchyard on his way out and he had caught sight of a light so he decided to investigate. He old me about it later that night and how he had shit himself when he saw a light over the top of a hole (he wouldn’t have been able to make out the bulb) and the soil was flying out. Of course he had added bits on saying there was eerie sounds and at another grave the same thing was going on. (bullshit) Then he arsed it as fast as he could.

He was really worried about it and it didn’t help when we would him up all night for weeks to come about ghosts and grave robbers. I even told him that I had seen things down there when digging graves and there was no way on this earth I would ever enter that churchyard at night.

Tell you what; he never used to piss about getting passed the place after that. Not sure if anyone ever told him the truth of what went on that night, I never did and its been many, many years since I last saw him. Is it time to look him up and come clean?

Strange as it seems, I used to enjoy doing that job and if it wasn’t for being disabled now, I’d have loved to have just one more go. I dug my Grandad’s grave; maybe I could have done my own and left it on stand by?