Blundering Barclays bank staff go home... and FORGET to lock up or set the alarms

They say that a fool and his money are soon parted! Can you believe that a bank as big as Barclays could do something as stupid as leave their doors open and go home?

"Bank customers had to stand guard after a branch of Barclays was left unlocked for almost four hours. Even the cashiers' service area and the route to the vault were left open to passers-by in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, on Saturday afternoon. The blunder was only noticed when a customer went into the branch to withdraw cash and found no staff present. Customer Lesley Phillips and two other customers investigated further and discovered the entire bank in The Broadway had been left unlocked."

Do they really deserve our money? Does this kind of ineptitude really warrant a bank like this one that makes 3.5 billion every quarter to be called a "major high street bank"?

Stars who hated each other on set

We are used to seeing politicians in the chamber of the House of Commons behaving like spoilt schoolboys, footballers putting in transfer requests in order to get attention and a payrise, or Big Bother contestants acting like they were 5 years old, but we rarely see the feuds between A List actors which can often spill over onto the set with disastrous consequences. On the whole though, lavish trailers and massive paychecks help smooth over any niggles, but sometimes the angst gets too much for these pampered princes and princesses. They may be actors, but even the most experienced stars can’t hide their genuine dislike of fellow performers.

Here are a few curtesy of Yahoo Movies blog:

Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett
The legendary Harrison Ford didn’t take too kindly to whippersnapper Josh Hartnett on the set of ‘Hollywood Homicide’. Ford reportedly referred to Harnett as a "punk", with the young actor retaliating by calling the veteran “an old fart”. As a result the pair barely made eye contact during filming and continuously picked on each other at press junkets. The film flopped.

Megan Fox and Michael Bay
Megan Fox shot herself in the foot when she slammed ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ director Michael Bay for focusing on special effects and not acting (probably for the best as it starred Shia LaBeouf and, well, Megan Fox). Bay responded with; “That’s Megan Fox for you. She says some very ridiculous things because she’s 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do. You roll your eyes when you see statements like that”. He then didn’t cast her in the next ‘Transformers’ film. Whoops.

Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey
The two came to despise each other after a massive row on the set of ‘Red Dawn’. When Grey was informed that Swayze would play her on-screen romance in the iconic ‘Dirty Dancing’, she was so upset that she almost pulled out. Eventually though they had a deep heart-to-heart and made friends. Years later Grey broke down into tears on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ as she remembered her time with the late actor.

Bill Murray and Lucy Liu
Comedy actor Bill Murray couldn’t even raise a smile whilst filming ‘Charlie’s Angels’, as he took a serious dislike to Lucy Liu. It was rumored that Murray thought Liu had an out-of-control ego and he refused to make any appearances in support of the movie when it came out in 2000. He also turned down reprising the role in the sequel, ‘Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle’. In retrospect a good call.

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
The granddaddy of Hollywood feuds - Bette Davis and Joan Crawford absolutely loathed one another. While filming ‘What Happened to Baby Jane?’, Davis actually kicked Crawford in the scene when she pushed her down the stairs. In return, when Bette had to drag Joan off her bed, Joan put on a weighted diver's belt underneath her costume, making her heavier to drag. Naturally, the duo also pitched in with some a-grade bitching. Discussing Davis' hair, Crawford said: “I don't understand these Poodle cuts on elderly women”. Davis retorted by saying Crawford was “single handedly responsible for the syphilis outbreak in America.” Meow.

Sir Anthony Hopkins and Shirley MacLaine
Anthony Hopkins thought the boisterous Shirley MacLaine was overbearing and was constantly annoyed with her while filming ‘A Change of Seasons’ in 1980. When asked what she was like, he fumed “she was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with." Don’t sugarcoat it Ant!

Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes
Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes didn’t exactly see eye to eye by the time ‘Romeo & Juliet’ finished filming. Danes grew tired of DiCaprio's onset pranks, branding him "immature", whilst he found her uptight and prudish. Not exactly star-crossed lovers.

Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren was cool and seductive while Marlon Brando was edgy and angry. Inevitably, when the two came together during the shooting of ‘A Countess from Hong Kong’ in 1966, the fur began to fly. A feud broke out after he asked her, right in the middle of shooting a love scene: "did you know you have hairs up your nostrils?" Smooth.

Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore
This feud during filming of ‘Red Planet’ began when Kilmer got annoyed over a fancy exercise machine Sizemore demanded the production ship from England to the set in Australia. Eventually the two hated each other so much Kilmer would reportedly not come out of his trailer if Tom was on the set. Many of their scenes together were even filmed over shoulders of photo doubles, if we are to believe some reports. Also, Kilmer reportedly refused to say Sizemore's character's name, substituting it for things like "Hey, you!".

