Broadsheets Category
Top news from The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Indepedent and The Guardian newspapers
Getting High And Mighty On Global Warming
THAT Big 4×4 might have lots of space, comfort and big cup holders, but know:
What does owning a 4×4 say about your marriage? Nothing very encouraging, according to Keith Bradsher, the author of High and Mighty, the 470-page American polemic that has assumed the status of a set text for the anti-Sports Utility Vehicle lobby. Paraphrasing detailed market research, Bradsher notes how people who choose these thunderous middle-class badges of honour are “frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self- absorbed, with little interest in their neighbours and communities”.
Blimey. And you thought that they just fancied the high driving position, the extra-large cup-holders and the bigger than average boot space. Manufacturers of SUVs have clearly been missing the target here. Instead of offering a three-year unlimited mileage warranty, they should be stumping up for a course of couple counselling and sticking a copy of Raising Happy Children in the glove compartment where the owner’s manual normally goes.
Big Car versus little minds…
Posted: 3rd, June 2008 | In: Broadsheets | Comment
Big Brother 9 Contestants Revealed: Julie Birchill And Caitlin Moran:
BIG Brother 9 is casting a shadow over the Club 18-30 toilet bowl and the columnists are coughing up their opinions as what lies in store.
Caitlin Moran in the Times, spends 740 words explaining why Big Brother is rubbish and she will not be watching it.
Of the show’s tabloid, and broadsheet, fodder, Moran says: “To me, in 2008, they are dead.”
“’It’s such a bloody relief,’ said my friend Mark, who gave up BB last year. ‘I felt as if I’d been released from a cellar.'” Austrians can only nod.
Over in the Sun, Julie Birchill tells readers: “REALITY TV was recently listed alongside capital punishment as one of the worst inventions of all time. Which really tells you all you need to know about the kind of airy-fairy seat-sniffers who hate it.”
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Posted: 3rd, June 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (5)
Immigrants And Poles Are Eurovision’s New Seekers
BAD news for Eurovision fans is that the 2.3 million immigrants the Mail says have come to the UK in the past 15 years are not all from Eastern Europe.
Or as the Express’ front-page screamer puts it: “IMMIGRATION IS OUT OF CONTROL.”
The Mail says “most migrants” have arrived from the Third World and not Eastern Europe, so reducing hopes of a naturalised Pole winning the big sing off for the UK, and of unnatural Poles voting for their former brethren.
Terry Wogan, who gives voice to Eurovision from an uneven wooden stool in a snow-blown corner of the BBC complex, is said by the Express to have blasted those “Eastern European racists”.
The paper reminds us that no eastern European country voted for Andy Abraham, who on top of singing a rubbish song suffered the double whammy of being a black man with a Jewish-sounding name. Had the finale to his act involved his admitting to eating little blonde children and shagging their mums, he might have scored big. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Like Wogan, Daily Express readers are outraged that the voting should be skewered towards the Russians. Taking time out from voting on today’s phone poll (“Should MPS have their expenses slashed” – make that “GREEDY MPs”) a “massive 98 per cent of readers” called the Express – irony of ironies – to complain of “rigged voting”.
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Posted: 2nd, June 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment (1)
Digital Content For Newspapers And The BBC
MARTIN Belam looks the newspapers and new media:
It also has to be said that the newspapers themselves have not been slow to move into producing video and audio content which is squeezing out smaller companies, for which the BBC required regulatory approval, and they did not. The BBC’s mp3 podcast downloads were a trial for a long time, and the protracted birth of the iPlayer was not solely down to poor management, but also included some enforced review processes. The Telegraph and The Guardian, meanwhile, can produce their podcasts and video and have them policed by, I guess, the PPC, but I don’t even know for sure if their rules of engagement cover that type of content yet.
Posted: 2nd, June 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Money | Comment
Fritzl Watch: Global Warming Is Like Child Rape
FRITZL Watch: Anorak’s look at Josef Fritzl, Elisabeth Fritzl, Nazis and assorted Frtizls in the news
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Global warming inertia ‘as bad’ as Josef Fritzl, says Bishop of Stafford”
People who fail to act over global warming are “as guilty” as Josef Fritzl – denying our children a future, a senior Anglican bishop has warned.
The Bishop of Stafford, the Rt Rev Gordon Mursell, said a refusal to face the truth about climate change was akin to locking up future generations and “throwing away the key”.
But with global warming, won’t the cellars flood?
Writing in his local parish magazine delivered across the Diocese of Lichfield, the bishop says: “Josef Fritzl represents merely the most extreme form of a very common philosophy of life: I will do what makes me happy, and if that causes others to suffer, hard luck.
“In fact you could argue that, by our refusal to face the truth about climate change, we are as guilty as he is – we are in effect locking our children and grandchildren into a world with no future and throwing away the key.”
He tells the paper:
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Posted: 2nd, June 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Tabloids | Comments (5)
France Pulls Line Dancers Into Line
IN Fracne they panic about aline dancing:
Now country and western has become so big in France that the country’s bureaucrats have decided to bring the craze under state control.
The French administration has moved to create an official country dancing diploma as part of a drive to regulate the fad. Authorised instructors who have been on publicly funded training courses will be put in charge of line dancing lessons and balls.
The French are so uptight…
Posted: 31st, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Strange But True | Comments (2)
Madeleine McCann: Every Directors Worst Nightmare
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
THE GUARDIAN: Ben Affleck has a movie out and thanks to the case of Madeleine McCann it’s getting lots and lots of press.
Breaking news broke my movie – What scuppered the chances of Ben Affleck’s latest film? This time he can’t blame the critics, says Andrea Hubert. Events in Portugal on the other hand…
It’s the twist of fate that every director fears most: you spend endless meetings fine-tuning the script, months sweating on a Hollywood lot, run it by the test screenings – and then, just as you’re ready to serve up your latest cinematic masterpiece, real life pulls the rug out from beneath your feet.
It’s every director’s worst nightmare. But Affleck’s film is a work of fiction and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is raw reality…
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Posted: 31st, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Celebrities, Madeleine McCann | Comments (668)
The Civil Partnership War: Earl Of Devon Takes On Gay Army
THE Earl Of Devon has yet to go on the record and say how he has squired up to 30 women, like Nick Clegg, or between 70 and 100, like Simon Cowell, or even 10,000, like Georges Simenon, but he is undoubtedly not in the least bit homosexual.
The Telegraph reports that The Earl, “whose castle was a Royalist garrison in the English Civil War, is under siege from gay rights campaigners after banning same sex civil partnerships at his stately home”.
How do gay campaigners besiege Powderham Castle, a fragment of the Civil War?
Indeed, they are just like the rest of us, and would do their besieging as men of yore, dressed in short-waisted doublet with long skirts, with slits on the chest and sleeve, allowing for movement, knee-length breeches, ribbon points at waist and knee, a lace-trimmed ruff and boots and gloves in a soft leather.
To the battle!
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Posted: 30th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets | Comments (7)
Londoners Forget 700 Items On Tube Every Day
SAYS Julie Haley, manager of the London Undergound’s lost property office, Baker Street, to the Telegraph:
“The amount handed in is increasing year on year but the fact that we get around 700 items handed in every day is a real testament to the honesty of Londoners on the whole.”
No figures for how item are not handed in, or how many of the items are stolen and then when used – wallets cleaned out; Tube passes ripped from covers; umbrellas left after a gentle frotting – but it surely is testament to Londoner’s honesty, and the impact of alcopops and skunk on the short-term memory of Londoners who can’t remember what they had in their shaking hands when they got on the train…
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Posted: 29th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Strange But True | Comments (3)
Comment Is Not Free On The Guardian
SAMIZDATA sees an attack on free speech in the Guardian:
Is the Guardian becoming increasingly illiberal? It may have a section of its website called “Comment is Free”, yet it is now attacking free speech when it disagrees with the opinions expressed.
Once a supporter of liberal values, the Guardian was the sort of paper that would have quoted Voltaire’s “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” But just as it has dropped support for liberal ideas on economics (it was once a free trade paper), it now appears to be dropping liberal ideas about freedom of expression.
In that vein, it is getting itself worked up because one of its rivals, the Telegraph, runs a blogging platform, like Blogger or Typepad, where members of the public can start their own blogs. That blogging platform has been one of the reasons why the Telegraph, according to moaning articles in the Guardian, has recently overtaken the Guardian in online readers.
Among the 20,000 people who have signed up for a ‘MyTelegraph’ blog, one is a member of the anti-immigration British National Party. The Guardian thinks the Telegraph should ban him, but the Telegraph says that it believes in free speech – even when the views are wrong – and rightly so.
The Guardian’s lack of faith in free speech is not just restricted to BNP-type comments. It whines that: “My Telegraph is also inhabited by some very unsavoury characters, including a minority of active members of the far right, anti-abortionists, europhobes and members of an anti-feminist ‘men’s movement’.”
Anti-abortionists! Europhobes! Opponents of excessive feminism! I wonder if the Guardian would prefer a return to the old days before the decentralisation of publishing in which only the elite, who knew best, were allowed a voice.
The newspapers fighting online…
Posted: 29th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets | Comment (1)
John Terry’s Nuremberg Trial, By Matt Dickinson
JOHN Terry is restored to greatness with a headed goal in England’s 2-0 victory over Team USA, a fine footballing nation whose legends are known to all soccerball fans: Pele, Beckham, Beckenbauer.
And he has suffered much. Matt Dickinson, the Times’ chief sports correspondent, puts that Champions’ League failure in perspective:
“Avram Grant, the Chelsea first team coach, has a perspective on life because of the traumas his family suffered in the Holocaust, but even he was struggling to find the words to ease the pain of Terry, who was white with shock.”
Terry missed a penalty – unlike those Germans who never miss, unless they are at Nuremberg…
Posted: 29th, May 2008 | In: Back pages, Broadsheets | Comment (1)
Gordon Brown Is Not Yellow, He’s Green
“DON’T be yellow Gordon, be green,” says the Independent on its front page – the Independent that supported the yellowy LibDems at the last election.
Here’s a video of Gordon going green…
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Posted: 28th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians | Comment
Niqab, Kebab And Stab: Welcome To Dewsbury Theme Park
WHO dares go to Dewsbury?
Don’t rush to make a decision. When Shannon Matthews was found, and her family members arrested, police handed out leaflets telling locals not to “jump to any conclusions about people who may be involved in this inquiry”.
As if anyone would do that. Don’t be hasty. Listen to the travel advice.
The Times would like to tell you in “Dewsbury: Kidnap, lynching and a suicide” that “The savage beating to death of a 17-year-old boy was merely the latest in a grim litany of incidents in this West Yorkshire town.”
Know that: “It is fast becoming the town that dare not speak its name.”
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Posted: 28th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets | Comments (6)
Madeleine McCann: Bobby Hands, Cannes And A Hunger For Publicity
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
As Leslie Felperin, the excellent reviewer for Variety magazine remarked to me: the newspaper-reading public can’t be persuaded to react in the same way: they care about Madeleine McCann in a serious mood, or in a non-serious mood, they care about Sir Alan Sugar or Simon Cowell. The idea of actually caring about a violent arthouse film investigating the life of Bobby Sands is a very tall order indeed.
Fact and fiction – the story of Madeleine McCann
Posted: 27th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann | Comments (562)
We’re Not Going On An Olympic Holiday
ALL change. The No. 16 to Beijing will not be stopping at Beijing.
Proposals to send a red double-decker bus by road from London to China, to coincide with the Olympics, have been dropped after critics derided the idea as a gimmick and a waste of almost half a million pounds…
Taxpayers will still pay more than half the bill for the project, lauded by Ken Livingstone, because of the expense incurred in planning the journey and hiring bus drivers.
The move comes as Boris Johnson, the new Mayor of London, launches an Olympics cost-cutting drive and says that as few officials as possible would be attending the Games.
Mr Livingstone claimed that the Beijing trip would highlight London’s public transport system to the world, via one of its most recognisable symbols, and help to forge ties with China.
It was cancelled last week by London 2012 organisers and Transport for London (TfL), which funded the journey, in the wake of the earthquake in Sichuan province.
The trip, which was to be undertaken by eight drivers at a cost of £450,000, was considered to be unsafe and in bad taste, given the scale of the disaster. However, given that Mr Johnson had denounced it during the election campaign as a publicity stunt and a “ludicrous waste of public money”, the decision was regarded by his aides as a “happy coincidence”.
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said: “He was already very sceptical about it and in need of persuading, but TfL and the Olympics board reflected on the earthquake and decided to pull it anyway.”
Mr Johnson scrapped another facet of Mr Livingstone’s legacy when he axed a controversial tie-up with Venezuela, and half-price bus and tram travel for some of the capital’s least well-off. Mr Livingstone signed a deal with the South American nation’s state-owned oil company last year, agreeing to provide transport advice in return for a 20 per cent cut in TfL’s bus fuel bill.
The savings were used to offer discount fares to around 250,000 people on income support.
At the launch of his successful campaign to oust the two-term Labour Mayor, Mr Johnson called the deal with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez “completely Caracas”.
No room up top – although it’s empty…
Posted: 26th, May 2008 | In: Back pages, Broadsheets, Politicians | Comment
Back To The Future For CCTV Policing
“CCTV: Does it actually work?” asks the Scotsman.
This question is positioned on the paper’s front page, and in a bid to answer it Anorak has been stood beneath a CCTV camera by a factory in Clyde waiting for a cue.
In the meanwhile, we read that only one in seven incidents caught on camera in Scotland was followed by an arrest at the scene.
Readers learn that in an attempt to make CCTV more effective at deterring crime, officials in Glasgow are contemplating using lights and speakers on cameras that can be activated when the network operator believes a crime is about to occur.
The operator should shout something like “Stop thief” and shine the light. It’s a big improvement on the policing of old, and if the operative can have a whistle and control a long robotic arm, preferably one linked to the national grid, then so much the better.
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Posted: 26th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets | Comment
Allah Has It In For Muslim Extremists
SUICIDE bombers get one shot at fame – unless they are really useless – says Rod Liddle on the UK’s exploding population:
Time after time Muslim fanatics attempt to wreak devastation in Britain – and succeed only in blowing themselves up, or setting themselves on fire, or their explosives refuse to do the decent thing and explode – while we infidel cockroaches look on in bemusement, quite unharmed …
They are either extraordinarily useless or Allah has got it in for them.
Freedom for Cornwall… (and Devon)
Posted: 25th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets | Comment (1)
The Exeter Bomber: Nicky Reilly And The Islamic Republic Of Cornwall
“BRAINWASHED at the chip shop,” screams the Sun’s front-page headline. Is this a chilling insight into the war on obesity?
Why not?
The tabloids are fond of linking themes, and if Madeleine McCann can somehow be placed at the scene and the chip wallah be persuaded to comment on how the rising cost of vegetable oil has forced him to cook in green diesel, then we have a story that says so much about today’s Britain.
In King’s Fry fish and chip bar, the Sun sees Exeter toilet bomber Nicky Reilly being brainwashed by Muslim men.
It was believed that Reilly, the Star’s “oddball loner”, was on the fringes of a group of radicals based in the West Country, a more heavily armed version of the Worzells, albeit exchanging combine harvesters for keys and ammunition.
We should take care not to mock those sons of the West Country. Last year the Cornish National Liberation Army (CNLA) threatened to burn down one of celebrity chef Rick Stein’s businesses in Padstow.
The group also said Fifteen – a restaurant set up by Essex product Jamie Oliver – was a legitimate target because Oliver was an “incomer” who was hurting local people by driving up house prices and living costs.
Readers will note that Reilly’s device exploded in Giraffe, an eatery founded in Hampstead, London. Exeter is in Devon, granted, but Devon and Cornwall constabulary work in tandem and the CNLA claims links with Welsh nationalists and other “Celtic nations”.
The Sun says that the relatively complex construction of the explosive devices suggests they were not put together by Reilly, “who has a very low IQ”. The Telegraph says they were constructed from sodium hydroxide, aluminium foil strips and an essential oil, combined with kerosene. It was confirmed that there were three devices in a bag packed with nails.
Reilly’s bombs were dangerous, although Reilly, who has lacerations to his face, was more of danger to himself.
But we wonder if his conversation to Islam is a smokescreen and that the brains behind the plot are rooted in Cornwall, the Islamic Republic known locally as The Iranian Riviera..?
Posted: 24th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Tabloids | Comments (11)
Peter’s Friends: At the Royal Wedding With Hello!
TO the pages of Hello!, where Mr Peter Phillips, son of stable lad Captain Mark, is marrying Miss Autumn Kelly.
Also in attendance are Miss Chelsy Davy, 22, pictured 16 times, and Miss Kate Middleton, 26, in 13 photos.
Says a source in the Sun: “There is no way that Princes William and Harry would have agreed to allow their girlfriends to be pictured in this way at what was supposed to be a private family event.”
Indeed, not. Over 29 pictures of the two gels, there is not a single shot is either of them wearing a bikini or sunbathing. Prince Harry is said to be “incensed”.
Says the Telegraph: “The wedding cake – decorated with sugar-crafted lily of the valley – was cut with the Army sword of Captain Mark Phillips, the groom’s father.”
The Mail, though, looks beyond the towering triumph of icing and the syrupy filler with the sword and says the wedding special run to 100-pages, trumping the Sun’s 58 pages, and making celebrity watchers wonder if adverts can be counted as part of the photospread?
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Posted: 22nd, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Hello!, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comments (7)
Eurovision: Of Milky Way And Jam
IT’S the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, and the Telegraph introduces Britons to Sebastien Tellier, singer of the French entry, “a jovial Beach Boys pastiche called Divine”.
“Eurovision is not a place for culture,” says M. Tellier.
Mr Tellier sings in English and those French who see this as a slap in the visage for their language should know he does so with a thick accent. To the English, Tellier sounds like he’s speaking in French.
A trawl of the internet for the lyrics to Tellier’s entry, tosses up the following:
I’m Looking for a band today
I see the Chivers anyway
Through my eyes…
Might this be a paean to Chivers, purveyors of Great British jams? The Chivers family are believed to have descended from Huguenots who settled in Cottenham at the end of the 17th Century, so very possibly, yes.
Or what about a tribute to Martin Harcourt Chivers, alumnus of Taunton Grammar School, Southampton and Tottenham Hotspurs football clubs., who ended his career at Servette in Switzerland?
Says Tellier:
Look away
They try to find the Milky Way
They love to drink it everyday
Jam and confectionary that doesn’t ruin your appetite between meals might not be mainstays of musical greatness, but this is Eurovison…
Posted: 22nd, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets | Comments (2)
Touring The Iain Dales
OBSEQUIOUS Tory wannabe Iain Dale is the eponymous star of DALE’S TOURS, “my new weekly slot for TELEGRAPH TV, in which I go round the country talking to Tory activists, councillors and candidates.”
TV executives worried about the power of the internet should sleep easy – especially if they adhere to the Dale mantra: Tune in and drop off…
Posted: 21st, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians | Comment (1)
Josef Fritzl In Austrian Literature
JOSEF Fritzl is an Austrian characature come true:
Fritzl existed in literature before he existed in life. We should attend more carefully to those critical writers – Nestroy, Anzengruber, Nabl, the Canettis, and numerous others – who are too readily dismissed as caricaturists. Their monstrous and grotesque characters, from Gundlhuber to Benedikt Pfaff, actually turn out to embody some of the twisted energies at work in Austrian society.
Posted: 21st, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets | Comments (7)
Carla Bruni Is Politic’s Amy Winehouse
THE MIRROR reports that French First Lady Carla Bruni has insisted a song about drugs called My Junk will stay on her new album.
Mirror readers weened on celebrity cocaine learn that Junk is slang for heroin.
“My guy, I roll him up and smoke him,” she sings. The Elysée Palce is reportedly uncomfortable with the line, it being a perceived slight on Sarkozy’s lack of size, his being no bigger than a herbal cigarette.
Elsewhere on the album, Bruni gives full throat to a tale about her love affair with French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Her version Bob Dylan’s You Belong To Me includes the line: “See the pyramids along the Nile… Just remember darling, all the while, you belong to me.”
While and Nile is decent rhyme. And there is hope that if Mrs Sarkozy continues in such a vein she could do for pop music what Amy Winehouse has done for politics.
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Posted: 21st, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Celebrities, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Profiling Schoolchildren And Weeding Out The Baa Baa Black Sheep
CLASSROOM troublemakers as young as five will not be expelled from school but placed in “sin bins”.
The Mail notes: “They will be sent for a spell in a specialist unit where they will be given anger management classes alongside normal lessons to prepare them to return to their schools.”
This may be just the Mail’s take on the news because over in the Guardian the same White Paper is given the headline: “Sin bins for pupils to be scrapped.”
Ministers moved yesterday to scrap so-called sin bins for disruptive pupils and replace them with specialist centres run by private companies, charities and academies, in an admission that the policy has failed.
So sin bins are out. As the Independent says: “Disruptive pupils to be sent to specialist ‘sin bins’ run by private companies.”
So much for the non sin-bins sin bins. What of the policy?
The Mirror says that “ministers are so anxious to catch youngsters before they offend that those who have out-of-control brothers or sisters or a mum or dad in jail could be sent to one of the units – even if they have done nothing wrong”.
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Posted: 21st, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Labour: After The Flood And Dunwoody Syunts
NEW Labour: The dam’s burst. Now voters just want to wallop Labour…
Of course, plenty are still loyal. Dunwoody has been canvassing only Labour stalwarts, who greeted her with fond memories of things her mother did for them. “Always Labour!” they said, and the latest ICM poll in Crewe shows 37% still are. Old Crewe railwaymen tell Tory canvassers they’d rather boil their heads than vote for the party that privatised the railways. But 45% tell ICM they’ll vote Conservative, sweeping away a 16% Labour lead in 2005. As a national swing, Labour would lose 150 seats.
Vote Dunwoody – like her mum:
Yesterday afternoon Ms Dunwoody was accompanied by Schools Secretary Ed Balls – perhaps the Prime Minister’s closest disciple – at the naming of a school building after her mother, who was widely respected as an independent-minded local MP.
Cynical…
Posted: 20th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians | Comment
