What could be scarier than thousands of birds descending upon one seaside town and inflicting horrific injuries and death upon its residents? Well, what about if the birds were diggers instead? Hmmm? Scared now?

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of the iconic Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, Hollywood is planning a re-make of the film with a new interpretation: crazed diggers, not birds, and it could be coming to a town near you (if you happen to live towards the east of Lincolnshire). That’s right, lucky cinema-goers will get to see a mean-looking JCB 3CX begin to menacingly follow innocent residents in the town of Skegness, and then begin to inflict damage upon them and their town, when the film premiers in 2013.

And as Health & Safety execs the world over know, you don’t wanna get on the wrong side of a JCB 3XC. Or a JCB 4XC come to think of it, they’re even bigger. “It would be seriously inadvisable for anyone to approach JCB 3CX which has the intention to maim or kill,” says Steve Jobsworth, a H & S officer from Lincoln, which is about an hour away from Skegness. “Thankfully, this kind of behaviour is relatively unheard of in the Lincolnshire area. Our main issues here tend to revolve around tractors.”

The proposed re-make of Hitchcock’s great classic has so far been met with indifference, confusion and smartarsery, and more indifference. “That’s nice,” says Mary Wise, from Mablethrope.

These guys better look out. Run! Run as fast as your little donkey legs will carry you!

“What is the relevance of diggers?” asks John Woodstock. “Is it a postmodern comment on technology’s precedence?”
So far, it is rumoured that casting directors are having immense trouble trying to attract famous actors to the role.

BP has been accused of ignoring safety concerns over Deepwater Horizon, the dynamically-positioned, ultra-deepwater, semi-submersive and ultimately embarrassment of an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, which led to the biggest offshore oil spill in US history.

It’s emerged that oil bosses failed to acknowledge safety concerns for financial reasons, and cut corners in spending which led to negligence and lax safety. Recommendations from safety engineers were ignored and industry practices were violated as the billions of dollars being made by the company just weren’t enough.

Cue a burst pipe and tens of millions of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, causing untold environmental damage and TV news images so familiar of childhood: those weird birds with massive long beaks standing in sinks looking perplexed and having oil washed from their feathers.

Silly birds – you can fly – why LAND in the oil?

And now it seems that the company’s bust a leak again in the form of a rumoured $10 billion spend on metaphorical diggers.

David Cameron, when asked earlier today to comment on the purchase of the diggers which, ultimately, save face rather than the environment due to their metaphorical qualities, summed up the thoughts of most of us: “I was amazed to learn last week that BP stands for Beyond Petroleum. I always assumed it meant British Petroleum, though, to be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought till now. You learn something new every day, as they say.”

Metaphorical diggers command a hefty price tag and were first invented by Plato in around 348 BC. Unlike standard diggers, they are said to work well below sea level and are coveted, yet rarely afforded, by those familiar with that worried feeling felt on waking up after a heavy night on the Pimms. The Saturday morning feeling.

Individuals are rebelling against their sofas and their televisions in preference of even more lively pastimes. Nonetheless, whilst individuals intentions seem to be great, they could in actual fact be creating themselves more harm than good as a result of wearing the wrong running shoes.

It is a widely recognized truth that whenever you walk your whole weight is distributed via your knee and ankle joints. When you run pressure which is exerted through those bones is exaggerated more and if an individual continue to exercise and apply pressure through these joints with extreme quantities of exercise then you could in fact cause permanent injury to yourself.

There are a selection of various brands available on the market right now which include brands such as Nike, Adidas, Asics and Reebok to name but two or three, and each one of these brands have spent a large amount of time and money to get the ideal system that can help cushion the impact suffered in the crucial joints in the body. A few of these companies utilise gels and air pockets, and some choose to opt for cushioning foam, nonetheless all these solutions have their own negative and positive features that you must discover.

Whenever you next plan to purchase a pair of running shoes for exercise then you will have to look at all the varying features and be sure that you invest a little extra time making sure the shoes you will be about to buy is the ideal companion to your feet.

Well spank my bum and call me Columbo! But after that… EPOS? Everything possible… on Saturdays? Only sometimes? Even the context isn’t always of assistance to the average acronym detective. Google it and discover there are many companies offering EPOS Retail for sale; super! So it’s a physical thing that you can buy.

For a STUPID person like me (acronym translator: Smart Talented Unique Person in Demand) there’s a wealth of unfathomable acronyms out there which seek to hinder my job as a writer further. Part of what I do is write about complex topics in an accessible (dumbed-down: think watching Newsround) manner for general consumption yet these technological acronyms play with my mind and scupper me at every turn.

EPOS Retail actually stands for Electronic Point of Sale – very useful if you’re erm, selling things I think. Something to help with selling while you’re retailing.

NOWADAYS, well it’s a whole different kettle of fish. Has anyone ever had the need for, or actually seen a kettle of fish? I digress – so now if you don’t have CRM Software, and all-singing, all-dancing place to sell your kettles on the interweb and the search engine optimisation to tell the world about it and haven’t foxtrotted your OLAP and optimised your KPIs you don’t stand a chance.

But do things like CRM Software actually matter? Yes, apparently. The old adage money makes money is true and is the reason so many industries have an unreachable barrier to entry and certain companies hold the monopoly on certain markets.

Breaking into certain markets is nigh on impossible due to the tyranny of big businesses that spend, spend, spend on marketing their products. It would be almost impossible to manufacture a new brand of kettle nowadays and properly penetrate the market.

