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Welcome to Belper

With its busy shopping streets packed with unique independent businesses, its history and heritage, its parks, reserves and beautiful spaces, Belper in Derbyshire is a great place to visit.

Find out more about this thriving, historic market town here: belper.madhm.uk.

Welcome to Belper

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Three Legged Footballers

You might not be all that surprised to learn that there is no rule in football which specifically prohibits the use of three-legged players. This, of course, is perfectly understandable since when the rules for football were first laid down by Sir Geoff Football back in 1952 the possibility of multi-limbed players was, at best, a remote one.

Today modern surgical techniques have made the grafting on of additional body parts almost commonplace, leading not only to an increase in leggage amongst professional players, but also the use of animal parts. For spectators at a Premier League match, it's not at all unusual to witness surgically enhanced centre-forwards tearing down the left wing on cheetah legs, strikers springing gazelle-like into the penalty box, or elephantine goalkeepers executing a perfect save with their trunks.

The situation looks set to become even worse now that human cloning has become a practical reality. In fact, Chelsea have already bred an octoplayer, whose eight legs means that he can squat in the centre of the pitch, kick the ball in any direction and doesn't even have to turn round at half time.

Well now FIFA, football's governing body and clearing house for brown envelopes, has decided that enough is enough. It has announced new legislation on the use of what it calls 'non-standard anatomy' and henceforth any player caught using more than two legs will be fined and banned for the rest of the season.

Nuts and Berries

Samsung have invented the first laptop in the world to run on nuts and berries. Made out of bark and with a touch sensitive screen developed from a specially grown species of Alpine moss, the Hedgerow 4000 is lightweight, economical and is compatible with most species of easily-foraged flora.

Originally scheduled to go on sale last year, a number of pre-release units had to be recalled when it emerged there was a problem with field mice. The rodents were burrowing through the soft casing and nesting on the motherboard.

Samsung say that they now have this problem all under control. They haven't gone into detail regarding their solution, but they have warned customers that if, while the machine is in use, they should hear a sudden loud 'snap' - similar to the noise of a powerful spring being triggered - they should not worry. This, they say, is part of the patent 'anti-mouse module' and is perfectly normal.

Door Tax

This month sees the twentieth anniversary of the disastrous 'door tax', in which the British government experimented with a new form of local taxation based on the numbers of doors in a household. The scheme only lasted six months before it was scrapped, proving to be unworkable due to the number of people who simply bricked up their doorways to avoid the charge. To this day it remains unknown how many people still remain trapped in their homes.