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Teen Vogue remove Alexi McCammond and her tweet-shaped moral stain

Teenagers says such dumb things. Alexi McCammond was appointed editor of Teen Vogue, a magazine that binds the vapid weltschmerz of teenage experience into a corporate-clad glossy guide to help the uncool know which big brands who need go invest in. But McCammond is mired in accusations of racism and homophobia for tweets she posted years ago, when she was just 17 years old. Two weeks after being hired, she lost her job.

There’s the tweet about her “stupid Asian” and “Googling how to not wake up with swollen Asian eyes”. Another tweet went “you’re so gay”. When a baseball umpire reportedly came out as gay, she opined on twitter: ‘Why is this “newsworthy?”’

McCammond said sorry a few times And that should be enough. But adult staffers on the mag were upset she was given the job. Advertisers cancelled.

You cannot escape the past. A tweet serves as a tattoo on your moral character.

Pick your bias – and then pick your social media action plan:

Posted: 19th, March 2021 | In: News | Comment


How many died when EU politicised the safe AstraZeneca vaccine?

EU

Is it safe to assume that people did not benefit for the EU’s crass and political decision to ban the AstraZeneca vaccine, the wonks and bureaucrats leaving 7m does of the life-saving drug in fridges rather than the arms of the people it serves? If it wasn’t beneficial, then was the decision detrimental? Did people die and get seriously ill because the EU first dithered to order vaccines and then used wobbly figures and hunches to bolster its power? Surely the answer is yes, they did.

EU regulators at the EMA say that after a “thorough and careful review” people can have confidence in the vaccine’s benefits and should get immunised, despite some countries pausing use. But damage has been done. The EU has told everyone last week the vaccine was dangerous.

So what triggered the panic? In the UK, there were five cases of cerebral sinus vein thrombosis (CSVT) – all men – among 11 million people who have received the vaccine. One person died. The EMA zone recorded 13 reports of CSVT. But not link between CSVT can the vaccine has been established. you can get it, if you’re unlucky.

EMA executive director, Emer Cooke, goes on the record:

“Drawing attention to these possible rare conditions and providing information to health care professionals and vaccinated people will help to spot and mitigate any possible side effects.”

If you get the jab and suffer a server headache for four days, call your GP. If you refuse the jab and get ill, it might be an emergency medic you end up trying to talk to through a tube.

Posted: 18th, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Jimmy Savile all over an underage Coleen Nolan in 1979

Former Nolan Sister singer Coleen Nolan says paedophile BBC DJ and TV ‘personality’ Jimmy Savile invited her to his hotel when she was 14. The Nolans had been on BBC TV’s Top of The Pops in 1979 when the man who died innocent and blameless before being outed as a prolific child rapist promised to “look after her”. Nolan thought Savile a “dirty old man” and declined. “I’ve got four sisters on the stage that would have beaten the crap out of him.”

Here’s the footage of Savile hiding in full view – at the 4-minute mark:

Posted: 18th, March 2021 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Music, News, TV & Radio | Comment


Was Piers Corbyn at the Sarah Everard vigil – and other ‘scandals’?

Shami Chakrabarti has a question, which is most likely rhetorical but might not be: “After the Sarah Everard vigil scandal, who still thinks the police need extra powers?” Guardian readers, to whom the question is addressed, who support the idea of police having more powers to target “unwitting racism“, hate crime and lockdown might well answer “yes”.

But Chakrabarti thinks the answer must be “no”. Sarah Everard went missing on a walk home from a friend’s house on 3 March. Her body was found in Kent. Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, 48, has been charged with her kidnap and murder. That the victim of heinous crime should now be linked to a “scandal” is hugely regrettable. A friend of Ms Everard’s writes:

Since we learned of Sarah’s disappearance, this experience has been hard to put into words. It’s not something anyone would ever imagine having to deal with. But now, as brutal as the outcome is, we have some answers. It’s shocking and devastating. But I would rather know than never find out what happened to her, so we can begin the long, painful grieving process.

When I first heard of the vigil for Sarah on Clapham Common I was looking forward to attending – it felt good to be able to ‘do something’ and express my love for Sarah and my sorrow for what has happened to her. Less than a day later, I decided not to attend, as have many of her friends. I can’t speak for all of them, but my reason for not attending is this: my friend’s tragic death has been hijacked. It is not a tribute to her any more, it’s about something else – and I don’t like what it has become.

