Fun Online Polls: Girls Aloud & Garden snails

A low turnout but a high percentage of correct answers in last week's Fun Online Poll:

Which was not the title of a song or album by Girls Aloud?
Biology - 1 vote
Can't speak French - 1 vote
Chemistry - 0 votes
Deadlines and diets - 1 vote
Money - 1 vote
Pure maths with statistics - 30 votes
Whole lotta history - 1 vote
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According to the BBC:

A fifth of British gardeners have thrown snails over their neighbour's fence, according to a survey.

Some 22% of people questioned for the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) said they had tossed a snail into their neighbour's garden, compared with 78% who said they had not.

Londoners were the worst culprits, with 30% admitting they had done it. Gardeners in Scotland were least likely, where 14% admitted they had thrown a snail over a garden fence.

Only a fifth? I thought everybody did it. My theory was, if there is a snail in my back garden, it must have come from a neighbour's garden, so all I am doing is returning it whence it came.

So let's see if we get the same responses here.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Mobile phone ban for Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding after using Range Rover"

From The Evening Standard:

Former Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding was today banned from using her mobile phone for six months after being caught behind the wheel while talking on her mobile phone.

The 31-year-old singer was spotted by a police officer driving her Range Rover while on the phone in Charing Cross Road during the evening rush hour on April 4. A separate charge of failing to end the call when the officer flagged her down was dropped after she said it would have been impolite to cut of the conversation right away.

Harding spoke only to confirm her identity during the hearing at Highbury Corner magistrates' court.

She was told she would be disqualified from using her phone for "totting up", after already racking up nine points for three previous offences ranging from ringing people up in the middle of the night while drunk to not responding to friendly texts. Defence lawyer Nick Freeman — known as "Mr Loophole" for getting a string of celebrities cleared of phone misuse charges on legal technicalities — earlier pleaded for her not to be forced to use public telephones.

But ordering her to pay a £500 fine, £20 victim surcharge, and £85 prosecution costs, District Judge Nina Tempia told her: "As Mr Freeman has said, he is asking the court to deal with you as opposed to a normal person. Well, you are a normal person. I can see no reason why you shouldn't be disqualified."

Following the hearing, the singer admitted her offence was "not acceptable".

She said: "Too many people drive while using their mobile phones and think its acceptable. It is not. Every year people on the other end are forced to endure long pauses in the conversation because the caller was distracted by negotiating that 'oh so tricky junction'.

"Cars are a convenient tool for modern life but they must be used courteously. I made a mistake by driving while using my phone, but I was lucky and didn't end up losing reception. I accept the court's penalty but it could have been a lot worse. I have learned my lesson. I have learned to love Big Brother."

Fun Online Polls: Home-Owner-Ism & Cheryl Cole née Tweedy

Here are the rather surprising results from last week's Fun Online Poll:

People value things more highly and use them more efficiently if...
... they have to work hard and put money aside to pay for them. - 97%
... they are 'free'; subsidised by the taxpayer; or bought with easy credit. - 3%

And why is that surprising? Because in Home-Owner-Ist economics, the reverse is true:

- People are encouraged to buy the biggest house they can possibly afford with the biggest mortgage. The only reason that prices rose as high as they did was because of a corresponding credit bubble. But in Home-Owner-Ism, falling prices are seen as A Bad Thing so the banks have to be bailed out (by the income tax payer) and forced to lend.

- Most people who own their own homes will have bought them fairly cheaply more than ten years ago and ought to have just paid off the mortgage by now. They no longer have to pay anything towards their houses, apart from a smidge of Council Tax, but as we know, property taxes, however low, are the most hated taxes - in a Home-Owner-Ist economy, VAT of 20% and higher rate income tax of 50% are quite acceptable taxes, because they are paid by 'somebody else'.

- What is land ownership if not the right to a future stream of taxpayer-funded subsidies? If you rent somewhere, you pay for the cost of the state out of income tax, and then pay all over again for the value of what the state does in rent. But if you take out a huge loan and buy a house, you think that you are getting it all for free - you are not, you have just paid a lump sum instead. And the state is ready to 'help' you if you are struggling with your mortgage, i.e. getting the income tax payers and savers to bail out the banks and subsidise the interest on your mortgage.

- The NIMBYs know that all things being equal, they can increase the scarcity value of their houses by getting the government to restrict new supply, so the NIMBYs clearly value their easily earned windfall gains over the hard work that home builders put into creating something new that is of additional value to society, and the NIMBYs need potential buyers to take out large mortgages to buy existing houses rather than smaller mortgages to buy new houses.

- And so on. I am sure you can think of dozens of other examples to illustrate how Home-Owner-Ism is in fact the complete opposite of what it claims to be.
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Something else that strikes me is that is seems highly unlikely that Cheryl Cole née Tweedy can't possibly have had malaria. I reckon she was just a bit tired and wanted to take a few weeks off but without appearing lazy, so she and her publicists came up with the story that she had malaria, which serves the useful purposes of reminding us that Cheryl had been in Africa a while back doing something for charidee plus also making us feel sorry for her.

But what do you think? Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

She will no longer fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for his love...

The sexy blonde one out of Girls Aloud*

This post is sponsored by Online Keno for money.

* Hmm. Should there be a comma between "sexy" and "blonde"?

Gear change of the week

Here, 3'25" in, a whole majestic semi-tone up:

On the official video, it's at 3'34" in.

"Sarah Harding's boobs pop out"

Does what it says on the tin. Unfortunately
the photo only shows one of 'em, but who's complaining?

Nicola Roberts on The Goblin King

When asked "If you took over the world what changes would you make?", the Girls Aloud star hit straight back: "I'd sack Gordon Brown to start with".

You can't say fairer than that, can you?