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We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.

Newspaper uses noose to illustrate suicide story

How much is too much? The Hindustan Times notes:

A 31-year-old assistant commandant-rank trainee Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officer allegedly committed suicide in his hostel room at the paramilitary force’s training centre in Gurgaon.

Identified as Mohaib M Mullah, hailing from Belgaum in Karnataka, was found hanging at 4 am from the ceiling fan of hostel room number 201 at the training academy in Kadarpur, police said.

 

hindustan times suicide noose

 

Too much information?

Police said that the exact cause is yet to be ascertained.

Ah…

Posted: 11th, May 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment


Met Police in Greenwich monster the homeless in classic display of stupidity

Idiotic police alert in West Greenwich, London. The Met’s “SAFER NEIGHBOURHOODS” gang – “LOCAL POLICE, LOCAL KNOWLEDGE” – are asking a question: “Should you give money to homeless people?”

Your own money: yes. Do what you like with that. But the police are not listening. They never do. They are telling, which is all they every do. Listen up:

“There is overwhelming evidence from charity’s like…”

“CHARITY’S.”

 

safer neighbourhoods

 

Stupid is as stupid does…

Posted: 9th, May 2016 | In: Reviews | Comment


Government wants you to carry ID papers on suspicion on looking ‘foreign’

PAPERS! The Guardian has news of a plot to make you a card-carrying Brit, or European Unionist, or African etc.:

Government measures making people prove their nationality or face prosecution risk damaging community relations and are discriminatory, critics have warned. The Conservatives want to give police and immigration officers the power to order people who have been arrested to state their nationality and require those believed to be foreign nationals to produce their nationality documents, such as a passport.

Believed to be foreign? Out there in Government someone thinks this is going to end well.

Failure to do so within 72 hours would become a criminal offence under the policing and crime bill currently going through parliament.

Do you have a passport? How about your birth certificate? And what would either document prove, anyhow?

But who cares for sense? Pull over, son. You been on holiday in the sunshine, sunshine? Papers!

 

Posted: 7th, May 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comments (3)


You local President Trump flies Denver to Virginia

donald trump obama

 

Can Donald Trump do it? The New York Times feels the mood:

For his first act as the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump strode on stage, extended his arms and conducted the crowd through a chorus of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

“We need to put our miners back to work!” he shouted Thursday to the crowd of more than 12,000 in the sunken, cavernous concrete Civic Center here. Hundreds of miners invited by the campaign to sit behind his podium rose in an extended standing ovation.

They love him. He’s local. Hell, he’s local everywhere:

Mr. Trump spent extended riffs going after Hillary Clinton, repeatedly referencing her comments about wanting to put the coal industry out of business (her campaign says she misspoke). He called the Clinton Foundation “disgusting,” referred to the investigation into her emails as secretary of state and Bill Clinton’s role in creating the North American Free Trade Agreement, and made a thinly veiled joke about Mr. Clinton’s infidelities.

“The Clinton administration, of which Hillary was definitely a part,” Mr. Trump said, continuing, “she was a part of almost everything. Almost, I say, not everything. Almost.”

He paused for a beat, as the crowd grew into a mix of laughter and cheers.

“Terrible,” Mr. Trump said, a wry joking tone in his voice. “I didn’t think the people of West Virginia thought about that. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Terrible, terrible people.”

Mr. Trump even donned a hard hat after receiving the endorsement of the West Virginia Coal Association, miming using a pick and shovel, before taking it off and risking his carefully crafted hair.

“You know you’re not allowed to hair spray anymore because it affects the ozone,” he said.

He added, in an allusion perhaps to his campaign’s overall slogan: “Hair spray’s not like it used to be. It used to be real good.”

