ASIA NEWS

BREAKING NEWS!

Yes! They're finally here. The official mascots for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. One's a fish, one's a panda, one's a Tibeten antelope (controversial?), one's a swallow, and one's an Olympic flame. God I love the Chinese.

"The five friendlies are an incredible little family carefully chosen by Beijing 2008 to represent all of China to carry a message of friendship to the children of the world," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said in a statement that was read at the ceremony.

"China is so lucky to have so many beautiful animals to represent the Olympic spirit," Rogge said, heroically keeping a straight face.

A plethora of real and mythic creatures were among the candidates considered by Chinese leaders, Olympic officials and design specialists over the past year. Among those that didn't make the cut were the dragon and a mischievous magical monkey out of Chinese folklore.

Best. Olympics. Ever.

source: AP

UPDATE!



As promised here are the 2002 World Cup mascots, Ato, Nik and Kaz, who come from Atmozone in space where they play a version of football. One of them is supposed to be a manager, the tall one presumably.

"Avid football fans, the three set out to help create a special atmosphere at the FIFA World Cup finals. The two youngest mascots have many adventure and cause much chaos on their way to the matches in Korea and Japan. In the end, they help make the 2002 FIFA World Cup the greatest tournament ever by creating an exciting atmosphere among the players and spectators and in the process convey the lesson that harmony is the key to every success."

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

TUPNews recommends you invest 30p in a copy of today's Sun. It's one of the best issues published since Rebekah Wade took over. Today's Deirdre's Photo Casebook is worth the cover price alone.

BUSINESS NEWS

Now that oil prices are receding, the hot pseudo-controversial opinion at London dinner parties is “nuclear, that’s the only answer.” Cue shrieks from lefty females and patronising lesser-of-two-evils, if-it’s-good-enough-for-the-French chat from Decent Leftists. The TUPNews reader, however, will keep his counsel until the argument is spent. Then he will stun all into silence by announcing that the future is, in fact, coal.

Coal? Arthur Scargill? Ken Loach? The Falklands War? Chimney sweeps? Dinosaur industry?

Half of all European electricity is generated by coal-fired plants. Unlike oil, there is still shitloads of the stuff left in the ground. The problem has always been that coal is awful in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, which is currently bothering big energy chiefs and Joe Sixpack alike.

Clean coal technology has come on leaps and bounds, however. It is now possible, through use of science, to burn coal in a way that emits roughly the same CO2 as natural gas – a reduction of 50-70%. The FutureGen project in the US, meanwhile, will potentially allow for a zero-emissions coal-fired plant.

As with all new technology, the main problem at the moment is the vast amount of capital required to build these new types of plants. But once the economies of scale are in place, clean coal is well positioned to be the energy source of choice for the 21st century.

OK, so you’ve shut up the nuclear alpha males. That still leaves the left-leaning maidens to impress, and they sure as hell aren’t going to be impressed by a coal enthusiast. Here’s where you bring the eco-charm – courtesy of your new best friend, the jatropha tree.

The jatropha tree was, until recently, a useless piece of shit whose only remarkable quality was its ability to thrive in the most godawful, desiccated climates known to man. It produced nothing of any use to anyone. But crops such as the jatropha tree are perfect for converting into biofuel, which you can run cars on. Biofuel is already being blended into the gasoline as we speak, in time it could replace oil as the transport fuel of choice. Best of all, it means that people who live in godawful places can now become jatropha tree farmers and make bare cash.

So there you are – an even more controversial opinion than nuclear, and an opinion with “bio” in it that also saves the world’s poor. Advantage TUPNews reader.

BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews recently returned from a morning press conference at the Carlton Club, a gentlemens’ club on St. James Street in London’s sophisticated St. James/Mayfair area. After a hairy moment when your correspondent was nearly turned away for my failure to sport a necktie, TUPNews was escorted downstairs to the Cabinet Room, thankfully without having to bear the ignominy of wearing the ‘house’ tie that such clubs often keep behind the desk for the rare and unpleasant occasions when members of the merchant class such as myself attempt to gain entry.

The Carlton Club has strong links to the Conservative Party. The Cabinet Room is so named because it contains the original Cabinet table used by Benjamin Disraeli, a former British prime minister who pretty much founded the modern Conservative Party. The table is circular, and would seat around twelve to fourteen people at the most. I arrived too late to take a seat there, unfortunately, and was therefore unable to fantasise about debating the Climbing Boys Act. Instead, I had to make do with the row of seats at the back of the room.

Large portraits of famous 20th century Tories line the room – Heath, Major, Lord Wakeham. Mrs. T takes pride of place, with the largest portrait directly behind the table (that is, where the chairman of any meeting would sit.) It’s pretty cool, and the effect is rendered more impressive by the cosy size of the room, and the fact that it is tucked away in the basement.

The subject of the press conference was the “Energy Crisis in the UK and Europe.” Much was said. To summarise: buy a nice, thick jumper this winter. And maybe some long johns.

BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews was going through some old receipts in my wallet this morning when a particularly garish back-of-a-receipt advert caught my eye. I’m surprised that back-of-the-receipt adverts are still going, as they must be the most easily ignored adverts outside of the web. I was also surprised to find myself taking a second look at this one, based solely on the fact that it featured a very colourful, psychedelic swirl design, but the content surprised me even more. The advert was for The Magdela, a pub about ten minutes down my road.

