The skinny
By Times Wires
Published December 8, 2007
Special report: Britain not always so Great
Either Santa buckles up, or no parade
Due to the high cost of insurance, Santa's reindeer won't be the only ones strapped to the sleigh when St. Nick makes the rounds in parades around Birmingham, England, this year. The town of Halesowen thought that it was going to have to cancel the annual event when it found out about a rate increase for the ride that careens through town at a top speed of 5 mph. "He would be more likely to injure himself getting in and out of the sleigh than actually falling out of it," said Rotary president Barry Wheeler. "It just seemed ridiculous. He doesn't actually ride on the sleigh that often." But the insurer determined it could reduce the premium by more than $400 if organizers added a seat belt to the sleigh, which is actually towed by an SUV, not reindeer.
Jail not designed to stop a break in
A man in a low-security prison in England got an off-hours visit from his wife when she broke into the facility for the expressed purpose of having an unapproved conjugal visit, according to the Sun newspaper. According to the report, she was able to scale a fence, meet her husband, go back to his cell and spend some amount of time there doing whatever they were doing. She wasn't caught until she was leaving when a guard realized that there was something weird about a woman walking around inside an all-male jail. She was arrested and released, and the husband has been transferred to a prison with more security.
A kinder, gentler breed of attack dog
Concerned about potential compensatory claims against the police department, forces in the United Kingdom are training their canine units to deliver head butts to subdue bad guys. In fact, the plan is to have the dogs muzzled so they can't bite. "Instead of biting, the dog is muzzled and launches itself like a missile at the midriff of the target," Clive Wolfendale, deputy chief constable of North Wales, told the magazine K9. Pish-posh says retired dog handler John Barrett. "This sounds like political correctness. I think the public would laugh at you with a muzzled dog."
Church here first, but shut up anyway
New neighbors in Britain can be really picky about noise. Earlier this week, we learned that a butcher has been asked to refrain from butchering because all the incessant chopping was bothering a new tenant in the building. Now, the BBC reports that officials in Somerset are looking into the possibility of asking a church to stop ringing its bells, and residents suspect it is at the request of a new arrival. Of course, when compared to the church, everyone there is a new arrival: Its bells have rung daily for 200 years. "I wonder if someone moved into Westminster Square," one longtime resident told the BBC, "would they ask Big Ben to be silenced?"
Compiled from Times wire services and other sources by staff writer Jim Webster, who can be reached at jwebster@sptimes.com.