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.
What is the point of journalism if it can’t publish things people don’t want to be published? A new Espionage Act drafted by the Law Commission would, says The Register, make it a crime to report on big date leaks. Reporting on leaks would be viewed in the same legal framework as spying for foreign powers. Break the law and face 2 to 14 years imprisonment.
You’re not a journalist. You’re a traitor.
The Law Commission’s consultation paper Protection of Official Data says espionage is something ‘capable of being committed by someone who not only communicates information, but also by someone who obtains or gathers it’. There is ‘no restriction on who can commit the offence’.
And, no, reporting on a leak would not be in the public interest. The paper says the public interest is not a valid defence. The State will decide what the public is allowed to be interested in. Their own defence is that it’s a matter of ‘national security’. But what is and isn’t covered by that term is undefined. You get the impression it could be anything – although not a need to hold power to account, a key tenet of any secure and democratic society.
So, if you know something is amiss in your arm of the State – if you want to blow the whistle on corruption and waste – handing data to a journalist will land them in prison.
And it gets worse.
The Register says places will be deemed to be off the news grid: ‘British Embassies abroad, intelligence and security offices, and data centres not officially publicised by the government would be designated as “prohibited places” or “protected sites”, making it an offence to publish information about them or to “approach, inspect, pass over or enter” for any “purpose prejudicial” to national security.’
So who was consulted by these State-approved consultants?
David Ormerod QC is quoted in the Telegraph: “We’ve scrutinised the law and consulted widely with… media and human-rights organisations.”
Oufits like the Open Rights Group (ORG) , an NGO listed in the report. But the ORG’s chief executive Jim Killock tells the Register: ‘There was no consultation. There were some emails with our legal adviser about having a meeting, which petered out without any discussion or detail being given.”
Worrying stuff.
Twenty years ago today the Daily Mail published one of the most eye-grabbing front-pages in recent history. It accused five men of murdering Stephen Lawrence, the black youth killed in a racist crime covered up by an incompetent and racist police force.
In February 1997, one day after an inquest jury ruled that Stephen Lawrence was unlawfully killed “in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths”, the Mail produced its front page.
The Mail challenged Neil Acourt, his brother Jamie Acourt, David Norris, Gary Dobson and Luke Knight, to sue for libel. They didn’t.
Today the paper revisits its sensational front-page headline.
The paper accuses Luke Knight of being ‘The Murderer Who Got Away’. Wow!
The Mail’s allegation is undermined by its own teaser, which says of the self-styled “loveable rogues”: ‘Two have been convicted, one’s in jail on a drugs charge and a 4th is on the run.’ If the Mail claims the five are murderers and only two have been convicted, how can there be only one who got away?
In 1999, the accused men spoke with ITV news. It was compelling television. And a word before you watch: I was in the crowd when they swaggered from court. One thing struck me as remarkable: the restraint shown by all those who saw them.
Posted: 14th, February 2017 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
In readiness for Donald Trump’s assault on ISI, we remind him of news from year ago, when Islamists were ‘shaving bears’.
Spotter: @FelicityMorse
Great work from Spiked, which has released its annual survey of free speech at universities. Using a three-tier traffic light system, where red indicates that free speech stops here, nearly two thirds of student unions and one quarter of university administrations earn a red light.
When did students become such prudes?
Bans include:
Oxford University – a ban for No Offence, a magazine devoted to celebrating free speech
University of East Anglia – banned a restaurant from handing out free sombreros lest it offend Mexicans.
Newcastle University – a ban on dressing up as Caitlyn Jenner
London South Bank University – a ban on blasphemy
It’s all pathetic. The next generation of know adult politicians, councillors and administrators are even bigger fear-mongers and censors than the current crop.
Read it all here.
To France, where ‘Theo’, a 22-year-old black man, claims he was raped when police inserted a truncheon in his anus. An internal police inquiry found nothing untoward. But Theo was showing severe anal injuries.
Police now says the wounding was an accident. In a video of the incident, police see a copper ‘applying a truncheon blow horizontally across the buttocks’. Theo’s trousers ‘slipped down on their own’. As such ‘there are insufficient elements to show that this was a rape’.
But an investigating magistrate disagrees. They’ve charged one of the police officers with rape.
French President Francois Hollande has taken the time to visit Theo in hospital and Prime Minister Bernard Cazenueve says their is an official state of ‘solidarity’ with the alleged victim.
Posted: 10th, February 2017 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
In 1950, Superman, a refugee from a distant land, had this message for American youth.
…and remember boys and girls, your school – like our country – is made up of Americans of many different races, religions and national origins, so…
if you hear anybody talk against a schoolmate or anyone else because of his religion, race or national origin – don’t wait: TELL HIM HAT KIND OF TALK IS UN-AMERICAN.
