Library Photo of average Nigerian scammer

I’ll let Deborah, who performs sterling secretarial and accounting services from Butler Sheetmetal HQ, take over the telling of one particular instance of such an intervention from a few weeks back. She sent me the following email about some nefarious Nigerian:

Well, it all started yesterday morning when I arrived to start my duties in the meter cupboard.  Matt asked me to ring Michael Odiase to take payment for an urgent job. I read the original email enquiry and it had scam written all over it, but Matt had promised we’d ring back.  So, I rang Michael who told me the normal procedure for making payment was for me to give him our bank details. I told him he’d have to pay by credit card and he said he would have to apply for one! In the meantime I had to go through all the rigmarole of getting a price from TNT to deliver to Lagos to be able to do a proper quote. TNT quoted £1323.00 to deliver to Lagos Airport, but they weren’t prepared to take it from the airport to its final destination. Twas a lot of messing about.  Any road up, I think we’ve shaken him off now. Suppose there’s an outside chance he could have been genuine, but my gut instinct says not.

Anyway, back to deal with more fools and time wasters respected potential customers.

You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for some of our African cousins in some respects. Especially those round Nigeria, Ghana or the Ivory Coast whose major export appears to be the scam. Let’s be fair, your average Nigerian has a worse scam rep than the notorious 19th century confidence trickster, Soapy Smith.

Bad lad Soapy Smith

So let that be a lesson to anybody thinking of pulling a fast one.

Then again, things are a bit quiet by all accounts, so we could do with the work!

It’s one of those wonderfully empassioned working class pleas that you don’t see that often in this day and age. In a nutshell, he’s making the case for Barack Obama and against racism.

“We can’t tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of white folks out there” — a lot of them are good union people, he added — who “just can’t get past this idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a black man.”

In the speech, Trumka went on to say that while there are many reasons to vote for Obama, there’s “only one really, really bad reason to vote against Barack Obama. And that’s because he’s not white.”

Just watch it.

His occasional Oliver Hardy-isms are also quite entertaining.

[via]

Because I’m as dimwitted as the rest of you, my first thoughts on learning that space had some sort of aroma led me to dismissing the concept out of hand. We all know there’s no air for starters and that anyone daft enough to open their helmet for a sly whiff would wind up covering the inside of it with their own explosive grey matter within thirty seconds.

Then again, I suppose it helps if you read an article rather than draw mindless conclusions from just the headline. If we dig a little deeper we find:

“We have a few clues as to what space smells like. First of all, there were interviews with astronauts that we were given, when they had been outside and then returned to the space station and were de-suiting and taking off their helmets, they all reported quite particular odours. For them, what comes across is a smell of fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike.”

Apparently the perfume scientist quoted above is from Manchester and has been approached by NASA to reproduce the same space odour so that astronauts can train their nostrils for the peculiar pong.

And this is what the International Space Station’s Science Officer Don Pettit had to say about the smell after a spell up yonder in 2003:

“Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn’t quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as ‘tastes like chicken.’ The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation.”

So, the smell we’re looking at is something akin to hot metal, fried steak, and welding a motorbike. How bizarre.

But, help could very well be at hand. Just follow me here, NASA, as I think we may be able to come to some kind of arrangement.

This is similar to the aroma that wafts from Jasper on any average Friday afternoon after the weekly chippy run and he’s got a bit of steak pie stuck in his whiskers. If he happens to do a spot of welding at the same time….BLAMMO - there’s your space scent right there.

Although, if he’s been on the cooking sherry the night before having watched Braveheart, he smells more like a tramp dipped in trifle.

Either way, just give us a bell, and we’ll give your pong police full access at our going rate.

I mean, we’ve been trying our best all these years not to cave in to Islamic fundamentalism, but as soon as some former Wall St. Wallah tells us he wants $750 billion in unmarked notes to cover a few gambling debts, or else the economic heavies will be round, we’re all expected to divvy up.

