LONDON (Reuters) - Lap-dancers at one of Britain's biggest strip clubs must pay their own value added tax (VAT) bills, a senior judge ruled on Friday.

In a High Court ruling that could affect dancers at other venues, Mr Justice Mann said it was the women and not their club, Spearmint Rhino, who should foot the bill.

He backed the chain's argument that the self-employed dancers provide the entertainment on offer, rather than the club.

"The women are not employed by the club. They are all self-employed," Mann said. "They pay a sum to the club which allows them to ply their trade for a session of eight hours."

Mann said an earlier decision by the VAT and Duties Tribunal that Spearmint Rhino should pay the bill was wrong.

Describing the services provided, the judge said: "A member of the public pays 8 pounds ($15.73) for admission and on entering goes into an area in which he, or she, may drink, socialize, eat and watch partially clad women dancing on a podium.

"At any one time, depending on the day, time of day and availability, there are between 20 and 140 young women available to provide the entertainment services in issue.

"Some of them will be those dancing on the podium. These proceedings do not, at least directly, concern that activity.

"The activities which concern me are those provided as a result of more direct engagement between the women and the customer.

"For a sum of money, the women can be engaged to perform private dances for the customer. A fee of 10 pounds is charged for a semi-nude dance; 20 pounds is charged for a nude dance. Each dance lasts for a 'track', about three minutes.

"In addition to those services, the dancer and the customer can agree what is called a 'sit-down'.

"For 250 pounds, a sum which is in fact negotiable, a woman can be engaged to sit and socialize with the customer for an hour."

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs had argued that the entertainment services were supplied by the club to the customer, through the dancers they had engaged.

Goosey's Gabbings...

Who is going to enforce this? Whoever it is, the man will probably have a permagrin...

And, I say that if the exotic dancers have had too much, perhaps they should get on a ship and come over to the Harbor, have themselves a little Boston...er...umm....panty party?

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Fort Collins C.O.(FP)-Saturday a large underground video game tournament featuring the popular Xbox 360 game Gears of War came to a surprising end.

Among the sixty plus competitors was a very determined team of young adults and one teenager who were equipped with disposable adult diapers. Security for the rented warehouse was forced to remove one of the players after others complained of the “septic tank like smell” coming from a nearby 16 year old gamer.

The team had the intention of only using the diapers for “an emergency trip” but after the 16 year old had consumed five cans of a caffeine loaded drink called a Spike Shooter he claimed he just couldn’t hold “it”. And “it” being the worst kind of it. Being the dedicated gamer he was he just tried to ignore his accident.

Nearby competitors felt it hard to overlook his slip up and asked him to be removed. After being removed from the tournament her proceeded to call local law enforcement and complain about his ejection not realizing he had attended an illegal paid gathering.

Upon arrival officers dispersed the tournament and issued fines. No arrests were made.

Goosey's Gabbings...

Ok, seriously..first of all, what kind of people even PLAN on wearing diapers to an event like this? Secondly, who craps their pants for the sake of playing a damn game? Who CRAPS THEIR PANTS, PERIOD??? I thought that the "South Park" episode that mocked online video gamers was a bit over the top, but now I know that it was just the tip of the iceberg. Good LORD!!!

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A website devoted to part of a Welsh village features in a list of the longest internet addresses in Europe.

A Birmingham man registered the 63-character address named after Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in Anglesey.

The address - www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochuchaf.eu - actually refers to the upper part of the Welsh-speaking village.

It is the maximum number of characters allowed and is recognised as the longest valid internet name in the world.

Keith Wood registered the domain name with EURid, the group managing the new European .eu domain.

He also registered an alternative to its full name - www.llanfair.wales.com - to spare internet users the hassle of using the village's full title.

Eryl Roberts, who maintains the village website, said: "We registered the village as a domain name to prove a point that home pages don't have to be short and they don't have to be made up names either."

Six other people last year registered the longest possible internet addresses possible.

One German user registered thisisthelongesteuropeandomainnameallovertheworldandnowitismine.eu .

EURid said almost 2.5 million .eu addresses were registered last year after its launch in April.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A man suspected of robbing several Arkansas banks has been featured in a video for about a month on the popular social networking Web site MySpace.

Now Arkansas police could add his mug shot to the Web page.

Ernest Gail Lail, 67, appeared in a Van Buren, Ark., court Thursday, on a charge of aggravated robbery. Police said they believe Lail, who has given his address as Concord, N.C., committed six bank robberies in Arkansas cities.

The robberies got national attention after a police sergeant in Fort Smith, Ark., put photos and video from a January robbery on MySpace in early March. He titled the page "Do You Know Me???"

Over 1,800 people signed up to be "friends" of the robber.

Fort Smith police Sgt. Jarrad Copeland said the robberies got local media coverage, but police weren't getting tips. That made Copeland think the robber was from elsewhere.

"I was just trying to think of a way to get the pictures to a broader audience," he said.

The Web page seems to pay homage to the bank-robbing lifestyle. Video shows the robber sweeping stacks of bills into a bag. He looks posed in some still pictures. The page has $100 bills as wallpaper. The background music is the "Bad Boys" theme from the TV show "Cops."