I checked the front and found it was a receipt from my local Somerfield Market Fresh on Lordship Lane. Somerfield must, therefore, employ someone to sell back-of-a-receipt advertising to local merchants – local as in within two miles of a specific store location. Amazing!

I can’t see how they make any money from it, though. You go from just buying millions of yards of generic receipt paper and sending it out to whichever store asks for it first, to printing thousands of individual batches of different receipt paper, and employing people to make sure that the right batches go to the right stores. Local merchants must have a lot of faith in the penetrability of back-of-a-receipt advertising.

If you’re interested, the Magdela (on Lordship Lane, past the police station) is offering two for one pizzas every Tuesday, including takeaway. I’ve eaten pizza in the newly-refurbished Magdela, it was excellent and affordable. They have a decent pub quiz on a Sunday night as well. Unfortunately TUPNews can’t go back there for a while, after drinking all afternoon and heckling the quizmaster with such witty barbs as: “What’s the capital of Bolivia?” “Your mum!”

UPDATE!

On the subject of receipts, check your receipt the next time you use one of those self-service checkouts. At Somerfield at least, the receipt will say something like:

"YOUR STORE MANAGER IS JASON BUTTS
YOU WERE SERVED TODAY BY ROBOT ANGELA"

It's a nice touch, but I can never help but wonder whether Angela is the name of the till-girl who got laid off when they brought the self-service machines in.

LONDON NEWS

The President of China, Mr Hu Jintao, is in town today to meet the Queen and do some sightseeing. TUPNews can report a massive security presence in the Savile Row / Mayfair area of London, where plainclothes policemen with earpieces are escorting Chinese diplomats around the shops. The Chinese diplomats are all wearing poppies.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

A teacher who visited a brothel found that one of the hookers was a moonlighting female colleague in Queensland, West Australia.

from the Sun

SPORTS NEWS

Darts
South Kensington Academics Darts League
Winter League Match
The Holland Club, South Kensington

Imperial College Select bt Arrows 9-4

TUPNews played for Imperial College Select in the first home game of the season. Imperial College Select is a ‘barbarians’ team that plays in that university’s darts league.

The full match report is on www.icselect.blogspot.com, which is linked on the right.

EUROPE NEWS

TUPNews recently went on an international pub crawl, starting in the Old Town of San Sebastian, in Northern Spain, and finishing in St Jean de Luz, in Southern France.

San Sebastian is the tenth largest city in Spain, and is located in the heart of the Basque country. In the course of my travels within this region, TUPNews has developed a deep affinity with the Basque people, their traditions and their plight. They are a proud, ugly people, whose fierce sense of nationalism is finely balanced between dark and light components – the dark being their caustic, if justifiable, hatred of the Spanish; the light being their passion for their own culture – particularly their cuisine, and to a lesser extent their sport.

TUPNews started the evening in the Parte Vieja, a lattice of paved alleyways heaving with cosy, inexpensive bars of a style popular in Western Europe: narrow, brightly lit, simply furnished places. The bars are largely identical and in close proximity to each other, which lends itself to bar-hopping, or as the locals call it, txikito. All Basque words contain at least one X, which leads to some very high Scrabble scores, as you can imagine.

Old Town bars are all about the pintxos, the Basque version of tapas. But pintxos is to tapas as, er, something brilliant is to something rubbish. No lacklustre offerings of stale bread and olives here, we’re talking about an entire bar surface covered in plates of prawn brochettes, fried octopus, Serrano ham, langoustines on a stick, anchovies, crab cakes, little bacon and egg things, melted cheese things, as well as many things TUPNews didn’t even recognise but scarfed down anyway. Every single bar is filled with this stuff – they have to hand you your drinks because there’s no space to put the glasses down on the bar. You just eat what you like and tell the bartender what you had at the end – it’s fantastic, and pretty cheap.

At about seven, walking from one bar to another, we came across a large group of people in one of the courtyards. They were preparing for a Basque ritual I had witnessed on my last visit but completely forgotten about. Taking a break from the eating and drinking, they collected white placards with the faces of Basque political prisoners – primarily members of the Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) terrorist group – and set off on a march through the city centre. The crowd numbered a couple of hundred and was comprised of Basques from all ages and walks of life. After about half an hour, they all came back and carried on with Friday night.

Amazingly, this has happened every single Friday night in San Sebastian for as long as anyone can remember. Imagine going on a protest march every Friday night!

This time it was peaceful and dignified – the last time I was here, an important parliamentary vote on Basque autonomy had just gone the wrong way, and bins were set alight. A chap came into our hostel clutching a rubber bullet he had picked up off the street – it was the size and shape of a tennis ball, slightly smaller maybe. But this was carnival season, so people were in high spirits anyway.

SERVICE UPDATE

OK, looks like we're in business. I've changed the comments to Haloscan, so unfortunately I've lost the many witty and enlightening comments that have been made so far - apologies for that, and for the delay as the change was made. As you can see I have also changed the TUPNews template to the "Berliner" format. If this was the Guardian, you could expect the next ten posts to bang on about the redesign as if it was actually fucking news, but this is of course TUPNews, so you can expect nothing less than the high-quality factual journalism to which you have become accustomed.

Thank you for your continued support.