KEEP YOUR SCHOOL ALL AMERICAN
Spotter: flashbak
Posted: 7th, February 2017 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
In what officials are calling ‘not a normal case’, a Buddhist monk has been arrested in Myanmar with 4.6 million methamphetamine pills, a grenade and ammunition were found in his car.
“This is not a normal case, and when we were informed that the monk was arrested, we were all shocked,” says Kyaw Mya Win, a township police officer.
“It is not a very common case, but not impossible to happen. What will happen to the monk is that he will have to give up his monkhood right away and face trial as an ordinary person,” adds Myanmar’s director general of the Religious Affairs Ministry, Soe Min Tun.
It’s unlikely the pills were for personal use. So was he buying the pills for his mates or selling them for other mates?
Myanmar has a history of persecuting the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. In 2012, ‘Buddhist extremists drove tens of thousands of Rohingya out of their homes, many risked their lives to escape in smugglers’ boats; more than 100,000 others are living in squalid internment camps’.
The Strait Times reported this month:
The UN report issued on Friday said Myanmar’s security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned their villages since October in a campaign that “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar has said it is conducting a lawful counterinsurgency campaign.
Is the army marching on methamphetamine?
Posted: 7th, February 2017 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
A new rule means old judgements are no longer fit for purpose. In 2013, Alan Turing was pardoned. His conviction for gross indecency quashed. Turing, ‘creator of the modern computer’, committed suicide in 1954. His crime was to have been gay.
What this pardon does for him is debatable. What is does for the State is clear: it absolves the current crop of blame. It makes them look good and on the right side of history. Turing remains convicted.
Today the State decreed that thousands of gay and bisexual men found guilty of breaking the law for breathing have been posthumously pardoned. Around 49,000 men have been cleared.
All male homosexual activity was illegal until 1967. Tuning was guilty of having a relationship with another man. He accepted a deal: he’d have hormonal treatment, a chemical castration, to set him on the straight and narrow. Turning, a hero who had aided Britain’s war effort considerably – his work in cracking the German Enigma code was of huge benefit to the Allies – was deemed a security risk. Police watched him. A great mind was made a pariah, an enemy of the State, by dint of his sexuality.
As for the pardon, well, it’s a gesture that reduces the victims to symbols.
Turning, a man whose name should be synonymous with great intellects and the war effort is now associated with gay rights and today’s moralists. His sexuality had no business of the State’s then; it has no business of the State’s now. So too all other convicted of a heinous law.
Leave these people alone. They suffered enough.
Does the Press have an issue with Muslims? Or do sections of it pick news stories that appeal to its readers’ prejudices? Or is debate on all religions so stymied by fear of causing offence and the speaker being labelled a bigot that free speech is on the rack? These questions and others are triggered by a story in the Express of a jogger who having been knocked into a canal only escaped his attackers by speaking Arabic.
The story, culled from the Birmingham Mail where it first appeared, tells of Lee Skinner, 38, who was “punched and knocked into the freezing water as he ran past five hooded youths in Acocks Green, Birmingham.”
The Express‘s writer is – get this – ‘Rob Virtue’. The Birmingham Post’s reporter is Jeanette Oldham. The reports are identical.
Badly bruised, Mr Skinner managed to clamber out.
As he struggled to get out of the cold, slippery canal the thug who punched him was waiting – until the former language teacher started speaking Arabic. The shame-faced gang, all aged around 17, then fled the scene and the attacker is now being hunted by police.
Mr Skinner told the Birmingham Mail:
“The police praised me and said my speaking in Arabic showed quick-thinking. They said my actions could have stopped the situation from being a lot worse.”
He went on:
“There were five in total, all wearing grey and black, casual clothing, puffy coats, caps and hoods. The guy who punched me was rounded in the face and had neat, tidy stubble. The other four were quite slim.. As I jogged past, the one with a rounded face punched me full force with his left hand, into my right cheek. I went up into the air and into the water.
“The one who punched me was waiting at the side of the canal with an incredible look of pleasure on his face. He was waiting to watch me suffer or to come back so he could hit me again.
“I was able to identify them as Pakistani as I’ve worked in Muslim communities and have a detailed knowledge of Islam and speak Arabic to a certain level. I also used to teach asylum seekers for a while.
“So in that moment I said something in Arabic – a Muslim declaration of faith. As soon as I said it, a look of panic spread across their faces. I then shouted in Arabic, ‘May God forgive you’.
“At that moment they looked like a bunch of terrified schoolchildren. That’s what ended it…
“They said they were very sorry this had happened. They then walked off and I walked home… The four boys admitted that the attack happened because I was white and I explained that in the current political climate, such actions could have a negative effect on the Muslim Pakistani community which they are supposed to be representing.”
It could be argued that the thugs were stopped from doing worse damage and perhaps repeating their alleged crime by their faith and Mr Skinner’s intelligence. Does religion make you less violent?
