Bank invites rip-offs

A man deposited a bank draft which 48 hours later turned out to be a fake. The teller accepted the deposit and allowed the customer to withdraw some of the $1.5 million face value of the draft. [Montreal Gazette}

A court case by the National Bank of Canada to recover the monies paid out on behalf of the customer was dismissed by the judge who said the bank's employee should have been more diligent.

The bank's lawyer is horrified and plans to appeal. Claiming it's a matter of principle he says if the ruling prevails the bank "would have the burden of verifying bank drafts against the issuer."

Wow. Guess this means you can cheerfully deposit fake bank drafts in the National Bank, withdraw the money,
and walk off with the cash. At least until the appeal is heard. Wonder if anyone's told the Nigerian scammers about this potential goldmine?

Our Tax Dollars At Work

Federal tax collectors in British Columbia downloaded over 800 pirated MP3 files of music and stored them on Canada Revenue's computers so they could listen and share the songs. [Canadian Press; Canwest News Service]

The digital music took up more than five gigabytes of space.

Gives a whole new meaning to "whistle while you work".

Pissing contest?

A new, unintentional tourist attraction in Edmonton will invite men (and eventually women) to urinate in public.

Downtown businesses on Whyte Avenue, evidently a popular area for drinking, are tired of drunks relieving themselves in alleys and doorways. So they are installing open-air plastic urinals.[Montreal Gazette]

Four men can use the urinals at one time. A plastic divider will provide a semblance of privacy for the urinaters. Since they are drunk one wonders if they'd care.

No details yet on the proposed outhouses for women.

Gives a whole new meaning to the concept of being judged by one's pee-rs.

Ethics of a Car Salesman

No Saturday shopping for a new car in Quebec. Nor Sunday for that matter. Most new car dealers in the province are closed on weekends.

When the PIE IX Dodge Chrysler dealership decided to defy the local dealers' Association and open on weekends many of the other new car dealers were outraged. They expelled the dealership that dared to put customers' convenience first.

So outraged were the dealers that they staged demonstrations to make it difficult for would-be customers to enter the premises of the open-on-weekends Dodge dealer. The protesters also jammed phone lines to the open dealership so potential buyers couldn't get through. [Montreal Gazette]

One disgruntled car salesman went too far. He called in a bomb threat. But he had to leave a message because of the phone blockage. The message carried caller ID. So the manager called that number, pretended to be someone else and got the man's name and the name of the GM dealership where he worked.

Police were notified and charges laid.

The man's boss said the guy was on sick leave.

Dah.

West Coast Wackies

If you've ever wondered why our west coast people are considered somewhat wacky, here are two stories from Vancouver [courtesy the Montreal Gazette]:

A driver charged with impaired driving after his car was stopped for weaving on a freeway claimed his attention was not compromised by the 10 beers and double cocktail he'd consumed but rather because his wife was enjoying a new vibrator.

In a hopefully unrelated story, the RCMP have new orders to check inside cars that appear to have been abandoned. This followed the revelation that a dead man sat in his car on the Trans-Canada Highway (presumably on the shoulder) for 3 days despite the car being noticed and flagged by local police and the Mounties. Seems no-one looked inside the vehicle.

Just goes to show that on the West Coast cars can be hazardous to your health.

Centenarian Won't Be Caught Napping

Saskatchewan centenarian Phyllis Perkins was excused from jury duty because serving as a juror would likely "interrupt her nap time." [Montreal Gazette]
The Saskatoon resident (born in 1903) meets the only legal requirements in that province for jury duty: being an adult and living in the judicial district.

Pity she's excused from serving. Ms Perkins might have set a whole new trend: Regular snooze time for judges and juries. Imagine what that could do for our moribund justice system.

Forget Radar Traps -- Just Use Goats

No goats on the 401 (Canada's busiest highway linking Montreal with Toronto) provided a Swiss visitor with an excuse for driving 61 km/hr over the speed limit. [Montreal Gazette]

He told police that he figured it was okay to speed because he was unlikely to hit a goat.

Hmm. Guess that driver has never seen Canada's main weapon in the fight to slow speeders: the Moose.

Anti-war Christmas Tree Unacceptable to United Way

Anti-war decorations on a Christmas tree were offensive to someone in the United Way in Burlington, Ontario [Montreal Gazette] so the tree was removed from its charity auction.

The tree was decorated with Christmas crackers, poppies and a platoon of toy soldiers by Pakistan-born artist Asma Arshad Mahmood. She entitled the piece of art "Merry Christmas from Mesopotamia, lest we forget."