In the Mail, Justin Webb harks bak:

The so-called rust belt states — in the north-east and midwest — are ripe for the picking. Trump does best in areas where the death rate among white people under 49 is highest — the downtrodden working class. Many of these people traditionally vote Democrat, but they have been voting for Bernie Sanders — Hillary Clinton’s Left-wing rival for the Democrat nomination — rather than Hillary herself. She lost the Michigan contest to Sanders, just as she lost Indiana to him this week.

Yes, Sanders is a socialist and Trump a billionaire plutocrat. But on trade — protection of American jobs — Sanders and Trump are on the same page.
Add a dash of Trump’s xenophobia and he’s in business.

Those who voted for Sanders because he speaks up for the little guy might well feel that Trump is closer to their hearts than Hillary.

He’s going to win, isn’t he?

Posted: 7th, May 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment


Manchester United, ‘Wayne Rooney hooker’ Helen Wood and restraint of trade

Who else shagged the “Roo hooker”? The Sun wants readers to know who allegedly paid for sex with Helen Wood, an adult woman who, allegedly, once had sex-on-the-clock with Manchester United star Wayne Rooney. Wood has appeared in the Big Brother house, not as a late-night sneak-in, prize or perk, but as an actual celeb. Surely she’s no longer the “Roo hooker” or even “Wayne Rooney prostitute”? Can it be right that an entire woman is defined by the little Roo that sought comfort and validation inside her ‘gagging order’?

The Mail adds:

A well-known actor who won an injunction to hush up claims he slept with a prostitute used by Wayne Rooney is reportedly to be named in the US today. The married father, whose reputation as a family man has boosted his career as a world-renowned star, allegedly paid escort Helen Wood £195 for sex. The millionaire then paid a firm of high-powered lawyers tens of thousands of pounds to stop his fans finding out.

Showbiz man has casual sex! The odd part is that he never boasted of it. But don’t name him here. The law’s the law.

But in the Sun, Helen says, “I’d like to tell my full story.”

She should sue the alleged trick for restraint of trade.

 

helen-wood-protitute-rooney-newsmediaimages

Image 1 of 8

Posted: 4th, May 2016 | In: Celebrities, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment


Naz Shah: Jewish technology plot behind racism error says anti-Semitic Labour Party?

“She’s made remarks that she doesn’t agree with,” says Labout of Naz Shah, the Labout MP who doesn’t much like Jews.

As @MichaelPDeacon notes in the Telegraph: “She’s made remarks… that she doesn’t agree with. She made the remarks. But she doesn’t agree with them. She disagrees with her own remarks.”

Naz Shah Jews racist

File under: Jewish technology twists nice woman’s words.

Posted: 28th, April 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews | Comments (3)


Liverpool Echo on Hillsborough: PRODUCE YOUR EVIDENCE

liverpool echo original hillsborough

 

Hillsborough. We knew. The police lied and lied and lied. The media fanned the lies. The police monstered the dead. The police made the loved ones and the bereaved wait 27 years to be told the dead were innocent. The survivors were not killers. Right until the end the police lied. Until yesterday when they had to stop lying in public. Now we’ll get talk of justice and see old men and women on the TV screens. The police are corrupt. They still hide. Did the top cops in South Yorkshire police achieve rank by rocking the boat and speaking out? It wasn’t then. It’s now. They want it buried. They want it all in the past, long ago before things got so much better. They want to tell us about lessons have being learnt. Then you think about one life snuffed out. And you demand more.

 

liverpool echo now

Posted: 27th, April 2016 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment


Madeleine McCann: Amaral v The McCanns was an accident waiting to happen

maddie mccann tabloidsMadeleine McCann – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann.

Goncalo Amaral is back in the news. The former Portuguese detective has won an appeal against his libel defeat to Madeleine McCann’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. The court order for him to pay the McCanns £395,000 in damages in April 2015 has been overturned. The Press pick up the story of Amaral and his 2008 book, The Truth of the Lie, in which he accuses the McCanns of “faking Madeleine’s abduction to cover up her accidental death in their apartment” (Star).

