Mayor who stole women’s underwear jailed

A mayor who got his ‘’sexual kicks” by sneaking into bedrooms to steal women’s underwear has been jailed for two years after he was caught out by a secret camera.

Ian Stafford, the ex-mayor of a Lancashire village, was jailed for two years Photo: PA

Ian Stafford, 59, was a church-goer and highly respected member of the community and Mayor of Preesall in Lancashire before his ”bluntly revolting” behaviour was uncovered, Preston Crown Court heard.

A part-time handyman and gardener, he had been employed for years by some of his victims who trusted him with keys to their homes.

But while alone Stafford, a bachelor, would creep into their bedrooms, rifle through underwear draws and masturbate before replacing the knickers and also stealing some of the garments.

One suspicious homeowner who began to notice the thefts then planted hidden cameras – which captured one episode with Stafford in the bedroom naked from the waste down acting out his fantasy, the court was told. Read the full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/8501032.stm

David Beckham, Footballer & Professional Underwear Model Comments:

I reely feel fer them victims of this NICKER-FIEF!
I ask yer, wot the bleedin’ ‘ell is up wiv this bloke??!  It ain’t normawl. Okay, ‘ee don’t ‘ave no wife like my Victoria te keep ‘im ‘appy, but ‘ee could go wiv wun of them laydees wot gets paid, right?

I fink ponsin’ around an’ steelin’ nickers from yer girlie-mates ‘as gotta be a step down, innit? I ain’t got no simpa-fee!

Wot can yer do wiv this ‘ere dick-’ead? Fer starters, ‘ee needs a shrink, and that ain’t a lie! ‘Ee needs FERAPEE big-time, an’ maybee ‘ee can leed a normawl life wiv a lady wot appree-shee-aytes ‘im.

Wot I would say to this paffetick git is: Look mate, you ain’t the best lookin’ geezer in the yooniverse, but yoos could learn to keep yer kinks to yerself an’ maybee get a decent job modelin’ nickers like wot me an me wife Victoria doo.
Yer know it makes sense, yer sad tosser!

Recalls islander Vassie Parilongi, now a part-time dinner lady in Melbourne’s Ear, Nose & Throat hospital canteen:

The story of the two British missionaries, Williams and Harris was recounted to me as a bed-time story when I was growing up. My mother used to tell me that both men were surly, rotund creatures, who took hours to tenderize. In fact, we have a nursery rhyme she used to sing to me which, roughly translated, goes something like this:

Two fat men

Two big fires

Too much time To tenderize

Missionary man

Go home to your gods

Chicken is better

Pass the salt

The Erromango islanders, who once had a nasty habit of eating their visitors, still have their own special family recipes handed down from generation to generation. But nowadays, instead of eating people, they are strict vegans and eschew any form of animal products. Why the change? Until recently, the islanders believed their past actions had brought a curse to the tribe.

“We were happy to have the curse lifted”, the village elders stated. Asked what the curse was, they all looked at each other and started crying. The island, now a tropical paradise for tourists, was once famous for its young people developing a mysterious and unsightly skin condition, a white stripe around the neck called a ‘godimanimarki’ or ‘Missionary Collar’, upon reaching puberty.

GG Qlarq

Dixon, my good man, appears you saw a ‘bit of action’ the other day at the local crop circle, eh what?

Listen here, old chap….absolutely nothing to worry about. Encounter, not cricket obviously, but not in the least bit suspicious – in fact, if anything, a blasted nuisance and a bit of a bore.

Naturally, no aliens involved.  Lot of stuff and nonsense! Ha! Guffawing out loud at the very idea!

To follow, possible explanations for wobbly upper lip:

• Yellow Hot Air Balloons (always sending them up – blighters always coming back down)

• Abba Tribute Band (one playing in local village – awful racket)

• Farmers’ prank (damned jokers, when they’re not shooting themselves, that is!)

