A Little Light Weirdness

First up is a story I have been trying to track down for over a week. Chichester Town Council in the UK were unable to remove a garbage bin that had been illegally dumped in a four-inch deep stream, because they did not have anyone qualified to use wellington boots (Chichester Observer).

The three man crew of a specially eco-refitted yacht, had to be rescued from hurricane force gales on the outward leg of a voyage billed as the "Carbon Neutral Expedition" and designed to raise awareness of green issues. Their rescuer? An oil-tanker delivering 680,000 barrels of crude (The Guardian).

The CEO of the company that supplies and installs most of the speed cameras for the UK Highways Agency has been banned from driving for six months after he was caught speeding at over 100 mph (The Times).

Sikhs serving in the UK police force are looking to develop a bulletproof turban so that they can meet the requirement to wear protective headgear of the force's armed response units without having to break their religious prohibition not to remove them (The Telegraph).

Finally, plans for a Berlin Monument of National Unity, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, had to be scrapped after the spoilsport jury rejected all the entries as too weird. Not one of the 538 submissions from members of the public, which included a 30 meter high gilded banana, a German version of the Statue of Liberty holding a Rubik's cube, a group of Smurfs dancing on a recreation of a section of the wall, and a giant statue of a man pushing a shopping trolley, was accepted. The jury has now invited contributions from selected professional artists (The National).