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Dear Guardian readers, Ede & Ravenscorft is not for investment bankers
Former BBC journalist Paul Mason offers guidance to Guardian readers: “How to blag a job in finance: buy some black shoes and talk like an aristocrat.”
Big news any of my friends who worked on the LIFFE floor – including ‘The Professor’, so nicknamed because he had two A-levels (grades C and D) -, no, it wasn’t sarcastic – and those from very non-aristo backgrounds (hard to fake being a toff if you’re Jewish, black or Asian) working throughout the money markets.
Mason, however, has honed in on investment banking:
There’s supposed to be a war for talent. If so, it became pretty clear last week why Britain’s investment banks are losing it. The recruitment filter, revealed in a report from the Social Mobility Commission, works like this: you can only join the customer-facing part of an investment bank if you went to one of four public schools; got a first from one of five universities; and possess “sheen”.
Yes, sheen. And polish. No matter how good you are, if your tie is not right or your suit does not fit like a glove, you are destined to take your excellence somewhere else.
Big news: people with lots of money prefer dealing with people who grow up at ease with lots of money and who succeed in academic studies. But the best part of this article in the picture used to illustrate the unfairness of it all.
The label on the shirt says “EDE & RAVENSCROFT”. Who are they? Well;
We provide ceremonial robes for all occasions, dress the judiciary (including providing handmade wigs) and ensure that graduates from all over the world look their best at graduation ceremonies.
You don’t wear brown in town. And you don’t wear an Ede & Ravenscorft shirt in investment banking. Of course, had the Guardian’s picture editor gone to the right school, they’d have known that.
Spotter: Tim Worstall
PS : jobs at The Guardian, this way!
Posted: 7th, September 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Money, Reviews | Comment
Of course Adidas and Nike discriminate against disabled athletes
Are Nike and Adidas prejudiced against disabled athletes? Yes. Is that prejudice immoral or illegal? Surely not. The Guardian reports on Hannah Cockroft, a British paralympian who accuses sportswear companies of discrimination.
Cockroft, who is expected to be one of the stars of the Paralympic Games in Rio after winning two golds at London 2012 and three in last year’s world championships, is the dominant figure in her sport but said Adidas and Nike have cited her inability to use their footwear in competition as a justification for not sponsoring her.
That seems reasonable. Nike and Adidas are most renowned for making trainers. If you are not known for wearing trainers, sponsorship would be waste of their endorsement cash.
Cockcroft says:
“The real reason? I have been told it’s because I don’t wear shoes when I compete. What do I do with that? I wear a shirt, I wear trousers, I wear shoes on the podium when I’m collecting a gold medal. But apparently because that’s not when I’m competing that’s not enough. I’ve been told this by Nike, Adidas, all the big brands. I told them it was discrimination. It is discrimination.”
Yes. It is discrimination. Of course it is. But it’s about her not it.
Adidas also rejected Cockroft’s claims, pointing out it has designed ParalympicsGB’s kit for the Games. “As a sports brand we have partnerships with teams, including ParalympicsGB, and individuals across both apparel and footwear,” a spokesperson said. “Whilst we will not discuss negotiations with specific athletes we can say we sponsor a number of athletes who don’t wear footwear to compete.”
So why has no big brand sponsored her?
Cockroft has had talks about kit sponsorship in the past but it is understood the companies’ offers have fallen below expectations.
She wants more money.
As for shoes:
Zoal Budd ran barefoot, but was sponsored by running shoe companies. One of the best known barefoot runners in history, Budd has actually been sponsored by a couple of shoe companies during her career – firstly Brooks and then Newton in more recent years.
Maybe Cockcroft is looking at the wrong brands?
Posted: 7th, September 2016 | In: Money, Reviews, Sports | Comment
Brazzers porn tossers left exposed in hacking parody
Anyone using the masturbatory site Brazzers “should be worried’ says Techworm. The site has been hacked. The data of – get this – 800,000 wankers is out there?
But why worry? Porn is ubiquitous. Wanking goes hand-in-hand with the web.
We popped along to the forum for wankers to see what one-handed typist talk about among friends. Sadly the site is down. So the latest tips on treating callouses, how to beat the dreaded dry wank blues and ‘Stains that look like Benedict Cumberbatch’ will have to wait.