Yes, me and you don’t have a clue other than the gut reaction of a collective sting, but when economists are drawing blank looks then what hope do we have?

According to this article, it appears manufacturing has hit its worst slump in seventeen years. Or to be more exact, UK manufacturing is shrinking at its fastest rate since they began recording manufacturing shrinkage seventeen years ago.

You save your ’since records began’ proclamations for tales of global warming and proper end of the world stuff, I suppose.

Then you’ve got the IISI delaying its three-year steel outlook:

“On a global basis [this] is a situation which is really unclear,” Mittal said at a press briefing ahead of the conference. “Once this financial crisis is behind us, there is much more certainty. This unprecedented situation has caused fuzziness.”

So things are a bit fuzzy according to Mittal? Fuzzy? FUZZY?

And this Times article has an interesting take on steel demand plummeting - not always a bad thing for small sheet metal shops.

But I’m more interested in what any of you people are seeing or predicting.

Feel free to share in the comments.

As much as I despised Mrs. T. you had to hand it to the Iron Lady for never pandering to those she wasn’t ideologically aligned with. The miners’ strike showed us her feelings on things such as unions - she was hell bent on destroying them.

All this talk of Caribou Barbie as America’s very own Iron Lady is all lip gloss on a turd. Mrs. Margaret still has the mental capacity today - and she’s thoroughly ga-ga - to run rings round the former second-placed beauty pageant queen. Not that the following is a staggering example of beauty queen IQ:

But there’s one thing you do know with those on the right - and that is their general distrust, nay disgust at all things union. So, it really was a honkalicious moment when Sarah Palin made a grand to-do of her husband’s Steelworker Union membership as she introduced her family to the fawning masses and the world at the RNC.

While I may have been muttering expletives under my breath, no other than the President of United Steelworkers Union, Leo W. Gerard, was taking Mrs. Palin to task on the USW Blog:

At the press conference, Palin trotted him out, stressing his steelworker credentials. Here’s a good union man, she emphasized.

But his United Steelworker card doesn’t include an automatic auxiliary membership for her. Or her running mate at the top of the Republican ticket, McCain, whose record on labor issues would require some serious penance before he could ever earn a union card.

John McCain opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, which would enable workers to collectively bargain and secure contracts with corporations more easily, like the employment contracts CEOs demand to have with corporations. McCain has jeopardized retirement by championing Bush’s privatization scheme for social security. McCain has voted for every American-job-killing free trade deal, without regard to human rights or environmental standards.

It’s Sarah Palin with first dude Todd Palin dancing the night away at some union fundraiser (or not). Cute as buttons.

Leo, easy tiger. You don’t know how you wound. He then rips into the pair of them a little bit more over general policy positions, but then returns to more union-related matters further in the post:

Ms. Palin needs to stop trotting out her husband as an exhibit until she explains her positions on workers’ issues. Just exactly where does she stand on the Employee Free Choice Act?

Her family has benefitted from her husband’s ability to be part of a labor union. Workers in labor organizations earn higher wages and are more likely to have pensions and health insurance. Because he works for BP and is a member of the USW, which collectively bargained a good contract for workers at BP, Todd Palin earns a good wage and has good health insurance. The Employee Free Choice Act would make it easier for other Americans to join unions and earn better money and obtain health insurance. Polling shows that 70 percent of Americans support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Inquiring minds want to know, Ms. Palin. Where do you stand on Employee Free Choice? Where do you stand on privatization of social security? Where do you stand on job-killing free trade?

Are you with McCain – and against workers – on these issues? If so, you need to stop using your husband’s membership in the USW as a prop, because then his union card cannot possibly cover up your or John McCain’s worker-savaging positions.

Oh, it feels like 1978.

Stainless Steel Klingon Blade

A spokesman for police (whether or not it’s the geezer above is anybody’s guess) in Gloucester, where it was surrendered, said: “It is a particularly nasty weapon that can, literally, take someone’s head off. We are very glad it is off the streets and we want more weapons handed in.”

