When his African grey said: 'I love you Gary' in his partner's voice, Chris Taylor became suspicious.

How Ziggy the indiscreet parrot gave a cheating girlfriend the bird.' Alan Hamilton. The Times.

WHEN Chris Taylor’s best friend repeatedly mentioned the name Gary, his suspicions were aroused...............
He didn’t know a Gary.

And, when the best friend made slurpy kissing noises every time he heard the name Gary on television, Chris wondered
if Ziggy was trying to tell him something about some other pretty boy. The penny dropped when, one romantic evening
as Mr Taylor cuddled his girlfriend Suzy Collins on the sofa, Ziggy blurted out: “I love you, Gary.�

What gave the game away was that Ziggy spoke the fatal phrase in Ms Collins’s voice. Even by the standards of
African grey parrots, Ziggy is a mimic and a half, and from his cage in the corner he had heard every bill and
coo of a secret love affair.

A chill ran down Mr Taylor’s spine. He turned to Suzy, whose cheeks had flushed to beetroot. As she dissolved
in tears she was forced to admit to a month-long fling with Gary, some of their intimacies conducted in
Mr Taylor’s home while he was out at work, but Ziggy wasn’t. She could not deny it; every time her mobile phone
had rung, Ziggy had piped up in perfect imitation of her: “Hiya Gary

Feathers flew, the relationship was over, and Ms Collins, 25, a call-centre worker, was sent packing that very
night from the house in Headingley, Leeds, she had shared with man and bird for a year. That was sad enough,
but what is even more heartbreaking is that Mr Taylor has had to part with Ziggy.Hearing the bird constantly
squawking the hated name of Gary in the voice of an ex-girlfriend was just too much.

Mr Taylor believes Ziggy was looking after his master’s interests as the bird never really took to Ms Collins,
nor she to him. It might have been jealousy,which can flare so easily in a household of two males and one female.

Ms Collins, who is staying with friends, said “I’m surprised to hear he’s got rid of that bloody bird; he spent more
time talking to it than he did to me. I couldn’t stand Ziggy, and it looks now the feeling was mutual.�

Not, in her view, a pretty boy, then.
:-j
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...988755,00.html

hahaha read that this morning :D :rotfl:

Times2 - Pass notes No 89: PARROTING THE TRUTH

'Naughty, naughty girl.

Yes, she was. And she should have known that parrots, with their extraordinary ability to mimic humans —
there’s one in New York with a vocab of 1,000 words — can land people in hot water. A cheeky African grey
on board HMS Lancaster once told a lady-in-waiting to the Queen she was a “slag� and had to be kept out of
earshot when the Queen came on board because of his habit of telling top brass to “******* off�. And a vicar in
Norfolk got into trouble when his parrot wolf-whistled at nuns . . .

P*** off, mate.

That’s the line that got a parrot sacked from a panto in Dorset. He was supposed to be Captain Flint, Long John
Silver’s parrot, but instead of saying “pieces of eight!� he turned the air blue. That reflects the bad habits of the
owners. After all, as you know, parrots repeat only what they hear at home.' :-j

my uncle had one that mimiced the telephon everytime my uncle went to have a bath or some thing he would make the sound couldnt tell the diffrence

Submarine captain cleared
By Michael Evans. The Times Defence Editor.

A NUCLEAR submarine commander’s experience of active duty in the Falklands war led him to expect the highest
standards from his crew, a court martial in a case of alleged bullying was told yesterday.

Captain Tarrant had been accused of shouting and screaming at crew members on board HMS Talent and reducing
two officers to tears during a secret mission in 1998-99. Judge John Bayliss, Judge Advocate, directed the panel to find
him not guilty through lack of evidence in three of the cases.

Giving evidence for the first time in his court martial at Portsmouth naval base, Captain Tarrant spoke of his service
in the Falklands as a young officer on board HMS Antrim, a destroyer that was seriously damaged after an
Argentine air attack. ''What I discovered was that a margin of error between operational safety and therefore operational
success, and operational disaster was pretty small.'' he said. ''Therefore from my perspective, it came down
to having the very highest of standards for operational capability at all times.''

However, he told the court martial panel of naval officers that when HMS Talent was setting sail for operations in
January 1999, his crew was ''extremely inexperienced.'' He said it was like ''taking someone from the third division
(Football team) and in six or seven weeks getting them to play in the Premier League !''