In the meantime:
Only the fearful sneer at ‘Giant Troll’ Milo Yiannopoulos
You don’t have to like him to support his right to free speech. Ann Althouse gets it:
“ABC’s Nightline goes after Milo Yiannopoulos and I’ve never bothered with this guy one way or the other… but this ham-handed effort to cut him down made me side with him. Why is the ABC reporter sneering and yelling at the person he’s interviewing?”
The hectoring reporter makes anyone who values free speech side with Milo. We all value the right to be offensive, right?
PS: The Ghostbusters remake is crap.
Posted: 6th, September 2016 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Elitist Black Lives Matter activists block London City Airport
Snotty Black Lives Matter protesters have forced London City Airport runway to shut. Nine protestors have “locked themselves together” on the runway.
Black Lives Matter UK says:
“Whilst at London City Airport a small elite is able to fly, in 2016 alone 3,176 migrants are known to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean. Black people are the first to die, not the first to fly, in this racist climate crisis.
“We note, however, that the UK is willing to charter special flights to remove black people from the country based on their immigration status.”
The small “elite” are holidaymakers and fellow travellers of all colours who want to fly, often on low-cost airlines, to other places. No planes fly from City Airport to Africa.
The even smaller elite are the nine know-alls who have adapted a US protest movement against police shootings of black citizens to be a rallying cry for all manner of ills. As Brendan says: “Its key UK spokespeople are a postgraduate geography student and a ‘black, British, queer, non-binary Muslim’ who goes by the pronoun ‘they’.”
It’s not about inclusivity, equality and civil rights; it’s about exclusivity, creating a space for the righteous and self-absorbed to pose and meet like minds in. It wants to create racial division, dividing society into blacks (victims) and whites (guilty).
‘Check your privilege’, goes the command to whites. But they, like the blacks and everyone else, should spend more time checking their boarding passes and passports than being preached at by these un-radicals. Class and wealth matter. Progressive movements matter.
The regressive and factional Black Lives Matter UK is all very cosy. Look:
The UK is the biggest per-capita contributor to temperature change & among the least vulnerable to its affects. pic.twitter.com/Bb5SmKWyt6
— #BlackLivesMatterUK (@ukblm) September 6, 2016
Posted: 6th, September 2016 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Hillsborough: Merseytravel is wrong to ban the Sun from Liverpool
In Liverpool, Merseytravel wants to ban the Sun newspaper. The city’s councillors all support the company’s efforts to force vendors stop selling the Sun across the Liverpool City Region transport network. It part of a campaign, to “eradicate the paper from the city”.
It’s rooted, of course, in the Sun’s awful reporting on the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 football fans died. The paper fanned the flames of bigotry, falsely presenting the dead and injured as agents of their own fate. Liverpool fans had not “picked the pockets of victims” and “urinated” on police officers. The Sun lied to its readers. The police lied to public it serves. They turned victims into criminals.
It was not “THE TRUTH”, as the Sun claimed in its front-page headline.
But banning the paper is weak. The Society of Editors says the move was “stretching towards censorship”. No. It is censorship.
Merseytravel chairman Liam Robinson says: “Lots and lots of people in this city get offended by this newspaper, they are offended to see it on sale. People who have to sell it are offended to touch it. We are here to represent the travelling public and local people. [This motion] was backed unanimously by all political parties.”
Paul Collins, from the Total Eclipse of the S*n campaign, says the newspaper had “slandered the dead, it slandered the city with lies. It upsets decent people.”
Are you indecent if you buy the Sun, which people do, presumably? Are you morally wrong if you read the paper?
This campaign does nothing to honour the dead, the bereaved and the hurt. It seeks only revenge.
Posted: 6th, September 2016 | In: Liverpool, Reviews, Sports | Comment
The Queen has no crown on Australia’s new high-tech bank notes
In the UK:
But New Zealand wins. It’s five-dollar note was named the International Bank Note Society’s banknote of the year for 2015.
Her Majesty is much changed:
Ill woman wants stolen illegal medicinal marijuana returned
At her home in Christchurch, New Zealand, Jane, 49, is surveying her loss. “They took my medicine,” she says of her missing marijuana crop.
