Didja hear? The English are fucking loaded, and their currency is twice the man the dollar is. In fact, so rich and well fed are they that their chubby fingers, slippery with meat fat, render useless the remote controls they use to power their expensive televisions, thereby causing them to go practically deaf every time a loud commercial comes on.

In Britain, regulators moved this month to dial down the volume of television commercials. The Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, which sets guidelines for the industry, adopted a new rule saying that TV ads should not be “excessively noisy or strident.”

And if the stations don't follow the rules? A distinctly British consequence: nothing!

In theory, the authority can forward cases to Ofcom, the British media regulator, which can impose sanctions on offenders. But such action rarely occurs in cases involving advertising …

See what bureaucrats do when they get far too much money in the coffers? Perhaps this isn't such a bad thing.

Finally, another Western country is getting a little wide in the middle. The English are almost as fat as we are, and it’s only growing:

Experts say that most of the population will be obese by 2050 unless urgent action is taken and the associated rise in ill health would cost the NHS £50 billion a year.
The Government wants Britain to be the first major nation to reverse the rising tide of obesity and said it would focus on reducing within 12 years the proportion of children who are overweight back to the 2000 level of 26 per cent.

At present, 30 per cent of children are obese or overweight.

When we see a fat couple on the subway, we wonder to ourselves if they could ever be happy considering how unattractive they both are. But then maybe they have a different, and equally valid, concept of beauty, they have found real happiness. And if everyone were fat, there would be no need to feel bad about being a little chubby or slightly morbidly obese. Except for heart disease. That shit is a killer.

According to Greek myth, humans were originally eight-limbed and had a single head made of two faces. Zeus, the King of the Gods, feared our power in that form and split us, damning us to spend our lives searching for our other half.

Well, in England, two people came as close as possible to living this myth. Male and female fraternal twins, separated at birth by adoption, found each other again, felt an “inevitable attraction” and married.

Of course one person’s inevitable attraction is another person’s “ew, gross.” And a High British Court annulled the marriage.

This story is a like litmus test: Some people find it really disturbing and others find it really sad. Wherever you stand, try to avoid fucking your sibling.

CHA-CHING By 2009, it is predicted that the U.K. will become the first major economy to spend more on internet advertising than on television advertising. Looks like this whole World Wide Web thing is here to stay. [Guardian]

Any sense of Anglo-Saxon solidarity we felt with sane British people who were also forced to deal with crazy Christians is gone. An English high court has ruled against the Christian group that had sued the BBC for blasphemy for screening Jerry Springer: The Opera in 2005.

We just can’t help but resent the British for a have justice system that actually protects them against religious loonies.

The BBC, the British network that makes PBS seem like MTV, is planning on decimating its work force today to make up for £2 billion in budget cuts.

The 2,000 redundent employees will mostly come from the news department as radio, television and online departments become integrated. If the cut goes through, union reps have warned that there will be a strike in a few weeks.

Findings scabs shouldn’t be hard: Think of all the American journalists who’ve lost their jobs to the same circumstances.

[UK Telegraph]