And so to the “scandal” in which heavy-handed policing broke up a vigil for Sarah on London’s Clapham Common. Officers handcuffed women and removed them from the gathering – much as they did when Piers Corbyn, the OAP brother of former Labour leader and Chakrabarti pal Jeremy Corbyn was treated he refused to leave an anti-lockdown protest in Hyde Park, London, on 16 May. He was later found guilty of breaching coronavirus restrictions. So much for the rules. Here’s how Chakrabarti begins her article:

The Peterloo massacre in 1819, the abuses of the suffragettes in the early 20th century, the killing of Blair Peach in 1979, the recent “spy cops” scandal: there have been many dark moments in Britain’s history of policing and protest. To this long list we must now add the scandalous police response to a public vigil held on Clapham Common, south London, marking the disappearance and death of Sarah Everard.

No mention of Corbyn.

Do the rules only matter only if you agree with the cause people are gathering for? Without irony, Chakrabarti continues:

When XR [Extinction Rebellion] blocked access to three printing presses owned by Rupert Murdoch in September, accusing newspapers of failing to report on the climate crisis, many politicians and commentators fell over one another to side with Murdoch over the climate protesters. Those who didn’t care about defending protesters’ rights when they were considered too green, or too black, have now woken up to find that a vigil for Sarah Everard has been broken up with a callous police response.

Too green, too black, too Murdoch?

If you cheered for lockdown and cheered again when the unlovely Corbyn was pinched, complaining about the lockdown rules now looks less about a demand for freedom for all and more about freedom for your own beliefs and causes.

Lead Image: Tim Dennell -A woman lays flowers at a vigil for Sarah Everard in Sheffield, UK. CC BY 2.0.

Posted: 17th, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


AstraZeneca vaccine banned as Precautionary Principle costs EU lives

At the time of twisting, 11 European countries have temporarily suspended use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine, including Germany, The Netherlands, France, the Irish Republic, Denmark, Norway, Bulgaria, Italy and Spain. These counties are wary of blood clots. About 17 million people in the EU and the UK have received a dose of the vaccine. AZ says there have been fewer than 40 cases of blood clots. But is the risk of blood clot higher than the risk of no vaccine? And how does the AZ vaccine stack up against the alternative vaccines?

AZ says th 5 events of deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) and 22 events of pulmonary embolism are “much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size and is similar across other licensed Covid-19 vaccines”.

The BBC Nick Triggle ads context:

The key question that has to be asked is whether this is cause or coincidence? Would these clots have happened anyway? The 37 reported cases are below the level you would expect. What is more, there is no strong biological explanation why the vaccine would cause a blood clot. It is why the WHO and the UK say there is no evidence of a link. And the EMA has suggested the vaccine should continue. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the decisions by individual nations to pause their rollouts have baffled experts.

And this is not the first time countries in Europe have exercised caution about the AstraZeneca vaccine. Germany, France and others did not initially recommend use of the vaccine for the over-65s. That has now been reversed, but the impact is still being felt, it seems.

The tabloids make it about the EU. Has it fallen victim to the precautionary principle (or precautionary approach)? Banning when extensive scientific knowledge on a matter is lacking can cause more harm than good. Don’t do it until you can be sure to have included everything in a risk assessment. But what if the evidence isn’t there and you’re waiting for nothing? It’s been a big talking point around the environment:

On 2 February 2000, the European Commission issued a Communication on the precautionary principle, in which it adopted a procedure for the application of this concept, but without giving a detailed definition of it. Paragraph 2 of article 191 of the Lisbon Treaty states that

Union policy on the environment shall aim at a high level of protection taking into account the diversity of situations in the various regions of the Union. It shall be based on the precautionary principle and on the principles that preventive action should be taken, that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source and that the polluter should pay

The Union is one thing but the 26 countries in it have their own interpretations. So there’s confusion. And in a pandemic, that’s not all that helpful.

When the win flu pandemics struck in 2009, Nick Cohen outlined the two extreme views:

Just before he died, Kingsley Amis wrote that two dismal groups fought over the use of English: the berks and the wankers. Berks were permissive types who rejected all rules. “Careless, coarse, crass [and] gross … they speak in a slipshod way with dropped ‘Hs’, intruded glottal stops and many mistakes in grammar. Left to them, the English language would die of impurity, like late Latin.” 

By contrast, wankers were authoritarians who wanted to impose every possible restriction on speakers and writers. “Prissy, fussy, priggish [and] prim … they speak in an over-precise way with much pedantic insistence on letters not generally sounded, especially ‘Hs’. Left to them, the language would die of purity, like medieval Latin.”

In France, President Macron talks of a ‘war” on Covid and sits on piles of unused vaccines. President Trump thought it best ignored. You don’t need to pick a side between the wankers and the berks. In too many countries, you’re not even given that option.

Posted: 16th, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Aphex Twin sells Virtual art for virtual fortune

Electronic musician Aphex Twin, aka Richard James, has sold an NFT (non-fungible token) for $127,000 in Ether. The genuine digital artwork called “/Afx/weirdcore,” features an animated version of the artist’s face with sound. Fans will recognise it as harking back to the cover of Aphex Twin’s I Care Because You Do studio album released in 1995.