Thieves broke in and stole Jane’s drug of choice, the one she uses to treat chronic debilitating foot and leg pain after a car accident. “Other drugs upset my system so badly,” she says. “I have tried all the pills, none of them agree with me. Tramadol put me in hospital, damaged my pancreas. I rely on cannabis – it’s the only thing that doesn’t upset me.”
They took her Afghan Kush.
“I can’t have any old stuff. I need the stuff that numbs me,” she adds. “I know that does it beautifully. Other varieties I need to take three times the amount to get the same effect, just so I can walk without screaming.”
But weed is banned in New Zealand. Jane is unfazed: “I have a mother who is 84 years old. She’s seen me on the pills, in hospital. She approves of me smoking. As far as she’s concerned hers is the only permission I require.”
Good on her.
If it helps Jane, why should Jane be made a criminal for helping herself? Whey should the State own her body?
Posted: 5th, September 2016 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
‘Camp’ Keith Vaz’s sex life ‘shame’ looks like gay-bashing
The Mail leads with news of Keith Vaz, the Labour MP the Daily Mirror claims paid two men for sex. It calls him “SHAMELESS”, adding: “Keith Vaz was shamelessly clinging to power last night after he was exposed for paying rent boys for sex.”
‘Clinging to power’ make him sound like the leader of the country rather than a Labour party MP (the two positions being mutually exclusive as Labour dissolves under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership).
As for paying “rent boys” for sex, what else do you pay them for? And boys? No. They were men, allegedly. Why do gay men who pay for sex do so with “rent boys” and not “prostitutes”? There is a whiff of something nasty in the air.
Surely we’ve got over the news that some men enjoy sex with other men? But in his catty profile of the man, Quentin Letts calls Vaz “Camp Keith”, noting his “flamboyant bitchiness”; he was “giggly and silly” as a Minister in Tony’s Blair’s cabinet; he “sashayed around Westminster”; “If you stood down wind of him you were more likely to catch a whiff of aftershave”.
Is it the alleged extra-marital sex that upsets the Mail or the fact it involves men?
Aside from Letts (married!) The Mail is aghast that Vaz did not not step down as Labour MP when the story broke. Why should he resign. Did anyone elect him on the strength of his sex life?
The paper says he should stand down from his role on a panel looking at “crime, migration and sexual exploitation”. Again, why? If all is true, perhaps he would have a worthwhile contribution to make.
Posted: 5th, September 2016 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
‘Wanton and furious’ cycling is a crime but speeding on a bike is not
You can break the law is your cycle too fast. The Mail:
Battery-powered bicycles are being modified to travel at almost 30mph – twice the speed permitted in public places – putting owners and pedestrians at risk.
Cyclists fit devices that override a speed sensor on the bikes that cuts the motor at the legal limit of 15.5mph. Others are being sold bikes with motors that exceed the 250-watt power limit permitted on roads.
The Highway Code (rule 124) states speed limits but there are no figures for bicycles. And why is 15.5mph the maximum? How was that ascertained?
This site says:
Cyclists can’t be booked for speeding, but might be fined for ‘cycling furiously’ or ‘riding furiously’ which is an offence under the 1847 Town Police Clauses Act. However, cyclists can be convicted for ‘wanton and furious driving’ under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 ( amended by the Criminal Justice Act 1948 (. 58), s. 1()) if they cause bodily harm to any person. They are then guilty of a misdemeanour and could, at the discretion of the court, be imprisoned for up to two years.
You can go fast but not go furious.
Daniel Ratcliffe regrets the error: Seamus Milne is away and Jeremy Corbyn might not be magic
The big question is: does Harry Potter like Jerrmy Corbyn? The Guardian says he does:
Daniel Radcliffe has endorsed Jeremy Corbyn for leader of the Labour party, saying the veteran leftwinger’s sincerity won him over. The Harry Potter star told The Big Issue that Corbyn’s informal style had excited voters and was a welcome departure from scripted politics.
The Guardian was sticking to the right script, albeit wrongly. The paper later regretted the error:
NOTE: This article was published in error. It was based on social media circulation of an interview Daniel Radcliffe gave to the Big Issue in September 2015. It is not known whether he still holds these views. It originally ran with the headline ‘Daniel Radcliffe endorses Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader’ and was published at 4.55am on 4 September 2016. The original article read as follows:
Whoops! As the Guardian checks the date of Seamus Milne’s contract (the paper says, he’s “a Guardian columnist and associate editor”; he’s also Jeremy Corbyn’s spin doctor), we look at what Radcliffe told the Big Issue:
“I feel like this show of sincerity by a man who has been around long enough and stuck to his beliefs long enough that he knows them and doesn’t have to be scripted is what is making people sit up and get excited. It is great.”
A days is long time in politics. A year is a lifetime…
Posted: 4th, September 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Celebrities, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Modern life gives your cancer?
The Daily Mail says cancer cases in children have risen by 40% in less than two decades “because of pollution, pesticides and gadgets”. They have been added to the list.
The paper cites the work of Professor Denis Henshaw, scientific director at Children with Cancer UK, who tells the Daily Telegraph: ” “These significant rises in cancer cases cannot be explained by improvements in cancer diagnosis or registration alone – lifestyle and environmental causal factors must be considered.”
The Mail adds:
He told the Sunday Telegraph that burnt barbecues, the electric fields of power lines, and hairdryers were contributors to the rise, as well as a pregnant mother’s diet and working shifts.
Over in the Telegraph, we learn:
Modern life is killing children with the number of youngsters diagnosed with cancer rising 40 per cent in the past 16 years because of air pollution, pesticides, poor diets and radiation, scientists have warned.
Modern life gives you cancer?
New analysis of government statistics by researchers at the charity Children with Cancer UK found that there are now 1,300 more cancer cases a year compared with 1998, the first time all data sets were published. The rise is most apparent in teenagers and young adults aged between 15 and 24, where the incident rate has risen from around 10 cases in 100,000 to nearly 16.
Dr Denis Henshaw, Professor of Human Radiation Effects at Bristol University, the scientific adviser for Children with Cancer UK, said air pollution was by far the biggest culprit, accounting for around 40 per cent of the rise, but other elements of modern lifestyles are also to blame.
Among these are obesity, pesticides and solvents inhaled during pregnancy, circadian rhythm disruption through too much bright light at night, radiation from x-rays and CT scans, smoking during and after pregnancy, magnetic fields from power lines, gadgets in homes, and potentially, radiation from mobile phones.
Radiation. Might that be the link. It’s use has risen over the pst two decades. Also, some cruel twist to think that the radiotherapy and CT scan that tests for and treats cancer might be making things worse.
Idiocy in a New York City bike lane
Stay in the bike lane. And stay to the end of this video. It’s not easy.
Posted: 3rd, September 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Sports | Comment
Donald Trump should vet only male immigrants and hire more women cops
Amanda Marcotte has a message for Trump supporters. She writes in Salon:
A modest proposal: Trump has it all wrong — to prevent crime, we need to do some “extreme vetting” of men
It’s not all immigrants who need vetting. It’s just the male ones. We should only let the women in. At least that’s what she might be saying:
There are, however, two groups of people who really do commit crime, especially violent crime, at wildly different rates: Men and women.
According to FBI crime statistics, men are arrested for roughly three-quarters of all crimes. When it comes to violent crime, the stats are even worse. Nearly 9 out of 10 people arrested for murder are male. Ninety-nine percent of rape arrestees are men. Men are arrested for 8 out of 10 aggravated assaults.
If Trump is right and the crime rate is serious enough of a problem to compel us to abandon basic human rights so as to subject certain groups of people to monitoring and legal intimidation, then it’s not immigrants we should target. It’s men.
Amanda. Spot on. But the forces of law and order already know it. They watch men far more than they watch women (via):
Rather than stating the bleedin’ obvious and missing the truth of it, Amanda might care to campaign for more female police officers (via):
Female cops accounted for just 3.4 percent of officers involved in the “83 most serious lawsuits” against the LAPD from 1986 to 1990. While the stats suggested that female cops aren’t reluctant to use force, the commission reasoned, they’re not nearly as likely to use excessive force. “With some exceptions, female officers interviewed believed they were more communicative, more skillful at de-escalating potentially violent situations and less confrontational,” the report reads. “A suspect’s defiance and disrespect of an officer often gives rise to use of force by an officer. Many officers, both male and female, believe female officers are less personally challenged by defiant suspects and feel less need to deal with defiance with immediate force or confrontational language.”
….
Policing remains one of the most male-dominated professions in America: in the 1970s, about 97 percent of American cops were men, and in 2013, that had fallen only to 88 percent, meaning that the police force is even more gender imbalanced than the active-duty military, which was 84.9 percent male as of 2014. And while there are way more men than there are women policing American streets, the gender disparity for police use of force is even greater. Paquette reports that of the 54 officers that have been charged with killing someone with a gun while they were on duty, just two have been female.
And sex crimes?
Deborah Friedl has 30 years with the Lowell Police Department in Massachusetts, and she is now deputy superintendent of police there, the first woman to hold that job. For at least a decade, she and an international cadre of women police leaders, including The National Center for Women and Policing in the U.S. have been promoting research showing that the best way to reduce rates of violence against women, sexual assault, rape, and homicide is to hire more women officers.
Maybe the new arrivals could be encouraged to join the Thin Blue Line?
Posted: 3rd, September 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
(No) Antisemitism in Labour Party Watch: Ruth Smeeth, Kate Osamor And Corbyn’s ‘kinder’ politics
More evidence that there is no anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The Jewish News reports on Ruth Smeeth, Labour MP:
Counter-terrorism police have launched an investigation into a fanatic who has threatened to hang a Jewish female Labour MP from the gallows. Ruth Smeeth is reportedly receiving special protection from police after receiving the foul-mouthed death threat on Facebook, which included anti-Semitic and homophobic abuse.
The Stoke-on-Trent MP is branded a “yid”, “dyke” and a “CIA agent” in the highly offensive rant which is reported in The Sun.
The abuser finishes the post by saying: “Ruth Smeeth is British and from my perspective since treason is still a capital offence in Britain, the gallows would be a fine and fitting place for this Dyke piece of Yid s*** to swing from”
Adding:
The threat was issued in July, soon after the MP fled the launch of Labour’s report into anti-Semitism in tears after being accused by a Momentum activist of colluding with the right-wing press.
Ms Smeeth accused Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of a “catastrophic failure of leadership” for failing to intervene during the incident and said the Labour Party “cannot be a safe space” for British Jews.
Ms Smeeth is quoted in The Sun saying of that incident: “I very much hold Jeremy personally responsible”.
The Facebook rant is captured and reproduced:
The Sun says the ranter is a Corbyn supporter:
We hear from a Corbyn PR:
“Jeremy has consistently spoken out against all forms of anti-semitism and has contacted Ruth Smeeth to express his outrage at the abuse and threats directed against her. Jeremy condemns all abuse, and no one responsible for it is a genuine supporter of Jeremy’s. He has repeatedly called for a kinder, gentler politics.”
Smeeth is quoted by the Press Association:
Ms Smeeth told BBC2’s Victoria Derbyshire programme. “I know that Jeremy Corbyn would condemn this, but it’s not about condemning, it’s about what people are doing in his name. What I need is for the leader of my party, the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition, to make it clear what can be done. He should be naming and shaming some of the worst perpetrators who are doing it in his name, and making it clear publicly that they do not speak for him, that this is unacceptable.
“There is a vile amount of racism and intolerance and abuse online, which then feeds on to our streets and leads to a culture of intolerance that he could actually personally do something about. That’s what I’m asking him to do.”
In other news:
Exclusive: Shadow minister’s aide suspended over Zionist posts.
An aide to shadow international development secretary Kate Osamor endorsed a controversial Palestinian activist’s social media posts
Elizabeth Dudley, who was a member of Kate Osamor’s parliamentary staff, ‘liked’ two Facebook posts from a West Bank activist, who Jewish News revealed yesterday is to speak at an event organised by Newcastle Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
One incendiary post from Iyad Burnat said: “To the American people do not bother to vote in the elections. The Zionists had identified the next president.”
Another post from him that was ‘liked’ by Dudley showed the bodies of dead children with the flag of Israel alongside the swastika. Wording above said: “Is the Zionists terrorists? What is the difference between Zionism and Nazism?”
Osamor told the Jewish News: “Having been made aware of these posts, the member of staff has been suspended with immediate effect.”
Conclusion: There is no anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
Jeremy Corbyn, Press TV and a ‘mere £20,000’ filthy lucre
Jeremy Corbyn has appeared on Press TV five times. Press TV is the Iranian regime’s propaganda channel. It used to be broadcast in the UK but it was banned “for its role in filming the tortured forced-confession of Iranian liberal journalist Maziar Bahari.” Bahari has called Corbyn a “useful idiot”, adding:
People who present programmes for Press TV and get paid for it should be really ashamed of themselves — especially if they call themselves liberals and people who are interested in human rights.
You can watch Corbyn at work here.
The Mail adds:
One Labour MP criticised the party leader’s links to Press TV, and said he should donate all the money to a Jewish charity. In 2011 Mr Corbyn took part in a round-table discussion on the channel with journalist Yvonne Ridley, lamenting the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Mr Corbyn told PinkNews his £20,000 fee for four appearances between 2009 and 2012 ‘wasn’t an enormous amount, actually’.
Is it enough to buy a train ticket?
Posted: 3rd, September 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Who farted in Grimsby Magistrates’ Court?
“Woman breaking wind cuts through sombre silence of Grimsby courtroom” is our local news story of the week.
The Grimsby Telegraph doesn’t say whether Grimsby Magistrates’ Court is famed for its silence, only that during proceedings a woman sat in the public gallery let rip.
Mark Naylor then adds:
One male observer, originally sitting unknowingly next to the culprit on the front row of the public gallery.. hastily moved back a row to provide a bit more distance in the event of a second unexpected event.
He also took cover outside the courtroom door later on during proceedings in a wise pre-emptive bid to avoid being in the firing line in the event of an ear-splitting encore.
He later suffered the indignity of being blamed by others for being the one responsible for the noise in the first place.
Where this man is known to your reporter is unknown, but reputations for chivalry have been built on less.
Posted: 3rd, September 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Eder: football’s ultimate rags to riches story
In the Mail, Adam Crafton has written on his interview with Eder (Éderzão António Macedo Lopes), the Portuguese footballer whose goal won Euro 2016 for Portugal.
His father, Filomeno Antonio Lopes, has been in an English prison since 2003, serving a life sentence for the murder of Eder’s stepmother, Domingas Olivais. Eder falls silent, takes a sip of water and says: ‘OK, let’s talk properly about this.’ Over the half hour that follows, Eder answers questions about his father’s past, relives his upbringing in an orphanage and explains why, just two years ago, he came very close to ending his own life.
Eder scores with his feet
There could be a movie in this tale of rags to riches. And there are others. Former Barcelona star Rivaldo lost his teeth to malnutrition.
Diego Armando Maradona… grew up in the shanty town of Villa Fiorito, where he shared one room with seven siblings. Sanitation facilities were somewhat crude and one night, when still a toddler, Maradona fell into the family cesspit after losing his way in the dark. Fortunately his Uncle Cirilo, screaming “Diegito, keep your head above the shit”, was on hand to rescue the youngster. “It wasn’t easy, eh? Nothing was easy,’ recalls Maradona with masterful understatement. One local resident remembers El Diego’s formative years thus. “He had nothing else but football,” says Jose Trotte. “He was not educated, he had no sophistication. He was shirtless and barefooted. He was just this street kid with a gift from God.”
And a hand from God, too.
The Jungle: reducing refugees to hapless saints
The Jungle refugee camp in Calais is troubling Stella Creasy MP. She writes in The Guardian:
As signatories to the 1951 refugee convention, Britain should share responsibility for helping more people, not just in camps in poorer nations but across Europe too. That means providing more legal safe routes to sanctuary and funding the administrative mechanisms for people to access them.
France is a safe haven for refugees. A refugee has been forced to leave their home by fear. Creasy’s lament scratches the notion of sovereignty. Where does the UK’s powers and and the EU’s power begin? Is a democratic state allowed to say who lives in its country?
If we are for allowing people to live and work in the UK, we should debate it. Creasy writes:
We can’t abandon refugee children – and that includes us, the politicians…
Why wouldn’t it include politicians, the people we elect to make decisions? Who made them something other than us, the mere humans who vote for them?