Daily Star (front page): “Maddie: Cop Wains Right To Accuse Parents”

“A banned book which accuse Madeleine’s McCanns parents of covering up her death will go on sale across  Europe after a shock ruling by three appal court judge in Portugal yesterday,” writes Jerry Lawton. No shock here, at least not to Anorak readers. Back in 2010, AGW told you:

The media awaits the verdict of McCanns Versus Goncalo Amaral. Much depends on it. The McCanns have taken a risk in going against the former police officer in a foreign country. While it can be argued – as they have done – that any publicity for their missing daughter is good because it keeps her name alive in the voracious media.

But it does not keep us looking for the child. It just allows us to gawp at them, the distraught parents of a missing innocent:

YOU know when an accident is going to happen. They even have corporate speak phrases for it these days: “Risk Assessment” is one.

You know when a playing kitten is going to fall from the arm of the chair, you know when the child is going trip and fall, no matter how quick you are to try and get there.

Sometimes you see disasters being created and thundering, in silent-movie slowed down train-wreck style, toward you or others and there’s little you can do other than stand and watch horror-struck by the enormity of it all.

You know the accident’s about to happen and there is nothing you can do but perhaps wonder why you knew?

It has nothing to do with sixth senses, it is because the most powerful computer known to man, your brain, has gathered in all the previous experiences you have weighed in the balance and made a predictive analysis.

That is what is so strange about the current and past behaviour of the parents of the missing child Madeleine McCann.

They have started a court action defending their reputations in Lisbon because the former chief investigating officer Goncalo Amara, is accusing them of being involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. They have also started an action seeking a money settlement for the Portuguese equivalent of libel and in addition are taking on a Lisbon-based documentary production unit for reporting on the detective’s objected to book and the case.

Lisbon was never going to be a perfect spot for the McCann’s to start legal sparring and this week they were dealt what can only be termed a body-blow when the detective’s lawyers produced evidence the UK’s top criminal profiler has said there were “contradictions” in their statements and both should be treated as possible “homicide” suspects.

No arguments, no amount of reshuffling or clarifications can change that and the facts can not be forced back into the can of worms which the McCann parents themselves have allowed to be opened.

Damage Limitation

The background PR work after the Lisbon shocker has been impressive. The McCann lawyers strode from the courtroom and counter-claimed there were tens, hundreds or more sightings of the missing girl. The UK’s Red Tops dutifully followed the thread and reported the lawyer’s statement. My experience and training gave the brain the predictive text that this looked like a smoke screen, a damage limitation. The missing fact was all these sightings came after the McCann’s themselves had been released from Arguido, suspect, status. The case was archived. It was a cold, leading nowhere, case in the eyes of the top legal and police professionals in Portugal…the responsible authorities have no clues and have suspended work on the case.

It has already been said in these columns, taking on the Portuguese legal system was going to be a minefield but there is one question:

Who is taking the responsibility for the Risk Assessment for this McCann course of action?

Whoever it was needs to be replaced or kept out of the limelight.

Mass public opinion is turning. The McCanns are slipping lower and lower down the celebs’ to be seen with list, certainly no-longer A list and slightly embarrassing to be around according to some whispers.

The McCanns are innocent. No charges have been brought against anyone…except the Chief Investigating Police Officer, Goncalo Amaral.

Wake up!

A second question would have to be: Who on earth took the Risk Assessment decision Amaral was a buffoon an incompetent, bungling, Jacques Clouseau Pink Panther type of police officer?

Come on, wake up! Police officers do not rise through the ranks to positions of authority without being good thief-takers and being very good at spotting the wrongness of something.

Amaral is tougher than the baying section of Britain’s media has portrayed.

The McCanns are becoming battered and worn by this. Just look at their recent photographs. The child is still missing, lost, gone. Arguments still rage over the rightness or wrongness of it all.