No-one on the Express got to debate that or more because comments below the paper‘s article are closed. The Birmingham Mail left them open. Here are a few of them:
My initial comment on this has been deleted. This I feel is unfair.
I only suggested that those who commit a crime be deported along with their families. This may deter those who are willing to carry out attacks such as these. Surely being passionate about the country you live in cannot make me racist.Congratulations to Lee Skinner for his quick thinking and courage. Nevertheless he is sadly deluded. Firstly there are no genuine positive aspects of Islam and Mohammed for the non-Muslim…
Secondly, this is an illustration of the difference between “radical” and “moderate” Muslims. The attacker was following the cruel, violent example of Mohammed and the other four gave him passive support and didn’t help the nearly murdered kaffir.
What a surprise. More proof that integration does not work. These people do not live by our standards and do not have the same morals. Just look at the areas they live in, Rubbish piled high, dirty and dangerous. Some of you may not like it but its true.
Islam a religion of peace my a##e.
You what? Absolutely disgusting behaviour, I’ve always thought whites were overly paranoid about being in majority asian areas but I might have to revise my position
Many of the comments claim the gang attacked Mr Skinner because they were Muslims and thereby inherently violent. One commenter notes:
EVERY TIME there is a news story to do with a Muslim or Islam,
MOST of the comments are full of HATE or BIGOTRY,
So how does the Birmingham Mail follow up its story? Like this: “Jogger who escaped canal thug by speaking Arabic hailed a ‘hero’ by readers.” Thugs is right. And which readers praised Mr Skinner? Five are name-checked:
Adam Lii Khan said: “Absolutely disgusting behaviour. A human is a human regardless of his nationality, colour or language. You did an amazing job by schooling them though! Hope you get better soon.”
Raziq Rashid wrote: “Lee Skinner I wish a speedy recovery and hope they catch the criminals. It was brave what you did and hope it shows the racist people our there that someone of a diffrent colour is still human and should be treat with the same respect we expect for ourselves.”
“Once again fair play on confronting the individuals with dignity which they probably didn’t deserve.”
Nad Arabian wrote: “This is ridiculous, I am Arabic and against what these guys did. Language is not the protection they should know their religion properly. Unfortunately it is individuals behaviour. Hope they get what they deserve and well done to this Man.”
Bob Khan said: “It doesn’t matter what race or colour people are, we are all human beings and we should respect everyone religion and race.
“I personally condemn this action against a respected person who was jogging on his way home.
“Get well soon my brother and hope police can catch those idiots soon”
The Mail must haver picked through its readers carefully to get that report out.
The only other readers name-checked are Dee Webb, who says:
Dee Webb said all five of the gang should be prosecuted by police. She said: “How can he shake their hands, the hands that could have killed him? It wasn’t just the one that hit him…they all took part and watched and did nothing..they are all responsible. .and should all be charged the same. Scum.”
And Jackie Playdon:
“Brave man. I hope his attackers are caught and punished. It could have been so much worse had he not been able to speak a bit of Arabic. I doubt I could have offered them my hand….but kudos to him.”
To call the assault on Mr Skinner a crime typical of Muslims is absurd and monocular. You can follow these links and discover that not all thugs, thieves, alleged rapists, muggers, robbers, would-be killers, rapists, bastards who shove joggers into the canal and criminals on Birmingham’s many towpaths are Muslim. Being a criminal is not the preserve of any one religion or race. To say the hateful acts of a few epitomise the many is as stilted and absurd as the Birmingham Mail’s vox pop.
Posted: 29th, January 2017 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
The Donald Trump Death Cult is in full cry. Whenever a new man is unveiled as the new President of the USA, the talk swiftly turns to his murder. (See Barack Obama Death Cult.)
CNN reports:
The Secret Service said Tuesday it is taking “appropriate action” after one of its agents suggested on Facebook that she would not defend President Donald Trump should someone try to shoot him.
So much for Trump making more jobs.
PS: Hey, CNN, how’s Obama getting on.
Posted: 25th, January 2017 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Donald Trump’s presidency is causing one Guardian writer to come over all anti-democratic.
I turned off the radio after Obama said, in his final speech: “In 10 days, the world will witness a hallmark of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power from one freely elected president to the next.” I yearned for a leader who would say something like: “Hey, there was foreign intervention in this election, along with voter disenfranchisement, so maybe it wasn’t free and fair.”
You might recall when Barack Obama popped over to the UK to tell Britishers how voting for Brexit would relegate the country to the “back of the queue”? As Henry Kissinger put it: “Obama seems to think of himself not as part of a political process, but as sui generis, a unique phenomenon with a unique capacity.”
The Guardian writer adds:
We didn’t need to know the minutiae of the Russian intervention; we already knew that it raised questions so grave that the whole transfer of power should have been halted while it was investigated.
So is democracy not free and fair when it delivers the result you don’t want?
Only one tabloid leads with Donald Trump’ inauguration. The Mirror introduces the 45th President of the United States. “Now the world holds its breath,” it adds. Over pages 4 and 5 readers are told “IT COULD ALL GO VERY BADLY WRONG.” The paper produces a listicle: “20 reasons why Trump’s reign could be a disaster for USA & World.”
Across the page, we see a picture of the Obamas sharing a hug as they gaze out from the White House. The message is clear: the good times are over. The good people are gone.
But let’s look at that list.
2. The rich will get richer.
What of Obama’s record, under whom African-Americans’ economic fortunes declined?
4. Deport illegal immigrants.
Under Obama, the US facilitated around 2.5million deportations. A record.
This is not to undermine Obama’s achievements and record. As the New York Times reports, Obama pulled “the nation back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression”. This is to highlight monocular reporting of a man whose wife billed him as “a leader who’s going to touch our souls”.
Lest any reader not have got the Mirror’s point, its editorial thunders, “Reasons to be fearful.” Brian Reade delivers Trump’ speech as he imagines it. People are “subjects of the Trump organisation”. But didn’t we all buy into Obama’s world, the man whose identity was key to his success? When Trayvon Martin was killed by a white Hispanic vigilante in 2012, Trump opined: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”
So how do you follow that? What is Obama’s legacy? Is it Donald Trump? “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America: there’s the United States of America,” said Obama in 2004. Now what do you see in a country where ‘white man’ has become an insult more than an observation?
Once all eyes were on Obama the man not the party activist, a politico branded ‘The One’, by Oprah Winfrey; now they are on Trump and his identity.
Plus ca change.
Posted: 20th, January 2017 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Are old white, male dons unable to teach young black students? Students at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) created a report to answer the question they pose. Called Degrees of Racism, the student union demands that “all academics must be prepared to acknowledge that they are capable of racism”.
Well, we all have our prejudices, even SOAS students and people on the Student Unions’ executive.
One student is quoted:
“Both of my tutors are white men. How can I have a rapport and feel comfortable talking to a 60-year-old white man? Our experiences of life are so different and you’re coming from completely different places.”
Wouldn’t it be good idea to learn how to relate to the old white boy, of which there are so many?
The report begins from making an argument that identity is of paramount importance in education. It paints all BAME students as victims.
The BME Attainment Gap project was conducted as studies show that there has been a gap between the degree attainment of white and BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) undergraduates at SOAS, with a greater proportion of white students attaining either a 2:1 or first class degree.
Might this be down to family money, class, society and more?
These gaps cannot be attributed to differences between students at entry at SOAS, thus suggesting factors within SOAS contributing to this finding.
So it must be racism, then. Is it “unconscious” racism, or unwitting racism, if you will, because racism didn’t prevent BAME students gaining a place at the college? We also don’t know why the BAMe students who made it to SOAS survived being taught by white teachers, who make up the bulk of education professionals.
A worrying number of students reported having experienced explicitly racist comments and behaviours in class, both from other students and from teachers.
That’s from the champions of reason and learning at SOAS student union, the same group that wants to boycott Israel and Israeli academics. Maybe if there were more Israeli academics in visible places at SOAS, the non-Israeli students would relate and understand the situation better? Because it’s all about identity, isn’t it.
What do we make of the news that ‘A British man who fell pregnant after he used Facebook to find a sperm donor has said he will be the “greatest dad”.’ That’s the start of the Indy‘s article on Hayden Cross, 20, a woman who, having been told by the NHS that she wouldn’t be able to freeze her eggs for use at a later date due to her hormonal gender transitioning, found a sperm donor on the web and got pregnant.
The Indy says, “He is now four months pregnant and may be the first British man ever to give birth.” Be he isn’t. Because, well, he’s not a he. He is not pregnant. She is. We can agree on that, surely? No. The Sun says, “He is legally male.”
The Indy is at pains to tell readers that Hayden Cross is a man. “Mr Cross said his first attempt using donor sperm had been successful and he would continue his transition process to remove his breasts and ovaries as soon as he has given birth,” says the paper.
Every paper agrees that Hayden is a pregnant man.
PREGNANT DAD-TO-BE Who is Hayden Cross? UK’s first pregnant man undergoing gender realignment treatment – Sun
FIRST PREGNANT MAN! British man four months pregnant after receiving sperm donation – Express
Proudly showing off his baby bump: Former Asda worker is the first British MAN to become PREGNANT after finding a sperm donor on Facebook – Mail
Hayden (born Paige) tells the Sun: “In September I got pregnant by a sperm donation. I found the donor on the internet… The man came to my house, he passed me the sperm in a pot and I did it via a syringe. I felt I’d no choice, I couldn’t afford a proper clinic. I don’t know who the bloke was. To be honest I can’t remember anything about him. He wouldn’t even tell me his name. He said he was just doing it to help people.”
Can Hayden be certain the sperm was the man’s and not harvested from another source? If you got a pot of jism from a stranger would you be not a little circumspect?
“It was the first attempt and it worked,” adds Hayden. “I was really lucky.”
It is an unusual story. But is there really no newspaper editor looking on thinking it’s not the story of a pregnant man?
Meanwhile…
Posted: 9th, January 2017 | In: Reviews, Strange But True, Tabloids | Comment (1)
What do we think about the right to carry arms? Amanda Erikson tells us:
Czech government tells its citizens how to fight terrorists: Shoot them yourselves
Good idea?
The Daily Express thinks it is. “Czech citizens may soon be able to legally shoot terrorists,” it says. The story is illustrated with a series of images entitled “Horrifying acts of terrorism we will never forget.” The paper also repeats the words of President Milos Zeman. He ‘already told the Czech population to buy weapons in preparation for a “super Holocaust” perpetrated by Muslim terrorists”.
The Czech Republic is home to 300,000 people with gun licenses. We don’t know how many of them are Muslim. But it can’t be many. There are about 11,000 Muslims in the country.
Obtaining a weapon is relatively easy: Residents must be 21, pass a gun knowledge check and have no criminal record. By law, Czechs can use their weapons to protect their property or when in danger, although they need to prove they faced a real threat.
The move to arm the populace is being promoted by Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec. He says:
“The terrorist attacks we have seen in Western Europe and elsewhere have increased security concerns among the public. More Czechs are getting firearms licenses and I think that if the situation does not improve in the coming months, then the number of firearms holders will grow.”
As the WaPo notes, the push if for citizens to use guns against terrorists if police are delayed or unable to reach the scene.
But the EU is not in favour:
People across the EU will now have to go through medical checks before getting a license to buy firearms. Online sales will also be limited.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission, called the agreement a “milestone in gun control in the EU. We have fought hard for an ambitious deal that reduces the risk of shootings in schools, summer camps or terrorist attacks with legally held firearms,” he said.
Europe is experiencing a mass wave of immigration of a type seen in the USA . Should Europe too have a Second Amendment to maintain order – “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”?
Or is this all about the right to bear arms if you’re not a Muslim or a refugee?
The post-mortem on George Michael’s body failed to establish a cause of death. There will be further tests. The police are not treating it as suspicious.
But the tabloids know why George Michael died. “Tragic George ‘Killed Himself’,” states the Star’s cover story. “Singer ‘wanted to die’.”
You might think George Michael’s life anything but tragic. Feted, celebrated, admired and adored by many, the singer was a superstar. The Star writes a narrative allegedly fed by a Twitter account apparently linked to Fadi Fawaz, Michael’s boyfriend, who, as the Times notes, found the singer “lying peacefully” in bed at his 16th-century cottage in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
The paper broadcasts the tweets: “the only thing George wanted is to DIE”; “he tried numbers of time to kill himself many times…”; “and finally he managed…” All troubling. And then below a picture of Fadi walking the Star supplies the caption: “Fadi claims he is hacking victim”.
The Sun, which also leads with the story of a tweet, says Fadi Fawaz’s profile has been “quickly deleted”.
He says he didn’t send those tweets.
The Mirror wrings more from “the mystery”. In “Final hours of pop legend” the paper thunders : “GEORGE’S LOVER: I SLEPT IN MY CAR AS HE DIED ALONE.” Farwaz tells the paper: “I did not send those tweets.” The Mirror then says, “It is unclear why he spent the night apart from his 53-year-old lover”. Farwz says, “I fell asleep in my car and I never saw him that night.”
For those of you seeking more official action, it’s worth noting what else the Mirror reports: “Fadi was pictured buying coffee on Christmas Eve from a shop near George’s home… He was wearing sandals and socks.”
Were his feet hacked? Or is it now fashionable to dress like a summering vicar on a Norfolk beach?
The mystery continues.
Posted: 2nd, January 2017 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Chelsea did not break any Premier League rules in their dealings with former player Gary Johnson, the former player who claims he was sexually abused by coach Eddie Heath as a member of the youth team in the 1970s. When Johnson and his lawyers took the matter to Chelsea in 2014, the club Chelsea agreed to pay him £50,000 and told him never to mention the allegations.
Johnson accepted the deal. But was a man who says his childhood was stolen from him badly advised and badly treated?
Chelsea said the club’s board understood it was “usual practice” to include a mutual confidentiality agreement. They noted that Johnson’s solicitors had not objected to the clause. When Johnson went public, Chelsea waived the confidentiality clause.
Eddie Heath is dead. Chelsea have publicly apologised. They say Johnson “suffered unacceptably” after joining Chelsea as an 11-year-old in 1970. You might well ask what an acceptable level of suffering amounts to, and who gages it?
