Key Posts Category
The sex abuse witch hunt: conflating Lord Rennard, Cardinal O’Brien and Operation Yewtree
SEX-abuse scandals are replacing kiss’n’tells as tabloid fodder. Sensation swirls about the LibDems’ former party chief executive Lord Rennard. Women say he acted “inappropriately. There is a claim that Rennard repeatedly “brushed a woman’s leg at dinner. Another says he propositioned her. She “” the offer to join him in his room.
At first, Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said he had no idea about any of it. The allegations made on Channel 4 News were news to him. By Sunday, however, Clegg’s memory told him that he had known about Rennard’s alleged “indirect and non-specific concerns” since 2008. Moreover, LibDem chief of staff Danny Alexander had had confronted Rennard over such matters.
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Posted: 27th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Readers identify the Tenby beach monster: it’s a Me-ex
Posted: 26th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment
In 1959 Pose magazine let the pin-ups speak
YEARS before the Sun crested the “News in Briefs” Page 3 feature, US cupcake magazine Pose introduced its readers to the ladies’ speech bubbles.
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Posted: 25th, February 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
The other side of West Ham and England’s Bobby Moore ‘King of the Bar Stool’
AS the West Ham faithful congregate at the Bolyn Ground to remember Bobby Moore, here are some memories of the maestro, not all of which are likely to be mentioned in the match programme…
Boozer
Moore’s drinking exploits were legendary, and a couple of crates of lager were always on hand when Bobby held court. He was once even sensationally dropped from the West Ham team for breaking curfew the evening before an FA Cup tie in Blackpool. Best friend Jimmy Greaves called Mooro the ‘King of the Bar Stool’. Usually, however, Tina and Mrs Peters were not involved…
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Posted: 25th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment
Kiwi rugby coach Ruben Wiki tackles half time streaker (epic photo)
TO the NRL rugby match between New Zealand’s New Warriors and Australia’s Brisbane Broncos. Ruben Wiki, the onetime Warriors centre now working as the club’s conditioning coach, wows the 15,000 fans at Forsyth Barr stadium in Dunedin, when he brings down teh anked streaker. Nice tackle. (You too.) It’s one for the gallery:
Posted: 25th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment
Oscars 2013: the best quotes (Anne Hathaway thinks Fantine was real)
THE OSCARS 2013 – the pick of the lines:
Anne Hathaway: “Here’s hoping that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the misfortunes of Fantine will only be found in stories – and not in real life.”
Because Les Miserables is a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
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Tanning mom Patricia Krentril heads to London in search of the sun’s rays
IN May 2012, Patricia Krentril was arrested in New Jersey for taking her 5-year-old daughter to a tanning salon, where she was burnt. Krentil, who looks George Hamilton’s portrayal of Geppetto’s Mr. Hankey, became a star. In May of that year, Patty Baked swore of tanning. Well, she agreed to take the challenge issued by In Touch magazine and abstain from UV rays for 30 days. Sure, she still used Jergens self-tanner and told us “I feel weird and pale”, but she did it. But now she’s back. And the Sun says she heading to the UK – in search of a tan!
(After which she will head to the Himalayas in search of the Abominable Snowman; Loch Ness in search of a Monster; and Mecca in search for a bacon roll.)
Says Patty Baked:
“I was born to tan — and there is nothing like the colour that you get from a sunbed. But in the past year I have been banned from tanning salons. Now I have to spend hours covering myself in tanning lotion to get the colour I want.”
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Posted: 24th, February 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Oscar Pistorius jokes: The funniest thing you’ll read about the killer Olympian
OSCAR Pistorius Balls: Anorak’s look at drivel written about the killing of Reeva Steenkamp. The runner has been portrayed an heroic oil painting. Today Tony Parsons writes in the Mirror:
The bigots are happy – the Oscar Pistorius murder case has given them licence to openly despise the disabled again.
To recap: Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead by her lover. She was unarmed. She might have been murdered. The runner thought the woman who shares his bed was a burglar. There was no burglar.
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Posted: 23rd, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comments (2)
Oscar Pistorius wins bail: ‘some kind of species the world has never seen before’ (photos)
OSCAR Pistorius has spent 4 days applying to be bailed for his shooting dead of Reeva Steenkamp, his lover. If this has been a big show, just wait until the main event. He’s won bail. A reader writes:
The Pistorius affair looks as though it may become a white athelete – black cop thing rather than an out and out temper/drug fuelled murder of a young woman. Either way Oscar’s finished, split and smoked like a haddock.
