THE BIG RETORT

Wh en homeless and jobless Billy Ray Harris recently returned a diamond engagement ring to its owner little did America realise here sat a wise old sage.  TheBigRetort  into a small part of his wisdom... Over the Pond honesty has proven to be the best policy when Billy Ray Harris, living on the streets of Kansas City, begging bowl in hand, became the lucky new owner of a very expensive diamond ring; accidentally dropped by distraught real owner Sarah Darling.   Realising the mistake, jobless "Billy Ray" waited for her return. He later reunited Sarah with her extremely expensive engagement ring. As a result, Sarah and hubby-to-be set up a Facebook page for donations towards helping Billy Ray - and which has skyrocketed to over 100,000 dollars..   Back in 2010 however, "Billy Ray", living on the streets, gave an interview -  here - stating to America: ‘Going green is a good idea’. It would - Billy Ray believed - 'cre...

Sir Steve Brokebloke Wadsofcash@Lewisham.con At a point when the public purse is being squeezed ever-tighter, Lewisham Council’s Mayor sends out an urgent appeal: But could Sir Steve look any closer for the cash than his interims? TheBigRetort Recently an appeal was dispatched to Lewisham residents from none other than Sir SteveBullock himself; to save the local hospital's A&E.   Since nicknamed by us “Sir Steve Brokebloke,” the Mayor of Lewisham claimed that the government and trust administrators did not have the power to downgrade the hospital following failings by its Trust elsewhere.   Apparently we ‘the people’ stand a good chance of winning a legal challenge to the (unlawful) decision so brutally carried out against Lewisham's A&E, and Sir Steve hopes to 'enable' us by making contributions to his Legal Challenge Fund.   But what if Mayor Bullock need look no further than his own council for the dosh?    ...

TheBigRetort had a crisis recently when a catch on its kitchen rubbish bin broke. Following which we left a heavy knife sharpener on it so that it didn't spring open. But like Pandora's Box letting out a malodorous whiff, imagine our surprise when we placed a call to Brabantia and got... service In fact, Brabantia displays a care-for-customer credentials that rubbishes many retailers. We were expecting the usual....blah, blah. Brabantia’s response: ‘’No problem. Our products are covered by a ten-year warranty." Brabantia, a truly solid company, swiftly sent us a whole new lid - and did not charge for the postage. But that aint the way its supposed to happen, Brabentia. You're supposed to give us the run around  - and then TheBigRetort investigates your bins, etc. So if you need a retailer to put a lid on it, try Brabentia:  simply solidly wonderful.

  Startling evidence has been uncovered that recently deceased Michael Winner may not have been such a nice chap after all. Shock! Horror! And a little chutzpah!   What you are about to read may offend those who have held 'The Twat' in such high esteem TheBigRetort lifts the lid... A halo slips... Revealing the darker side of Michael Winner: whom we let... R.I.P himself.    www.Punch.co.uk  Reproduced with kind permission of Punch Ltd. Copyright (c) Jon Paul Morgan  

The Representation of the People Act 1969 introduced a specific provision that ‘convicted persons’ are legally incapable of voting during the time they spend in prison. But should prisoners want to claim the right to vote anyway? TheBigRetort takes a judicious step back. The denial of prisoner voting rights in Great Britain dates back to the Forfeiture Act 1870. Linked to the notion of “civic death‟, the Act literally executed the human rights of the convicted. Now seen by some modern liberal thinkers as archaic and uncivilised, they argue that citizens who have erred should not have their human rights excoriated.   In the other camp sits the hard-leaning saints of humanity the Victorian ‘victim’ mindset; which also wants its pound of flesh, and some. Prison to the VM represents punishment 'only'; among which is the loss of civil rights. Part and parcel of that denial of rights is the right to vote on how civilisation itself is governed. After all isn’t the ri...

The year was 1908. A Remarkable Wager. A man wearing an iron mask... Pushing a pram full of postcard photographs... Must find a wife along the way... Visit three towns in each county of England... Make his way around the world visiting each country and city on the list... And it would take 6-8 years... But the person who did it would win the princely sum of $100,000 An astonishing tale…. IF TRUE. Following our findings into Harry Bensley, the legend who trekked through Edwardian England in order to complete an 8-year trek around the world ‘for a wager‘, we now present the identity of the young man who accompanied ‘Iron Mask’ on his remarkable journey. H is name was... William German. According to the Western Times article we uncovered (18 April 1908), it was it was four months after the commencement of the trek that William German of Holsworthy rendezvoused with a man wearing an iron mask. It states: “Master Wm. German, the son of Mr and Mrs S German, of T...