• Cows (damned silly creatures – neurotic around electric fences)

• Kids (upstarts in general)

• Americans (rather tall on the whole)

Suggest a jolly good drink/walk with the wife to let the dust settle, then back to work it is, my good fellow, protecting our glorious countryside against dirty rotten vandals, who seek to undermine our British way of life, eh what?

Yours,

Major Charles Pickett-Humes
Ministry of Defence (Public Relations Dept.)

A Japanese company, Haruyama Trading Co., has developed a suit that it claims protects the wearer from the deadly H1N1 strain of influenza.

Julian Ryall via www.telegraph.co.uk

The anti-flu suit which is on sale in Japan

The company has produced 50,000 of the suits and will start selling them on Thursday, according to a company spokesman.

The suit is coated with the chemical titanium dioxide, which reacts to light to break down and kill the virus when it comes into contact with it, according to Junko Hirohata. The chemical is a common ingredient in toothpaste and cosmetics.

The suit – which is indistinguishable from any other worn by Japan’s legion of “salarymen” – comes in four colours and styles, which are medium grey, charcoal, navy and a grey pinstripe. It will go on sale for about £365.

The company said it spent a year developing the suit, which retains its properties even after being washed numerous times.

Japan has been gripped by swine flu fear since the global outbreak began a year ago, with the World Health Organisation confirming more than 340,000 cases worldwide and around 4,100 deaths.

A seven-year-old boy became the latest victim in Japan on Sept 22, the youngest and 18th fatality from the disease here.

In the same week, medical institutions across the country reported treating 23,275 cases of influenza, the majority with the new H1N1 strain. Most of the new cases were reported in urban areas, where population density increases the risk of transmission

The latest article posted by Hewdge, about commuter gropers on Tokyo’s subway system, has prompted a piece of advice by Swami Baba Ramdev, an Indian guru who believes that all ailments, including acne and ‘gayness’ can be cured by Pranayama Yoga.
In Tokyo, being groped on the subway has become such a problem for young women, that undercover police officers have been dispatched to catch the perpetrators in the act. Click here for the full story:

Baba Ramdev’s open letter to Hewdge addresses the issue of commuter groping and gives clear advice on how to end this very rude transport trend:

Dearest Japanese Commuting Ladies.
It is clearly these naughty Japanese groping men who are very much requiring Pranayama Yoga. With Pranayama Yoga we are removing the distortion disabilities of physical body’s and bringing us into spiritual discipline. What am I meaning? It is very clear. I am meaning, with correct prana-bindu breathing, and stretchy-bendy of the physical bodies, these scallywag Japanese men can be controlling urges of the groping action until they are arriving innocently home to their little wives
Namaste.
SWAMI BABA RAMDEV, Calcutta

It is one of the safest cities in the world, but for teenage girls and young women, travelling on Tokyo’s vast train and subway system comes with the ever-present risk of sexual harassment from fellow commuters.

But this week the Japanese capital’s police launched a crackdown on the scourge of groping. In the first reported case, Tsutomu Yamane, 30, was arrested within minutes of allegedly groping a 15-year-old girl on Monday morning.

Undercover police officers have been dispatched to notorious train lines across Tokyo in a new offensive against chikan, a catch-all term that covers groping, sexual rubbing and surreptitious mobile phone photography.

The introduction almost a decade ago of women-only carriages during the morning and evening rush hours failed to put an end to Japan’s chikan plague, despite warnings that convicted gropers face up to six months in prison and a fine of up to 500,000 yen (£3,300).

Police in Tokyo make between 1,500 and 1,800 arrests a year, and have recorded more than 700 cases in the first six months of this year. More than 50% of victims are women in their 20s, and about a third are teenage girls. According to one survey, nearly two-thirds of young women say they have been touched inappropriately in train or underground carriages.

Kimiko Kitagawa, a 31-year-old business consultant, joined the long list of chikan victims as she stepped off a subway train near her office in central Tokyo earlier this year. “I felt a hand grab my backside, but when I turned around there were several men rushing to get past,” she said. “I had no way of knowing who had touched me.”