He went on to say ''I do not think I subjected anybody under my command to verbal abuse at any time. I believe
I took corrective action for operational issues and the submarine operated at all times safely in a very demanding
environment with extremely inexperienced people.''

The hearing continues. (Further charges)

Quickie:-

CRASH OUT ?

An Australian prisoner escaped by going on a crash diet, losing three stones and squeezing out between the
bars of his cell.

Tres Huevos strikes again.

:D ''Its an illusion Bernie.''

Sub captain cleared of bullying his young crew
By Michael Evans. The Times. (Re: The further charges.)

THE captain of a nuclear submarine was cleared of bullying his crew ysterday after telling of his concerns that they
were not up to their secret mission. Captain Robert Tarrant described his job of taking his young, inexperienced
crew on such a dangerous assignment as “like taking footballers from the third division to the Premier League
in six or seven weeks.

Captain Tarrant, who joined the Navy in September 1979, also complained that the submarine was “riddled
with defects� as it was about to set off on a classified mission. He was not allowed to reveal publicly his orders for the
Trafalgar class nuclear-powered “hunter-killer� submarine, between February 1998 and July 1999.

In his evidence Captain Tarrant disclosed that HMS Talent had been sent off for an operation in January 1999.
It was at this time that Nato was preparing bombing raids on Serb targets in Kosovo and Belgrade to stop Serb troops
carrying out “ethnic cleansing� of the Albanian population.

The only member of the public allowed to listen to the most secret evidence was Captain Tarrant’s wife. An intelligence
officer told the judge that Mrs Tarrant, 44, was already well acquainted with her husband’s submarine work.

After his acquittal on the five charges, he held hands with his wife, Tracy, as he read out a statement. He began by saying:
“I wrote this myself, it’s what I believe. The Royal Navy and the Armed Forces have a zero tolerance of bullying
and harassment, and it is quite right that these allegations should have been thoroughly investigated; and they have.�

Are you a Super Smurf * ?

High King Niall: the most fertile man in Ireland
Jan Battles. Sunday Teleraph.

GENETICISTS have identified Ireland’s most successful alpha male. As many as one in 12 Irish men could be descended
from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th-century warlord, according to research conducted at Trinity College Dublin.

Niall, who was head of the most powerful dynasty in medieval Ireland, may have left a genetic legacy almost
as impressive as Genghis Khan, the Mongol emperor who has 16m descendants after conquering most of Asia
in the 13th century.

Researchers at the Smurfit* Institute of Genetics at Trinity estimate there could be as many as 3m men worldwide
descended from Niall. The highest concentration of his progeny is in northwest Ireland, where one in five males have
inherited his Y chromosome.

When international databases were checked, the lineage also turned up in roughly one in 10 men in western
and central Scotland. About 2% of European-American New Yorkers carried similar Y chromosomes.

“Given historically high rates of Irish emigration to north America and other parts of the world, it seems likely that
the number of descendants worldwide runs to perhaps 2-3m males,� according to the paper, which has been
published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, which is also where the study showing Khan’s genetic
dominance appeared.

Niall reportedly had 12 sons, many of whom became powerful kings themselves. One was Conall, after whom
Donegal (Tir Chonaill) was named, while Tyrone (Tir Eoghain) was ruled by Eoghain. Other sons were powerful
in the midlands and all but two of the High Kings at Tara after Niall were his descendants.

Katharine Simms, head of Trinity’s history department said “Under Brehon law a man had a first wife, a live-in concubine,
a live-out concubine and someone he just casually met and so on. '“In each of these cases a child
could take the father’s name.�

Plenty of opportunities then for creating that gene pool. ;) ...........and dont forget the ''Nine Hostages'' ? :-j

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...986072,00.html

Lets head for - 'The Eureka Years. ' 1901. BBC 4.

Adam Hart-Davis explored spectacular years in the long history of science, when brilliant ideas emerged from the
maelstrom of mad, bad and dangerous thinking.

Why did the navy consider the submarine an un-British way to wage war, and how did the sanitary arrangements
threaten to undermine the superiority of the officer class?