Says Aphex Twin: “We will spend a portion of the money on planting trees* and either donating to permaculture projects or setting them up ourselves, depending on how much we get.”

*Real trees?

Posted: 16th, March 2021 | In: Money, Music, News, The Consumer | Comment


Musician identifies the classical music played in famous cartoons

Vincent Alexander (@NonsenseIsland on Twitter) writes that many of us were introduced to classical music from watching old cartoons. “I’m going to identify the pieces that frequently popped up,” he writes:

One of the most recognizable is Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2,” performed by those great piano virtuosos Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry.

Posted: 11th, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, Music, News, TV & Radio | Comment


Joe Biden Forgets…

Type ‘Joe Biden forgets’ into Google and you get a slew of results. Many of us forget things, especially when under pressure. But when you’re leader of the free world, a sharp mind is useful. Here’s a quick round up of what Joe Biden has forgotten:

Biden Forgets… The Name of His Defense Secretary

Joe Biden Forgets What Year It Is

Joe Biden Forgets What Year It It II (see it here)

Joe Biden Forgets… Donald Trump

We’ve been here before:

Posted: 10th, March 2021 | In: News, Politicians | Comment


Harry Dunn : Anne Sacoolas makes us puke

Good news is that Anne Sacoolas says she is willing to make a “contribution” to society with a bout of “community service”. Anne Sacoolas will make up for leaving a blameless teenager dead by the British roadside by clearing the American roadside of some debris not of her making. Not that Anne Sacoolas actually said that on the record, preferring to hide behind her lawyer.

Mr Dunn, 19, was riding his motorbike when he was struck and killed in a crash with Anne Sacoolas near RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire in 2019. She was driving on the wrong side of the road. She then cited diplomatic immunity and scarpered. Now her lawyer says Anne Sacoolas has “never denied that this was her fault”.

Such craven bollocks should make you puke. But save something back. Because you need to digest this:

“We understand that community service is a typical sentence for offences like this. We have offered ever since over a year ago that she would be willing to serve that kind of a sentence and to make a contribution in Harry’s memory, to take other steps to try to bring some peace to the family.”

In Harry’s memory. Now vomit freely.

But some news: the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has authorised Northamptonshire Police to charge Mrs Sacoolas with causing the teenager’s death by dangerous driving. But the US rejected the extradition request in what must have something to do with that so-called Special Relationship.

Posted: 9th, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Meghan and Harry want a messy divorce

By now you’ll be wondering what Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been getting up to since leaving the UK. Well, after the separation, they’ve being going gung-ho to secure the rights to the the narrative in the divorce. As Helen Lewis put it in an excellent take on the mess, the two sides – Meghan and Harry v The Royals – have a set of fighting rules:

But who is to blame? Meghan’s version goes like this: The Queen was lovely, but the wider institution of the monarchy – known colloquially as “The Firm” or “The Palace”—failed to help her as she was ripped apart by the British press. Worse, she sometimes felt that courtiers were actively working against her. An incident in which Meghan was accused of making her sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, cry over a bridesmaid’s dress was, she said, reported in the press the wrong way around. Kate made her cry, but then apologized, and all was forgiven. But the Palace wouldn’t go on the record with a correction. “They were willing to lie to protect other members of the family,” Meghan said, “but they weren’t willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.” The Palace refused to give her son, Archie, a title and a security detail—and there were some “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be.” The mix of racism, isolation, and intrusion she endured drove Meghan to suicidal thoughts.

The royal narrative is that the Windsors receive millions from British taxpayers, and fulfill a public role. They can’t limit access to their lives to sympathetic listeners like Oprah. They must be accountable. Playing by those rules, you’d be mad to contest every false rumor printed about you, and declaring war on the press is counterproductive. Far better to keep your head down and let your work speak for itself. Can you see the difference in the two views? Members of the Royal Family accept a level of scrutiny and partisan attack usually directed at politicians. Meghan and Harry want to be treated like celebrities.

meghan harry tabloids

One day on from that Oprah interview and the couple keep their media stock high by issuing a newly released photo. She looks radiant and so California. Harry looks like he avoiding the sun. Does she need him as a person to carve out a new career as an influence, lifestyle force, or just the title?

But this is love. We all get it that the money and maybe even the fame are attractions when you marry Harry. But who’d want that level focus on their life that comes with tying yourself to the Firm? Meghan has this covered. “The most important title I will ever have is Mom,” she told Oprah. But Duchess, without the title, would we tune in? How many of tuned in to Suits hoping to learn your opinions on global warming and rescue chickens? “I went into it naively,” the 30-something divorcee with experience of Hollywood casting calls and family rifts told Oprah. “I didn’t do any research about what that would mean. I’ve never looked up my husband online.”