Did people actually have kettle shops anyway? They wouldn’t make much money would they because once you’ve bought a kettle that’s it for a few years isn’t it? Not much opportunity for repeat business.

Reality is only ever your own perception of it. So why not try to change what you can’t change? If you can’t change the real, just change your perception of the real.

If you think something didn’t happen, then it doesn’t really matter whether it did or not.

I know hypnotherapy doesn’t actually do this, but wouldn’t it be great if it did? Allow you to be convinced that things aren’t really how they are.
Are you a bit of a minger? Look in the mirror and see someone beautiful blinking back at you. Suffering the pain of unrequited love? Convince yourself that the object of your unwanted desires does not exist. Has the love of your life betrayed you with another? Convince yourself that the event never occurred; forget it, get over it, ignore it and love innocently once again.

It’s not like you wouldn’t be hurting so much if you hadn’t found out, is it?

Imagine if hypnotherapy let you live your life without a care in blissful ignorance. Sinister? Maybe. Easy? Yes!

But I am going to point out why it is important that, as a man, if you are trying to romance a lady on a special occasion, that you produce the real stuff and not a cheaper fizzy alternative.

With cheap stuff, you’re saying you don’t think that much of her, and so ergo she won’t in turn think much of you either.

It’s not about the taste, it’s about showing your acknowledgement of your lady’s worth. It says ‘I care so much about you, only the best will do’. It harks back to caveman days when a woman would pick a man who could offer her the most, as this would mean the most for their offspring too, which would preserve them for the future.

No one’s going to pick a partner who only makes half the effort – a half-a-job – are they? What would be the point in that? Why put up with second best? Especially if the occasion is a proposal. If someone can’t expect the best for an occasion like this, what on earth can they expect for the future?

And so be warned: buy into the hype else you could be drinking alone. Like an old shrivelled alki.

While it sounds like the perfect scenario in some ways – you think you are headed back home from your break in the sun only to find that you actually have to spend another week away, many people were forced to pay for alternative methods of transport back to Blighty and short breaks turned into financial nightmares as people were forced to take extra time off of work and many discovered that employers were unwilling to pay them for the time at work they missed.

By law an employer does not have to pay an employee if they do not turn up for work, and with many companies still struggling under huge financial burdens in the wake of the recession, many people have been hit with the double whammy of paying for extra travel and having their wages deducted.

Thankfully, an erupting volcano and its resulting ash cloud does not cause such chaos on a regular basis, and everyone is hoping that the volcano eventually quietens down in time for Britain’s annual mass summer exodus to somewhere in the sun.

The main problem with immigration in Britain is a logistical one; this country is physically very small and is already very densely populated, and so squeezing in more people IS challenging. But if we did have endless space to build new houses, immigration is actually one of the best things that can happen to this country.

We’ve got a rapidly-ageing population, and one day soon there will be too many old people and not enough young people which is going to make things very difficult economically. Young migrant workers will help to support the economy, and of course this is a great thing. There are lots of other perks to having aspects of other countries’ cultures brought to Britain too, but not many people seem to recognise them. They just see the new houses problem, or worse.

Bonk-eyed professional disgrace, AKA Nick Griffin

Another thing that I think people get confused with, and which poor immigrants end up getting a bad name because of, is the differences between asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and immigrants. By definition, immigrants are coming to Britain to work. They may take jobs, but what about all the home-grown chav layabouts we have here that don’t work? Should we maybe swap some of our chavs for people that want to work here and strengthen the economy?

Less of these maybe?

People that read the Mail have a completely skewed view of what really goes on. Ask a Mail reader about the subject and it will tell you this: illegal immigrants come here and get given really nice, big houses and cars straight away.

Do they? When has that actually happened even once?

Immigration: a cloudy issue

If someone arrives at a UK port and they aren’t legally allowed to come and live in this country, they are deported off again.

The issue of asylum seekers is different again, and these are the people who absolutely should be let in to Britain, because they are going to be killed in their own country if they do not leave. Why shouldn’t we as human beings offer residents of other, backward, less evolved countries shelter from death?

But immigration IS a problematic topic, granted, and with little remaining space for new houses, it will be interesting to see how much this issue is debated before the election in May.

When you buy health insurance for foreign travel, you can arrange for it to cover inconveniences that actually wreck your plans for a getaway such as the cancelled flights aforementioned erupting volcano has resulted in.

I’m sure that all of the airlines who have had to cancel flights are going to refund their customers or offer them some sort of compensatory alternative, but you’d still worry, wouldn’t you, if you hadn’t bought the health insurance for travel beforehand?

I would; I’d fret. Selfish volcano. Oh, look at me, erupting all over the place like some boiling pus-filled zit on the face of the earth, spoiling everyone’s travel plans! And in the Easter holidays too! Should have taken the kids out of school in term time, saved money, AND actually have got to go away on holiday.

Saying that, I’m not directly affected by aforementioned eruption, and so when I switched on BBC news this morning and heard ‘BOOM, BOOM! VOLCANIC ASH DECENDS OVER BRITAIN, CAUSES HAVOC IN THE SKIES AND GROUNDING ALL AIRCRAFT!’ I leapt excitedly to the window expecting to witness some apocalyptic nuclear-winter-esque vision, and was a little disappointed to see the usual chavvy family next door embarking on the school run.