Folly of the DayA Window Fell Twenty-Six Storeys From the Luxury Penthouses and Narrowly Missed Two Carpenters. Fourteen Months Later the Same Thing Happened Again and Killed a Man on His Break.
The building's entire commercial proposition was that it was better made than the buildings around it — that is what the word luxury purchases, and it is priced by the square foot. Fourteen months before a man died, the building had already told its owners precisely what was wrong with it, in the plainest language available to architecture: it dropped a piece of itself onto a public pavement and missed two men by a margin nobody has ever bothered to measure. That is not a warning anyone has to interpret. It is the same event as the fatal one, less one corpse. What the near-miss revealed was not a defect in the glazing but the governing assumption of the whole enterprise — that a thing which looks finished is finished, and that a fault which has not yet produced a body has not yet produced a problem. The windows of the Corniche were fitted by people who believed the appearance of quality and the fact of it were the same article. One of them fell twenty-six storeys to demonstrate the difference.
Source: HSE Media Centre
The WireThe Company Recycled Fire Extinguishers for a Living. It Had No System for Restraining a Fire Extinguisher While It Was Being Discharged.
There is one hazard in this business and it is named on the side of the company, in the first two words: these are sealed vessels holding pressure, and the entire operation consists of letting the pressure out of them. A firm that had thought about its trade for a single uninterrupted minute would have owned a clamp. The fine, for the life of a man, came to less than the cost of a modest family car.
Source: HSE Media Centre
The WireThe Pads Were Advertised as Plant-Powered and Good for the Planet. The Top Sheet Was Corn-Derived Plastic and the Tampon Strings Were Coated in an Oil Product.
A brand built entirely on the proposition that it is the honest one in a dishonest aisle described an oil-derived coating as plant-powered, and was found out not by a regulator or a customer but by a rival who had read the ingredients — which is to say by the only party in the market with a commercial motive to do the reading.
Source: The Grocer, on the ASA ruling of 23 September 2026
The WireStruck Off for Dishonesty in 2022, He Has Now Asked the Tribunal Twice to Put Him Back on the Roll. It Has Now Refused Twice.
The striking-off was for telling people things that were not true in order to get something he wanted; the remedy he has twice proposed is to explain to the tribunal that he is a man whose word can be relied upon.
Source: Solicitor News, on the SDT decision of 22 September 2026
The WireThe Health Executive Resigned. Nobody Made Him Go, Nobody Asked Him to Stay, and the Taxpayer Handed Him $350,000 on the Way Out.
Severance exists to compensate a person for a loss he did not choose; here it was paid to a man who chose, which makes it not compensation but a gratuity — the state tipping a senior employee for the service of ceasing to be one.
Source: New Zealand Taxpayers' Union
The WireThe Council Said Answering the Question Would Cost Too Much. The Information Commissioner Worked Out That It Would Not.
A public body which calculated that answering was too expensive, took the decision to refuse, defended the refusal through a complaint and an investigation, and must now answer anyway, has spent considerably more of the public's money establishing that the request was affordable than the request would ever have cost.
Source: Information Commissioner's Office
Black-Robed Egomania'I Would Like to Tell the Deputy to Pull His Gun and Shoot All Three of You,' the Judge Told the Lawyers, Before Calling Them the Apple Dumpling Gang and the Keystone Cops.
The occasion for this was a discovery dispute — the dullest procedural furniture the law owns — and the judge's response was to reach, in open court and on the record, for the armed officer standing behind him. The robe is issued precisely to the man who is expected to be the least interesting person in the room; he found the arrangement intolerable and reviewed the lawyers as though they were a matinee, which is an unusually direct confession about who he believed the proceedings were for.
Source: MySuncoast, on the Florida Supreme Court's order of 24 September 2026
Campus WatchMichigan State Students Helped Pay for a Feminist Rage Room. The Rage Room Consisted of Colouring Books, Coloured Pencils, Paper Plates, Velcro and Sweets.
The rage was billed as a room and arrived as a craft table, which is the whole of the modern university in one line item: an emotion announced at volume, provisioned at a hundred and eighteen dollars, and documented only in the advertisement for itself.
Source: The College Fix