On 6 September 1997, Diana’s brother told everyone watching her funeral how his sister’s “particular brand of magic” needed no royal title to legitimise it. But without it, she’d have been a nice Sloane Ranger, an unlikely president of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, patron of the Natural History Museum, Nelson Mandela’s teatime companion, president of the Royal Academy of Music and patron of Turning Point, a health and social care organisation – Diana famously visited its project in London for people with HIV/AIDS in 1992. She later established and led fundraising campaigns for AIDS research. Doors open when you’re a Royal. Diana was possessed of skill and grace, she had charm and charisma. Had Harry been more graceful, he’d have stood a better chance of keeping his ties to the British military, something he is said to have wanted. Now he just looks a bit drippy; a tad whiney; more than a bit dull. “His skill set (flying helicopters, shaking hands with mayors) seems oddly redundant in their new life of podcasts and Netflix deals,” quips Lewis.

Maybe Harry should have briefed “naive” Meghan better? Must be hard to namecheck Princess Diana, as they did within five minutes of the interview’s start, and not be aware that for her it wasn’t all celebrity mates, yachts and Paris?

The scrutiny on Diana was intense. A tabloid editor’s job was to press f9 on the keyboard and deliver a Diana shocker.

Shocks keep coming:

Hard stuff for Harry to read that and then worry how such scrutiny could affect his wife. And he was already unhappy before he met Meghan. Now woke but once lambasted for laking about in Nazi fancy dress and calling a soldier  “our little Paki friend“, Harry is married to a professional LA habitué. Oprah and Meghan share the same cultural values: self-promotion is good; making it all about me is good; new money is great; and the past really is another country. For Harry, it’s where he was born and bred.

Posted: 9th, March 2021 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment


Celebrate International Woman’s Day with Meghan and Kate’s Royal Rumble

Let’s celebrate International Women’s Day with a fight between Meghan Markle, aka Meghan Windsor, and Kate Middleton, aka Kate Windsor. Megs told Oprah Winfrey in a TV interview that on the morning of her wedding to Prince Harry, Kat made her cry. Some people think Megs made Kat cry, but Megs says that’s a falsehood that must be corrected on the international stage. Kat made her cry. Fact.

Women campaigners for equality, both domestic and international, will be chuffed to bits that two such high profile women are front and centre in the public eye – albeit for a bitchy row over a dress. Says an Angela Merkel from Germany, “I’m no relation. Thank god.”

The papers are delighted. Meghan and Harry are tabloid gold. Expect to hear lots more quotes from Harry & Meghan about their televised quest for privacy against the terrible tabloid press in the tabloid press:

Posted: 8th, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment


‘I deserve a £500 ASOS gift voucher because’ – you bought TopShop and I lost my job

Complete this legend and win: “I deserve a £500 ASOS gift voucher because…

mel at @midnightpinkish delivers: “”u bought topshop n now i’m unemployed during a pandemic.”

Asos

She adds: “just for the record im literally not blaming asos, i’m just trying to win a free £500 voucher by making light of a shit situation!!”

Posted: 6th, March 2021 | In: Money, News | Comment


Covid-19 lockdown is an assault on the young – 4 in 10 oldies break the rules

The house parties busted. The raves smashed. The kids turfed out of school. The young abused and attacked as criminals for getting on with their lives, drinking coffee whilst walking in the park embracing the day. All to save the old people and protect the NHS. Well – get this – now the aged have been jabbed, four in 10 over-80s have broken the lockdown rules since getting vaccinated. Are they being derided in Westminster, filmed by police drones and the monstered in the media? How many have been arrested and fined? None.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) find that 43 per cent over 80s say that since receiving the jab, they had met someone indoors who was not in their support bubble. And around 41 per cent said they had seen more people since being immunised.

And the young? Nothing. They lost. Just abysmal.

Posted: 5th, March 2021 | In: News | Comment


Anne Frank would have loved Covid Isolation – the worst article ever written

It had been nearly 50 years since I read The Diary of a Young Girl. What a timeless piece of writing; especially during a global pandemic with its restrictions, anxiety and isolation.

Because being hunted down by a murderous death cult who wanted to murder every Jew (totting up 6 million dead) is eerily similar to having to wear a mask to buy takeaway coffee and ordering groceries on the web. Frank remained in hiding for 761 days in a hole behind a bookcase before being sent by a cattle truck to Auschwitz, where she was tortured, enslaved and murdered.

As my COVID fatigue has gotten the better of me in recent weeks I started to say to myself, “What would Anne do?” or “How would Anne describe this time?” and “How would she cope?”