The matter was put before the Premier League. They have found Chelsea clear of any wrongdoing. The Blues will review their procedures and send a copy of their report to The Premier League. The Premier League board says: “After careful consideration, the board has determined that no Premier League rules were broken by the club not reporting this matter to them in 2014. ‘The League has requested that Chelsea agrees to a full safeguarding audit from an independent safeguarding expert. The league has no reason to have any concerns about Chelsea’s current provisions in this area but, given the seriousness of these historical allegations, feels that such a review is an appropriate course of action.”
Says Gary Johnson to the Mirror: “(Chelsea owner) Roman Abramovich may be one of the richest men in football, but he has been very badly advised on this.” Was he the only one who was?
Posted: 23rd, December 2016 | In: Back pages, Chelsea, Reviews, Sports | Comment
To Chicago, where Latasha Eatman has been jailed for 49 days for something she didn’t do. CBS News reports that Eatman was arrested in 1993 on minor marijuana possession charges. Her punishment was to complete a period of community service. But Eatman was unable to comply because the facility to which she’d been detailed was closed and full whenever she turned up. And she turned up on numerous occasions. Eventually a judge excused her from probation.
Fast forward to 2016 and police looking for shops selling contraband cigarettes spot Eatman and run her name through the computer. The machine flags up an outstanding warrant for failure to complete community service. On the strength of the shoddy data and poor admin, police arrest Eatman and locked her up. After ten days in prison, the mother of a six-year-old is brought before the Beak. She tells him what happened and of the previous ruling. But this judge calls her a liar. He orders that Eatman is slammed back in prison and held without bond. For 29 days she remains in choky.
By chance, one Cara Smith, a chief officer at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, is running an audit of first-time offenders locked up in their jail. The authorities realise their error. Whoops!
One day later, Eatman is released.
And how was your day?
Spotter: Reason
Posted: 22nd, December 2016 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Karen Matthews – ‘the UK’s most hated mum’ (source: Daily Mirror) is talking through a “pal” with an impeccable memory to the Daily Mirror.
In “I need plastic surgery for my own safety” readers see a picture of Karen, the woman convicted of kidnapping her daughter for cash. Like most of you, we too had forgotten what Karen Matthews looked like. and with her dyed hair, gained weigh, new name, Bible group mates and living far away from her native Dewsbury, it would have been easy to have ignored here. But the Mirror somehow managed to spot her and her anonymous friend, and now Karen says she is living in fear.
Over page 4 and 5, we are told in an emotive headline, “People scream nonce at me in the street… but I think I deserve everything I get.”
Karen is “trying to build a new life for herself…but there are clearly many who are not ready to forgive or forget”. Given that headline, one of them seems to be Karen herself.
People have thrown fireworks at Karen (bangers, since you ask). She is “hounded”. So she needs to have her face rearranged. Well, a bit of it at least: “I would love to get plastic surgery, make my nose small so nobody would recognise me.” She was “attacked” in prison. “They hit me with a snowball,” says Karen.
The Mirror says on Page 12 that Karen Matthew getting plastic surgery on the NHS is “a question for public debate”. And Karen “deserves a fair hearing”.
Lest you still not think the Mirror is spinning a story around Karen Matthews to flog you her memoirs, Lucy Thornton tells us: “My sympathy then loathing for Karen has turned to pity.”
And if there’s enough interest, it’ll turn to a book deal.
Posted: 13th, December 2016 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
As the internet watches footage of a man punching a kangaroo in the face (see below), we’ve been looking at the story of the Glasgow Celtic fan who throw a burger at a police horse before the Champions’ League match at Manchester City’s Etihad stadium.
The fan was arrested and fined £90 for a public order offence.
(The horse did not eat the ‘beefburger’. Horses are not cannibals.)
Minds turn to April 2013, when Newcastle United fan Barry Rogerson, 45, threw something else at a police horse working at the match: a punch. He told the tabloids: “I reacted stupidly but I did not go out to attack a horse. I love animals. I’ve got three dogs, a fish pond out the back and I feed foxes across the road.”
Maybe it’s time police adopted the football clubs’ policy of not using real animals, but mascots? Why should animals be hurt when people are willing to put there beaks and snouts in the firing line.
“We all thought he was having a laugh, but then he called us a bunch of “c****” and after a few words exchanged he waddled off back to the Family Stand,” said one Torquay fan of club mascot Gilbert The Gull. “At the end of the game, Gilbert came over again and in front of us on the pitch, he gave the ‘come on then’ body language towards us and wouldn’t stop until hiding behind the stewards and again waddling off as we moved towards the exits.”
