Reviews Category
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.
London’s Anti-Nazi Brompton Road Tube Station Sold For £53m
BROMPTON Road station has been sold by the Ministry of Defence for £53m. The former Tube station used by the War Office to control anti-aircraft batteries protecting London from air raids, will most likely end up as flats…
Pity.
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1940: Hattie McDaniel’s Stirring Academy Award Winning Speech As The First Black Oscar Winner
ON February 29, 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award, winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for giving life to Mammy, the Gone with the Wind house servant. Fay Bainter heralded McDaniel by telling the audience that the gong “opens the doors of this room, moves back the walls, and enables us to embrace the whole of America….”
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Wind Farms Kill Hurricanes And Prevent Rape
GOOD news for wind farmers: those things kill hurricanes:
Massive offshore wind farms’ unexpected benefit: Hurricane protection; Wind speed, storm surge slashed when there are 10,000 turbines in storms’ path.
February 28 1986: Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme Is Assassinated
ON February 28 1986: Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated on a Stockholm street.
A bouquet of flowers is laid down at the pool of blood on a Stockholm City pavement where Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated shortly before midnight on Friday, Mar. 1, 1986 in Stockholm.
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Posted: 28th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Politicians | Comment
A History Of Controversial Children’s Books: Sex, Sambo And Obscene Rebellion
ANORAK’s history of controversial children’s books: sex, drugs, sambo’s gay lover and anti-authoritarianism in the classroom.
The Little Red Schoolbook
In 1971 the proprietor of Stage 1 publishers was found guilty of having in his possession obscene books for publication for gain. Richard Handyside was fined £25 on each summons and ordered to pay £110 costs.
The obscene publications were copies of The Little Red Schoolbook written by two Danish schoolteachers, Søren Hansen and Jesper Jensen – and then rewritten by a group of British adults and schoolchildren, including a young Hilary Benn. It urged young readers to question authority and challenge social conventions, and described adults as ‘paper tigers’. Pupils were encouraged to disrupt lessons that they found boring.
The book was widely regarded as an invitation to anarchy, and it was banned in Italy and France. An abridged version was eventually passed for publication in the UK, but it had by this time achieved considerable notoriety. Ironically, the main area of contention was not the political message, but the section giving basic sex education and advice – particularly concerning masturbation – most of which would be on the school curriculum these days. This was of course the convenient pretext chosen the DPP in order to suppress a book that they regarded as socially subversive.
An extraordinary documentary can be heard here.
Noddy
Enid Blyton is by no means the only venerable authoress to find her books falling out of favour as popular opinion changes over the decades, as Richmal Crompton will have known only too well.
She remains the most high-profile example, however, thanks to her ‘Gollywog’ series, which related the adventures of Golly, Woggy and Nigger, who liked nothing better than to stride along, in Blyton’s own words, ‘arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song – which, as you may guess, was “Ten Little Nigger Boys”.’ These books are not currently available in most children’s libraries
More famous are her Noddy books, in which they feature once again. In one particularly pointed incident, Noddy is attacked by golliwogs, who steal his car and leave him stranded.
Luckily the Toyland police were very efficient, and always at hand.
Not all gollies are bad, though. In Golly Town we find a Mr Golly, who is one of Noddy’s best friends. He owns Toyland’s garage, looks after Noddy’s car, and is an all-round bloody good bloke, as this picture proves…
The Tale of Little Black Sambo
Another former staple of junior school libraries that fell out of favour (though it remains popular in Japan). In 1996, Fred Marcellino produced a set of new pictures, renamed the characters, and republished it under the title The Story of Little Babaji.
Tintin
One could be charitable and say that Hergé’s most controversial Tintin adventure merely represented the condescending views of Belgian (and British) society at the time.
Post-war, they seemed anachronistic and offensive, portraying as they did a nation of stupid, lazy, infantile savages in need of a clever white master. The book quickly fell out of favour (and out of print).
The Brave Cowboy
A similar trick was pulled with Joan Walsh Anglund’s charming best-seller, in which scary ‘Indians’ were removed and replaced by white bankrobbers and other ne’er-do-wells.
Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin
This otherwise unremarkable tale relates the everyday life of five-year-old Jenn, who lives with her dad and his boyfriend.
In 1986 it was reported that the book was in the library of a school run by the Labour-controlled Inner London Education Authority, and this was a major factor in the Tory government passing Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality. The full, bizarre story can be found here…
And Tango Makes Three
This modern-day ‘Jenny’, based on a true story about two ‘gay’ penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo has the distinction of having had the most had the most ban requests in the USA in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010. In 2009 it came second.
‘It’s regrettable that some parents believe reading a true story about two male penguins hatching an egg will damage their children’s moral development,’ said co-author Justin Richardson. ‘They are entitled to express their beliefs, but not to inflict them on others.’
Posted: 28th, February 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
War On Drugs Creates Boom Times For Prison Industry
HOW’S that US War on Drugs working out?Well, prisons have never had it so good.
Posted: 28th, February 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
The Roots Of Ska: From Tennessee, Through Jamaica To The Best of British
: It’s the Blue Beat style as demonstrated by Prince Buster (25) at a reception at the May Fair hotel in London. Blue Beat music is based on a West Indian blues style known as ‘Ska Blues’. Buster is here for radio and TV appearances and has brought a Blue Beat hat (a trilby) as gift for Prince Charles. Date: 27/02/1964
SKA music gets into your bones.
In is essay The Chop On The Upbeat, John Jeremiah Sullivan looks at the birth of ska, the music that make you dance – and that anyone can dance well to:
Once, writing about Bunny [Wailer], I spent the better part of a week getting completely out of my mind and surfing through songs, trying to pinpoint the emergence, from the chrysalis, of the ska sound. I wanted to be able to hold the evolution of it in my head, just for a minute, to say how it happened, session by session. You can’t really do it. Even when you know everything, I mean. There were too many active participants, too many shared influences, you’re inside an echo chamber with two hundred people shouting. Also there’s a weird fuzzy period between the rhythmic shot over the bow of “Easy Snappin’” (1957? 1958?—we’re not even sure) and 1960–61, when a little cluster of very ska–like songs gets recorded, in not entirely certain order.
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Posted: 27th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
Why Did Police Shoot Dead Mark Duggan But Only Wound Michael Adebolajo And Michael Adebowale?
MICHAEL Adebolajo (left) and Michael Adebowale (right) are behind bars for a long time. Adebolajo was given a whole-life term and Michael Adebowale was jailed for a minimum of 45 years for the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich.
Having committed their heinous crime, both men were shot by police.
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Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (5)
Listen To 13 Of The Absolute Worst Songs Of The 1960s
I HESITATED using the word “worst” since many of these are novelty songs, which are intentionally strange or humorous rather than attempting to be a genuinely serious musical composition. However, that doesn’t erase the fact that they, like all the songs in this list, are simply unlistenable, intolerable, and unbearable. These songs are so bad you will be tempted to escape and click your “back” button. But I encourage you to see it through – press on, and see what sort of stuff you’re made of.
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Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comments (13)
February 26 1993 In Photos: Omar Abdel-Rahman And His Followers Bomb The World Trade Center
ON this day in photos – February 26 1993: At 12:18 local time a large car bomb exploded at New York’s World Trade Center killing six people and injuring 100 more. The bomb tore through three floors of concrete. It triggered a fire in one of the towers.
In this file photo of Feb. 26, 1993, Victims of a fire at the World Trade Center in New York are treated at the scene after an explosion rocked the complex. Twenty years ago a group of terrorists blew up explosives in an underground parking garage under one of the towers, killing six people and ushering in an era of terrorism on American soil.
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Those Tax Dodging Scumbags At Zara!
WE’RE well used to hearing stories about how the tech companies, Apple, Google and the like, are dodging taxes all over Europe. But people are starting to realise that it’s not just that sector. Many other multinationals are indulging in very much the same behaviour:
Another reason for Inditex’s industry-best profit margins of almost 15 percent: the company uses the kind of tax loopholes coming under increasing scrutiny from international regulators.
In the past five years, Inditex has shifted almost $2 billion in profits to a tiny unit operating in the Netherlands and Switzerland, records show. Although that subsidiary employs only about 0.1 percent of Inditex’s worldwide workforce, it reported almost 20 percent of the parent company’s global profits last year, according to company filings.
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Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Manchester United’s 11 Worst Defeats (And Counting)
SOBS and moans filled the air from Plymouth to Plymouth Rock, from York to New York, from Wales to New South Wales, from Surrey to Salford. Even a few people in the city of Manchester could be heard above the general laughter. So many questions were raised by Manchester United’s performance in Greece this week that we’ll restrict ourselves to just one. Is it the reds’ worst defeat of the modern era?
Here are 11 others that give it a run for its money…
December 1972: Crystal Palace 5-0 Manchester United
Don Rogers ‘did a Pele’; United did something unpleasant in their shorts. But it was Palace themselves who were relegated, and the Red Devils lived to be relegated another day.