Refugee camps are not a long-term solution. But demolishing them or hoping other countries will deal with the problem because it isn’t happening on our soil isn’t a sustainable or honourable response.
Instead of meaningful debate about human freedom, the issue is reduced to infantalized virtue signalling over who cares most for the refugees, portrayed either as hapless and saintly or criminal and dangerous.
Time to treat them as adults.
Gawker: power and money smash free speech and the right to offend
Sorry to see Gawker go? Here are a few words on what they said about the US site:
Denton’s self-starting staff crossed two rich and angry men. One was the wrestler Hulk Hogan, incensed when Gawker published part of a video showing him having sex with a friend’s wife. Hogan took Gawker Media to court and won a total of $140 million in March. Hogan’s suit was bankrolled by Peter Thiel, a billionaire whom Gawker had outed as gay in 2007. At last month’s GOP convention, Thiel told the audience that, “I’m proud to be gay. I’m proud to be a Republican.” Gawker, for its part, went proudly bankrupt.
Gawker, the muck-raking, dirt-digging, mud-slinging internet magazine, has just been forcibly closed down. It was not found guilty of threatening America’s national security, or corrupting the nation’s youth. Instead, Gawker was put out of business for publishing true stories that some people found offensive. One of those offended people happened to be a Silicon Valley billionaire, who used his wealth and power to shut Gawker’s irreverent mouth as surely as if he had been a Third World tyrant sending the cops to close a dissident newspaper.
But this is more than an outrageous tale of a thin-skinned rich boy. Gawker’s demise is only the headline in a bigger story about a campaign to tame press freedom, online as well as in print, and to sanitise the news media. It is a campaign being led on both sides of the Atlantic, not by old-fashioned censors, but by a new alliance of illiberal-liberal prigs who want to ‘ethically cleanse’ the media of whatever is not to their refined taste.
Nick Denton (Gawker publisher):
Peter Thiel has achieved his objectives. His proxy, Terry Bollea, also known as Hulk Hogan, has a claim on the company and my personal assets after winning a $140 million trial court judgment in his Florida privacy case. Even if that decision is reversed or reduced on appeal, it is too late for Gawker itself. Its former editor, who wrote the story about Hogan, has a $230 million hold on his checking account. The flagship site, a magnet for most of the lawsuits marshaled by Peter Thiel’s lawyer, has for most media companies become simply too dangerous to own.
Peter Thiel has gotten away with what would otherwise be viewed as an act of petty revenge by reframing the debate on his terms. Having spent years on a secret scheme to punish Gawker’s parent company and writers for all manner of stories, Thiel has now cast himself as a billionaire privacy advocate, helping others whose intimate lives have been exposed by the press. It is canny positioning against a site that touted the salutary effects of gossip and an organization that practiced radical transparency.
As former Gawker developer Dustin Curtis says, “Though I find the result abhorrent, this is one of the most beautiful checkmates of all time by Peter Thiel.”
That crisis and the editorial changes that followed it did almost as much as the Peter Thiel-funded Hulk Hogan lawsuit to illustrate that what made Gawker great also made it vulnerable. In a word: money. (And an internet that’s become increasingly responsive to it.) Gawker was able to be what it was because it existed at the whim of an eccentric millionaire, not beholden to corporate interests, who was interested in what journalism could be. It was only a matter of time, perhaps, before other eccentric billionaires (like Peter Thiel and Frank VanderSloot) would come along who were more interested in what it couldn’t.
That Thiel succeeded in destroying Gawker by secretly funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit is a serious sign in a media landscape that’s already lost most of its biodiversity. But Gawker’s closure is a loss for its own sake. And ours.
NBC:
Until the news broke that tech billionaire Peter Thiel was funding former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan’s suit against (now-defunct) gossip blog Gawker for outing him as gay nearly a decade ago, most people were unaware that third parties — traditionally, hedge funds — could bankroll a lawsuit against a person or business
As a result, start-ups in the field of litigation-finance investment have gained prominence, with a simple pitch to investors: Put up as little as $5,000 to fund lawsuits, and make money.
What price free speech?
‘I adore distilled whippet shit’: ‘Tom Baker’s’ advert outtake (NSFW)
Is this Tom Baker talking in an outtake for an advert he was recording? YouTuber campfreddie thinks it might be:
Tom Baker is over here.
