Retro Yakking

Police have released CCTV footage of an Ashton-in-Makerfield bank robbery which took place in June this year. The raid, on which Retro Yakking reported, involved a five-mile cross-borough chase and concluded in arrests at a Wigan multi-storey car park.

The footage, uploaded to YouTube by Manchester Evening News, shows the moment two hooded thugs forced bank employees to hand over cash, as well as aerial pictures of the Ford Mondeo getaway vehicle reaching its final destination.

Hit the ‘continue reading’ link for the video.

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Life in Wigan ground to a halt yesterday as twin strikes meant that both the town’s postal and public transport services were massively curtailed. Postal workers and First Manchester bus drivers both formed picket lines in protest at working conditions, pay and the lack of pies in the canteen.

Well, they have meat and potato, but I want steak and kidney! — Alf Hart, irate picket line protester

What makes the story all the more interesting is the fact that the bus station and central post offices are situated side-by-side, prompting rumours of a merger of the two. Yet more think the postal workers invited the bus drivers over for a cup of Sunday tea, during which both completely lost track of time and only emerged this morning rather worse for wear, thinking it was still Friday evening.

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Speedy Clean are being hailed as the new Ghostbusters after saving numerous households from vicious green slime monsters.

The beings are created when various food packagings come together in the same brown wheelie bin, and emerge from their squalor to irritate residents just minutes before they are due to be mutilated by bin wagons on Friday mornings.

But the bin cleaning service has thankfully kept the beasts under wraps, blasting them with powerful jets of water within minutes of a simple phone call. Unfortunately for residents, there are no other bin cleaning services in the area, meaning Speedy Clean can charge whatever the hell they like for one bin wash. One disgruntled resident spoke of his disgust over the situation.

This is supposed to be a period of recession! I simply do not have the £200 for these blasted slime thingies to be exterminated every single week. — Local resident Alf Hart

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You may recall that a few months ago, Google updated its Street View service to include around twenty cities from the United Kingdom.

Oh what fun it was to watch people going about their daily business unaware that their every move was being tracked by the mighty Google. Oh, how hilarious it was to see people acting up for the cameras like little children with a new wrestling outfit.

You may also remember the reported sightings of the Google Street View van in various areas of Wigan, though admittedly these mostly proved to be false alarms - it was a drainage inspector van with a strange mushroom-like appendage.

Now, though, actual, proper Google vehicles have been spotted throughout the past week in areas including Atherton and the East Lancs Road. The genuine Google car has a long tubs protruding from the roof with big, bulky camera boxes on top. The most common are black, though the ones seen this week were cream.

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A little over two months ago, Retro Yakking reported the introduction of brand new brown bins allowing the good people of Wigan Borough to embrace the recycling revolution.

Around that time, it was commented that the chocolate coloured bins looked so good you could take a bite out of them, but I seriously recommend you do not try this yourself.

New research, carried out by Harry Yack of Hindley University (heheh), suggests that these new bins could potentially cause some nasty diseases, and may even be responsible for swine flu.

Well, perhaps not the last bit, but the green residue building up at the bottom of the bin cannot be good for one’s health. Whereas regular bins require rubbish to be placed in refuse sacks, stuff can just be thrown into the brown ones willy-nilly without the need for a bin bag.

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