Window Cleaning News UK & USA

Moaning pensioner threatened with jail: Sunderland UK: A Victor Meldrew-style moaner who whinged about his neighbours in sheltered accommodation has been warned one more complaint could land him in jail. Ernest Harvey's serial snipes have been investigated by police and housing officers – who say they are unfounded. The 70-year-old's battles with the warden at his last home led to him being arrested four times, but never charged. Now, he has been given a court order banning him from moaning and told he could be locked up if he doesn't stop complaining. But the retired window cleaner says he has been treated unfairly by the gentoo staff who run his home at Jubilee House, Easington Lane. He claims they ignore his problems."I'm not complaining for no reason," he said. "I'm being made out to be a liar."

Tributes have been paid to a window cleaner and keen athlete from Burnham, UK - killed while on a cycling holiday in Spain. Marathon runner Peter Mitchell, 60, died instantly when he was involved in a collision with a lorry near San Sebastian on the morning of Saturday, August 23. His friend for 12 years, Tony Nester, 40, was riding with Mr Mitchell on a 1,200k cycle ride from northern Spain to France when it happened. "He had an infectious personality and people warmed to him. He regularly and easily made friends with large groups of people from al walks of life and he will be missed by many friends in the world of athletics," he said. Mr Mitchell leaves a son, Simon, 24, and daughter Sarah, 20.



Most window cleaners have seen untold eye-opening situations from the top of their ladders. But few will have witnessed anything as blue as the sight that greeted a team of volunteer underwater washers in landlocked Birmingham. Because the nine scuba diving members of Scubaction have the weirdest window cleaning job in town. Their task is simple – to descend into the underwater world at the city’s Sea Life Centre to keep the giant tank spick and span. Oh, and try to ignore the sharks and turtles keeping them company while they work. Dive leader Adrian Marsland, aged 42, said: “It is unusual, but where else in the centre of Birmingham can you get to dive with creatures like that?” The tropical 800,000-litre tank is one of the main attractions at the centre in Brindleyplace with its two giant Green Turtles, family of Blacktip Reef Sharks and colourful reef fish. While the water is continuously filtered, sediment settles on the viewing windows and across the tunnel, creating a thin film interfering with their view of the marine creatures inside. About once a month, the team pack their scuba gear, pick up their fluffy squeegies and plunge into the five-metre deep fish tank to begin their unusual cleaning operation in full view of the paying public.
I know Birmingham city centre can sometimes be a dangerous place, but it’s not every day you get headbutted by a 42-stone Green Sea Turtle. I’d expected the threat of a nibble from the family of sleek Blacktip reef sharks to be a more pressing underwater problem. But when I joined the window cleaning dive team at Birmingham’s National Sea Life Centre, they made it clear the beautiful sharks were not an issue – but the turtles could be. Underwater, graceful Gulliver and Molokai like to let you know they are boss and will bump you, scrape past your head and nibble long hair. The visitors to the Sea Life Centre last Sunday were not seeing ‘fins’ – that really was a journalist with a soggy notepad and squeegie in hand. I’d joined volunteer divers to spruce up the inside of the tank but I’m not sure I made much a splash with my window cleaning. It’s fair to say I’m no George Formby.



Paul Mullin (pictured above): Writes plays about: Science, death, radiation sickness, sex, amnesia. Has had them produced in: New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Louisville, Baltimore. A plate-glass window and a sudden gust of wind christened Paul Mullin's career as a playwright. It was 1990 in New York City, and Mullin was 23, working as a window washer. "It was the stupidity of youth times a thousand," he says, sitting in the backyard of his Seattle home with a glass of bourbon, soaking his feet in his sons' inflatable pool. "I was also working as an actor at the time, and as a night porter, so during the day I was climbing 60-story buildings on two hours' sleep. Stupid." Hours before the opening of his Ellison and Eden, Mullin was in a fancy apartment building, cleaning its 70-pound windows. He had to pop each one out of its frame and lean outside while he washed the glass. He was struggling to yank one of the windows back into its frame and called Al, the large Puerto Rican building manager, to help. A rogue gust blew the window into Mullin, shattering it against his face and body. "I asked, 'How bad is it, Al?' And he just stood there freaking out, going 'uh—uh—uh.'" Blood was pouring out of Mullin's face, but he felt oddly calm: He knew he had to get to a hospital immediately. Fortunately, there was an emergency room kitty-corner from the apartment building. "Cars were beeping at me as I tried to cross the street, and I thought: 'So this is how it is? My face is bleeding and you're honking? Fine.' That's when I decided to leave New York." He got 40 stitches sewed into his cheek that night and missed the opening of Ellison and Edison. "We were a young, angry ensemble," Mullin says. "Our artistic director—and main donor—was a call girl."

Two classroom buildings at Kean University, New Jersey, USA were evacuated last night but will be open today following a fire in a storage trailer on campus, a university spokeswoman said. The fire started around 8:25 p.m. in the trailer, which was used to store solvents for window cleaning. The Union Township Fire Department and Union County hazardous-materials team extinguished the blaze by 8:40 p.m. Nearby Willis Hall and Hutchinson Hall, where students were attending evening classes, were evacuated. The buildings will be open for classes today, said Audrey Kelly, the university's spokeswoman. Kelly said the storage trailer was destroyed. Willis Hall "has some scorching outside, but no significant damage to the inside." The cause of the blaze is under investigation, Kelly said.

A HUDDERSFIELD businessman & ex-window cleaner leaves his millionaire lifestyle behind to sample life on the breadline in a TV show next week. Gavin Wheeldon, who heads award-winning translation company Applied Language Solutions, is featured in Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire returning to the North Wales resort of Rhyl, where he spent childhood holidays. Gavin, who was named Employer of the Year in the 2007 Examiner Business Awards, finds that the town has faded over the years, with unemployment and poverty rife. The programme – at 9pm on Tuesday – follows Gavin as he works under cover, living on an allowance in a B&B while searching for local people he can help. Gavin, 32, who lives at Meltham, first demonstrated his entrepreneurial streak by taking gardening and window cleaning jobs as a youngster. At 14 he was selling kitchens. Despite being under age he was kept on by the firm because he was the best salesman they had. By the time he was 20 Gavin had set up his first IT company and four years ago he started a translation business – despite not being able to speak any foreign languages.

Postal is a 2007 film based on the 2003 computer game series of the same name. The film is directed by filmmaker Uwe Boll and filmed in Cloverdale, British Columbia. Postal premiered in Montreal on July 22, 2007 during the Fantasia Festival. Initial trailers market the film as a shock comedy, and have caused controversy as they show a jet flying into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, reminiscent of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was later revealed that this scene is in fact the opening scene of the movie, where two of the hijacker terrorists get to know that their sign-up deal for the "99 perfect virgins" might not work out due to the lack of resources after too many recent martyrs, and decide to hijack the plane to the Bahamas instead, only to be overpowered by the airplane passengers, who, in the struggle for the controls, end up driving the plane into one of the towers. In his seminar at Breakpoint 2007, Boll has noted that he will "probably end up in jail for it", and claimed that he wanted to create a movie that is "ruthless, just like Monty Python movies used to be". Out on DVD in the UK this week, trailer below...