Something is judgementally wrong in the Risk Assessments taken here. This week has been hugely damaging to the McCann’s and their cause. The information given this week in the Lisbon court can no longer be ignored or forgotten. It will have a high cost and one of the costs are potential new helpers and donations to the campaign of finding the child.

No shock.

Daily Star Page 7: “Maddie SHOCK”

The Portuguese appeal court judges “ordered” the McCanns to pay  “full legal fees of the three-year hearing”. The McCanns have “instructed lawyers to appeal against the new ruling”. But the judges call Amaral’s book a “legitimate  exercise in the right to express an opinion”. Portugal was once a police state. Free speech is enshrined. The lawyers’ appeal looked doomed.

We then get a rapid-fire vox pop. The McCanns deny Amaral’s claims. A “pal” says they are “seething”. Their spokesman Clarence Mitchell says, “It is a matter for Kate and Gerry’s lawyers to deal with .”

The Sun (front page): “MADDIE: Agony for McCanns as cop wins libel case”

Page 4: “Hunt Hit By Cash Crisis – Maddie £430k Libel Loss Blow – Tec wins against McCanns”

The payment “deprives the Maddie Fund o9f cash to keep the nine-year search going”. Private cash. But not public purse monies. That continues to be spent on the search.

Daily Mirror (Page 7): “Bungling cop in libel triumph over the McCanns”

Is every policeman who fails to solve a case a bungler?

And then we get to the money. The cash Amaral was ordered to pay the McCanns never left his account. All payments – £360,000 and £76,000 in interest – was held until the appeal judges had ruled. The money never came out of the Maddie Fund, did it? It was never in the Fund.

Daily Express (Page 8): “McCanns ‘seething’ as Maddy detective overturns book ruling”

We finally hear from the McCanns’ legal aide. Their Portuguese lawyer, Isable Duarte, “said she  was ‘disappointed’ but not surprised” at the ruling.

Daily Mail (Page 30): “McCanns suffer £395k libel loss”

Page 30. The story continues – but less and less people are listening to it.

 

Posted: 20th, April 2016 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment


Madeleine McCann: tabloid sensation, Police PR and nothing

madeleine mccann tabloidsMadeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child.

Daily Mirror (front page): “Maddie Police: We Hope to Find Her Alive”

Well, yes. Of course they do. They’re not ghouls.

Mick Duthie, the police chief leading the “hunt” for the missing child, says, “We hope that we will fine her alive.”

Page 5: “There is always a possibility that we’ll find her…work still needs to be done.”

Got that about the possibility of news? It’s PR-speak for, “We haven’t found her.” With, as the Mirror states, £12m spent on the search so far, police are keen to show they’ve made progress. If Duthie does know what happened to the child, he’s not letting on. He says, “We want to find her alive” but “If she’s been murdered…” She might be alive. She might be dead. Maybes.

Daily Star (front page): “Maddie Search Sensation”

Oh, go on. We’ll play along. What is the sensational news?

It is news that cops “hope to find her alive”. Read. All. About. It.

Page 7: “Top Maddie Cop: New Maddie Clues”

Joe Kasper writes: “Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie says detectives are still pursuing “justifiable and reasonable” leads. No. What he said was that if the police needed more money to find Madeleine McCann, they would ask for it: “There is a missing girl and is she has been murdered and if we think we have got reasonable and justifiable lines of inquiry to pursue then they should be dealt with.”

The Sun (Page 6): “Cops ‘ no closer’ to locating Maddie.”

So much for the Star’s new leads sensation.

Duthie says cops “do not have a ‘full understanding’ what happened to her or why she was taken”.

Mentions of murder: nil.

Daily Express (front page): “Police: Maddy could Still Be Alive”

No body. No proof of anything.

Page 7: “Madeleine police follow up new leads”

Number of new leads mentioned by police: nil.

As another anniversary of Madeleine McCann’s vanishing looms into view, and the news cycle picks up the PR, we learn that nothing has change. Child disappears. And that’s the sum of all the facts.