April 1974: Manchester United 0-1 Manchester City
That day came at the next available opportunity: the following season, to be precise. Contrary to popular myth, former United legend Denis Law’s back-heeled goal for City didn’t actually send United down –other results meant they would have been relegated anyway. But it became an enduring emblem of the club’s post-Busby demise. United fans invaded the pitch – another symbol of the Red Army at the time.
May 1976: Manchester United 0-1 Southampton
The late Bobby Stokes caused a major FA Cup upset – and won a car – by scoring the Wembley winner for second division Saints, thus depriving United of their first serious silverware of the Seventies.
September 1989: Manchester City 5-1 Manchester United
Chants of ‘Ferguson out’ at the match are often attributed to cheeky City fans, on the grounds that United’s supporters had all left the stadium by then…
The Maine Road Massacre was one of a series of results in the early stages of the season that led the United faithful to lose patience with their as yet unsuccessful manager Alex Ferguson, and prompted the infamous ‘tara’ banner.
September 1990: Liverpool 4-0 Manchester United
Liverpool were reigning champions when they crushed United at Anfield in this early season fixture, and looked likely to continue their dominance. United, by contrast, looked as far from being champions as ever. As it turned out, Liverpool didn’t win the league and haven’t done so since. United, on the other hand, were just three years away from a period of unprecedented success.
January 1992: Manchester United
New Year’s Day brought a result which suggested that United’s 26-year wait for the championship would continue for another season. And so it proved, as Leeds United overhauled their lead in the final season of the old First Division. The Premier League began later that year, and over the next two decades United would make the competition their own.
November 1994: Barcelona 4-0 Manchester United
Group A of the Champions League turned into a nightmare as Romario and Stoichkov tormented United. Keeper Gary Walsh, who remembers being unrecognised by United fans on a coach at the airport afterwards. The result had significant consequences, as United were ultimately eliminated after finishing in third place on goal difference.
May 2002: Manchester United 0-1 Arsenal
Arsenal clinch the title at Old Trafford with a goal by Silvain Wiltord (remember him?) back in the days when Arsène Wenger didn’t regard fourth place as a trophy.
March 2009 Manchester United 1-4 Liverpool
Losing to their hated rivals is as bad as it gets for United, but this defeat in the run-in proved to be just a blip, and Fergie’s boys went on to clinch their 18th title – thereby finally equaling Liverpool’s tally.
May 2011: Barcelona 3-1 Manchester United
The score-line is convincing, yet it doesn’t convey the gulf in class between the two sides on this warm evening at the magnificent new Wembley stadium. Barcelona dominated this Champions League final, and established themselves as the undisputed kings of Europe.
October 2011: Manchester United 1-6 Manchester City
The ‘noisy neighbours’ put United firmly n their place with this stunning display at Old Trafford, and the goals tasted extra sweet when they went on to pip them to the title on goal difference in the last seconds of the season. And here are the reactions of a man from the south of England and one from Manchester…
Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Sports | Comment
Swastika Spotting At Chelmsford’s County Hall, Manchester Central Library And Other Worthy Places
GET a load of those Swastikas etched onto the walls of Chelmsford’s County Hall, built between 1928 and 1939 by J Stuart of Portland stone.
A member of the public has lodged a Freedom of Information request asking why it “was still commissioned given the symbol’s negative connotations”. Essex County Council has yet to answer.
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Gay J. Edgar Hoover, Bad Sonny Liston And The Fixed Fight That Made Cassius Clay A Star
WAS Cassius’s Clay shock victory over Sonny Liston in the heavyweight championship of the world a fix? Clays had been 7-1 to defeat the reigning champion, who was backed by the mob.Ali won by technical knock-out when Liston remained in his corner at the start of the seventh round.
Now we get to read the FBI’s nots on the bout. A 1966 memo written to J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI at the time, mentions one Ash Resnick as the organiser of many fixes.
J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), is honored at ceremony when he received an award on Oct. 3, 1966 in Boston
The note alleges that a Barnett Magids believed Resnick and Liston each made $1 million by betting on Clay to win.
Resnick
“At about noon on the day of the fight, [Magids] reached Resnick again by phone, and at this time, Resnick said for him to not make any bets, but just go watch the fight on pay TV and he would know why and that he could not talk further at that time. Magids did go see the fight on TV and immediately realised that Resnick knew that Liston was going to lose. A week later, there was an article in Sports Illustrated writing up Resnick as a big loser because of his backing of Liston. Later, people ‘in the know’ in Las Vegas told Magids that Resnick and Liston both reportedly made over $1 million betting against Liston on the fight and that the magazine article was a cover for this.”