We recently highlighted the ‘banker’ who splashed out £71,000 on a drinks binge at a top London nightclub in one single evening - and with just nine money-making wannabees. Now, in our follow up exclusive, TheBigRetort   uncaps the bottle. At the bottom of the glass we discover a 'sponsored' jolly for  a top model agency and a publicity stunt gone awry. Our report pours ice on a little-known drink someone has styled 'Methuselah'... What do a bunch of party-going models and a drinks firm have in common?   Answer: A give-it-large hedge fund owner with more money than sense. To recap... It took place just off Oxford Street. In a club called The Rose. You may recall that this is the place (if you've got no soul) that was recently promoted by its gloating owners as the wannabe hangout of the embarrassingly wealthy. And boy do we mean e-m-b-a-r-r-a-s-s-i-n-g. The Rose has a thorn aft...

Jerome Isaac, 47, has been charged with murder and arson following the death of Deloris Gillespie, 73. The victim was set alight after being sprayed with a flammable liquid when her lift stopped on the fifth floor of her apartment block. The incident was captured on CCTV together with images of her attacker dressed as a pest controller who was seen entering the lift in Brooklyn, New York. The video went white as the woman was set on fire. Dorinda Thomas, 56, told the New York Post. "She was a wonderful lady, you understand."

Following the much-publicised introduction of the new Routemaster bus, reports just in...  Boris Johnson’s new bus, named the “Son of Routemaster”, has broken down on a motorway just south of Luton. The new Routemaster took the unscheduled stop leaving its driver looking forlorn. The Routemaster, which has its hazard lights flashing, is flanked by police in a lay-by.

I n our last Retort, we reported on the City hedge fund banker who received national publicity when it was revealed that he blew £71,000 on a single night out for ten in a London nightclub. Added to the largess he left a tip for one lucky young lady... of £10,000. TheBigRetort exclusive... Since we ‘outed’ the lucky 'Rose Club' waitress at our last retort the recipient of the windfall has now posted a photograph of the receipt - showing a tip made out to her to the value of ten thousand pounds. Yes - TEN THOUSAND! Who's the lucky girl, then? TheBigRetort can now reveal that she is none other than "Margaux Nina". Or at least this is the name under which she currently Tweets. "Wooooooop ahahahaha !!! ;-) watch out…" Ms Nina wrote in one tweet following the enormous tip. She even thanks the London Evening Standard, presumably for reporting on the tip? Woooooop ahahahaha indeed.

The new alternative to the hated Bendy-Bus was seen on London streets today as LBC's Nick Ferrari, and former MP Michael Portillo put two very large bums on seats.   Their verdict: a big thumbs up for Mayor Johnson's "Boris Bummer.". The old Bendies never did find much popularity (except amongst fare dodgers) and if Ferrari and others are to be believed, the Boris Bummer is likely to bring in the punters due to its lighting and sleek glass design, which also manages to retain the heritage of the old much-loved Routemaster. Will is be a success amongst the travelling public? Fares ladies and gents, please.

When newspapers recently reported the largesse of a mysterious hedge fund manager who is said to have frequented a London club where he spent £71,000 on a single evening out - TheBigRetort  couldn't resist querying the bill... The Evening Standard, together with the Mail and various additional newspapers of note recently carried a feature on the 13 th December that came in for a lot of scrutiny by we poor due to the amount of money that is said to have been spent, in a single evening, and by just one rich individual at a club styled 'The Rose'; and which (significantly) recently opened off Oxford Street. On Thursday evening into the Friday morning the club is said to have played host to a big-spending banker and his cohorts - with more money than it seem sensitivity in what are arguably straightened times, for the many at least. But is all as it seems in this remarkable story of riches to riches? Apparently this right ‘banker’ (call him what you will) all...

