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Money

Money Category

Money in the news and how you are going to pay and pay and pay

Guinness Viral Group Sex Ad

DIAGEO demands that YouTube remove a “fake” Guinness viral advert, in which a girl balances a bottle of the black stuff on her back during a group sex session.

The 60-second viral shows two different male hands taking the drink, which is precariously balanced on the small of the woman’s back, before another woman reaches up and grabs it.

Enjoy the marketing…

Posted: 31st, July 2008 | In: Money, Online-PR | Comments (6)


We’re all Chinese Now: UK Commuters, This Is The Hour

IN China the commuters are revolting. Downtrodden people of UK train, coach and bus, this is our time. It’s the Cummuter Revolution. Advance!

“Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said.

The passengers clashed with airport police Tuesday morning, smashing computers and desks, Xinhua said, blaming the melee on China Southern staff’s “inappropriate working attitude.”

Hurrah! We’re all Chinese now!

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Posted: 31st, July 2008 | In: Money, Strange But True | Comment


Do The Licence Payer: BBC Fined, And Elisa Roche Auditions For Countdown

IT would not surprise us to learn that Pudsey Bear, BBC Children In Need’s overstuffed monocular mascot, has 20-20 vision.

The BBC has been fined £400,000 for “deliberately cheating” the public with fake phone-in competitions. The BBC is funded by the public, meaning that we have been cheating ourselves. And that is not on!

Right it is then that we should pay, and the Beeb has been censured.

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Posted: 31st, July 2008 | In: Money, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (3)


Do The Numbers: More Countdown Auditions, With The Telegraph And BBC

AUDITIONS for the person to replace Carol Vorderman as the nation’s favourite TV brain box move on to day 4:

BBC

Vorderman, who is reported to earn in the region of £900,000 a year from the show, announced she was leaving on Friday.

BBC

Vorderman’s agent said on Saturday that the star felt forced to step down from the show when she was told to take a 90% pay cut from a salary understood to be in the region of £1m.

NICOLE MARTIN (Telegraph)

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Posted: 31st, July 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Celebrities, Money, TV & Radio | Comments (4)


Ali Lohan: When TMZ Does Underage Porn

TMZ.com is the apogee of celebrity porn.

Tabloid Baby looks at the site funded by the corporate monoliths Time-Watner and AOL and wonder how their clean corporate images sit with TMZ’s crude comments on Lindsay Lohan’s 14-year-old sister, Ali Lohan.

Anorak’s man in LA says:

In a story about Ali’s audition with a film producer with ties to the porn industry, shaved bronzed midget Harvey Levin and his gang use a double-entendre headline alluding to oral sex, along with a photo that obviously is meant to look, at first glance as if the 14-year-old child is performing an act of fellatio.

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Posted: 30th, July 2008 | In: Celebrities, Money | Comments (2)


Pratchett Fall: Rowan Pelling Is Well Read At Tesco’s

HOW wonderful it is to be well read, to show knowledge by way to quotes and “Yes, I read that”. Says the Telegraph’s literary elephant Rowan Pelling:

Last year, Tesco sold £107.2 million of books. We may think of it as a grocer, but in reality it’s a behemoth, carrying the nation on its vast back like the turtles in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

That’s the cover of the book he notes on the left, the one with the elephants.

You Anorak’s don’t need to read it…

Posted: 30th, July 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Money | Comments (21)


Do The Sums: More Countdown Auditions, With The Guardian

AUDITIONS for the person to replace Carol Vorderman as the nation’s favourite TV brain box move on to day 3: The Guardian:

HEIDI BLAKE (Guardian)

So, farewell then, Carol Vorderman. Following 26 years of co-hosting Channel 4’s flagship gameshow, the woman recently dubbed “Mrs Countdown” is set to take her final bow after reportedly being given 48 hours to accept a 90% cut to her £1.2m pay packet or resign

ZOE WILLIAMS (Guardian)

But to return to that 90% – as any true maths fan would – that was a cut from 800 grand, so it would have left her with £80k.

LEIGH HOLMWOOD (Guardian)

Previous reports put her salary between £900,000 and £1m a year.

Audition 1

Audition 2

Posted: 30th, July 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Money, TV & Radio | Comments (2)


The Miley Cyrus Smiley Condom Caper

MILEY Cyrus has been approached by Lifestyle Condoms to front a campaign for safe sex.

Miley is 15 years old. Jail bait. She does it for Jesus. But does not get pregnant.

Her fans will be dleighted, especially those in London.

Posted: 30th, July 2008 | In: Celebrities, Money | Comment


Selling Knife Crime: Eros’s Arrow And Selfridge’s Red Hearts T-Shirts

THE Mirror is outraged. On sale in Selfridges, London, is a T-shirt for The Red Hearts, an LA punk band.

The T-shirt features a drawing of a blade on the wearer’s heart and some red ink that trails into the lettering “THE RED HEARTS”.

Janina Rout, 47, shopper, mother, was appalled:

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Posted: 30th, July 2008 | In: Money, Tabloids | Comments (6)


Hillary Clinton Escort Services

SAYS the email from Hillary Clinton (remember her?):

“Summer is a time for simple pleasures: family vacations, baseball games, and dinner out under the stars. At least it is if you aren’t running for president!”

“HAVE A MEAL WITH HILLARY – LET’S GO TO DINNER!

Hillary’s not pimpimg Chelsea. There’s more:

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Posted: 29th, July 2008 | In: Money, Politicians | Comments (4)


Cristiano Ronaldo Is Good Enough To Eat

WHOLE Foods Market – “motto: “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet” – has produced a Cristiano Ronaldo tribute food.

Can you guess what it is?

Is it:

a) An edible food varnish
b) A gingerbread man you can dunk into your tea (surely dive in? – Ed)
c) An organic tan-as-you-shave gel (the special strip deposits a layer of fair trade tanning substance in your opened pores)
d) Linseed oil
e) An eclair

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Posted: 29th, July 2008 | In: Back pages, Money | Comments (3)


Do The Time: More Countdown Auditions, With Joey Barton

MORE auditions for Carol Vorderman’s former job as the nation’s favourite brain box, featuring Joey Barton…

STEVE WILSON (Telegraph)

Barton was bought from Manchester City just a year ago for £5 million and is on wages that amount to around £70,000 a week.

ROB STEWART (Telegraph)

Newcastle midfielder Joey Barton will refuse to accept a cut in his £55,000-per-week basic wages when he meets the club’s hierarchy for crucial talks on Tyneside following his release from prison.

PATRICK MULCHRONE (Mirror):

Three in five want the £60,000- a-week former England player sacked, a poll has shown. The row has seen some refuse to renew season tickets.

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Posted: 29th, July 2008 | In: Back pages, Money, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment


Spread Betting: Banking On Mortgages

GET this: you, the customer, can take out a loan with Lloyds TSB at 7.2 per cent and use the cash to buy shares in the bank which pays a yield of 10.9 per cent.

Easy money. Although would you buy shares in the banking sector?

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Posted: 29th, July 2008 | In: Money | Comments (3)


Obama Is A Commie

OBAMANIA Watch – Anorak’s look at Barack Obama in the news.

IS it because American politics is distilled into two shades of blue?

Some right wing Americans think Barack Obama is a communist. Looking at the US from the outside, he looks very much like the typical American politician raising loadsa money for himself and his campaign.

Source

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Posted: 28th, July 2008 | In: Money, Politicians | Comments (2)


Climate Cops And Green Shirts: The War On Global Warming

HEY kids, wanna play a game of green shirts and baddies?

NPower, the electricity people, want you, the Britisher Jungvolk, to inform on your mums and your dads if they disobey the rules on climate change.

Grab a gas mask, a tin hat and come closer. Baroness Young of Old Scone, head of the Environment Agency, says climate change is “World War Three”. And in zer war you want to be on the side of the good guys, right kidz? We vill take ze moral highground, and victory will be ours.

Attack the non-believer.

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Posted: 28th, July 2008 | In: Money, Online-PR | Comments (6)


Countdown Carol Voderman Is 11 Per Cent Less Attractive Than Myleene Klass

“COUNTDOWN MELTDOWN,” says the Mirror. “Shocking truth of how Carol and Des were FORCED to quit.”

News was, and still is, that Vorderman was offered a 90 per cent pay cut in her £800,000 salary to keep her job as celebrity sums worker outer on the Channel 4 show. She was offended, appalled and RAGED OUT.

Anorak has enjoyed Carol’s work over the years and can that she has been treated unfairly, being as she is only 79 per cent less attractive then she was when her last pay deal was set.

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Posted: 28th, July 2008 | In: Celebrities, Money, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (12)


Buying Cars In China: The Quick And Hard Sell

Buying cars in China – a quick and hard sell…

Posted: 27th, July 2008 | In: Money, Photojournalism | Comment


EU And Us: Farming With France

FRANCE is the current president of Europe. It’s a system seemingly modelled on Italian politics where everyone gets a go at being leader. For the next six months – lest war in Europe breaks out, Germany invades or France refuses to give it back – the baton is with Les Blues.

As the press release for Europa tells us:

The European Commission has approved 31 programmes in 16 Member States… to provide information on and to promote agricultural products in the European Union.

Want to know how the money is divided and who gets what? This graph should give you some idea:

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Posted: 25th, July 2008 | In: Money, Politicians | Comments (4)


Financial Spreads: Oil Slick, Bonds Stick And Pounding Sterling

SPREAD Watch: Anorak’s look at the financial spread markets

BUY much last month?

The Office For National Statistics (average age, mean height at age six months and number of employees called Colin on application) has released figures on high street sales.

June was a record month. June saw a month-on-month drop of 3.9 per cent in sales volumes. This reversed the jump of 3.6 per cent in May.

If the Grand Old Duke of York did economics, he’d be in charge right now.

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Posted: 25th, July 2008 | In: Money | Comment


Bottled Water In China

BOTTLED water in China…

Spotter: T.Boy

Posted: 24th, July 2008 | In: Money, Photojournalism | Comments (4)


Getty Uses Flickr: We’re All Paparazzo Now

GETTY is worried:

It was announced on the Flickr blog on July 8th but I only knew about it from this story in the Guardian’s media section today (so score one for the ‘dead tree media’ I suppose).   The plan is that Getty Images will trawl through the photos on Flickr to look for ones they think are marketable, which they will then buy off you for the same rates they pay established journalists.   Darryn Lyons and his Big Picture are also soliciting photos through their Mr Paparazzi website

Source

Posted: 23rd, July 2008 | In: Money, Photojournalism | Comment


US Papers In A Panic

NEWSPAPERS are in a panic. The Mirror’s new site is a celeb-fest news dump:

The many and deepening cuts at newspapers across the country are starting to take a toll on their content, according to a study being released Monday.

The challenge newspapers must meet immediately is to find more revenue on the Internet, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s study, called “The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost in America’s Daily Newspapers.”

Newspaper managers need to “find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears.”

The new Anorak’s coming to get them…

Posted: 23rd, July 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Money, Tabloids | Comments (2)


Bakel Blog’s eBoost Cold Call

BAKEL Blog gets a call from eBoost’s customer service…

“Hey Roger van Backel [butchering my name with obvious relish], you are a faggot! So listen to this, queer!” [unintelligible background noise and talking, then the name ‘Roger’ again, then she hangs up]

Source

Posted: 23rd, July 2008 | In: Money, Online-PR | Comment


Srubya And Soapbama: Cleaning Up With Barack Obama

SOAP firm Scrubya donates 75 percent of its proceeds to nonprofit organisations dedicated to “cleaning up the mess” it blames on George Bush.

Time to come John McClean, or scrub up with Soapbama.

Posted: 22nd, July 2008 | In: Money, Politicians | Comment


The Benefits Of Being Kerry Katona’s Mum

KERRY Katona’s mother, one Susan Katona, “had £46,000 despite claiming she was broke, a court heard yesterday”, writes the Sun.

Susan Katona, 48, has admitted claiming £5,622 income support — despite earning thousands from photographs and interviews about her daughter, 27.

Yesterday she failed to appear for sentencing for a second time — claiming she has agoraphobia.

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Posted: 22nd, July 2008 | In: Celebrities, Money, Tabloids | Comment (1)