Interesting Facts

For three months, John McArthur has spent two hours each weekday morning parading outside LAMH Recycle in Motherwell, Scotland, wearing a placard reading: “Say no to slave labour”. (Why? Well, after the organisation "let him go" from a temporary job, he was ordered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to work for the same firm for six months without pay, in order to continue receiving unemployment benefit. Welcome to Britain 2014.)

According to his press office, in his main speech at the Labour Party Conference in Britain, Ed Milliband, the leader of the Labour party, gave a 6,000 word speech, with no teleprompter, or notes. (He repeated "Britain can do better" 17 times, so I don't think that counts. I'm lucky if I can remember what day it is, kudos to him.) If you're interested in how he did it, this article in the Independent attempt to figure it out.

According to the Tories, nearly two million people in Britain have never had a job. (Seemingly a further three million have not worked since Labour came to power. In the worst unemployment black spots, as many as a quarter of all adults have not held down a job since 1996. Of course the conservatives are the opposition party, and so they are calling it "horrendous". Labour could put a different 'spin' on it by saying "Over 5 million people in Britain haven't had to degrade themselves by working for Tory fat cats!")

The Spanish Riding School in Vienna, famed for its Lipizzaner horses, has admitted two female riders for the first time in its 430-year history. (In a further break with "tradition" they have accepted a non-Austrian, 17- year-old British girl Sojourner Morell. In exchange for her training she will commit herself to working for the school for at least 10 years! I thought indentured labour was illegal!)