Posted: 1st, September 2016 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
Transfer Balls: Liverpool got outstanding value with Balotelli, the new Luis Suarez
In among the headline figure of £1.165bn spent by desperate Premier League clubs in the transfer window is news of Liverpool’s Mario Balotelli. He’s singed for Nice. And Liverpool let him go for free. Well, so go the media headlines. But what Liverpool did was to save themselves £90,000 ever week in the wages Balotelli earned nicking a living (although the Mail says it was £125,000-a-week)
Balotelli, 26, made 28 appearances for Liverpool, scoring four goals, since joining from AC Milan for £16m in 2014.
It might be worth looking at what they said when Balotelli signed for Liverpool:
Balotelli: “I’m happy to be back because I left England and it was a mistake. I wanted to go to Italy but I realised it was a mistake. English football is generally better. English football is beautiful.”
Brendan Rodgers: “This transfer represents outstanding value for the club and I think we have done a really smart piece of business here.”
Robbie Savage: “Mario Balotelli to Liverpool: Robbie Savage on why the signing would be a masterstroke by Brendan Rodgers…Life won’t be dull at Anfield when Balotelli is around. And after turning Suarez into a £75 million player, who’s to say Rodgers won’t repeat the trick with another exotic striker?”
“Exotic”?
Posted: 1st, September 2016 | In: Back pages, Liverpool, Reviews, Sports | Comment
Man who spotted The Beast of Dartmoor sketched it because he had no camera
“I memorised what it looked like and as soon as I got home I started drawing it.,” says Steve Swatton, 60, who saw the Beast of Dartmoor in a Plymouth field. “I used to be quite good at sketching and I just kept changing the drawing until I got it right.”
Sketchy
“It was very sleek and about the size of an Alsatian. It was like looking at a shadow as it was jet black, as black as you can get. It was very powerful looking and its tail was very long too. What struck me about its tail was where it hung down its hindquarters it was very long and the same thickness all the way down. It was a perfect bow shape – if you put a piece of string across it, it would look like a strung bow. It was watching us and I think we spotted each other at the same time as we were about 50 – 60 yards away.
“Then all of a sudden it disappeared and hopped over a hedge into the scrub land which leads into the forest. I ran up there as I thought there might be a chance of seeing it, but it was gone. It was probably more scared of us than us of it. I wasn’t that scared at the time but thinking about it now if I had been cornered it could have got a bit nasty, as it probably weighs about 60/70lbs – heavy enough to bring a deer down.”
So they say…
Posted: 1st, September 2016 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
‘Muslim’ refugee assures Western paedophiles that raping boys is OK in Myanmar
The culture wars are heating up in Australia, A refugee from Myanmar is in the dock. The Mail calls him foremost a “Muslim refugee”.
He appears to be foremost a paedophile. There is no word that Islam played a part in his crimes. Maybe culture did?
A refugee jailed over the sickening rape of a 10-year-old boy told authorities that it was culturally acceptable to sexually assault children in his homeland.
Mufiz Rahaman, 20, slumped forward in the dock at Downing Centre District Court yesterday as he was sentenced to five years in jail, with a non-parole period of three years, after pleading guilty to aggravated sexual assault of the boy in the child’s bed on January 8 last year …
In sentencing Rahaman, Judge Andrew Scotting said the community from which the offender came from “had demonstrated a lack of proper morality”.
Do citizenship lessons include a section on morals? And isn’t raping boys why so many Western men travel to south-Eastern Asia?
Your Free Porn Day guide: but who pays for it?
Big news for Sun readers. Tom Gillespie has produced a guide for web users keen to watch porn for free.
IF work’s giving you the blues and you’re in need of some light relief it might be time to celebrate FREE PORN DAY… after all Christmas is still four months away.
Is it also Masturbate at Work Day? Yeah, why wait until Christmas to experience the guilty pleasures of Home Alone?
It’s: “A HANDY GUIDE Free Porn Day is coming and adult websites Evil Angel, Vivid and Kink are inviting users to watch sex all day for free.”
Who knew anyone paid for porn?
‘Hoe, a dear, a female dear, Ray a porn star up your bum…’