Posted: 19th, April 2016 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment (1)


Madeleine McCann: murder, belief and Mick Duthie hopes

madeleine mccann Mick DuthieMadeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child.

Daily Mail: “Detectives believe the missing youngster could still be found alive”

Progress: nil. We are still in the lyrical land of “could” and “believe”. Time moves on but the single thread story of the child who vanished in 2007 is snared. The Mail notes the words of Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie. He’s been speaking with the London Evening Standard. We read:

Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie, the head of the Yard’s homicide squad…

Homicide? Is that significant? We are clutching at straws. No evidence whatsoever any harm befell Madeleine McCann, let alone murder.

…said officers were pursuing “justifiable and reasonable” leads in the investigation into the missing three year-old.

Good. Get on with it. Best of luck.

He was speaking weeks after the Home Secretary Theresa May granted police £95,000 to extend the five year old inquiry for a further six months.

This is about money, then, and value in how it’s spent.

Mr Duthie, who is in overall charge of the investigation Operation Grange, said: “There is ongoing work. There is always a possibility that we will find Madeleine and we hope that we will find her alive. That’s what we want and that’s what the family and the public want and that is why the Home Office continue to fund it. There is work that needs to be done still. “

Yep. And:

The police chief admitted detectives did not have a “full understanding” of what happened to Madeleine or why she was taken but added: “That is why the work continues. “

Full understanding? Is that another way of saying they don’t know what happened to her?

He told the Standard: “There is a missing girl and if she has been murdered and if we think we have got justifiable and reasonable lines of inquiry to pursue then they should be dealt with.”

Murder. He said it. That’s grim. He added:

 

 

“The investigation continues. We go to the Home Office every six months. We have a smaller team dealing with it because we have less inquiries to deal with but we still have a job to do. I imagine that if we have not completed our inquiries within six months we will go back to the Home Office and ask for more money.”

We told you that.

He refused to give further details about the inquiry but confirmed that detectives were still examining possible links to a series of burglaries in the Algrarve area at the time Madeleine went missing.

If. Could. Possible. A child vanished. And that’s what we know.

 

Posted: 18th, April 2016 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment (1)


Britain’s Got Talent: Beau Dermott and Jack Higgins are crying cousins

JAck Higgins

 

Front-page news in the Sun: “Britain’s Got Talent ballet sensation is Beau’s cousin.” The “sensation” is Jack Higgins, 14, a young stage school ballerina who “wowed” the TV show’s judges with his dancing, causing Amanda holden to gape and stop blinking, Simon Cowell to use up the expression he was saving for when he sees the face of Mamon, David Walliams to swoon and Alesha Dixon to hail it as the best thing ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

The best bit, of course, was that Jack cried. Tears are the cynical BGT’s pop shot, the moment of release. (Remember Hollie Steel who sobbed half-way through Edelweiss and triggered a race to see which celeb could reach her with the comfort hug? Hollie… Oh, never mind.)

Jack said he’d been “bullied for ballet since five”. He’s been at stage school for nine years, so you wonder who had been bullying him for that long – the smart money is on the tap dancing mob or the country dancing toughs?

Today the Sun tells us that Jack is related to Beau Dermott, the stage school singer who belted out a show tune one week earlier. Their mothers are twin sisters. To help us tell them apart. Jack’s mum Debbie is the one in the T-shirt yelling “GO JACK – BGT 2016”.

Jack says, “It would be amazing to both get to the final. We are completely different acts, so it wouldn’t feel like we were competing against each other.”

Not for you, maybe. But for your mums it could be. There will be T-shirts…

Posted: 18th, April 2016 | In: Celebrities, Reviews, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment


Madonna fury: Rocco should stick to weed and ditch the fags

madonna rocco weed cannabis“ROCCO and Roll Up!” invites the Star’s front-page headline. “Madge fury at teen son’s booze and cigs.”