Resnick and Liston are both dead. Hoover is dead. This site alleges a link between the gamblers and the FBI:
Other information suggests Meyer Lansky obtained hard proof of Edgar’s homosexuality and used it to neutralize the FBI as a threat to his own operations. The first hint came from Irving “Ash” Resnick, the Nevada representative of the Patriarcha family for New England, and an original owner-builder of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. As a high-level mob courier, he traveled extensively. In Miami Beach, his Christmas destination in the fifties, he stayed at the Gulfstream, in a bungalow next to the one used by Edgar and Clyde. “I’d sit with him on the beach ever day,” Resnick remembered. “We were family.”
Another source claims:
Meyer Lansky, a Polish immigrant, was considered the head of the Mafia.
But really, what happened?
Florida State Attorney Richard Gerstein initiated an investigation of the fight to focus on Liston’s shoulder injury, for which he enlisted the services of his office’s medical/legal adviser and the Dade County Medical Examiner. A Florida state law provided for a prison term of up to ten years for anyone found to have fixed or thrown a boxing match.
The boxing commission in Sonny’s home state of Colorado suspended him immediately after the bout. “I’m not gonna look at any medical examination and let that guide me wrongly on account of his being injured,” said one commission member. Some people suggested that Sonny should be barred from the ring for life.
Four weeks after the bout, the results of Gerstein’s investigation confirmed the findings of the eight doctors who had examined Sonny after the fight. “While Liston’s injury is beyond doubt, there is also little doubt that he went into this fight with a sore or lame arm,” stated the report. It also noted that none of the pre-fight information was imparted to the Miami Beach Boxing Commission. That means the commission chose not to mention the fact that they had turned down Sonny’s request for an injury-related postponement. The investigation revealed no evidence that the fight had been fixed, and Gerstein’s office found no fluctuation in the betting odds anywhere in the country.
But the story rumbles on… You can see the fight and the photos from the build up to it here.
Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Sports | Comment (1)
Sick and Full of Burning: 13 Regrettable BookTitles
FAR be it from me to stifle creativity – an author should be able to title their work as he or she likes. However, there is a limit to my tolerance. Sometimes, the title is so terrible that it simply must go; creativity be damned. Here’s a handful of vintage reads which suffer from just such an affliction.
12 Chinks and Woman by James Hadley Chase (1941)
I understand people weren’t as sensitive to racial issues back then, but this is ridiculous. The novel’s title was later changed to The Doll’s Bad News; a wise move, but you can’t undo this level of epic racism. This from the author who gave us these other great titles: The Marijuana Mob (1950), There’s a Hippie on the Highway (1970) and Goldfish Have No Hiding Place (1974).
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Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (6)
Lewis Gill Killed Andrew Young On A Bournemouth Street: But It Wasn’t Murder
LEWIS Gill, 20, punched Andrew Young, 40, hard enough for the older man to fall down on a street in Bournemouth. Mr Young hit his head on the pavement. He never recovered, dying in hospital.
We know what went before the attack. Just before 4:25pm Mr Young was upset that Gill’s friend Victor Ibitoye had been riding his pushbike on the pavement. He told the cyclists it was a “dangerous activity”. As Ibitoye rode away, Gill, approaching form the Mr Young’s side, swung his fist. Mr Young goes down hard. Gill swaggers off. A youngish looking women with the pair, barely registers the horror, twiddling her hair as she walks on. But Ibitoye stops. Looks back. And gets off his bike. He appears concerned for Mr Young.
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Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
November 1972: Liverpool’s Steve Heighway And Brian Hall Read A Greek newspaper in Athens
FLASHBACK to November 1 1972: Liverpool’s Steve Heighway (left) and Brian Hall (right) read a Greek newspaper in Athens ahead of their UEFA Cup second round second leg match against AEK Athens.
Liverpool won the tie 6-1 on aggregate. They would go on to defeat Spurs in the semi-final and Borussia Mönchengladbach on aggregate to win the cup.
Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Liverpool, Photojournalism, Sports | Comment
Rebecca Adlington’s Nose Gives The Mail, Sun And Daily Mirror Abuse Amnesia On Fat And Ugly Wayne Rooney
EVERYONE and their dog has been sticking up for Rebecca Adlington. Apparently, she may or may not have had a nose job. It’s her business, her money and she can do as she pleases.
However, that’s not everything cleared up.
You see, everyone now has to fret and fuss, wondering if this is all the result of years of cruel jibes she’s received on Twitter and from comedians like Frankie Boyle.