Magistrate Desmond Nair says the media have treated Pistorius like <em >“some kind of species the world has never seen before”.
He asks a key question: why did the accused fly into the apparent danger zone without his prosthetic legs when he had other course of action open to him?
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Posted: 22nd, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Sports | Comments (3)
Oscar Pistorius from despair to bravado: the changing face of the Olympics star in court in photos
OSCAR Pistorius murder case: has the Paralympic runner’s demeanour changed over the last few days? Have defiance and even bravado replaced desperation? Cameras are allowed into the Pretoria courtroom. They allow the world to see snapshots of one man’s trial for the murder of his lover, Reeva Steenkamp. He shot her dead. But did he mean to? He says “no”. The State says “yes”. The defence is muddying the once clear waters. Their job seems simple: they have to make it hard for the prosecution to prove his guilt beyond any reasonable doubt:
February 14, 2013
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Posted: 22nd, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment
Heather Frost: Could Tewkesbury Queen borrow Rebekah Brooks’ police horse?
HEATHER Frost, the Sun’s “dole Queen“, might move into a custom-built six-bedroom council “mansion” in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
(It’s 1,850 square feet and not liable for any forthcoming mansion tax – mansions are now deemed to be properties worth over £2m.)
The Sun leads with the news that Frost owns a horse. Indeed, don’t we all. Horses are the meaty pets of the poor. Old Mr Anorak’s was delivered this morning in cardboard box and smeared in ketchup. Heather Frost doesn’t own a horse. She owns ‘raw food’.
Of course what Frost should do appease the Sun is not to own a horse outright – bought fair and square – rather, she must borow a horse, like David Cameron did from former Sun supremo Rekbekah Brooks, whose horse Raisa was lent to her by Scotland Yard. The rich borrow. The poor buy. Those sad bastards. Says the Sun on its front page:
Mum of 11 dole queen owns a horse… and she wants to buy 2 more
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Posted: 20th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Atherton California: the best police reports in America
IN Atherton, California, the average home costs $4,010,200. It’s home to 7100 residents. Last year, the town saw 152 crimes, of which 95 were for larceny. There were no reported rapes nor murders. The Atherton Crime Prevention Task Force’s advice for locals is to “Call the police anytime you observe suspicious persons or events”. They do. This is selection of what they call to report:
Posted: 20th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Sergei Magnitsky: How a dead man was put on trial
THE court calls Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. He’s a bit slow to take the stand. He’s a bit quiet. This is because Sergei Magnitsky is dead. He died in a Russian prison from pancreatitis. He’s buried at Moscow’s Preobrazhensky cemetery.
Mr Magnitsky was first arrested in 2008. The lawyer with US firm Firestone Duncan had been working for London-based Hermitage Capital Management. He claimed to have uncovered a massive fraud worth £125m. He told all to officials. He was then arrested for alleged tax evasion and sent to prison, where he was beaten and denied medical help. He was had been held for a year without charge. Well, just under a year. In Russia, you can be held for anything up a year without charge. That time would have lapsed on November 24. He died on Monday, November 16. Such was his misfortune.
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Posted: 20th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Oscar Pistorus murder trial: His affidavit in full
THE OSCAR Pistorus Murder story is tabloid manna. Was the fabled double-amputee running champion no cartoon Zebedee made human, rather a baser, more Earth-bound man who murdered his lover, Reeve Steemkamp? Did he really shoot though a shut door not knowing who was on the other side, shocked to the core when returning to his bed – from where he had retrieved his gun (he kept his 9mm pistol under it) – to find his lover gone?
When he heard noises from inside the bathroom, didn’t he think it was his lover might be taking a midnight leak? Didn’t he tap the bed next to him and search out his lover? He didn’t switch the lights on. He fired. Then, realising Reeva was missing from the bed, he picked up a cricket bat and smashed in the locked bathroom door. He carried the dying woman downstairs in his arms.
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Posted: 20th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment
The fashionistas of London Fashion Week 2013 – photos of fashion’s forwards
LONDON Fashion Week 2013: we’ve been photographing the fashionistas seen outside Somerset House. Look out for: 1980s colours; the BA Robertson fan club; men dressed as clerics; men dressed as furtive sex shop browsers (circa. 1973); and other cool kids…
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Posted: 18th, February 2013 | In: Fashion, Key Posts | Comment (1)
Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party: a picture story
HUEY P. Newton was the co-founder of the Black Panther Party co-founder and Minister of Defense. He was born on February 17, 1942. He was murdered by a member of the Black Guerilla Family on August 22, 1989. On the way, one policeman was shot dead – Newton’s conviction for the murder of John Frey was overturned. When he was accused of killing Kathleen Smith, Newton fled to Cuba. He returned. Two trails failed to deliver a verdict. The case was dropped. So much for the violence. What about the message?