Others have behaved worse, like Chaddy the Owl (Oldham Athletic), who set about the Blackpool mascot. Blackpool press officer Matthew Williams told us: “I was in the press box and they were play-fighting, when Chaddy waded in and seemed to be kicking 10 bells out of Bloomfield Bear.”
And now for the kangaroo puncher. He’s Greig Tonkins, 34, an elephant keeper at Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, New South Wales. He was out hunting wild pigs when his dog was grabbed in a headlock by a roo.
Tonkins wins by a technical knock out.
Kangaroos are feisty. In June a roo broke a woman’s breast implants. “Just out of the corner of my eye I’ve seen this kangaroo up on this ledge,” Mrs Heinrich told News Ltd in Australia. “I thought, ‘he’s cute’, and then he jumped on top of me and used me to launch off and on to my girlfriend. [The implants] are silicon and saline, and the saline will just go through your body but the silicon now congeals so it stays within the area but it’s very painful, it’s up there with cracked ribs.”
Greig had best take care. And watch out for those wild pigs. They’re huge.
We’re gonna need a bigger fist.
Posted: 7th, December 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Ant is delighted
“Find out what Scarlett Moffat will not next,” says the Daily Star on its front page. Judging by the picture of the Googlebox star and now I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! winner in her bra and knickers, we’d says ‘put some cloths on’ or ‘catch a cold’. On page 4 and 5, Scarlett is a “Celebridey”. Aha! She’s going to get married!
Scarlett Moffatt is “heading down the aisle”, says the paper in an “exclusive”. Well, it is to anyone not following Luke Crodden, Scarlett’s boyfriend, on twittter, and didn’t see him tweet: “I think I wanna marry you @ScarlettMoffatt.” If that was a proposal, it’s one Scarlett didn’t see on account of her being in a televised jungle clearing with neither phone signal nor phone.
The Mirror, which also leads with Scarlett, says she’s in line for a £1m deal. In an “exclusive” Halina Watts, says Scarlett has “revealed her big plan for the future – to team up with Ant and Dec. Imagine handing out with those boys all day and having a laugh,”says Scarlett, exclusively in the Mirror. “I’d love it.”
That’s not all that exclusive to Daily Star readers who read the exact same dream on November 22, then billed as her “threesome” with Ant and Dec. Scarlett fans will have read that before when she said it in her book published last April.
Exclusive – Daily Mirror December 5 2016
Not exclusive – Daily Star November 22, 2016
Over in the Star, we read that Scarlett is due to earn £1m in endorsements and TV deals. As well she might. Last year’s I’m A Celebrity winner Vicky Pattison told the Mirror in March 2016: “I’ve just about hit the 7-figure mark for the first time. But I’m being wise with my money. I’ve been very well advised and I’m turning myself into a bit of a property tycoon.”
Find out what Scarlett does next by visiting her local estate agency.
Posted: 5th, December 2016 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child.
Having led with “important” news on the hunt for the missing child only yesterday, the Sun makes not a single mention of the child. The Express, however, leads with the story on its cover. “NEW TWIST IN POLICE HUNT FOR MADELEINE McCANN,” declares the paper, the words hanging by a familiar picture of the child.
On Page 7, we get to the news. Below stories about Scarlett Moffatt winning I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! and a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease, we read: “Did people-traffickers snatch Maddy?” To which the only sensible answer is: Dunno. Did they?
New funding for the police search for Madeleine McCann will investigate a tip that she could have been kidnapped by people smugglers. The child “may have been photographed with her parents son the beach by a ‘spotter’ for a gang,” says the paper. Or may not have been. We don’t know. It’s a theory. A “police source” is quoted: “It raises hope that she could still be alive.” After that a “friend” of Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann is quoted: “There is definite hard evidence that this is happening and they have looked into the fact someone was targeting children and may well have been sterling children to order.”
In the Star, on Page 15, readers are told, “MADDIE: 4 MOTHS TO FIND HER.” That’s how long British police have been given to locate the child who vanished in May 2007. The paper says “detectives have changed their minds about what happened “. They no longer believe she was “snatched by burglars during botched raids on the family’s holiday apartment”. They now think child-traffickers may be behind the disappearance. A “source” unnamed, as ever – says this is the “last roll of the dice”.
It’s the “last chance” to find the child, says the Mail on its page 14. Police want to “work out if she was kidnapped to order”. The paper adds that “no trace of her has ever been found”. Readers are told that the parents “were ultimately forced to raise funds for teams of private detective to chase a barrage of often spurious tip-offs”. And that the the “child trafficking theory was first raised in 2007 by private detectives who believed there could have been gang ‘spotters’ working on the resort.”
Believed. Could. But no facts.
As for four months to find the child, the Mail says when the public funding for the police search ends on April 1 2017, more money will be provided if “investigators have evidence that the few remaining leads are worth pursuing”.
Madeleine McCann went missing in 2007. Such are the facts.