Of course, the issue of women being pressured to fit a certain look, or be expected to be good looking if they’re going to be successful is a dreadful narrative that has cropped after, at long last, women started to call bullshit on the practice. It’d be wonderful if we lived in a world where we were celebrated for what we could do, rather than how we look.
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Uganda’s Red Paper Newspaper Names ‘200 Top Homos’ And Their Worms
TO UGANDA, where the local Red Pepper newspaper leads with:
“EXPOSED! Uganda’s Top 300 Honos Names”
Congratulations to those who made the list, and commiserations to those who did not, could be premature because Uganda is a beacon of intolerance and bigotry. The paper adds:
“In salutation to the new law, today we unleash Uganda’s top homos and their sympathisers.”
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Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Adam Alter Wonders About The Perils of Wishful Thinking
ADAM Alter wonders about the perils of wishful thinking:
According to a great deal of research, positive fantasies may lessen your chances of succeeding. In one experiment, the social psychologists Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer asked 83 German students to rate the extent to which they “experienced positive thoughts, images, or fantasies on the subject of transition into work life, graduating from university, looking for and finding a job.” Two years later, they approached the same students and asked about their post-college job experiences. Those who harbored positive fantasies put in fewer job applications, received fewer job offers, and ultimately earned lower salaries. The same was true in other contexts, too. Students who fantasized were less likely to ask their romantic crushes on a date and more likely to struggle academically. Hip-surgery patients also recovered more slowly when they dwelled on positive fantasies of walking without pain.
Heather Barry Kappes, a management professor at the London School of Economics, has published similar research with Oettingen. I asked Kappes why fantasies hamper progress, and she told me that they dull the will to succeed: “Imagining a positive outcome conveys the sense that you’re approaching your goals, which takes the edge off the need to achieve.”
Realism hurts…
Daily Mail Scare Story Tuesday: Dying From A Broken Heart
IT’S Scare Story Tuesday in the Daily Mail. Let’s take a look at this week’s ways to die:
Page: 13: “You really CAN die of a broken heart – losing a loved on doubles the risk of heart failure”.
Bad news for those spouses looking to murder their partners. You’re signing your own death warrant.
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1960s Horror Food: The Luminous Metrecal Diet In A Can
IN the 1950s and 1960s, Mead Johnson’s Metrecal promised to get you into shape. What that shape was, we people of the future can only guess at – and we guess it was a human form jackknifed over a toilet.
Mead Johnson spotted Sustagen, a composite blend of mix of skimmed milk powder, soybean flour, vitamins, minerals, corn oil, minerals and vitamins spooned into hospital patients not up to eating solids. Pressing ‘Go’ on the random-name-generating computer, produced Metrecal, the weight-reducing miracle. It looked like baby powder. It tasted like baby sick. But – buy – it sure cured your appetite.
Take a drink and get slim. But do stick to the 900 calories of Metrecal a day.
This advert for the vile goop is from 1965:
The keen-to-be-slim could chow down on Metrecal milkshakes, Metrecal cookies, Metrecal clam chowder (New England style) and Metrecal tuna and noodles. Remember, so long as you kept to 900 calories a day, you’d be thinning. And nothing was better at building the new you than the liquid lunches, dinners and breakfasts.
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Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
This Is What George Washington Drank At His Constitution Signing Do
THIS is what George Washington drank at his leaving do:
…we still have available the list of beverages served at a 1787 farewell party in Philadelphia for George Washington just days before the framers signed off on the Constitution. According to the bill preserved from the evening, the 55 attendees drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer, and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.
That’s more than two bottles of fruit of the vine, plus a number of shots and a lot of punch and beer, for every delegate. That seems humanly impossible to modern Americans. But, you see, across the country during the Colonial era, the average American consumed many times as much beverage alcohol as contemporary Americans do. Getting drunk—but not losing control—was simply socially accepted.
Chin-chin. Never trust a tea-totaller…
Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Politicians | Comments (4)
Christian Aid’s Hugely Amusing Ideas About Tax In Africa
CHRISTIAN Aid has a new report out about how tax should work in Africa. And it’s a hugely amusing report. Amusing for devotees of blinkered ideologues ignoring reality that is.
The page is here and the actual report here.
Here’s the basic problem. In this part they are correct:
After a decade of high growth, a new narrative of optimism has taken hold about Africa and its economic prospects. Alongside buoyant growth rates, there has been some poverty reduction and some positive progress in sectors such as health and education.
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Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: Money, Reviews | Comment (1)