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Posted: 18th, February 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
Madeleine McCann: Gerry McCann says ‘Madeleine and her safety is often treated with complete contempt’
MADELEINE McCANN: Kate and Gerry McCann want Lord Leveson proposals on media regulation be implemented in full.
They should not get their way. Press Freedom means what it says. No buts. Why should journalists be held to ethical and moral standards imposed by others? You only need a access to the internet and an opinion to be a journalist. You might not be a good one, but the public will be the judges.
Why should a human being not need a license to express a view? True, writers must be held to account for what they /we say. But freedom of expression cannot be ring-fenced. You cannot cause offence to no-one.
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Posted: 17th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment
The worst thing you will be read this year: Cardinal Roger Mahony forgives the priests’ rape victims
CARDINAL Roger Mahony, 76, headed the Los Angeles archdiocese for 25 years. The place was riddled with sex abuse. Children were raped. In 2007, Los Angeles paid $660m to alleged victims of abuse. His successor, the Most Reverend José H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, apologised:
My brothers and sisters in Christ,
This week we are releasing the files of priests who sexually abused children while they were serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But that does not make them less serious. I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed…
My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties…
Cardinal Mahony shielded accused priests from investigation in the 1980s. When he had power, he abused it. That power has been removed. He protected Msgr. Peter Garcia, who raped illegal immigrant children in Spanish-speaking parishes. He threatened to have them deported if they told the authorities. Mahony ordered him to keep out of California: “I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors”. In 1987, Garcia did return to LA. He remained a priest until 1989. He died in 2009. He was never prosecuted.
Mahony takes to his blog. His post is entitled: “CALLED to HUMILIATION”:
From our earliest catechism days we learn about the virtue of humility. We study it, we think about it; but we don’t embrace it.
And why? Because humility is all about self-effacing, about seeing ourselves as far more diminished than we had hoped. As a result, few of us set out to embrace humility for Lent or as a pattern for our lives. Most us us accept a few affronts and neglects as humility, and then move on.
But as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are actually called to the fullness of humility: humiliation, and publicly.
Today’s Gospel gives us the stark reality and immediate challenge: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” {Luke 9:23] Daily means each and every day, not now and then on our faith journeys, and on our terms.
That desire flows from our lips so easily, but we seldom mean it fully and internally. It’s almost a spiritual throw-away for us. But Jesus means it so deeply.
Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand: I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility. Rather, I am being called to something deeper–to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.
It wasn’t about kids being raped. It wasn’t about secular law being ignored. It was about him being tested.
I was not ready for this challenge. Ash Wednesday changed all of that, and I see Lent 2013 as a special time to reflect deeply upon this special call by Jesus.
To be honest with you, I have not reached the point where I can actually pray for more humiliation. I’m only at the stage of asking for the grace to endure the level of humiliation at the moment.
It gets even better:
In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated. In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people. I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage–at me, at the Church, at about injustices that swirl around us.
Thanks to God’s special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them.
He forgives the victims.
Over the coming days of our Lenten journey I hope to explore with all of you some deeper spiritual insights into what it really means to take up our cross daily and to follow Jesus–in rejection, in humiliation, and in personal attack.
Strangely, the more I allow all of this to unfold without protest and objection, the greater the inner peace I feel.
Kyrie, eleison!
And you still wonder how rapists can get away with it..?
Photo: Msgr. Roger Michael Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, receives from Pope John Paul II the biretta, symbol of cardinal rank, during a Consistory at the Vatican in Vatican City, Friday, June 28, 1991. The Pope elevated 23 new Cardinals.
Posted: 17th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
August 1970 – A Smuggler’s Guide to Importing Pot from Mexico (Scanlan’s magazine)
AUGUST, 1970 – A Smuggler’s Guide to Importing Pot from Mexico, as featured in Scanlan’s Magazine.