But if the article above harks back to 2006, then there’s this blog post I digitally penned in 2005 drawing people to the attention of the Klingon Imperial Weapons Group (KIWG) Yahoo! Metalworking Group.

Lt. Whorf looking more confused than your average copper wielding a Klingon blade.

And from the group’s front page:

*** IMPORTANT***: In order to request permission to join the KIWG, you must write a detailed letter explaining your interest in Klingon bladed weaponry, any experience you may have in metalworking and why you would like to join the Guild, along with your name, e-mail address and city/country. Send your application to the Guildmaster at klingon@klingon.org and it will be considered for acceptance. If accepted, you will be added to the KIWG mailing list.

If only the Daily Mail had seen this in 2006, they’d be able to blame blogs, the internet, Al Gore and anybody else who has a secret hankering to rip the fabric of society in two both literally and metaphorically.

Unless, of course, you were defending you and yours from a burglar in your home, then chopping the offender’s head clean off as they were making their escape would be too good for ‘em.

Anyone up for a jar?

I only live a stone’s throw away from work, but it’s far enough to turn a fifty minute lunch into a tight half hour if you don’t play it canny and get your wife to pick you up. So bang on the stroke of midday I gaily flounce out of the McLain Building front door to a welcoming Stephanie.

Last Thursday saw me flounce to the same script only to find nobody waiting for me outside. It wasn’t an immediate problem as I’m not the type of fella who rules over his women with a rod of iron - then again. But, with five minutes gone I was getting a wee bit antsy wondering where she was. With ten minutes gone I was slowly beginning to fume (the first thing running through my mind that she’d nodded off or was gassing with her mother - not worrying whether she was ok).

I had no other choice than to march off as I had no means of buying my own lunch.

Each step I took, the baking West Virginia sunshine raised my temperature levels until I was as heated as my sweating brow. By the time my house was in view I’d worked up a serious cascade of perspiration that evaporated to a head of steam. Somebody’s ass was gonna have me going positively Doomsday on it.

As I came up to crossing the entry to Uncle Pete’s car park, which adjoins (almost) our pad, a police SUV was blocking my usually unhindered passage and with its backend protruding way into the street, my only route involved playing chicken in the oncoming traffic as I walked round it. Still, I was that pissed I was raring to risk getting tasered as I gave Mr. Plod what for.

Then, as my apartment came into full view, I noticed our car in the adjacent parking spot to Uncle Pete’s and our abode. Thing is, it was in the Uncle Pete’s side with the yellow fire hydrant and had a piece of paper flapping from underneath the right windshield wiper.

The cop was walking towards me concentrating frantically on writing and walking having just given us a parking ticket.

DEF. CON. ONE.

I yanked myself up the stairs on the verge of going truly ballistic as I pictured Steph on the phone talking crap with her mother about window treatments. I entered the door to an inhale of breath and immediately saw her scurrying about the kitchen like a female Fagin.

You’ve got to poop a pocket or two.

Straight away she asked me if the copper was still outside and began to explain how she’d come to pick me up but suddenly had poorly poo cramps and had no other choice than to hare home to let rip.

I don’t wish to get too graphic. It’s not as if we all haven’t been there.

I calmed down to eleven on hearing this, but couldn’t quite sympathize fully as she’d been watching traffic copper putting the ticket on our windscreen from our window. Not only that, but she knows full well that Aldi beef sticks always end in toilet trauma, and she’d eaten two cans of the buggers the night before. And on top of that, we’ve always known how keen they are at Uncle Pete’s to rat out any offenders to the cops and get folks towed away.

Library Beef Sticks

With this in mind, and the fact that Mr. Chubby Rozzineri hadn’t moved his police veh-i-cle for a good fifteen minutes, we needed to make sure we were:

a} Not going to get clamped/towed away, and
b} Somehow sneak out and away to get some lunch without him noticing.

