Oh the burden of being ROYALTY!
The monarchy has defended the cost of refurbishing a Kensington Palace apartment for Prince William, his wife Catherine and their baby son Prince George.
A royal spokesman did not confirm the seven-figure cost — reportedly at £4 million — for repairs and refurbishments, but said the royal couple had paid for their own furnishings. (Folks, your ever frugal reporter knows how expensive even that that can be……., I had to go out last year and buy a new recliner!)
The bill includes extensive work on the 17th-century London palace apartment, including installing a new roof, overhauling the electrics and carrying out plumbing repairs, while work was needed to remove asbestos.
William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have taken up Apartment 1A, formerly the home of princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth’s sister, who died in 2002.
http://news.yahoo.com/british-monarchy-defends-cost-william-kates-home-232726682.html
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Speaking of ‘boomerang’ kids: It’s not only the Royals that are adjusting to their grand kids still living at home! A report suggests boomers are taking on more of the responsibility for their adult children struggling to attain financial self-sufficiency in the post-recession years of high youth unemployment and low wage gains.
The report, based on an online survey by Environics Research, shows a majority of boomers have stepped up to help support their adult children, and that as many as one-in-five say they would be prepared to put their own financial security at risk to help out.
The number one way of helping out is providing free room and board, but also contributing to major purchases like cars or computers, helping pay for rent and groceries and of course, paying off credit card bills.
(Matter of fact …………., one third of young adults still live with their parents or grandparents!)
Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/boomers-feeling-financial-strain-of-boomerang-kids-survey-1.1270696#ixzz35OqC0adO
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Hey kids, have ya ever seen someone drop0 a mentos into a bottle or glass of coca-cola, and then watched a volcanic eruption occur?
Well, …………., not being content with the ordinary, run of the mill explosion, some of this nations most inquisitive, and serious researchers, (college kids) decided to go that one better!
Unfortunately we can’t show you any more than this because of the graphic nature of the video, but here is a picture of the young guys remains!
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First it was a prison helicopter escape, and now a prison “balloon” attempt?
Inmates were sent indoors when a hot air balloon landed in the parking lot of an Oregon women’s prison, but it wasn’t an escape attempt.
The Oregonian reports (http://is.gd/m6VYcw ) that the pilot told officials at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility that he was taking part in a balloon festival Thursday morning but was running low on fuel and battling strong winds.Reynolds says inmates who were in the recreation yard were sent inside for about a half hour while the balloon was removed.
She says the parking lot is far enough from the main prison that officials “felt confident in assuming this wasn’t an inmate escape attempt.”
(Let’s face it kids, that helicopter escape was like something out of a U.S. movie! A balloon attempt would be more Canadian!)
Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/2014/06/20/3401817/hot-air-balloon-lands-at-oregon.html#storylink=cpy
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A Republican Senator from the Southern States has raise the question about “what’s up with all this funny weather?“
IT’S GLOBAL WARMING, YOU ASSHOLE!
Recent bouts of extreme weather — including persistent warmth and drought in the western USA and cold outbreaks in the East — are linked to large fluctuations of wind patterns high above the Earth’s surface, says a study published Sunday in the British journal Nature.
These strange fluctuations in wind patterns, related to jet streams at upper levels of the atmosphere, and their connection to global warming have been the subject of extensive research within the climate science community.
“Over the past three decades, there is evidence that extreme weather events are linked to changes in atmospheric air flow patterns,” said study lead author James Screen of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
These strange fluctuations in wind patterns, related to jet streams at upper levels of the atmosphere, and their connection to global warming have been the subject of extensive research within the climate science community.
“Over the past three decades, there is evidence that extreme weather events are linked to changes in atmospheric air flow patterns,” said study lead author James Screen of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/06/22/weather-extremes-atmospheric-waves-climate-change/11106043/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+usatoday-NewsTopStories+%28USATODAY+-+News+Top+Stories%29
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THIS, ladies and gentlemen, during the first few decades of transatlantic air travel, was the first thing Europeans saw when they landed a Gander airport, Newfoundland.
GANDER, N.L. – The vintage international lounge at the Gander airport in central Newfoundland is a time capsule where Italian marble and designer furniture still exude the faded glamour of world travel. (I was there in 1957!)
It’s a vast room, its iconic yellow sofas whimsically arranged on a mezzanine overlooking terrazzo floors and sleek blue chairs where VIPs ranging from global leaders to the Beatles once stopped on transatlantic flights.
It was opened by the Queen as a showcase of Canadian modernity in 1949. But the growing costs of preserving this cultural touchstone have raised the prospect that a more practical, smaller terminal will replace it.
“We understand and appreciate the historical significance of this airport and this terminal building,” said Gary Vey, president and CEO of the Gander International Airport Authority.
“We’re hopeful that some solution can be found perhaps to maintain it. But we have to be clear that it can’t be at the expense of the airport authority because we don’t have a mandate for that.
“To put it bluntly, we’re not in the museum business.”
The airport still has a strategic and vital role but no longer sees nearly the traffic it once did, he said. Operating costs of the terminal are increasingly eating into profits, he explained.
Vey sympathizes with those who want to protect Gander’s unique ode to an era when boarding a plane was a luxury. He’s about to retire from an extraordinary 17-year career in a place like no other.
“I’ve seen everybody here from Fidel Castro, Vicente Fox, Prince Charles, the Queen. I saw Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, the list goes on.”
He once talked politics with former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. for a cherished few minutes when they were en route to Moscow for the funeral of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
Vey still gets a kick out of sharing with visitors the room’s most prized features. They include the “Welcoming Birds” sculpture in bronze by Arthur Price and the 22-metre long futuristic mural that hangs overhead.
Called “Flight and its Allegories” by artist Kenneth Lochhead, its vibrant colours were fixed to last in the classical tempera style using egg yolk. At the bottom left is a male figure with binoculars that seem to follow you around.
Vey laughed as he showed off the row of chairs before a large makeup mirror in the original ladies powder room where Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy may well have freshened up.
In the centre of the lounge is a circular bank of pay phones where members of the 101st Airborne Division Screaming Eagles formed long lines for what would be their last words with loved ones on Dec. 12, 1985. Their chartered Arrow Air DC-8 crashed just after takeoff early that morning, killing 248 troops and eight crew, as they headed home for Christmas to Fort Campbell, Ky.
Ice on the wings or a possible explosion were later blamed in a divided official report.
Margaret O’Dea was a teenager in Gander in the mid-1960s who spent hours at the airport when international and domestic passengers freely mingled.
“It was warm, it was safe, there was food and there was always people. We became people watchers.”
She especially recalled listening to often terrified young American draftees, many of them just 18, on their way to the Vietnam War.
“They had just said goodbye to everybody they loved in their whole life and they knew many of them were not going to come back,” she said.
O’Dea said she wasn’t looking for pen pals or romance.
“It was trying to help them face what was coming, even though none of us had a clue what they were going to face. It was just they needed someone to talk to.”
O’Dea is among many people who hope the lounge can be saved intact.
“If it’s taken apart, it’s destroyed.”
Jack Marion once worked night shifts at the airport.
“It was part of the fabric of the town back in the ’60s and ’70s,” he recalled. “We made friends with the crews and with everybody in the terminal.”
Cary Grant arrived on a private jet one night and came in for a chat.
“What a nice man he was.”
Marion also recalled sending baby formula, car parts and even fresh Christmas trees home with Cuban crews heading back to Havana. For five years the terminal was like his second home.
“It’s quite emotional when I think about the fact that they’re maybe going to get rid of it or tear it down. I just hope it doesn’t happen.”
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