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Posted: 17th, February 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Oscar Pistorius: Reeva Steenkamp is turning on the world – it’s what she would have wanted
THE OSCAR Pistorius murder trial: Why are we watching it? The Paralympian’s girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, 29, died at his home in Pretoria on Thursday. Steenkamp was shot four times. Bullets hit her in the head, chest and hand. It seems as through they were fired through the bathroom door at the runner’s home on the Silver Lakes Golf Estate on Thursday. A 9mm pistol was found at the home. The next day the Sun led with the photo of bikini model Steenkamp in a bikini.
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Posted: 16th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment
Oscar Pistorius murder: no tears in court, Trish Taylor’s bitterness and taking sides
OSCAR Pistorius is front-page news. The double-amputee, “the fastest man on no legs” who became a Paralympic and Olympic robo-legend, is accused to murdering his lover, 30-year-old Reeva Steenkamp, at their South African home. He’s been in court.
The Indy: “Pistorius Weeps”
Daily Express: “Blade Runner sobs in court”
The Times: “The anguish of Oscar”
Like the Express, the Sun opts to lead with the alleged killer’s nickname, focusing on the unfortunate “Blade” angle – although the murder weapon is said to have been a gun:
“Blade Runner suicide watch”
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Posted: 16th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Sports | Comments (2)
1948: The great horse meat scandal
1948: THE horse meat scandal. Meat on the hoof. Black market “veal”! Eight of every ten horses head to the slaughterhouses! “This sordid trade is on the increase..!” “Shire horses are being wiped out..!”
Sugar rationing in World War 2
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Posted: 14th, February 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (3)
I got a Christopher Dorner tattoo: Media turned a killer into a folk hero (Raoul Moat is dead)
CHRISTOPHER Dorner allegedly murdered three people, one a policeman – one Monica Quan, an unarmed woman related to a cop. The ex-cop wanted to murder lots more people. He went on the lam. He found Kim and Jim Reynolds’ mountain cabin in the San Bernardino mountains in California. He stuffed their mouths with small towels and placed pillow cases over their heads. He had a gun.
“I really thought it could be the end,” Ms Reynolds told reporters “…He tried to calm us down, saying very frequently, he would not kill us.”
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Posted: 14th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Valentine’s Day: The most disastrous dinners for two: rows, murder and mayhem
As you prepare your St Valentine’s Day meals, take care. Cooking can lead to rows. We’ve chronicled arguements over dinner in the news…
A husband killed his ‘nagging’ wife by clubbing her to death with a lump hammer after a row about mashed potato. Colin Adlard, 61 snapped and repeatedly struck his wife Wendy with the hammer while she was in bed because she would not stop shouting at him and berating him.
A man turned to drugs to de-stress following a heated row with his girlfriend over defrosting waffles. Jamie Paddison of Grantham, Lincolnshire admitted possession of cannabis after being found carrying the Class B drug on December 19. Bill Fraser, defending, told the court Paddison had made good progress in reducing his use of the drug but had a habit of turning to it in times of stress, as he did following a row with his girlfriend. Mr Fraser added: “The row was about how they should have defrosted their waffles – which seems a bit bizarre to me.”
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Posted: 13th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Pregnant Kate Middleton shows off her bikini curves on holiday in Mustique: the fury!
PSSST! Want to see photos of Kate Middleton on holiday in Mustique? Well, then you’ll have to buy a copy of Italy’s Chimagazine, which has published the shots of the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge. The British need to make do with the Daily Mail’s news that said photos have been met with “Royal fury”.
Louise Eccles and Rebecca English poor scorn on that “tawdry” foreign rag. How very dare it cause our British Princess anguish the sticky fingers of a long lens. Meanwhile, on other Mail pages you can read:
Jenny Frost shows off her growing curves in bikini as she talks fans through her pregnancy – 10/10/2012
Revealing Victoria’s Secrets! Doutzen Kroes shows off her fabulous post-pregnancy figure in daring black bikini – 16/02/2012
Making waves! Megan Fox shows off pre-pregnancy body in tiny black bikini – 30/11/2012
Glowing Myleene Klass shows her pregnancy curves in all their glory in a white bikini – 07/11/2010
Pregnant Tori Spelling shows off her growing baby bump in a bikini… and a new tattoo tribute to husband Dean – 04/05/2011
Bumpin’ in Barbados! Coleen Rooney shows off her pregnancy curves as she soaks up the sunshine with son Kai – 06/02/2013
Baby on board! Jessica Simpson’s best friend CaCee Cobb shows off her bump in string bikini – 02/02/2013
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Posted: 13th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Royal Family | Comments (8)