Anyhoo, I had fifteen minutes to get out and get fed. As soon as we managed to get outside, Steph realized she’d forgotten, of all things, her bloody car keys.

I’m sure I felt a vein in my eyeball pop.

So, she whispered to me to stand guard while she ran back upstairs in case the tow wagon turned up.

Being a clever lad, I stood close enough to our car to be able to leap on anything or anyone attempting to take it away, but distant enough so the copper didn’t think I had anything to do with it.

We’d deal with any police interference as and when it presented itself.

I can’t say Steph was hurrying, and every second was vital in terms of my growling gut and the impending tow truck, which couldn’t have been too far away. Also, I kept seeing (eaten too many) CHiPs checking out our motor out of the side of my eye.

If ever we could do with a swift diversion and get away it would be now.

All I could foresee was a ten minute telling off from the policeman, and some kind of call-out charge argument as the tow guy arrived. Any kind of exchange would totally wipe the rest of my lunch break redundant.

I kill with my bare hands when I’m hungry.

With still no sign of Steph - obviously attending to another beef stick bowel release - I was thinking of just sneaking in to Uncle Pete’s and sod the car getting towed.

But, as I turned to salivate over the entrance to the restaurant, two guys came storming out and started screaming across the road at some other guy who’d just tried to park in the space Steph should’ve gone in first off. He’d tried pretty appallingly by all accounts as he’d managed to not only prang the irate guy’s back bumper, but also block him in.

There was shouting and storming from both sides of the street, which is busy and noisy a the best of times, and this prompted Chief Wiggum to spring into action.

A bit of street disorder sorting obviously had him feeling more police-like than waiting for some other fat chap to turn up and wheel our car off.

And just as he walked past me, as if by magic, Stephanie appeared.

With one deft flick of the thumb, the car doors were open; and we were in and off.

I had never been so happy to get stung for just a parking ticket in my entire life.

Alas, the entire shaboodle hasn’t been pieced together as that was being done on site. So, you’ll just have to make do with the 40 or so pictures of the punched metal arrangement here.

You’ll also notice a well lit, freshly painted unit in the photos which is the self-same place they were moving into until somebody offered them a reasonable rapscallion for it and the gypsies next door said they could buy their unit and expand sideways.

I promise there’ll be a tale or two about that little negotiation.

The Guardian manages to point a crooked finger in China’s direction while claiming:

The police believe illegal metal trading costs the UK economy almost £360m every year. Lead from church roofs, drain covers, railway signaling cable, Henry Moore sculptures, bronze plaques have all been stolen.

Between January 1 and April 16 this year, British Transport police recorded 637 metal theft offences and arrested 153 people. A two-day crackdown targeting illegal scrap metal trading and involving 38 police forces is currently under way.

A crackdown on illegal scrap metal trading in a burgeoning black market worth £360m a year?

Well it obviously wasn’t that much when I couldn’t part with a clapped-out Renault van without paying somebody for the privilege.

But enough of me bitterly whining about being unable to get fifty quid for some old banger; it appears East Lancashire, and Colne especially, are one of the current illegal scrap metal dealing epicenters of the UK. As the LET reports:

* Copper wiring has been stolen from the Royal Blackburn Hospital causing power failures.

* In Darwen thieves stole a 12ft gate, a 20ft car park barrier pole and a cattle grid.

* In Colne businesses and schools have been targeted with scrap metal raiders stealing lead from their roofs. Flashing and water-proofing has also been taken.

* In one of the most audacious incidents a gang of thieves diced with death by cutting down poles carrying 11,000-volt electricity cables in the hunt for scrap metal near Pendle Water in Brierfield.

At least some council high-up puts it all into perspective:

County Coun Doreen Pollitt, deputy leader of Lancashire County Council, said: “I am amazed that anyone has the brass neck to go out and brazenly steal public property in this way.”

Doreen, you wag….