The MySpace member page says the robber wants to meet "more bank tellers so that I can continue my crime spree!!!"

Copeland said Lail had been serving a federal prison term for a bank robbery in the 1960s and was released on parole in September. He listed Concord as his address with parole officials.

The MySpace page apparently did not directly help officers find Lail. He was arrested after he wrecked his car Wednesday, fleeing from a bank robbery in Van Buren, said Lt. Brent Grill of Van Buren's investigation division.

"It would have been kind of a cool deal if someone recognized him from MySpace," Copeland said. He said the page still may have helped, in that so many people were on alert.

"So glad to hear that you caught him," a "friend" named Stacy posted Thursday. "I have to admit though I think we will all miss the page. Maybe all law enforcement should use MySpace to help catch these losers."

Goosey's Gabbings...

What a clever little invention. However, this has its deterrants--I can see there being some pranks pulled from this, or even some really bad people that are seemingly "joking"--all pros have their cons (literally).

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A man of 102 has been given a 25-year mortgage for £200,000. If he survived to pay off the debt at age 127, he would be the oldest person who has ever lived.

The pensioner, from East Sussex, has agreed to make repayments of £958 a month, on an interest-only basis.

He will use rent from the property to pay them and is understood to be hoping to profit from rises in the property's value.

It is thought the pensioner sees the buy-to-let market as a way to easy money, despite growing warnings that high property prices make it difficult to profit from renting out homes.

Most banks and building societies have an age limit of 75. But a number of lenders, including the Mortgage Trust, Bristol and West, Woolwich, and Preferred, impose no age restriction.

He secured his loan through Mortgages for Business, a Kent firm that has helped hundreds of elderly people buy homes.

The firm's spokesman Jonathan Moore said yesterday: "Even five years ago, anybody over 65 would have been hard-pushed to get any kind of mortgage.

"But some lenders have eased their restrictions to keep in step with the market.

"This 102-year-old has taken this interest-only, buy-to-let mortgage out as an investment in partnership with his family and his repayments are being covered by his tenant.

"It's not risk-free if property prices and rental income suddenly fall. But look at the South-East - there's a great property market.

"Rental is absolutely booming because the South-East hasn't got enough houses. Many over-65s take out mortgages to invest invest in buy-to-let because the pensions crisis has left them with insufficient income."

Mortgage lenders have become increasingly willing to extend large loans to anyone willing to sign on the dotted line, whatever their prospect of paying off the loan.

There are said to be thousands of pensioners saddling themselves with large debts that they are unlikely to live to pay off.

The world's oldest person, Jeanne Calment, died in France in 1997 at 122.

As it happens, she pulled off a property coup of her own.

In 1965, when she was 90 years old, she agreed to give her flat to a young solicitor when she died, if he paid her a pension of £330 a month.

He died two years before her - after paying out three times the value of her home.

Goosey's Gabbings...

So THIS is what the housing industry has turned into? I mean, what did he put under occupation--"I try not to poop my pants"???

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The Ministry of Information and Communication called on the country's major fixed-line operators Friday to check the technical viability of the scheme.

``We are set to deny access to porn sites based overseas, with details being unveiled early next week,'' said Suh Byung-jo, director general at the ministry.

``We feel obliged to come up with measures to counter the recent woes caused by adult video clips available on the internet,'' said Suh, who chaired the meeting.?

Suh's remarks came in the wake of a set of mishaps early this week involving major portal sites such as Yahoo Korea, Daum Communication and Naver.

On March 18, two porn videos were posted on Yahoo Korea, the nation's second-string Web portal. More than 20,000 users downloaded the files.

Unaware of this, Yahoo Korea left the clips on their site for roughly six hours and a number of minors are believed to have downloaded them.

Daum, the second-largest portal site, also carried an audio-visual file of foreign fashion models exposing their breasts for approximately seven hours last Tuesday.

On the same day, a Web surfer posted a nude photo of a woman at the top portal Naver but the company did not remove the picture for about four hours.

``It may cost some investment for the Internet service providers to block overseas porn sites and the overall Internet connection speed may slightly slow down due to such steps,'' Suh said.

``Plus, it will be a tall task to block every porn site. But we think we have to be able to cut access to a nasty site when our people report it,'' Suh said.

However, some are concerned that porn sites will find a way to sidestep the access bans.

Goosey's Gabbings...

So, you're going to block porn, eh? Remember the Dunkin' Donuts commercials? I believe this will go something like this..A Korean man gets out of bed.."Time to block the porn sites..." then the whole rest of the day he will continue to say "Time to block the porn sites..." until he gets home one day and runs into himself--"Time to block the porn sites.." "I already blocked the porn sites!!!"

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LONDON (Reuters) - Love will literally be in the air for one lucky couple as a local English radio station offers a chance to join the mile high club over America.

The winning couple, who will be selected by a panel of judges appointed by the radio station, will be flown to Atlanta, Georgia and put onboard a private plane equipped with champagne and a double bed to take to the air in amorous style.

Goosey's Gabbings...

Ahh, the power of love. How great it is. Now, what happens when they get sucked in by the blue monster in the toilet, one of them throws up, and the other screams in pain? Ahh, the power of love. How great it is....

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