We hear you, Madonna, aka Madge the Vadge. What self-respecting cool kid drinks and smokes when they could be experimenting with smarts drugs and pour grade-A medications?

Madonna, we learn, is “fuming” 15-year-old son Rocco has been “snapped under a bridge in London swigging from a bottle and puffing on a suspicious-looking cigarette.” A suspicious looking cigarette is, of course, a cigarette, a Government-taxed cancer stick. A proper roll-up contains pure marijuana, a healthy substance (see Colorado State medical advice).

 

Posted: 16th, April 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment


Man hit on head by brick he’d thrown at Prevention of Suicide office windows

To north Belfast, Northern Ireland, where it’s alleged a man smashed windows at the offices of the Public Initiative for Prevention of Suicide (PIPS). The man is now in hospital because reportedly one brick he threw bounced back and hit him on the head.

Police are investigating.

 

Man hit in on head by brick he'd thrown at window of Prevention of Suicide office

Posted: 16th, April 2016 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment


Glastonbury Festival kills British steel with recycled cups

Glastonbury steel cup

“Get ’em while they’re hot!”

The Central Somerset Gazette has news:

Glastonbury Festival supporting British steel with 250,000 reusable stainless steel cups for 2016

How is that supporting British steel, then? The Tata-owned steel works at Port Talbot in south Wales is in trouble. It produces slab, hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanised coil. That’s new steel – virgin steel.

Festival organiser Michael Eavis pulls on a thick glove, holds aloft a steel cup for your red-hot coffee (ouch!) and tells the Somerset paper: “..the single most important thing was being able to source British stainless steel for the cups from the place where it was invented – Sheffield, and then to take it on to the home of manufacture – Birmingham.”

But how does this help British steel?

Teaming up with APS Metal Pressing Ltd, the cups are made from recycled steel which is smelted in Sheffield… “Week after week, there’s a story in the national press about jobs in the UK steel industry being put at risk. There’s seemingly no end to the negative slide of this critical industry and with it the jobs, skills and infrastructure are lost and won’t be replaced.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: 15th, April 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment


Gemma Atkinson and Ronaldo: fools, horses and sex with prostitutes

gemma atkinson ronaldo sex

 

Actress Gemma Atkinson has “revealed” that back in 2007 she and “footie ace” Cristiano Ronaldo watched Only Fools and Horses on their first date together.

If never did work out. Why not? Well in 2007, Gemma was quoted in the Sun: “I did go out with Cristiano, but it all ended when he was caught shagging prostitutes.”

All together now:

God bless Hooky Street
Viva Hooky Street
Long live Hooky Street
C’est magnifique Hooky Street
Magnifique Hooky Street

 

Posted: 15th, April 2016 | In: Celebrities, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment


This Pizza box turns into a weed pipe

pizza pipe

 

Every Push for Pizza “comes with a “Pizza Pipe”. Well, this is still a concept, but the idea is sound. You rip off a section of the cardboard box, pop out the ceramic stand that stops the box from crushing the pizza and assemble the thing ready for your post-prandial puff.

“No longer will one have to search for a pipe before or struggle to remember the telephone number of the pizza parlor after its use,” says Push for Pizza. “Equally important, the pizza is in hand before the munchies set in, leading to a more relaxed and enjoyable experience without the interminable delay of its delivery or the pain of gnawing hunger.”

 

push for pizza weed pipe

 

File under: stone baked.

Posted: 14th, April 2016 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment


Daily Mail relocates Cliff Richards Atlantic winery

Let’s bemoan the state of education that allows the Daily Mail’s Julian Robinson to miss up his seas:

A luxury Mediterranean winery that produces Sir Cliff Richard’s own brand of plonk has been put on the market – for more than £7.5million. Quinta do Miradouro and neighbouring winery Adega do Cantor in Albufeira in Portugal’s Algarve are up for grabs after 15 years of producing the singer’s wine, Vida and Onda Nova.

Anyone keen on inspecting the place should now that The Algarve is on the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Quinta do Miradouro Adega do Cantor in Albufeira

 

 

Posted: 14th, April 2016 | In: Celebrities, Money, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment


Oxfam finds $1.4tn tax cash ‘hidden’ in plain sight

=hidden tax oxfam

 

More financial illiteracy in the Guardian. The headline tells us:

US corporations have $1.4tn hidden in tax havens, claims Oxfam report

Some work there by Oxfam’s investigations arm to find such a gigantic stash of “hidden” cash.

The charity’s analysis of the financial affairs of the 50 biggest US corporations comes amid intense scrutiny of tax havens following the leak of the Panama Papers.

And the charity said its report, entitled Broken at the Top was a further illustration of “massive systematic abuse” of the global tax system.

In 2012, said Oxfam, US firms reported $80bn of profit in Bermuda…

Not hidden at all, then. The billions were all laid on in the companies’ accounts.

Now whose for a game of hide and seek, Oxfam style?

 

hide and seek oxfam tax

Posted: 14th, April 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Money, Reviews | Comments (3)


Ted Cruz wants you think of him and stop masturbating

As Texas Solicitor General, Ted Cruz argued that the government had an obligation to discourage masturbation:

ted cruz onanism

 

Stop masturbating. Think of Ted. Literally.

Spotter: Cingram

Posted: 13th, April 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment


Stephen Fry, sexual abuse and free speech policing

Paris Lees is talking about free speech in the Guardian. Stephen Fry has something so say about therapy and victims being defined by their ordeal:

“It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place – you get some of my sympathy – but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy…. Self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity. Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is, we’ll feel sorry for you if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Grow up.”

Agree? Not agree? Lees has a problem with it:

Fry is talking rubbish.

He is allowed to, of course, because of free speech: for in 2016, an absolutist interpretation of free speech has become popular among the chattering classes. If only the overwhelmingly white, middle-class, Oxbridge-educated, male-dominated commentariat would take “freedom from prejudice” as seriously as it takes “freedom of expression”.

Free speech is free for all. She’s wrong.

 

Posted: 13th, April 2016 | In: Celebrities, Reviews | Comment


John Whittingdale sex capers too low-brow for red-tops

Tory MP John Whittingdale’s sex life is not a matter for gossips, ‘Outraged of Hacked Off’ of tabloids. As Francis Wheen puts it:

Just heard a Today programme “debate” on the Whittingdale affair which made the Republican primary debates sound like Socratic dialogues.

In the Hacked Off corner was Evan “Dr Death” Harris, lambasting the tabloids for not printing a story about an MP and a dominatrix – even though his pressure group actually wants to stop such stories ever being published. In the tabloid corner, Neil “Wolfman” Wallis pretended that a story about an MP and a dominatrix isn’t the sort of thing that would interest red-top editors, who prefer front-page scoops about Cartesian circularity and the eternal truths.

Toe-curling imbecility and insincerity from start to finish.

Audio to follow…

Posted: 13th, April 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment


Tory MP in ‘free’ slave and master sex scandal

John Whittingdale had relationship with 'dominatrix'

 

John Whittingdale, the Culture Secretary, says he has been “in a relationship” with a sex worker. The Telegraph takes up the story of the Tory MP and the “dominatrix”. The Mail calls her a “prostitute”.

The Cabinet minister released a statement stating that he did not know about the woman’s occupation when they were together and that he ended the relationship as soon as he was made aware of her job.

 

The Tory didn’t pay for his time with the “worker”. Plus ca change, eh?

Whittingdale said:

 “Between August 2013 and February 2014, I had a relationship with someone who I first met through Match.com. She was a similar age and lived close to me. At no time did she give me any indication of of her real occupation and I only discovered this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story about me to tabloid newspapers. As soon as I discovered, I ended the relationship.”

Slaves and masters, readers. Slaves and masters.

 

Posted: 13th, April 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment


Britain swamped by hidden anti-EU messages in the Express

The Daily Express says the “EU wants to control your pension”. Happily, like you, my pension is in the Cayman Islands, which is not in the EU – yet. But it does sound sinister. Talk of the EU controlling your cash is unsettling. How dare those undemocratic technocrats dip into my pension book.

 

EU vote DAily Express UKIP

 

The front-page story continues on the Page 9, whereon we learn that it’s, er utter bollocks.

Tory MEP David Campbell Bannerman says a vote to remain in the EU means the “logical thing is to have common pensions…” It’s not planned. But it might be. Having produced a non-story story more loaded than George Bush at a frat house party, the Express invites readers to calls its phone lines and vote.

 

EU vote DAily Express

 

Vote now. And vote often.

 

Posted: 12th, April 2016 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment


Guardian: ‘let’s start a war with Jersey’

pirates guardian

 

How clueless and lacking in direction is the Left? Get this from Polly Tonybee in the Guardian. She’s talking about off-shore tax idylls, like the British Virgin Islands and Jersey:

Today Cameron’s promise fell far short of that genuine transparency. He needs to get tough with the treasure islands and follow Charles de Gaulle’s example. When Monaco refused a tax measure he requested, he forced them to surrender by surrounding the kingdom with soldiers and turning off their water supply.

And you still wonder why the colonialists on the Left all loved Tony Blair?

 

Polly Tonybee tax

Posted: 12th, April 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Money, Reviews | Comment


Adam Johnson: a ‘cushy’ life at Holme away from home

Adam JohnsonAdam Johnson, the former Sunderland footballer serving a six-year prison sentence for sexual activity with a girl of 15, is in a “Cushy” cell. So says the Sun, which features Johnson on its front page.

A “source” says people will “wonder if he should be kept in a much tougher prison given the nature of his offence”. People who read the Sun, perhaps.

As for Holme House, a few facts:

A DHL warehouse operates within holme House processing canteen forms and Picking/packing for eight establishments in the North East. This provides employment for 40 prisoners and NVQ qualifications can be attained…

UNLOCKING TIMES

Mon: 07:30 – 12:30, 13:30 – 16:30 & 17:00 – 19:15
Tue: 07:30 – 12:30, 13:30 – 16:30 & 17:00 – 19:15
Wed: 07:30 – 12:30, 13:30 – 16:30 & 17:00 – 19:15
Thu: 07:30 – 12:30, 13:30 – 16:30 & 17:00 – 19:15
Fri: 07:30 – 12:30, 13:30 – 16:45
Sat: 07:30 – 12:30 & 13:30 -16:30
Sun: 07:30 – 12:30 & 13:30 -16:30

The most recent report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, noted:

there had been five self-inflicted deaths since the last inspection and what appear to be two further self-inflicted deaths since this inspection;..
first night cells were dirty with broken equipment and there was little support from staff or prisoner mentors for those new to prison;
many cells were dirty, toilets were inadequately screened and some prisoners shared cells designed for one which were too small;
laundry arrangements were chaotic and there were insufficient phones and showers;

The Sun, of course, wanted more for Johnson, noting on March 18.

Shoot scared: Footie perv Adam Johnson to pay for ‘protection’ while in horror prison – Paedophile faces being sent to tough jail where sex offender inmate was disembowelled

He is likely to be sent initially to Armley jail in Leeds before transferring to HMP Frankland in Durham, home to child killers Ian Huntley and Levi Bellfield.

He is in Armely. But Johnson’s murder in Frankland is no longer an option to excite the Sun.

And is prison “cushy”? One prisoner told me how it works: “It’s only hard for the innocent – the guilty all sleep well.”

Posted: 12th, April 2016 | In: Reviews, Sports, Tabloids | Comment