The year the first motorbyke was invented saw the birth of th RN's first submarine. Shipyard No1 Barrow-in-Furness
launched the Holland 1 - she was 11 x 60 ft and weighed 112 tons, with a crew of eight, a single torp tube and a
steering wheel. Her RN title was HM Submarine Torpedo Boat No 1 and soon 4 others were built, designated for
harbour protection. By WW1 RN had the largest fleet of serving subs in the world.

Holland 1 was petrol engined and hence carried white mice as a CO (carbon monoxide) precaution. These critters were
uniformely hated, by the crew,for their loud (sic) squeeking ! ( cf. Modern intrusive sonar ! ).

Conservative Naval command elements felt that the use of submarines was underhand (not sporting)
Perhaps the same folk who still considered 'steam' new fangled ! No surprise then the sub was known as
'The Devils Device." But even in Nelson's day his commander had predicted that the sub would bring about the
''end of the battleship.'

From small acorns - the submarine service with its 'shoulder to shoulder' requirement for officers to serve
alongside their men heralded in new concepts of leadership. A trend which was impressively, but sadly, further
demonstrated by thousands of young subalterns who died leading their troops 'over the top' from the trenches of WW1.

On a lighter note and BOT - the head enforced the lowest common denominator principle. Where there was communal
lavatorial facilities with no privacy, as demonstrated by Holland, there could be no false pretensions !

Was the 'head' an agent of social revolution ? In France - Dr. Guillotin in the UK - the 'head' ? ;)

The Army's deadliest enemy is at home
By Max Hastings (Filed: 22/01/2006) The Sunday Telegraph.

Extracts relevant to the 'bullying' case :-

''Last week's court-martial proceedings against a Royal Navy submarine captain accused of bullying his officers
made bleak reading. I have no opinion about the merits of the case, and no sympathy with bullies. Like most people
who care about the Armed Forces, however, I felt my heart sink at yet another public embarrassment.
Their via dolorosa seems endless.

Today, politicians and lawyers have thrust upon the Armed Forces restrictions and legal burdens designed to drive them
into line with modern civilian practice. This is madness. Those who administer the Infantry Training Centre at Catterick
are scarcely allowed to impose discipline on new recruits, lest they quit or sue.

Many line battalions have to run their own training programmes for alleged trained soldiers from the ITC,
(Infantry Training Course) to render them fit to serve. Faced with the most rudimentary discipline - punctuality,
kit inspections, morning runs, obedience to orders - many young men literally pack up and go home.

The excesses of European Human Rights law are bad enough in civil life, but disastrous when imposed upon the
Services. The current issue of British Army Review carries a letter from a veteran warrant officer, suggesting that young
soldiers no longer find it acceptable to give "casual salutes" to officers. The First Sea Lord, Sir Alan West,
said this month that the Armed Forces face ''legal encirclement" from human rights. Every officer knows what
he means. Circumstance and misguided policy unite against discipline, confidence and morale.

One of the oldest military maxims is "train hard, fight easy". If Britain's Armed Forces are obliged to conform to
the social and legal standards now prevailing in civil life, their future is bleak indeed, because these will
render them unconvincing warriors.

A retired general tells me of conversations with several officers who have left the Services: "They say they find
civilian life a breath of fresh air, because they no longer have to work with all the taboos and restrictions that
are making uniformed life fantastically difficult. It's becoming easier to give an order in a civilian business than in a
service unit.''

Eureka Years cont.

US readers will know that Holland, an Irishman, was sponsored by 'Nationalists' to take his ideas to
America where he first produced a steam driven vessel.

The Saga of the Submarine:
Part 4: The USS Holland - John Holland
http://inventors.about.com/library/i...submarine7.htm

Related Articles:

The Saga of the Submarine - John Holland and the USS Ho...
The Saga of the Submarine - John Holland vs Simon Lake
The Evolution of Submarine Design

Also - The Evolution of Submarine Design:
http://inventors.about.com/library/i...submarine3.htm

Willy photos.

(The Thames whale was christened Wlly (By some.)

See the BBC photos - click halfway down on the left.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/

We weren’t always quite so sentimental:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...004267,00.html

No, Willy was Willamena !

The 19ft whale has now been confirmed as an adolescent female.

She first surfaced on Friday morning in central London and throughout the day captured the attention of thousands
of Londoners who flocked to the river banks.

Despite the best efforts of many well meaning volunteers she subsequently expired as she was being
carried down the Thames to open sea in an inflatable jacket on a barge.