Confusion and embarrassment mean the number of groping incidents is suspected of being much higher than official reports suggest. “Many victims are reluctant to come forward, as they feel too embarrassed,” a police spokesman told the Yomiuri newspaper. “We are going to concentrate on the most serious cases.”

The crackdown came in response to a recent jump in cases involving groups of men who use online chat rooms to arrange where and when to target women. At least 100 websites list prime groping locations, offering hints on how to fondle undetected and, if that does not work, evade arrest.

One site advises would-be gropers to select carriages with doors that open near platform escalators or staircases – perfect escape routes.

Several men arrested in recent months have admitted being encouraged by the websites and emboldened by the prospect of working as part of a group. A typical tactic is to position two men in front and behind a victim, while as many as six other men block the view of other passengers.

The police are targeting nine railway lines in Tokyo where groping has become endemic, especially the Saikyo line, which takes commuters between Ikebukuro and Akabane in the capital’s suburbs.

Attempts to prosecute gropers, however, have been frustrated by cases in which women, often with the help of male accomplices, make have made false accusations in the hope of securing huge out-of-court settlements.

Men who are apprehended are usually found guilty. The 2007 film, I Just Didn’t Do It, was based on the true story of a young man accused of groping who cleared his name after a five-year battle. In another high-profile case, the supreme court last year acquitted a 63-year-old professor of molesting a teenage girl in 2006. He had earlier been sentenced to 22 months in prison.

A former spy convicted of fraud in the United Arab Emirates has told how he made a bid for freedom by donning a wetsuit disguised under a burka before diving into the ocean.

Frenchman Herve Jaugbert, an ex-naval officer, alleges the Dubai secret police had threatened to insert needles up his nose and that he was about to be thrown in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

Jaubert, who designs and builds leisure submarines, then disguised himself in a burka and walked down to the water’s edge.

From there, he swam underwater to the nearby coastguard station, on a remote outpost, where he cut the fuel lines on a police patrol boat. He knew it was the only one in the area, and the coast would now be clear.

He then swam back to the beach, got into a Zodiac dinghy and headed back out to sea. Six hours later he was 25 miles off-shore and outside Dubai’s territorial waters. Another former French agent met him in a yacht, he claims.

Kitted up: Jaubert had breathing equipment with him so he could swim underwater to a police patrol boat and disable its engines

The pair then sailed to Mumbai, India, which took a week. Jaugbert told the French consul that he had lost his passport and was given a new one.

Jaubert had been working as a contractor for ship-builder Dubai World in 2007 when he was called in for questioning by police, he told The Sunday Times. An executive at the firm had reported finding bullets in Jaugbert’s office and police thought he was a mercenary or hitman. At the same time, the company accused Jaubert of billing for goods that did not arrive.

According to Jaubert, his employers had run out of money and wanted to find a way of sacking him without paying benefits that would have been due under a five-year contract.

Covered up: Jaugbert used padding under the burka to disguise the shape of his breathing equipment

‘The police had interrogated me for hours and threatened me with torture,’ he said from his home in Florida, where he now lives with his wife and two children. ‘I lived with a ball of fear in my stomach.’

He said that if he hadn’t left, he’d be ’stuck in the same nightmare as the others’, referring to the dozens of expatriate businessmen who are languishing in Dubai jails for alleged ‘economic crimes’.

As the economic slump deepens, foreigners are being jailed for misdeeds not generally considered as crimes, such as the bouncing of a cheque.

To the Emirati authorities, however, Jaugbert – who is writing a book about his experiences – is a liar and convicted fraudster. He was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison after his escape in the dinghy.

A spokesman for Dubai World said Jaubert had been dismissed because ‘he was found stealing from the company’, adding that his five-year sentence was ‘entirely appropriate’.

Out to sea: Jaugbert travelled 25 miles in a rubber dinghy to escape from the Dubai police who he alleges threatened him with torture. A friend picked him up in his yacht and they sailed on to Mumbai

Read more on Jaubert’s website: www.escapefromdubai.com