Drivers penalised for eating, drinking, making merry; Insurers charge up to 40% more for 'carelessness'

Middle-class drivers, including those with young families and mortgages, are the latest target of faceless insurance companies and unscrupulous traffic police intent on wantonly punishing anyone found 'breaking the law'.

Drivers caught eating an apple, writing a novel or knitting while in control of a vehicle face rises of up to £200 on their insurance premiums.

Over 25,000 unsuspecting motorists are convicted of supposedly 'driving without due care and attention' every year and punished by the courts with massive £60 fines and penalty points on their otherwise clean licences. And many devious insurers use driving convictions for distracted behaviour - so-called CD10 offences - as an excuse to raise already cripplingly high premiums.

The insurance rises are in line with a Government crackdown on supposed 'careless driving', which can also include such harmless past-times as playing scrabble, tuning the wireless or applying make-up whilst driving.

Now ministers are even considering plans to allow police to stop motorists deemed to be distracted and hand out humiliating on-the-spot fines, while other more dangerous - often foreign - motorists drive past pointing and laughing.

Nigel Humphries of the Association of British Drivers said: 'They started upping the premiums for speeding but clearly this is not enough. There is no evidence people caught eating an apple or swigging water and given three points are less likely to do it again. Insurance firms need to produce evidence which shows these drivers are more risky before they hike up the premiums.'

Recent examples of over zealous officers stopping responsible motorists minding their own business include the case of Ediri Tsekiri, a 36 year old researcher, who was stopped by police near her detached suburban home in Liverpool for not being in proper control of her vehicle.

And last month, Gary Sanders was stopped by police in the same city - for laughing while driving.

A driver said: 'It's health and safety gorn mad. You can't even take a quick nap on the motorway now without some jumped up copper accusing you of careless driving. It's just an excuse to wring even more money from us hard done by motorists. The Daily Mail is doing a great job in exposing how silly these accusations of dangerous driving are - careless driving never hurt anyone.'

Although driving without due care and attention has been a criminal offence since 1988, and insurers have levied higher premiums on drivers with convictions or endorsements for over three decades, sources confirmed that it was all the fault of the increasingly prevalent nanny state under New Labour and that Gordon Brown probably loves it.

World to end in three years, sort of, maybe, say experts

Nearly everybody will die on September 22nd 2012, it emerged today.

Especially you.

In a chilling and factually accurate account of the future, Michael Hanlon, the Daily Mail's science editor, described in graphic detail the full horror of the catastrophe awaiting Britain in just three year's time.

'When it comes', intoned Hanlon, who posesses GCSEs in both physics and chemistry, '[it] will be beautiful at first. Pillars of incandescant green writhe like gigantic serpants across the skies. Sheets of orange race across the horizon during the most spectacular display of the aurora borealis seen in southern England for 153 years.'

But the stratospheric light show will be little more than a deadly precursor to months of cataclysmic horror as our beloved life-giver, the Sun, begins hurling gigantic globules of white hot plasma towards our innocent planet.

While millions gaze upwards in wonder at the many coloured lights painting trails across our normally grey sky, high energy particles will have already begun wreaking havoc with our electrical grids, leaving vast swathes of Britain without power.

Hanlon, a fan of dramatic page breaks, continued forbodingly: 'By midnight, every mobile network is down and the internet is dying. Television - terrestrial and satellite - blinks off the air.

Radio is reduced to a burst of static.

By noon the following day, it is clear something terrible has happened and the civilised world has plunged into chaos.'

And if the terrifying new revelations seem like the ramblings of a disturbed street prophet with a cardboard sign reading 'Teh ends are ny!' dangling from his neck, think again: Hanlon's evidence is based on an article that appeared a month ago in The New Scientist - a clever person publication produced by real science journalists.

Improving upon the original piece by copying and pasting the first two paragraphs before writing eleven additional enitrely imagined scenes of blood-curdlingly exciting death and destruction, Hanlon described a post-apocalyptic landscape unimagined by the timid mind of the original author: 'By the end of 2013, 100,000 Europeans have died of starvation. The dead go unburied, the sick untreated.'

Although the article as it appears in New Scientist contains no estimate of the cost to human life, Hanlon's forecasts are 'probably accurate', said an insider.