At a guess I’d say Anne Frank would find lockdown akin to a gentle breeze on sunny day. And then our writer notes that she is “like Anne”. Both of them kept a diary. As Dame Edna Everage is wont to put it, that’s “spooky.”

And then we get to Anne & Me:

As I wrote that first entry, in December, 1969, I thought that, maybe, Anne Frank had been a distant relative. When I looked in the mirror or at the women in my life, I saw her: We all had similar thick brunette hair, strong facial features and weak yet determined smiles. I, too, had a fraught relationship with my mother and, like Anne, was self-aware, sensitive and easily hurt. We were both diarists with no friends recording our boredom, fear and struggles.

Jew or Not a Jew?

Although we were not hiding in an Amsterdam annex, my family also had secrets. There had been rumours that my grandparents had been Polish Jews who had changed their identity to survive the atrocities of war.

A Bigger Oeuvre Than Anne Frank’s

…whether we write till we are only 15 years of age, such as Anne, or still at 62, as I can. I have discovered personal growth occurs in how we respond to universal struggles.

Anne Frank was murdered.

Image: Anne Frank on Zoom.

Posted: 4th, March 2021 | In: News | Comment


BBC invites panel of non-Jews to declare that Jews cannot be victims of racism

politics live jews

Does the BBC have an issue with Jews? Dear old Auntie is trying to spot them. It’s got a televised panel on Politics Live to join in a bout of lunchtime Jew ‘rausing’. So how do you identify a Jew? Through eugenics? Watching them pray? By giving them a badge to wear? And why does it matter?

Any Jew looking into their Sephardi ancestry and perhaps taking up those countries’ offer of a right to return, after the Inquisition expelled them on pain of death, is not asked to prove any religious credentials. No-one in Lisbon or Seville asks how often the applicant goes to synagogue. The Gestapo never asked Jews that question either. But on the BBC’s Politics Live show, four non-Jews formed a panel discussing whether Jews are a race. It was a revolting spectacle, reminiscent of that New Statesman cover about the ‘Kosher Conspiracy’. Because if Jews are not a race (clue: they are) they cannot be victims of racism. Jews are fair game.

anti-Semitic new statesman kosher conspiracy

The BBC has form here. The BBC’s biography on new Labour leader for Scotland Anas Sarwar (born 14 March 1983) says he’s “the first minority ethnic leader of a major political party in the UK”. He isn’t. Three Jews have led major UK parties: two Conservative; one Labour.

The BBC changed that to read: Mr Sarwar “is the first non-white leader of a major political party in the UK”. All Jews are white? No. On the census forms, there is no room for ‘Jew’. This is useful because Jews are prone to getting murdered and making a big list of who they all are and where they all live can be dangerous for them. But nowadays, there should be the option.

BBC Jews

But some people don’t get it, or don’t want to get it. People like Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner, who tweets: “I am so proud that our party has elected the first ever ethnic minority leader of a political party anywhere in the UK.” Nope. Wrong.

Angela Rayner Jews

If you’re going to use race to score points and big yourself up, why not work to get it right? Ed Miliband, Benjamin D’Israeli and Michael Howard are the three Jews who’ve led major UK political parties. To the BBC and Angela Rayner they.do not count.

Politics Live host Jo Coburn then put it that because Jews have progressed so much in society they might not be “seen as a group deserving recognition”. Got that? As one Jew said in his advise to British Jews, “don’t dare fail.” They get you for that. You’re swarthy, immigrant “vermin”, as one Manchester paper and the far-Right put it. And if you do well, you’re privileged whites who run the world, as the righteous Left have it (see above). The one thing you are always is a Jew. And racism is what leads to your murder.

Posted: 3rd, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Blood diamonds: Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview is beyond satire

When they tire of telling us via their PRs, lawyers, Netflix, Spotify, photoshoots and Oprah Winfrey about the horror of media intrusion, Prince Harry and Meghan Windsor, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, may reflect on why it was the media is obsessed with them.

Today’s Meghan missive reaches us via The Times, in which she is the subject of a story that alleges the American was rude to Palace staff, was accused of “bullying” and this:

The Times can reveal that the duchess wore earrings to a 2018 event that were a wedding gift from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said by the US to have approved the murder of the Jamal Khashoggi.

The dinner took place three weeks after the killing.

Blood diamonds? In 2019, the UK imported a million metric tons of crude oil. She wears Saudi goods mined underground, you stick the country’s produce in your car. Who is the more guilty? The Sussexes busy lawyers are dismissive of the “spurious allegations regarding the use of gifts loaned to The Duchess by The Crown”.

The Times goes for it:

After a newspaper revealed that a PA had left after only six months, it is understood that the duchess became extremely concerned about the number of stories in the press about staff leaving. Her lawyers state that she did not read the press…

When the duchess wore the earrings in Fiji given by the crown prince she told aides who were preparing to brief the media about her outfit for the state dinner that they had been “borrowed” from a jeweller, a source said, an explanation that was widely reported. This was three weeks after the murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Lawyers for the duchess said she may have stated they were borrowed but did not say they were borrowed from a jeweller and denied that she had misled anyone about their provenance.