It was back in June 2010. The Kepler space telescope discovered over 750 extrasolar-planets culled from data that it had collected in its first 43 days of observations of the cosmos. Marked "candidates" - since then astronomers have gone on to confirm hundreds of planets orbiting alien suns light years beyond our own little solar system. But one planet alone has drawn the most excitement. We name it “Keptoo-toobe”. The recent discovery by astronomers of an extra-solar planet designated Kepler 22b comes just one year after a treasure trove of stars was unveiled by the space telescope Kepler at NASA. “This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened,” said scientist William Borucki at that time. NASA expected only 50% of these so-called alien candidates to actually turn out to be real planets. Kepler 22b, almost two and a half times the size of the Earth, has not only been conf...

George Hallam, an economist at Greenwich University,  has been nominated as the London People Before Profit candidate in the forthcoming bye-election in Feltham and Heston. But can he do it? The challenge by Mr Hallam follows the death of MP Alan Keen (Labour), who passed away this November aged seventy-three. Mr Keen had been ill with cancer for some time. The London People Before Profit movement grew out of what was the former Lewisham People Before Profit (LPBP). People Before Profit was set up, not by politicians, but by community campaigners in South London who were angry about Government and political leaders who simply put the interests of Big Business before community need. The London People Before Profit Party brings together a broad group of people of varying political backgrounds who are united under one banner, the People‘s banner: Community Need Before Private Greed. Such was the rush to meet the qualifying deadline for the bye-election that the Londo...

Vincent Tabak may have graduated from 'observer to perpetrator' after watching pornographic films, before going on to strangle Jo Yeates, 'for his own sexual gratification' detectives have claimed. The six-man and six-women jury in Joanna Yeates murder trial had been deliberating for thirteen hours and 36 minutes, before returning to Court One at Bristol Crown Court and finding the defendant, Vincent Tabak, guilty of murder. As the verdict was delivered, Tabak immediately sat down and put his head in his hands. Mr Justice Field began sentencing by telling the jury: "I think there was a sexual element to this killing." Tabak is said to have held a collection of pornographic films featuring women being choked. Contrary to his image as a devoted boyfriend, it can also be revealed that he sought out the company of prostitutes while on business trips to Newcastle and Los Angeles. The judge lifted an order banning publication after the 10-2 guilty verdi...

TheBigRetort:  ringleader of a gang who kept mentally disabled people in cellar escaped jail term. Linda Ann Weston, 51, was convicted in 1983 for keeping a man in a closet and starving him to death. Although found guilty in the 1983 abduction and murder, Weston did not serve time in prison. Venus Weston, younger sister of Linda, was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison. Linda the elder was ruled ‘incompetent to stand’. Even though the plot was originally hers. A fact not picked up by the American media who continue to report: 'It is not known how long she served in prison.' TheBigRetort exclusive....

Police in Philadelphia recently discovered four abused and vulnerable adults shackled together in a dank cellar where they were being held captive, with dogs for cell mates. Officers also discovered a teenage girl. Three people have been arrested. It has been widely claimed that one of the captors, Linda Ann Weston, 51, served time in prison for a similar crime. TheBigRetort… but she didn’t. In November 1981, Bernado Ramos was reported missing by his mother. His body was found in a closet two weeks later. Linda Weston, 23, and Venus Weston, 21 his lover, were later charged and convicted with his captivity and murder. Apparently Bernado had been the father of Venus’s child but refused to support it. It was his last mistake. The Weston sisters had beat him with a broomstick and eventually starved him to death in the cupboard. A remarkably similar modus operandi when compared with the current charges. However, Linda Weston, now charged with abduction and enslavement in th...

Edgington knife attack linked to previous double slaying at New Cross. TheBigRetort… exclusive. An urgent probe by the NHS may wish to focus on the mental health unit where a knife attacker sought refuge, prior to going on a rampage that left one woman dead and another seriously injured. The patient, Nicola Edgington, 31, was from the same mental health unit where a previous patient also went on to commit a frenzied knife attack that left two foreign students dead. TheBigRetort previously revealed that Edgington had been ordered by a judge to be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act after stabbing her mother to death in 2005 - but was conditionally discharged in 2009. The 31-year-old recently admitted herself into Oxleas House in Woolwich, and fled the unit prior to her second and third attacks. Although a warning was put out by the unit to police, Edgington went on to stab one person to death and seriously injure another. The probe...