The grim vision follows other real cataclysms that actually happened after being predicted in The Daily Mail, such as the Millennium Bug, a 50ft tall woodlouse that wreaked havoc in several major British cities as it crushed skyscrapers and bridges, scurrying around in search of a giant warm, damp crevice in which to nest, and the black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider which swallowed Earth shortly before it was shut down by health and safety inspectors.

Even more worryingly, the solar superstorm is not without precedent. As Hanlon, who has done his research, explained: 'It is something that has happened before - not that long ago - and indeed has the potential to arrive every 11 years.'

In 1989 a solar flare caused a stream of stellar plasma to enter the Earth's atmosphere, leaving nearly 6 million Canadians without electricity for almost half a day as magnetic storms affected Quebec's power grid.

And although Hanlon acknowledged that, actually, 'it may not happen in 2012' or even 2023, ' the year of the next solar maximum', he recommended that we should all be really, really worried and start stockpiling candles right now.

A scientist said: 'This is not just rampant fear mongering or exaggeration, and won't come back to make the writer look silly when nothing happens in three years because the Mayans predicted the same thing a thousand years ago, and everyone knows they did all sorts of mystical stuff and rode around in chariots literally made by the gods themselves. Do you think you know better than them? No, didn't think so.'

Ex-actress looks thirty years older after thirty years

She was once a pin-up for teenage boys and frustrated middle-aged men dissatisfied with their wife's nightly 'headache' everywhere.

With legs that ended at her armpits and sensational denim hotpants - not to mention exquisite breasts and an attractively simple demeanor - the original Daisy Duke became a worlwide sex symbol and the only reason to watch substandard 70s TV series Dukes of Hazzard.

But incredible new photographs reveal that Catherine Bach, who played Duke for six years, seems to have aged at least 30 years since the TV show first aired in 1979.

Since having selfishly had a child in the 90s, Bach has 'piled on the pounds' and now just looks fat and a bit old. The shocking pictures also show that Bach's once pert bosom appears to have drooped as a result of aging - it would appear she has not deemed it necessary to pay out for even the most essential cosmetic surgery.

But it wasn't all bad news for one mid-market national newspaper - the startling news of Bach's battle with the forces of aging provided a superb opportunity to reprint more photographs of Jessica Simpson, who squeezed herself into the Daisy Duke's denim shorts for the 2005 Hollywood remake of the Dukes of Hazzard. The change of actress sparked rumours at the time that Bach might already have aged by a number of years as she had not been approached to reprise the role that made her a star.

Simpson, who came under fire for 'larding up' a bit last year, also has nice legs, a pleasing bottom and great breasts and accounts for a large proportion of traffic to dailymail.co.uk.

Thirty humourless readers left critical comments underneath the Mail's expose of Bach's grotesque tubbiness but, inexplicably, they had all disappeared by the morning. Insiders have blamed 'internet goblins' for the fault.

Don't miss The Quail's exclusive special report in 2039 on Jessica Simpson's shock battle with the aging process!

COMMENT: The perils of criticising the police

"Let the Quail say in a loud and shrill hooting fashion that we are increasingly concerned about the witch-hunt being whipped up by pinkos against the police.

Take the glorifying of benefit-scrounging former heroin addict Nicola Fisher, who at the heat of battle between police and rioters viciously hit a police officer's fist with her face and insubordinately obstructed his baton as he attempted to swat a rather nasty looking bee that was troubling him.

But, even if the officer did use disproportionate force against Miss Fisher, is it any more acceptable that she, a scummer, has made thousands by selling her story through the dubious offices of Max Clifford?

The logical answer would be yes, it is more acceptable for someone to make money from something than it is to beat unarmed, law abiding citizens with weapons.

But in fact, it is not."

Now 'Elf 'n' safety bans English Civil War

An 'istorical battle re-enactment on the grounds of a stately 'ome 'as been cruelly censored by officious 'elf and safety stormtroopers fearing that the sound of gunfire might frighten local badgers, or something.

Instead of using gunpowder and live ammunition, musketeers from the English Civil War Society were forced to shout ‘Bang!’, 'Pew pew!', 'Blammo!' and various other gun noises when they fired during the event at the Clarke Hall living museum in Wakefield. The actors were also banned from skewering 'enemies' with their bayonets in case they died.

