LOOKALIKE

(Left) Laurel and Hardy straight man (Right) president of Belarus

Has anyone else noticed the striking similarity between Aleksander Lukashenko, the cheery dictator of Belarus recently accused of rigging his country's elections, and the much-loved Scottish actor James Finlayson, who played straight man in scores of Laurel and Hardy films?

I wonder if by any chance they are related?

WRONG END

OF THE STICK

A pilot flying from Liverpool, the birthplace of The Beatles, to Londonderry, the birthplace of Irish Protestant marching, mistook a British military air base for the city's civilian airport and proceeded to land his jet there - much to the surprise of the watching squaddies.

A statement from the airline Eirjet tried to play down the incident by saying it "involved the aircraft landing at a runway exactly in line" with the City of Derry civil airport.

That's a bit like Dick Cheney claiming there'd been a 'decoy malfunction' when he mistakenly injected buckshot into his hunting chum.

The fact that the two airports are six miles apart and the Ballykelly base normally has only army helicopters and light aircraft on its apron might have been another clue.

One bemused passenger said: "The pilot apologised and said, 'We may have arrived at the wrong airport'. "Everyone started laughing and thought it was a joke, then I saw for myself when I looked out and saw army officers everywhere."

The 39 passengers were taken by coach from the base to their intended destination.

Eirjet said it would begin a full investigation, working in consultation with the UK's Department of Transport, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Irish Aviation Authority over the border in the Irish Republic.

Don't be surprised if you hear the airline in question has now been nicknamed 'Wherejet'.

On a more serious note, if the same thing had happened at a US air base, it might not have had a happy ending. How many US base commanders would sit back and watch while an unscheduled, unannounced civilian airliner made an approach toward their territory?

FIRST

BRAZILIAN

IN SPACE

QUEER TIMES

FOR THE

STRAIGHT GUYS

Hot on the heels of 'Brokeback Mountain', the South Korean film industry has come up with a new movie about..... two gay clowns.

Is this going to be a new trend in the mainstream media? There have always been plenty of gay people in the film industry, but they were either in the closet or behind the camera.

Now it looks as though we're about to have the amusing spectacle of straight male actors clamouring to play the part of a homosexual in order to advance their career. (I was going to mention Philip Hoffman in 'Capote', but Truman Capote was so camp that really doesn't count).

No matter if the script is ropey or the direction is pedestrian, as long as there's a bit of 'man love' in it, it's sure to be a hit.

It's all a bit of a reversal from the way Hollywood etc was run in the past.

What next?

'Bareback Mountie' - the story of forbidden love between two Royal Canadian Police?

'Stickleback Hillock' - the tale two middle-aged fishermen brought together by their passion for carp?

DIM BRITAIN

There can be no more savage indictment of the poor educational standards currently plaguing the UK than the following gem from the website of The Times in London.

"Only days after agreeing to help bail out the ailing Chinese Super League, the new British sponsor has had to apologise to the people of China for referring to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as separate countries on its website.

"The new sponsor, iPhox, also scored an own-goal when it listed the language of Taiwan as Taiwanese and failed to list Chinese as a language anywhere on its site, other points that angered the Chinese Football Association and led to an outpouring of rage in mainland internet chatrooms.

"The internet telephone company temporarily closed down sections of its Chinese-language site to make changes, and carried an apology on its homepage."

Considering that Britain's supposed to be a knowledge-based economy, it's a pity that whoever wrote the website copy seems unable to use a simple research tool such as Google.

Are we now paying the price for years of lip service to social equality in UK education rather than the pursuit of academic excellence?

I bet whoever wrote that website rubbish knows the names of all the house mates in the last series of Big Brother or all the tracks on the Sugar Babes' album, yet appears to know diddly squat about the world he/she inhabits.

'Mr' Blair goes on about "education, education, education" yet sends his own children to state schools so elite they are private in all but name.

It's a typical mealy-mouthed 'New Labour' lawyers' response to a social issue. It's a question of 'do as I say, not as I do'.

Britain's governing class is quite happy to let the ordinary people play Russian roulette with their children's futures by educating them in the hit and miss state sector, while most of the great and the good take no such chances.

JOB TITLES OF THE WEEK

1) Dr Andy Nazarechuk, dean of the Singapore campus of University of Nevada-Las Vegas William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration.

2) Dr Chris Roberts, professor of strategy in the Hotel and Tourism Management Department at the University of Massachusetts' Isenberg School of Management

BELARUS

ELECTIONS

'FREE AND FAIR'

MAD WORLD

Yesterday, while out jogging in a vain attempt to fight off the advance of a middle aged beer belly, I was listening to the BBC World Service when I heard an interview of such silliness and banality that it actually became grimly fascinating.

A young woman was speaking in the instantly recognisable glottal tones of what's known in the UK as Estuary English - a sort of mock cockney mixed with your mother's telephone voice plus a dash of Jamaican intonation - found mainly within the region of Greater London known as the Thames Estuary. An example of an Estuary English word is 'innit', that can either be used as a rhetorical question at the end of a sentence, to mean 'isn't it?' or is used as a kind of way marker during speech in place of a full stop or pause.

The young woman was telling an equally excited young man about how she had been recruited into the Sugar Babes, Britain's latest throwaway all-girl singing combo in the tradition of the Spice Girls etc.
She explained how a producer had asked her to come up to London but wouldn't tell her why.

On arrival, she was whisked into a recording studio and asked to sing some vocals for the band, and became so excited by the news she couldn't stop shaking.

She went on to recount how she was then kept in London for FOUR days and barred from 'phoning her mother with the good news, as a publicity blackout of the earth-shattering event was considered of the utmost importance. She wasn't allowed to phone her boyfriend either. The young woman seemed to think this was both amusing and perfectly reasonable.

I know that in the bonkers world we live in today I shouldn't be surprised that being in a pop band is considered more important than 'honouring your father and mother' as the Bible puts it. But if you or I held a young girl incommunicado in a big city for four days I think we'd be hearing from the police rather than the BBC.

QUEEN ELIZABETH
PULLS OUT OF
COMMONWEALTH
GAMES

Queen - suffering repetitive handshake injury

VISITING
BRAZIL PRESIDENT
KEEPS QUIET ON FATAL
UK POLICE SHOOTING