Quite right. Christmas is not, of course, a time to encourage peace and an end to war. The tree is a pagan symbol and Christianity itself has a long history of torture, blood, gore, prejudice and discrimination.

Just as Jesus said: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. " [Matthew, 10:34]

Nothing To Crow About

Crows are flocking to our cities. Murders of crows are blanketing Charlottetown, P.E.I.'s waterfront and have previously inundated Woodstock, Ontario where at least 40,000 crows outnumbered human residents. [Canadian Press]

The noise and feces of these murders disturb and annoy their human hosts. In Charlottetown the City Council is reluctant to spend the necessary money to shoo away the birds with "high-pitched bird distress and and predator calls".

One councillor suggested his colleagues fear the crows might migrate to their own backyards.

A solution is still being sought.

Strange that the City Council doesn't see the obvious: why not make crow pie a delicacy, in the clever way that the French made slimy snails (ugh!) and slithery oysters (double ugh!) into gourmet foods.

Oh, right. No City Councillor is going to eat crow.

Fortune for the Fortune Teller

78-year-old Sophie Evon is wanted by the police after scamming a broken-hearted Seattle woman out of $220,000 and fleeing from Toronto to British Columbia.[Canwest News Service].

Seems the 26-year-old video store clerk victim was depressed after being dumped by her boyfriend. She sought the palm-reading help of Evon's daughter-in-law Sylvia Lee (now serving 18 months in a U.S. prison).

The two fortune-telling crooks (are there any other kind? It's like saying some psychics are genuine) put the victim through a ritual of cleansing her of evil which cost the clerk some $10,000. Then the love-sick victim was persuaded by these heartless criminals to help the ex-boyfriend who was, according to them, in serious
trouble. He could be helped, they claimed, by their praying for 24 hours over substantial cash. So the victim liquidated the retirement savings of her parents, handed over $209,500 in $100 bills and never received a penny back.

Too bad she didn't realise the fortune tellers were preying.

Convicted Mum Killer Can Become A Lawyer

He stabbed his naked mother 40 times and slashed her throat to end her suffering. He was sentenced to four years and 10 months. Served a less than a year.

Now, years later, he is deemed by the Quebec Professions Tribunal to have the right qualities to become a lawyer. [Montreal Gazette]

Following the ruling The Quebec Bar Association gave up its 10-year fight to prevent Sebastien Brousseau being admitted to the bar.

The three Tribunal judges claimed the bar's opposition arose from subjective views, not from evidence. Contrary to the bar's assertion that Brousseau lacks the characteristics necessary to instill confidence in the public and the judicial system, the Tribunal noted that many lawyers and non-lawyers signed affidavits attesting that Brousseau is not the same 21-year-old he was in 1990. That indeed, he'd earned the respect of his law-school professors, lawyers and employers.

Gives a whole new meaning to the expression "cut-throat lawyer."

Feel nauseous?

Quebec's auditor-general is alarmed that restaurant inspectors -- searching for health risks such as E-coli and salmonella -- in Montreal are doing a more thorough job than their counterparts in the rest of the Province.

His solution? The Province should take over Montreal restaurant inspections.[Montreal Gazette]

Right. Why raise standards when you can lower them?

Sometimes you need a strong stomach to digest our politicians' silliness.

Naked lawyer guilty

A nude lawyer admitted his guilt in court after a passer-by in Trois Rivieres reported him for being in a public place clad only in a hat and shoes. [The Gazette, Montreal]

The lawyer (whose name we omit because he's suffered enough sardonic publicity) had been charged with a similar offence in the 1990s but won an acquittal because he'd been entrapped by a cop.

This time his feeble excuse was that he was hot from jogging and had stopped to change his clothes. But the judge was troubled by the lawyer's behaviour, saying that it was "not good for the members of the bar."

So even when a lawyer wants to show the naked truth, he is rebuked.

However, now the lawyer's clients will surely believe him when he offers to give them the shirt off his back.

We'll drink to that

An ad for Australian tourism had to be re-shot for Canadian TV viewers. Seems our Aussie cousins actually dared to show a glass of beer that was half-empty (or half-full, depending upon whether you're an optimistic Australian or a pessimsitic Canadian).

In Canada the government won't allow TV ads that show people actually drinking non-branded beer -- or even holding a glass of beer that's less than full..

The resulting scornful uproar brought Australia world-wide free publicity. [Canwest News Service]

Of course, the real reason for the Canadian ban is that we don't drink beer from a glass. From babyhood on, it's a bottle of beer, thank you very much.

To see the Australian ad go to http://wherethebloodyhellareyou.com

The $28,700 coffee cup

A ten-year-old girl picks a Tim Hortons coffee cup out of the garbage at her school and begins a woeful tale of greed.

Seems the cardboard cup is worth $28,700 -- the value of an SUV that was uncovered as a prize when the little girl asked a 12-year-old friend with stronger fingers to help her "roll up the rim" of the cardboard cup. [The Gazette, Montreal].

The 12-year-old's parents phoned a local radio station for advice because they wanted 50% of the prize value!

Then a man demanded the cup be tested for DNA evidence to prove that he was the rightful owner of the cup. His lawyer claims the man purchased and enjoyed the coffee and even though he threw away the empty cup he's entitled to the SUV prize.

I know, I know. You're waiting for the trite comment, "a tempest in a coffee cup" but all I can say is kudos to the marketing experts at Tim Hortons who produced a TV commercial so powerful that it encouraged a 10 -year-old girl to rummage around in her school's garbage looking for a rim to roll up.

Gross Anti-Smoking Ads

A study of gruesome pictures on cigarette packages showed that throat cancers, blackened lungs and decayed teeth did not deter 12 female volunteers from smoking.

Magnetic resource imaging determined their brains' reactions to the pictures, printed on cigarette packages since 2001. Even the most revolting (to non-smokers) images failed to have an impact on the young women. [Canwest News Service].

Researcher and graduate student Shoshanna Campbell got it right when she said the cigarette packs should show "smoking makes you poor, or if you smoke you'll get ugly."

It's my guess that teenagers, far from being grossed out by the disgusting images might even collect them. This study (fortunately funded not by taxpayers but by something called The Canadian Tobacco Control Research Initiative) is an example of scientists wasting their time and money investigating something that is obvious to laypeople -- namely that youngsters think they're going to live forever.

Until smoking is made to appear uncool the growing percentage of kids (especially girls) will continue.

It's a typical dilemma for Canadian Federal and Provincial Governments: cigarettes are a legal product, their sales bring in a lot of tax money yet smokers get sick and require a good chunk of scarce medical resources. On the other hand, they die sooner thus saving some Medicare dollars.

No wonder politicians are nervous.

It's enough to make them reach for a smoke.

Steals $16 million, Serves 14 Months

An Edmonton former bank manager, Nick Lysyk, is free on parole after serving 14 months of his 88 month sentence for robbing the Bank of Montreal of $16,335,000. [Canadian Press]

He'd set up 64 phony loans until he was caught in 2002. The bank seized $5 million in cash and assets.

Hmm. That leaves some $11 million unaccounted for. Think Mr Lysyk has it squirreled away somewhere warm and cozy? You can bank on it.

Not Just Barefoot in the Kitchen

20% of Canadians enjoy sex in the kitchen according to a Gallup poll. [National Post]

While this stat pales in comparison to the 33% of Danes and 28% of Norwegians who enjoy cooking naked it is close to the 22% of Swedes and Japanese who relish kitchen sex.

Think about that next time you're sitting around a Canadian kitchen table. Or maybe not.

"Santa" caught red-faced

Christnas eve in Belleville, Ontario saw Santa Claus apprehended by police as he was about to enter a home. Clothed in red and carrying gifts the jolly fat man had been reported by a neighbour as a suspicious character lurking nearby.

When police questioned Santa the embarrassed man turned out to be a fellow cop. He was off-duty and said he was simply trying to sneak into his own house to plant gifts as a surprise for his kids. [Montreal Gazette]

So who's been naught or nice? You'd think a cop would know that these days Identity Theft is taken very seriously. Can you imagine what the real Santa Claus will be giving that cop next Christmas?

Definitely Not Jolly Rogers

A $12,000 cell phone bill from Rogers Wireless astounded customer (and lawyer) Susan Drummond

She refused to pay because the calls had been made not by her but by Hezbollah the terrorist organizaton. They had "cloned" her phone -- captured the number and the encrypted security code -- to make hundreds of overseas calls.

According to Toronto's Globe and Mail Ted Rogers and some of his executives have also had their phones cloned.

But Rogers insists Ms Drummond pay the bill (now grown to over $14,000). Her court claim is that the company has the technology to detect unusual patterns of calling so Rogers should have contacted Ms Drummond when the calls began. The company should have immediately cut off the terrorists' use of her phone number.

Now you know what is really meant by a "terrorist cell,"