Sue Riley, a member of the Sir Thomas Lunsford's Regiment of Foote said: 'We were told that because the lead windows in Clarke Hall are so old there was a concern that the shock waves from the guns would smash them. They didn't want us to bring the house down.'

A do-gooding lilly-livered kill joy council spokesman claimed that the sound of gunfire might disturb patients at Wakefield Hospital, which is next to Clarke Hall.

'This was done in the interests of public safety and to protect nearby windows at the historic hall', he said timidly, speaking from within a big ball of cotton wool. 'I just hate anyone having fun of any kind', he may or may not have added.

A source said: 'It's 'elf 'n' safety gorn berserrrrrk! Britain's bonkers innit? Argh!'

'Victim' of G20 police brutality 'a bit of a scummer', says newspaper

A woman who claims she was left 'black and blue' after being struck by a police officer during the 'Police Whacking Day' event at the G20 protests has demanded taxpayers' cash as compensation for hurt feelings and a couple of bruises.



Nicky Fisher, 35, was seen hurling abuse at a police sergeant in a video of the incident, which took place at a vigil to mark the death of Ian Tomlinson, who died of natural causes on the previous day.

The officer, who was so terrified of violent attacks from the likes of 5"1 Miss Fisher that he felt it necessary to hide the identification number on his shoulder pads, has since been suspended pending further investigation.

But Fisher's reputation was under scrutiny last night it emerged that she 'has faced allegations of shoplifting in the past' and is therefore probably a criminal who deserved it anyway. She even admitted that: 'There wasn't any bruising or marks on my face'.

The Daily Mail also exclusively revealed that Fisher lives in sin with her boyfriend 'in a rundown basement flat' which, shockingly, 'faces a council estate'. Mail journalists who visited her residence to demand a detailed statement the morning after her attack were startled to find 'an anti-fur slogan and a 2003 Glastonbury Festival sticker' stuck shabbily on her front door, suggesting a certain distasteful belief in wooly-minded silliness. It is understood that she has time to worry about polar bears dying and trees suffocating because she is unemployed and relies on state benefits to fund her wayward lifestyle.

Her boyfriend, 'an overweight young man in an England football shirt', refused to comment or even tell reporters his name. Neighbours said the 'couple' have lived in the flat for around ten years, and Fisher 'did not appear to have a full-time job'.

It has since emerged that Fisher is now being represented by public relations guru Max Clifford, agent to stars such as St Jade of Goody, Simon Cowell and Tony Martin. She is believed to be attempting to negotiate a £50,000 deal for selling her story to a national newspaper, after a video of the incident conveniently appeared on Youtube. It is not known how a sub-working class person like Fisher can afford Clifford's services, which can cost up to £100,000 per day, but insiders have suggested that 'something fishy' is probably going on.

A fed up British taxpayer praised the police's stoicism in dealing with undesirables such as Fisher:

One conservative letter writer said: 'Ha! I suspected as much!'

* Update *

Since Miss Fisher's shady background was originally reported, it has come to light that she is also a 'former drug addict'. Typical.

So what is this 'blogosphere' thing anyway? An analysis of blogging as seen by mainstream media

Readers from the real world may have been perplexed by the attention given to the so-called 'blogosphere' this past weekend, and left wondering why they should care about it.

The short answer is they shouldn't.

The British blogosphere is comprised entirely of frustrated writers bitter about their inability to land jobs at real newspapers, sitting in their mother's basement, stabbing endlessly away at their computer keyboards in the middle of the night writing cretinous, infantile forums of abuse dressed up as argument in the hope that people will read their inconsequential, misinformed diatribe.

Such hopes are miguided and futile. People don't care what these vicious, nihilistic bloggers have to say because all the news and comment worth reading is already published by the mainstream national press. Granted, print journalism is usually several days behind the blogs, and presents an often strangled version of reality, but, ultimately, it is written by real journalists unfettered by the mindless intricacies of the internet - a dying medium if ever there was one. These are the people to trust, not square-eyed internet zombies removed from reality by their 'modems' and 'processors'.

A recent example of this growing dichotomy of reportage between the real newspapers and the blogs is the fine work done by the Evening Standard - the Daily Mail's London edition - which exclusively broke the news that brave police officers tending Ian Tomlinson in the moments before his death had been bombarded with bricks by evil anti-capitalist demonstrators at the G20 protests. It is telling that not a single blog noted this critically important event - presumably because many of the bloggers themselves are evil anti-capitalists desperate to cover up the vile behaviour of their comrades.

Indeed, those who live online are destined to die online, and if you delve deep enough into the 'blogosphere' you find a world that’s very happy to be separated from the real one. So divorced is this new breed of citizen journalist from reality that they even consider Twitter - the boring website beloved of celebrities who want to tell the world what kind of muffin they're eating - to be a useful tool for reporting news and monitoring 'buzz' around particular current affairs. How absurd!

It is around this ridiculous, irrelevant mire of online tittle-tattle and rumour that the events of this Easter weekend spun.

Ironically, the now-defunct, directionless British blogosphere was invented by leading conservative pundit Iain Dale in 1984. His website, Iain Dale's Little Black Book of Westminster was an immediate success and continues to attract nearly 12 billion absolute unique visits every month. It has been hailed as 'compelling and entertaining' by Piers Morgan but it is noteworthy that Dale has attempted to distance himself from the murky waters of the blogosphere through frequent appearances in national newspapers and on television. It is precisely because of his detachment from the reality of blogging that he has been shortlisted for the prestigeous Orwell Prize for blogging.

But it is testament to how low the blogosphere has sunk that Dale was barely involved in the weekend's scandal, despite repeated shouts of 'I want to play!'. Instead, it was former Labour spin-doctor Derek 'Dolly' Draper whose blog, LabourList, caters for 60 million people, at the centre of attention for illiciting those fateful emails from his Number 10 pal, Damian McBride.



However, if it hadn't been for crusading, swivel eyed, right-wing, sleaze-wallowing blogger Guido Fawkes, Draper's foul attempts to smear the Tories would never have come to light and bored the British public to tears in the first place. Fawkes - real name Paul 'Pee' Stains - rose to prominance in 2004 after being declared bankrupt and deciding the best way to claw his way from financial hell was to start a blog. It is still a mystery how this questionable strategy succeeded.

This trinity of bloggers - it is illustrative to think of them in terms of the father, the illegitimate son and the greasy ghost - are followed by a bewildering multitude of smaller, less important internet scribblers who, collectively, form the wider blogosphere. Dale and Stains count amongst their brethren such wits as Donal Blaney, scourge of 20 something Labour candidates, such thinkers as Dizzy, a computer programmer with a taste for pornography, and Letters from a Tory, a man who supports capital punishment for those who smell of alcohol and look at policemen a bit funny.

On the left, the list is even more depressing. Behind the fecal point known chillingly as 'The Liberal Conspiracy', sit a gaggle of naysayers and angry old men determined to destroy the few remaining whisps of tradition and middle-class pride this country clings to. Tim Ireland of The Bloggerhead pursues a ceaseless, brutal agenda against The One True blogger in almost every issue of his online magazine and even dares question the veracity of the national press in using deluded fantasists as authoritive sources. Vicious nihilists such as the unpalatably named Chicken Yoghurt, meanwhile, appear to support no particular brand of British politics, instead criticising the actions of the Tory and Labour parties in a fence-sittingly un-partisan kind of way. Suspiciously foreign sounding bloggers like Hopi Sen peddle the type of meandering lefty drivel that attacks everything but never proposes any decisive, committed plan of action or solution to anything.

For more excrutiating examples from the left-wing piffle-osphere, see the links to the left.

It is plain to see that the interminable fountain of drivel pouring forth from these 'writers' only serves to create a chaotic, screeching, somewhat sticky sphere of blogs, hopelessly inadequate compared to the panoply of well written, increasingly successful national newspapers.

The events of the Easter weekend have led to some discussion of a rebirth of blogging amongst some left-wing commentators. Only in the self-aggrandising world of online punditry could such heretical Messiah-aping be tolerated. Surely it is time for the bloggers to scurry back underneath their moss covered rocks and give up; surely, if Derek Draper has taught anyone anything, it is that blogging is a silly, puerile nonsense to be ignored by anyone with a shred of common sense.