Following it? Lost the will to live? Or are you wondering if everything to do with the Royal Family is beyond parody? Get this anecdote from Tory MP Michael Ellis, via the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon:

Before any more is said, let is be placed on the record that the supremely gorgeous, never wrong, rich and highly intelligent Duchess (also very litigious – ed) says it’s untrue she bullied anyone. Well, a spokesman for the Sussexes says it’s all part of a “smear campaign” and the duchess is “saddened by this latest attack on her character, particularly as someone who has been the target of bullying herself and is deeply committed to supporting those who have experienced pain and trauma”. These are “defamatory claims” “based on misleading and harmful misinformation”. To which the media says: “Phew! Thank god she didn’t ignore it and start training in to be a nurse.”

Meghan Windsor bullying

We are told that two Sussex PAs left their jobs:

Both PAs signed non-disclosure agreements. There is no suggestion that Meghan tried to prevent them from speaking. Lawyers for the duke and duchess stated that she had no knowledge of the agreements and that they believed staff to be comfortable and happy.

No knowledge is not the same thing as saying the NDAs do not exist.

In late 2017, after Harry and Meghan’s engagement was announced, a senior aide spoke to the couple about the difficulties caused by their treatment of staff. People needed to be treated well and with some understanding, even when they were not performing to their standards, they were told. Meghan is said to have replied: “It’s not my job to coddle people.”

Are you more bothered by alleged non-coddling or Prince Andrew’s antics? Are you amazed we are supposed to look up to these people, of whom only one matters – and she’s sat on the throne? So what do we get?

One former staff member said: “I had unpleasant experiences with her. I would definitely say humiliated.”

After Jason Knauf, the couple’s communications secretary, made his bullying complaint, another member of staff was worried about spending time with her the next day because she feared that Meghan was about to find out. “This is why I feel sick,” they said.

Another time there was a row about whether Meghan had been told that the media would be present at an event. When she rang the aide, they rang back but she did not pick up. “I feel terrified,” the source said. “I can’t stop shaking.”

An unnamed source adds:

“There were a lot of broken people. Young women were broken by their behaviour.”

The Times editorialises:

The issue boils down to whether Meghan was a demanding boss with high standards, or a bully. Did her team fail her or did she ask the impossible?

To help us decide a source (again unnamed) is quoted: “Everyone knew that the institution would be judged by her happiness,” a source said. “The mistake they made was thinking she wanted to be happy. She wanted to be rejected because she was obsessed with that narrative from day one.”

And it must be noted: “Lawyers for the duchess said this was entirely wrong. The duchess wished to fit in and be accepted and had left her life in North America to commit herself to her new role.”

Lawyers are said to be delighted.


Posted: 3rd, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment


Dr Seuss bans 6 of its books for their racism

Dr Suess

Dr Seuss, aka Theodore Geisel, regrets the error. Six of the writer and artist’s titles are bing banned:

AP:

Six Dr. Seuss books — including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said Tuesday.

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday.

“Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families,” it said.

The other books affected are “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”

You should see the stuff of his they still let in…

Posted: 2nd, March 2021 | In: Books, News | Comment


Prince Harry attends Oprah while Philip so sick

How can Prince Harry go ahead with his ‘o me miserum’ interview with US TV empress Oprah Winfrey when his grandfather is “so sick”? The Mail’s Richard Kay’s question is rhetorical. He provides no list of alternative answers. The inference is that only one response is needed: Harry’s a traitor. A dead grandparent is ok for getting a day off school, and it should stop you from going on the telly to talk about your mum.

The Telegraph is the only other mainstream paper to lead with the Oprah interview, in which Harry comes over wetter than an otter’s pocket. The former lad who dressed as a Nazi for laughs, used the word “Paki” and got naked playing pool in Las Vegas is now middle-aged, woke and taking time out from whatever it is he does to talk about his “incredibly hard” life. No need to editorialise. The episode is needy, entitled and narcissistic. It’s pretty what being a celeb is all about.

The Telegraph quotes an unnamed source saying the Palace is worried about Philip’s ailing health (he’s 99) and couldn’t give a stuff about Harry and Meghan’s’s televised chat with Oprah Winfrey. It does this on its front page. No comment is very much a comment. The Telegraph expects its readers to care.

