Tag Archives: news

O! His dad is a patent lawyer

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BBC NEWS | UK | Youngest inventor patents broom
A five-year-old boy is thought to be the UKs youngest person to patent an idea after inventing a labour-saving broom to help his father sweep leaves.
Sam Houghton, of Buxton, Derbyshire, was just three when he came up with a double-headed broom to collect large debris and fine dust simultaneously.
After passing the rigorous patenting process, his idea is now protected from anyone who might copy it.

I heard this story on 5Live this morning. The boy was apparently only 3 when he invented the broom.  Amazing. Then I heard that his father is an expert in patent law. At that point the story lost something. Am I just being cynical?

Radio 4 news hit by giggling fit

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BBC NEWS | Radio 4 news hit by giggling fit

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Hundreds of listeners have contacted BBC Radio 4 after newsreader Charlotte Green dissolved into giggles while reading a bulletin on Today.She lost control after playing a clip of the oldest known recording of the human voice.

Charlotte Green has my sympathy – as someone who used to read news bulletins I know the dreadful feeling when a fit of the giggles interrupts your normally sedate reading voice.

The one that I recall most vividly was when I was reading a piece of copy, “North Yorkshire dinner ladies were toasted for winning an employment tribunal case over equal pay”. My imagination played riot with the idea of toasted dinner ladies.

Out of proportion

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The response of Israel to the attacks from Gaza is out of proportion. Whilst I defend the right of a country to protect it’s inhabitants the treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel is unjust. I saw a play called Salaam Bethlehem by Riding Lights Theatre Company in York last December. It is set in a Christian Palestinian home. It made me realise how the Palestinian Community has been humiliated by the overwhelming response of the Israeli authorities to the terrorist attacks in their country. The tension between these communities is as old as modern Israel itself. More bombs, bullets and rockets will never solve the problem. The international community is right to raise a protest, it must also increase its efforts to bring agreement and peace between the two sides. Both have a right to exist, neither has the right to dominate and humiliate the other. Salaam Bethlehem.