AWOL 2014 Issue 276 28th March | Page 5

Advertise here from only 40 baht per week weird NEWS london, england The lights are on but nobody’s home as the Metropolitan Police pay £100 to change a lightbulb The Metropolitan Police spend up to £100 each time a lightbulb needs changing, according to new figures. A maintenance firm is paid the dazzling sum every time a bulb needs changing ‘urgently’ while in ‘non-urgent’ cases they receive £26. The figures were brought to light by barrister Jessica Learmond-Criqui after she was tipped off by disgruntled officers frustrated by the ‘current’ state of police finances. With budgets being cut across the force and up to 65 police stations across London facing closure, many have criticised the apparent waste of money spent on such a simple task. ‘It’s utterly crazy that the Met would even consider wasting so much money on changing a lightbulb,’ Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, told the Sunday People. ‘This sounds like the punchline to a bad joke yet the bill to taxpayers is no laughing matter,’ added Mr Isaby, who seems to be quite switched on about the subject. The bright sparks at the force also admitted that the charge they pay to contractors Interserve is determined by the position of the light fitting and the type of bulb used. So it turns out it takes more than just a couple of coppers to change a light bulb. belgium Maths teacher threatens Game of Thrones spoilers instead of detention for naughty students Remember spending ages writing lines on the blackboard, or sitting in detention? A maths teacher apparently decided to up the ante by threatening to reveal Game of Thrones spoilers to his misbehaving students. One day while teaching in a noisy classroom, the educator asked who watched Game of Thrones, to which the majority raised their hands. ‘Well, I’ve read all the books,’ he told them. ‘If there is too much noise, I will write the name of the dead on the board. They are enough to fill the whole year and I can even describe how they die,’ reports nieuwsblad.be. Those troublemakers who took it as an empty threat soon found themselves living to regret it when the teacher proceeded to write the names of those killed off in the third series on the board. Unsurprisingly, the class got back pretty sharpish to working on long division and the like in silence after that. 5 Join the AWOL forum