Should Philip die the day Harry and Meghan attend to Oprah airs, there will be much weeping and wailing at a smart residence in one of LA’s gated ghettos. The old sod will have stolen their limelight. And then the real problems begin for Harry should it dawn on Oprah and Hollywood bigshots that the big scoop was rubbish, serving up a moist tissue to a tired, struggling, impoverished and cynical public. The Harry & Meghan show is the spin-off soap opera no-one watched. Because without the rest of The Munsters, Harry and Meghan are pretty uninteresting. All eyes on the funeral, then, when absentees will be newsworthy.

Posted: 2nd, March 2021 | In: News, Royal Family | Comment


Grand National trainer sits on dead horse: why not race the corpses?

Leading Irish horse trainer Gordon Elliott, 43, says the photo of him sat on a dead horse is authentic. Elliott says he took a phone call and sat down on the horse “without thinking”.”I apologise profoundly for any offence that this photo has caused,” he says. The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) is “appalled”.

Elliott has thrice trained the winner of the Grand National. The race yielded 7 fatalities out of 439 horses taking part between 2000 and 2010. In 1998, three horses died: two were injured in the race and then offed by the vet; one suffered a heart attack whilst jumping a fence. But the racing fraternity is aghast and agog and one man using a dead horse as an al fresco office.

‘MURDER?’ – Winner of the Grand National in 1973, 1974 and 1977, the UK’s best known and most loved racehorse is pictured with fans on a visit to Bristol at Castle Park on March 15th 1980.

“I can categorically state that the welfare of each and every horse under my care is paramount and has been central to the success that we have enjoyed,” says Elliott. “The photo in question was taken some time ago and occurred after a horse had died of an apparent heart attack on the gallops. At what was a sad time, which it is when any horse under my care passes away, my initial reaction was to get the body removed from where it was positioned. I was standing over the horse waiting to help with the removal of the body, in the course of which, to my memory I received a call and, without thinking, I sat down to take it. Hearing a shout from one of my team, I gestured to wait until I was finished. Such background information may seem trivial at this time and will not allay the concerns of many people both within and outside the world of horse racing.”

He’s right. It doesn’t.

Image: An edited version of an image of Gordon Elliott released by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board, via BBC, no copyright note.

Posted: 1st, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, News, Sports | Comment


The BBC forgets the Jews and identifies Labour leader Anas Sarwar by colour

The BBC’s biography on new Labour leader for Scotland Anas Sarwar (born 14 March 1983) says he’s “the first minority ethnic leader of a major political party in the UK”. He isn’t.

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881), was a Conservative Party leader who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was an ethnic Jew.

It was not until the Jews Relief Act 1858, also called the Jewish Disabilities Bill, that Jews seeking to become MPs did not have to swear the Christian oath of office. The bill allowed “any Person professing the Jewish Religion, [to] omit the Words ‘and I make this Declaration upon the true Faith of a Christian'”.

Other Jews have led major parties. Michael Howard, Baron Howard of Lympne, CH, PC, QC (born Michael Hecht; 7 July 1941), served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005.

This is how Labour Party attacked Howard and another Tory MP Oliver Letwin (also Jewish) in 2005 – you might see hints of Fagin and get a load of those Jewish pigs:

And there’s Ed Miliband (born 24 December 1969), Leader of the Labour Party and the Leader of the Opposition between 2010 and 2015. His mum and dad were Polish Jewish immigrants. In April 2018 – irony of ironies – Jeremy Corbyn fanboy Owen Jones called out “antisemitic dog-whistles” aimed at Miliband, which included “smearing his dad as ‘the man who hated Britain’, and harping on about the weird “north London intellectual”.

So well done Anas Sarwar. But you’re not the first.

Update: the BBC has changed the bio. It now says, Mr Sarwar “is the first non-white leader of a major political party in the UK”. Non white? Are all Jews white? Do all whites see Jews are white? Isn’t being Jewish to belong to an ethnic group? Are Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews less white than Ashkenazi Jews? Is the BBC looking at skin colour only when it sees a politician, including one whose father Mohammed Sarwar was the UK’s first Muslim member of parliament?

On ethniticity, the UK Government says:

In England and Wales, there are 18 ethnic groups recommended for use by the government when asking for someone’s ethnicity. These are grouped into 5 ethnic groups, each with an ‘Any other’ option where people can write in their ethnicity using their own words. These groups were used in the 2011 Census of England and Wales.

So which group is the one for Jews? And should all MPs first be identified by their skin colour before a word on their policies is mentioned?

Posted: 28th, February 2021 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment


FUCKD and BOMBD : anti-vaxxers adopt Smiley symbol

The Smiley was drawn by Harvey Ball in the 1960s – and went all aceeeeedd in the 1980s. The beaming round yellow face was on records, T-shirt and Ecstasy tablets. Now it’s been adopted by anti-vaxxers and anti-facemask wearers using the #SmilesMatter hashtag. But not one of them thought to add the words ‘BOMBD’ or “FUCKD’ to the message.

Posted: 27th, February 2021 | In: News | Comment


Covid-19: The NHS is scared of Gwyneth Paltrow

Reading of a senior NHS leader’s response to Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow’s Covid-19 routine minded me of a joke told by the abrasive Glaswegian comic Jerry Sadowitz. “Prince Diane put her hair in a bun,” he begins, “and her **** in a toaster.” How much information do we need and what does it have to do with us? The BBC reports that Paltrow has a “duty of responsibility” when talking about Covid treatments. Paltrow is not a doctor, not medically trained and the last time I looked made a living pretending to be other people to deadline. Jane Seymour’s views on Covid-19 are unknown, but when Dr Quinn Medicine Woman breaks her silence the NHS will surely be all ears.

Paltrow says he had Covid-19. It left her with “some long-tail fatigue and brain fog”. She took her foggy brain to see a “functional medicine practitioner”, who had advised “intuitive fasting”. She takes “ketop and plant-based diet”, never eats before 11am and partakes in “infrared saunas” (aka: sitting too close to patio heaters).

NHS England’s Prof Stephen Powis says such methods are “really not the solutions we’d recommend”. Well, hard cheese. Paltrow never consulted you. But Prof Powis never studied for years to support such stuff and says that he is more into “serious science”. “Like the virus, misinformation carries across borders and it mutates and it evolves,” he says. “So I think YouTube and other social media platforms have a real responsibility and opportunity here… We need to take long Covid seriously and apply serious science. All influencers who use social media have a duty of responsibility and a duty of care around that.”

The message is clear: listen to us; don’t listen to them. I’m want to be an influencer. And you’re all thick.

Posted: 25th, February 2021 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment


British Police warning: being offensive is not an offence unless it is, which it isn’t

Wirral police offence

Police on Merseyside say “BEING OFFENSIVE IS AN OFFENCE”. But it isn’t. Superintendent Martin Earl reminds us of that in a statement. He says the earlier statement made by police on big billboard in a public place “although well-intentioned was incorrect”. Good to know the law when it’s your job to uphold it. Otherwise it looks more like a threat or a whim. Says Martin:

Offended?

Posted: 23rd, February 2021 | In: News | Comment


David Baddiel and all Jews blamed for dead babies on Twitter

Baddiel Jews twitter Alexandra Tohme

David Baddiel has written a book on what it means to be a Jew. In Jews Don’t Count he looks at why so-called progressives love to be on the ‘right side of history’ and fight racism but whose righteous love does not extend to Jews. On Twitter, account “Alexandra Tohme” (@alextohme) seems unimpressed by it:

“Perhaps Baddiel would like to help “Make Jews Count” the amount of ordinance they’ve dropped on Lebanon. The amount of deaths. The amount of damage they’ve done. Jews don’t and shouldn’t count when they’re killing babies. On yer bike kike.”

Wonder if whoever wrote that revolting tweet about Jews and dead babies, and the one that followed about “cramming” Jews into “Golders Green”, read Baddiel’s book? More tweets followed:

Update. The tweet on the account “@alextohme” in which Baddiel is called a “kike” is no longer available.

Let’s finish with this:

Maybe it’s time to read Baddiel’s book.

Posted: 22nd, February 2021 | In: News | Comment


Harry and Meghan are Duke and Duchess in a country that gave us true royalty like Prince, The King and Zsa Zsa Gabor

Where do the Duke and Duchess of Sussex rank in the USA, a country that gave us Prince, The King (Elvis), King (a town in North Carolina (see above The Count (of Sesame Street), The Godfather of Soul and Emperor Norton, a citizen of San Francisco, California, who proclaimed himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States” in 1859? Harry and Meghan will not work as members of the Royal Family. The spare to the heir and his wife have no duties to fulfil connected to their titles. They cannot hold their honorary commands and patronages and live in California. A series of cataclysmic events could still result in Harry becoming King. But that seems unlikely. They could become the King and Queen of Netflix and Podcasts. Or name their forthcoming child Empress, Princess or Queen.

Right now, Harry and Meghan resemble extras from a dull Hollywood soap opera. Not quite as regal as Zsa Zsa Gabor and less grand than Dynasty’s Prince Michael of Moldoiva. But maybe one day popular enough to appear at Caesar’s Palace casino in Las Vegas.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s being handed back to the Queen:

Harry:

Captain General, the Royal Marines
Honorary Air Commandant, RAF Honington
Commodore-in-Chief, Royal Navy Small Ships and Diving
President, The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust
Patron, the Rugby Football Union
Patron, the Rugby Football League

Meghan:

Vice-President, The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust
Patron, the Royal National Theatre
Patron, the Association of Commonwealth Universities

Posted: 19th, February 2021 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment