Rabid badgers have eaten through Scutter Park’s 12 fences overnight, forcing the three day meeting to close.

This year’s three day festival at Scutter Park – named the ‘outhouse in jump racing’s garden’ – has been abandoned after badgers munched through all the birch fences.

An initial check of the course revealed all the hurdles intact, but, to ground staff’s horror, the chase course was missing every one of its twelve fences.

Baffled to find all fences vanished, clerk of the course Tarquin Bibby was almost in tears as he performed his routine 6 am inspection.

Bibby said: “At first we thought it was aliens, or some elaborate thieves – but then we noticed a troupe of bloated, passed-out badgers sleeping in the regulation ditch.

“We have terrible problems with badgers: we laughed when we found my assistant clerk bound and gagged in the woods in an old sett. Since then I’ve had my car tyres slashed, my ignition cord cut and my engine sabotaged.

“They have an immense network and are always one step ahead of us: they’re basically criminal masterminds.”

Badger, Gareth Timms said: “That Bovine TB badger cull in 2013 wiped out all my friends and family. We’re not even yet.”

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The BHA has recommended other industries follow suit on their policy of men waving flags at each other.

Despite the Industrial Revolution, developments in AI and with the Quantum age just around the corner advancing human understanding, the BHA insist on flag men waving bits of stick at one another.

But now, other industries like banking, crime and NASA are being encouraged to do the same.

Flag operations coordinator Gareth Timms said: “There’s only one tried-and-tested way of getting sh*t done and that’s waving loads of flags.”

“Anyone who doesn’t understand flags is a simple idiot and needs locking up.”

 “If you’ve got health problems, struggling with a relationship, or financial woes, you might consider waving flags – as many as you can.”

“Don’t worry about the immediate descent into chaos your life will suffer by doing absolutely nothing to address the problem, simply blame it on everyone else.”

Minister for Culture, Alf Archer said: “In a digital age this makes perfect sense. I don’t see why women’s rights, a free-market economy and climate change can’t be solved by tons of blokes waving flags.”

Flag waver, Maxwell Benson said: “We’re running flag workshops so that really simple folk can learn all about the different colours and their meanings – even though none of us know what they mean and they’re all technically ‘grey’.”

“Waving a flag once every 8 years is a difficult job – I make it look easy.”

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France’s first bookmaker was guillotined on this day in 1794 for his barbaric treatment of peasants

The 21^st November 1794 saw France’s first bookmaker, Aristocrat Garett-Palombes de Timmes de Salignac, Duc de la Scutteur de Chambonais, guillotined by revolutionaries for his barbaric treatment of peasants and racegoers.

Nicknamed ‘Le F*cking Bastard’ de Timmes was the original bookmaker, pretending the horses he owned were well-backed but ensuring a huge profit from losing match races.

Managing to escape the first round of aristocratic executions, de Timmes was a native of the Vendée region, a place the Revolution reached with little enthusiasm.

De Timmes accumulated enormous gambling debts playing Pétanque, owing 20,767 Livres Tournois (£158K today) shortly before the Revolution of 1789.

Owning large swathes of farmland across the départements of Loire-Inférieure (Loire-Atlantique), Maine-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres, and the Vendée, Garett de Timmes was despised in perpetuity as much as during his own life time.

Peasant Shooter

Known for his barbaric treatment of his agricultural workers and incalculable greed, de Timmes was the proud inventor of Tir au Paysannes, a human variant of clay pigeon shooting.

Played with peasants, de Timmes would force two of his employees to sprint across the soft soil vegetable patches and take pot shots at them with a Charleville Musket.

Threatening them with dismissal, de Timmes shot them anyway if they refused.

‘Le Fixeur’

To avoid bankruptcy De Timmes had horse racing to fall back on. As an owner-breeder with over 200 horses in training, De Timmes took to ‘fixing’ his match races.

Talking up the chances of his own runners De Timmes’ horses were very popular bets on all known form and appearance – to which he would lay enormous liabilities through his betting agents.

If his horse won, de Timmes would lose considerably. However the ‘butcher’ ensured this would never happen.

With a win looking almost certainly guaranteed, race day punters – a mixture of aristocrats, peasants and clergy – believed all they had to do was gallop down and come back, but de Timmes had other plans.

Instructing his jockeys (usually a servant in his employment) to fall off on the far end of a racecourse, De Timmes engineered the race so that a win for his horse never happened.

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If the riders failed to fall off, marksmen positioned in trees would shoot them off. Occasionally, De Timmes would shoot them anyway even if they had executed his plan to the letter.

Execution

His downfall came after suspicious Republican forces wondered why all of his beaten favourites had so many skilled riders fall off, make mistakes, take the wrong course, give their runners far too much to do, change the horses strides, or fail to ride to with an ounce of credibility.

De Timmes was finally put to death by Guillotine after peasant leaders Jacques Cathelineau, Gaston Bourdic, and Jean-Nicolas Stofflet had backed de Timmes’ runner Le Confit – a classic winner – on the advice of her bookmaker-owner.

Striding out 40 lengths clear, Le Confit looked sure to land the prize for raceday punters who had backed her at odds of 16-90. However, 30 yards before the line jockey Everard Bouger jumped off and shot himself in the foot.

A riot quickly ensued and de Timmes was taken prisoner by the revolutionaries.

Following execution by guillotine, agents of the Republic and counter revolutionaries alike played football with de Timmes’ head in a celebration match lasting 90 minutes.

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