Asda brings back pounds and ounces

If like me, you can remember the good old days when fruit and veg was sold using imperial measurements as opposed to metric, then you'll look back on those days with a sense of fondness and even nostalgia. Now, sixteen years after shops in the UK were required to display weights in grams, Asda has said it will return to the imperial measures of pounds and ounces.

From Monday, Asda shoppers can once again buy strawberries by the pound, with plans to roll this out to other fruit and vegetables if it proves popular.

"We have had a steady stream of shoppers asking us to put imperial measurements back on packs as they are still confused with how much they get in grams," explained Andy Jackson, Asda's strawberry buyer.

"We have taken the common-sense approach and are trialling putting pounds and ounces back on our strawberries this summer season and see what the response is. No one wants to order a litre of beer in the pub, so why do we have to buy 453.39g of strawberries?"

The UK moved over to metric units for most items in 1995, with the final switch — loose goods — being made on 1 January 2000. The only exceptions allowed being pints of beer, cider and milk (588ml) and the Troy ounce for precious metals (31.1g).

But the move proved highly unpopular. One grocer — Steve Thorburn — was found guilty of selling a pound of bananas using Imperial scales after the January 2000 cut off. The public rushed to his aid, sending more than £300,000 to his defence fund, however he was still found guilty of the offence despite several appeals — receiving a six-month conditional discharge.

Anyone for a punnet of strawberries?

Sad people live longer - Downside of being too happy

It can be quite annoying being constantly told by so-called experts or scientists that we are too fat, don't exercise enough, need to let our feelings out more bla, bla, bla. Now we hear that being happy all the time is not always a good thing as too much happiness can lead to an early death, a study found.

The study found that children rated as "highly cheerful" by teachers died younger than their less cheerful classmates. People who are extremely happy tend to indulge in more risky behaviour such as taking drugs, drinking too much, driving too fast or even using up their life savings without thinking through the consequences of their actions.

And that's not the only downside to being overly joyous. Writing in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, a team of psychologists say that people who are relentless in the pursuit of happiness can end up being worse off than when they started.

And people who read magazine articles with tips on how to be happy felt worse after watching a happy film, compared with those who were not given any mood boosting advice. This was probably because they had higher expectations of being happy, and when this did not happen, they felt cheated and disappointed, the researchers explained.

I wonder if I should mention this to my wife? Er...um...perhaps not. I don't want my life to become a misery!

'Black women are less attractive than others': Controversial LSE psychologist sparks backlash with his 'scientific' findings

What man could be so stupid as to slag off a race of women? It's hard enough for a man to find a good woman these days so why make it harder for yourself? Remember, never make a woman feel bad about herself. She'll find ways to make sure your life is hell!!

A controversial psychologist has caused outrage after publishing an article claiming black women are less attractive than those of other races. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, attempts to justify his theory using scientific methods in an astonishing blog post on Psychology Today.

Using findings from a study of physical attractiveness by Add Health, he claims the results show that 'black women are... far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women. He then tries to come up with reasons for his perception of the report.

'Black women are on average much heavier than nonblack women,' he says. However, this is not the reason black women are less physically attractive than nonblack women.' Kanazawa also uses genetic reasoning to try to add some weight to his theory.

'Because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races,' he says.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388313/LSE-psychologist-Satoshi-Kanazawa-claims-black-women-attractive.html#ixzz1MjF3p6cB

So, having attacked black women because he says they are too fat, he then goes on to say their unattractiveness is because of mutations in their genes. Um...er...time to find a quiet academic post in Chile methinks!!

Johnny Depp is revealed as the Queen's cousin (20 times removed)

You couldn't make this stuff up! Johnny Depp is revealed as the Queen's cousin (20 times removed). We've heard that Lady Gaga is related to Madonna, while Obama counts Brad Pitt amongst his unlikely distant cousins. Now it has been revealed that Johnny Depp shares his ancestors with none other than the Queen. The pair are cousins, 20 times removed, a genealogist researching Depp's family tree has revealed. Don't see much of a resemblance myself!



Hollywood actor Depp, 47, is descended from the Deppes family - French Huguenots living in 14th Century England. Dr Nick Barratt, who works on the British version of Who Do You Think You Are?, told the Sunday Mirror: 'You have to go back more than 500 years to reach the point where his ancestors become royal.'



So now we know!

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1387261/Johnny-Depp-revealed-Queens-cousin-20-times-removed.html#ixzz1Mh8WDKFE

New smartphone privacy alert as Android handsets found to be prone to leaking data

More fears about privacy have surfaced this week. Millions of smartphones which use the Android software promoted by Google are a security risk, it was claimed yesterday. Researchers found that criminals can tap into the transfer of information between the phones and the internet, gaining access to personal data. The discovery was made by security experts at the University of Ulm in Germany.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1388107/New-smartphone-privacy-alert-Android-handsets-prone-leaking-data.html#ixzz1Mgs2FFgd