Posted: 5th, December 2016 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child.
The Sun (front page): ” MADDIE GANG PROBE Cops given cash to probe ‘important’ new lead that Maddie was snatched by people trafficking gang.”
Important enough for the paper’s front page – but not ‘important’ enough to avoid those inverted commas.
The rest of the Press follow the Sun’s lead.
The Mirror: ‘Madeleine McCann cops chasing ‘important new lead’ as investigation reaches “last roll of the dice”.’
The Indy: “Scotland Yard set to investigate ‘important’ new lead in disappearance of Madeleine McCann.”
Daily Mail: “Scotland Yard given extra funding to probe ‘important’ new lead over theory that Madeleine McCann was kidnapped by trafficking gang.”
It’s important. Maybe.
Over pages 4 and 5, readers are told more.
The development is being taken so seriously that senior Whitehall officials have been briefed by the Met on its progress.
Well, the hunt for the missing child has cost a lot of public money. Maybe the bean counters are worried about a lack of value for their investment?
And what of the breakthrough?
Detectives are following a tip that a gang of European traffickers snatched the tot after taking pictures of her. It could end up proving that she is still alive, nearly ten years after she vanished.
Everyone sane would like this story to have a happy ending. But how can anything prove the child is alive other than her being found?
As with so much to do with this story, an unnamed source is quoted:
A source said: “This is an important new line of inquiry which could provide an explanation on whether Madeleine was abducted and transported away. It raises hope that she could still be alive.”
Surely we only know if the new tip is important if it comes up with evidence that explains what happened to Madeleine McCann.
Retired Yard detective Colin Sutton said the extra money for the last line of inquiry means “there must be something worthwhile”.
Who needs evidence when you’re a retired detective?
The Sun adds: “Reports following Madeleine’s disappearance suggested she could have been taken to Belgium or Morocco in North Africa.”
But we have seen no evidence that she was.
But this is interesting:
The Met’s clubs and vice unit received a tip that the ring had placed an order for a “young girl” just three days before Madeleine went missing. Leicestershire Police, who at that point led the Operation Task effort to help find Madeleine, were also informed.
Is there any evidence to support the story?
In 2011, police in Portugal smashed a trafficking ring snatching young women and underage girls in the Algarve and Aveiro, in the north of the country.
The Portugal Resident has more:
An operation to crack down on human trafficking has led to the arrests of 12 men identified as being part of a criminal network in the Algarve and Aveiro, in the north of Portugal.The ring is believed to be responsible for the sexual exploitation of many young women in the Algarve, some of them underage, who were being coerced into acting as prostitutes in the region
Go on:
During the operation, 30 Romanian women were identified as possible victims of human trafficking.
The SEF, Portugal’s immigration and border service, added:
“The movement of the prostitutes between different networks hindered the police and judicial authorities in being able to conduct a criminal investigation but authorities in Spain, Italy, the UK and Germany cooperated with us with the assistance of Europol in this case.”
Algarve Social Democrat (PSD) MP Mendes Bota was unimpressed with the suspects’ treatment:
Speaking to Lusa News Agency on Monday this week, Mendes Bota claimed that, “a few days after they were arrested”, the majority of the individuals detained by SEF Immigration Officers during the February bust “were released by a judge who decided that they should await their trial, who knows when [the trial will commence], unrestrained.”
We can’t find any news on any trail.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 4th, December 2016 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Stage school kids and pushy parents, listen up. Stop sharpening your elbows and start smiling beatifically.Lady Gaga has arrived in London. And she has a message, as told in the Guardian:
Singer says money and celebrity have been put on a pedestal, and the happiest people are in the poorest parts of the world
And stinking rich, super-celebrated, fame-hungry Lady Gaga, whose every outfit and manifestation seems to be the product of a focus group, should know.
Lady Gaga has denounced the evils of money and fame as she promoted her new album on the roof of one of Britain’s biggest shopping centres.
Lady Gaga looked down on the masses and told them to be as happy as pigs in the brown stuff. She might even envy you. Only recently Lady Gaga was so upset she touched a rubbish truck outside Trump Tower. The Guardian holds its nose and writes:
The singer, who has an estimated net worth of more than $250m (£200m), performed for an audience of competition winners at Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, on Thursday night.
The revolution will be endorsed.
Posted: 3rd, December 2016 | In: Celebrities, Reviews | Comment
In its front-page farewell to Andrew Sachs, known chiefly for his work as Manuel, the well-intentioned and hapless Spanish waiter in Fawlty Towers, the Mail juxtaposes the actor’s portrait by the news “MIGRANT NUMBERS HIT NEW RECORDS”.
The Mail fails to say how many migrants hail from Barcelona.
PS: Andrew Sachs was born in Berlin in 1930.
Posted: 2nd, December 2016 | In: Celebrities, Reviews, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment
