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.
A handy guide to dealing with online abuse: print out and keep
Have you been called names online by a mentally negligible with access to the internet? Has some no-mark tweeted something you disagree with? Were you offended? Well, before you call the police and become a nark, take a look at this handy guide to dealing with online abuse:
We’d add ‘ gold them up to ridcule’ to the chart.
But then it was brought to our attention by Brendan O’Neill, who is a*@*£$! !%****t ****!
Exam stress caused railway employee to masturbate over sleeping pregnant passenger
“I was studying for the test when I started to have unwanted thoughts,” Manny Romos, 35, told MTA police. “I began to touch myself when I felt ill with a headache and stressed, the next thing I knew I was masturbating.”
He was not alone. Not too far away a woman was sleeping on the Metro-North Railroad. She tells the court:
“My daily commute from New York City to New Haven was really tough, and especially, being six months pregnant back then, I really, really felt tired. But after the incident, I never snoozed or slept again on the train, since I was afraid that it could happen again. Considering that this horrible event happened during working time, I really think his future employers should know about what happened … This clearly was a sexual attack, and he should have a record of this.”
Ramos masturbated on her. When she saw him. He zipped up and declared, “It wasn’t me.”
The judge sentenced Ramos to a two-year suspended term, three years’ probation and to sign the register as a sex offender.
Ban kosher, halal, veils and circumcision and stop the barbabric Jew and the cruel Muslim
The Times‘ “Environment Editor” wants to tell Times readers about religious slaughter of animals. You might think this a religious matter, a story based on Jewish and Muslim covenants with God. But it’s not. It’s about welfare and civilised forms of animal slaughter. It’s about making our country’s environment better. Just as the calls to ban circumcision are not an attack on Judaism or Islam but a sane move to end barbarism. It’s all about being better human beings. Got it?
First they came for the clothes.
Then a court in Cologne, Germany, came for the circumcisisors, “to respect fundamental rights of children”. Sure Genesis says: “And ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt Me and you.” But the Council of Europe says cicumcision is “a violation of the physical integrity of children”. It says all 47 nations in the Council’s zone will “initiate a public debate, including intercultural and interreligious dialogue, aimed at reaching a large consensus on the rights of children to protection against violations of their physical integrity according to human rights standards”. Member states should “adopt specific legal provisions to ensure that certain operations and practices will not be carried out before a child is old enough to be consulted”.
No snips. No Jews. Sever the link between parents and child. Your God is dead.
Jonathan Sacks wrote:
Did the court know that circumcision is the most ancient ritual in the history of Judaism, dating back almost 4,000 years to the days of Abraham? Did it know that Spinoza, not religious but together with John Locke the father of European liberalism, wrote that brit mila in and of itself had the power to sustain Jewish identity through the centuries? Did it know that banning mila was the route chosen by two of the worst enemies the Jewish people ever had, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV and the Roman emperor Hadrian, both of whom set out to extinguish not only Jews but also Judaism? Either the court knew these things or it did not. If it did not, then how was it competent to assess the claim of religious liberty? If it did, then there are judges in Germany quite willing to say to religious Jews, in effect, “If you don’t like it, leave.”
So. Stop it. Stop the Jew.
Then they come for the halal and kosher meat.
Because human spiritualism takes second place to the feelings of a chicken reared for food. Because adults and parents are not as important as the State’s children. One set of beliefs offends another.
But it is in no way racist of bigoted to single out the halal and kosher chickens; it’s an animal rights issue, dummy.
You ban circumcision not because you hate Jews and seek to undo what they believe to be part of an ancient agreement with God; you ban it because the kids are being abused. You look at the Muslim woman in their veil, portray her clothing as a stain on her human rights and you ban it.
Did the Dutch get it right when they banned kosher and halal meat? If these arcane Others will not yield to the culture of goodness, the trusty Dutch will force them to, it being what the dumb animals deserve. It’s not racist. It’s not intolerant. It’s just, you know, correct.
In the film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), the Nazis portray Jews as rejoicing in the suffering of animals. They were not “civislied Europeans”. They did love the cow and the hen like noble Germans. It’s not racism – it’s just doing what’s right and decent.
The Times then trails its story like this:
Muslims calls? Muslim demands are leading to more unstunned animals being killed for meat? It’s an odd headline.
Online readers then get this news of “lambs to slaughter”:
The image is very much that these religious methods are cruel and wrong. And, don’t forget, it’s an environmental issue. Adelaide surgeon Dr Paul Cowie once championed a new environmentalist cause:
We will save many litres of water if more men were circumcised because there would be less fiddling in the shower to keep it clean.
Stop the Jew and the Muslim and save the children, the animals and the planet.
The Times goes on:
The number of animals killed in halal abattoirs without being stunned first has soared because of campaigning by Muslims for traditional methods of slaughter. Halal and kosher abattoirs cut the throats of 2.4 million sheep and goats without stunning in the latest recorded year, an increase of 60 per cent, according to the British Veterinary Association’s analysis of surveys by the Food Standards Agency.
And:
The agency found that, in halal premises, 37 per cent of sheep and goats, 25 per cent of cattle and 16 per cent of poultry were killed without being stunned, a procedure that renders the animals insensitive to pain before they are slaughtered.
So they say…
Cattle take up to two minutes to lose consciousness after their throats are cut, meaning that they might experience pain for that period. Poultry can take two and half minutes or more to lose consciousness and sheep 20 seconds, according to the European Food Safety Authority’s scientific panel on animal health and welfare.
The increase has prompted leading vets to renew their call for an end to religious exemptions from animal welfare rules. John Blackwell, the BVA’s president, said that the practice “unnecessarily compromises animal welfare at the time of death”.
So says the vet. And then it gets really nasty:
In an interview with The Times last year he called for religious slaughter to be banned if Muslims and Jews refused to adopt a more humane method of killing.
End your traditions. Stop being a Jew and a Muslim. Be more humane. Be less barbaric.
The BVA’s petition on the government’s website calling for a ban on non-stun slaughter yesterday passed its goal of 100,000 signatures, which is the number which the government says may prompt a debate in the House of Commons.
Listen to the non-Jew and non-Muslim and become a better Jew or Muslim.
Mr Blackwell said that the response to the petition showed the strength of public opinion on the issue. “We urge the chairman of the backbench business committee to honour the epetition and pledge that an end to non-stun slaughter will be debated at the first opportunity in the next parliament,” he said.
If this does not strike you as wrong. If this does not strike you as intolerant, illiberal and an assault on Jews and Muslims. If you think the State knows better than ancient religions, parents and God. If you think that then you are a dangerous fool…
Posted: 30th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (3)
Local News watch: Plymouth Herald delivers compassionate killing with a free sausage rolls
Big news in the Plymouth Herald:
As @drbramwell notes:
Nothing like a tragic local news story to make you peckish. Check the small print.
Hey, ma, you know how you love sausage rolls, well, try this…
Murder online: the logic that links viewing with doing is shaky
Jamie Reynolds, 23, murdered 17-year-old Georgia Williams. He was sentenved to life imprisonment.
In sentencing Reynolds at Stafford Crown Court, Mr Justice Alan Wilkie told him he “had the potential to progressing to become a serial killer”.
The Daily Mail notes:
After his arrest, detectives found 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography on his computer. Some of the images were doctored pictures of girls and women he knew, with ropes digitally drawn around their necks. He had penned up to 40 short stories with graphic descriptions of sexual violence against women and had also written a script detailing a girl’s murder.
Reynolds planned for murder:
After taking a series of innocent pictures of the teenager, Reynolds persuaded her to stand on the box with the rope around her neck. He then bound Georgia’s hands together before kicking the box away causing the pretty teenage RAF cadet to asphyxiate. After she died, Reynolds – who hoarded hardcore ‘snuff’ movies featuring sexual killings – stripped Georgia and abused her lifeless body.
The Mail’s reference to the victim’s look is absurd. The paper adds:
In court it emerges that Reynolds began hunting for clips of women being strangled six years before the attack. When he was arrested police found 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography on his computer.
Reynolds had previous. It emerged in court Reynolds was handed a police caution in 2008, aged 17, for trying to strangle another teenage girl.
The IPCC has announced that Devon and Cornwall Police are investigating West Mercia’s handling of the case.
But what about the porn? The Mail makes a link between it and Reynolds’ actions:
Lord Thomas, who threw out Reynolds’ appeal against his whole life term last year, said the case ‘left me in no doubt at all that the peddling of pornography on the internet had a dramatic effect on the individual’.
He added: ‘What is available to download and to see is simply horrific and it played a real part in the way in which this particular murder was carried out.’
The Mail then editorialises:
He told the Commons justice committee the crime in May 2013 had been influenced – and intensified – by pornography. It was hard to believe, he said, that Reynolds could have come up with his sickening plan without first reading about similar fantasies or offences online.
But he could have read books, magazines of even the Mail’s report on how he committed his crime:
He even set up a homemade gallows made from an upturned red recycling box beneath a rope which was attached to the loft hatch.
Got that? Ok, now away you go.
Jamie Reynolds is a depraved killer. He looked and hoarded repulsive images. So. Eveyrone who looks at such eimages must be suspected of being a killer-in-waiting. they are guilty in thought. And that goes for Daily Mail readers who can enjoy such stories as:
And that’s if Mail readers aren’t being invited to ogle pre-teen girls.
Jamie Reynolds didn’t just look at porn. He also made up stories. But can only killer be made to represent all of us? If you don’t trust humanity it can:
Michael Ellis, a barrister and Tory MP, said the Lord Chief Justice’s evidence was significant because judges knew better than almost anyone about the driving forces behind offences…
He added: ‘If the impression he has been left with, having dealt with some of the most serious cases, that extreme pornography is influencing some crimes, then I think that is very persuasive.’
It might be persuasive. But that doesn’t make it right. The Mail then adds:
In October 2012, Mark Bridger was jailed for a whole-life term after being found guilty of killing five-year-old April Jones a year earlier. He had searched for images of child abuse and rape.
And in May 2013, Stuart Hazell was jailed for murdering 12-year-old Tia Sharp after scouring the internet for vile child porn using terms such as ‘violent forced rape’ and ‘incest’.
The link between what you see and what you do is flimsy. Do video games make you violent? Did video nasties turn the sane into rapists and human flesh eaters? Those 1980s video nasties are now sold as classic movies. The logic that links viewing with doing is shaky.
In 1930 Sergei Eisenstein was bemused as to why the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) bbanned his Battleship Potemkin, appraising the censors:
“One of them is blind and probably deals with the silent films; another one is deaf and so gets the sound films; the third one chose to die while I was in London.”
So ban it. Ban the video nasties. Ban the computer games that look so real. Ban the porn. Prevent everyone from seeing lest individuals confuse entertainment for reality and run amuck. People are so slack-jawed and empty that watching a film will turn them and you into a murderer. People do not think for themselves. The censors will view it, decide on its worth and ban it.
What a terrible view of humanity we are being sold.
We should tolerate individual fantasies that are not acted upon with harmful consequences. Don’t ban it. Debate it. Hold it up for discussion, mockery, riducle and question.
Posted: 29th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
No. An eight-year-old girl did not find the cure for cancer in the Daily Mail
Well, has a “girl of eight found a cancer cure”? The Daily Mail wants to know on its page 5.
Questions in the form of headlines can be answered very simply with a ‘No’. But let’s look at the Mail’s story:
In most families, dinner table conversation is restricted to what happened at school or whether homework has been completed. But Michael Lisanti asked his eight-year-old daughter how she would cure cancer, and it seems she may have got it right.
May.
Camilla Lisanti suggested using antibiotics, ‘like when I have a sore throat’. Her parents, a husband-wife cancer research team were sceptical at first but tested out her theory in their Manchester University lab. And to their surprise, several cheap and widely-used antibiotics killed the most dangerous cancer cells.
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Free speech: Satire is perhaps one of the most important gifts we have
Lawrence Krauss, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, on free speech:
Hate speech involves people, not ideas. No idea should be sacred in the modern world. Instead, in order for us to progress as a species, every claim, every idea should be subject to debate, intelligent discussion, and when necessary ridicule. Satire is perhaps one of the most important gifts we have to inspire us to re-examine our own lives and our own ideologies. If every other area of human endeavor is open to ridicule, then certainly so should religion. The notion that a cartoon, which presents an image of a historical figure, is so blasphemous to provoke violence is repugnant to anyone who believes that free and intelligent discourse is the basis of a civilized world.
This means that we need to encourage even ridicule of the sacred Qur’an in the public media. The more frequently and openly this appears, the less threatening it will seem, and the more acceptable it will be for believers to actually intellectually engage rather than emotionally and violently act.
They all are Charlie Hebdo. But none want to be him…
Phone Hacking: 50 famous faces line up claims against the Daily Mirror and Sunday People
You despise Rupert Murdoch. You cheered when the News of the World was removed from the newsagents’ shelves.
Did you cheer when the Metropolitan Police hacked into the phone records of the Sun (it wanted to discover the source of the ‘Plebgate’ story ) and the Mail on Sunday? The Met wanted to discover the source of the MoS story that Lib Dem cabinet minister Chris Huhne got his then wife Vicky Pryce to take the blame for his speeding offences.
It’s fine and legal when the police use awful Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to hack newspapers. But it is just awful when tabloid journalists hack phones to find a story they deem to be in the public interest. This is ‘irresponsible’ journalism. The politicians and right-minded gentleman of the Press and the illiberal Hacked Off pressure group prefer ‘responsible’ journalism. The powers that be will tell you what is and what is not ok and mortally correct.
When David Cameron said “while it’s vital that a free press can tell truth to power, it is equally important that those in power can tell truth to the press” did you think the world had been stood on its head?
So. How do you react to news that Trinity Mirror is facing a fresh wave of phone-hacking compensation claims?
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Daily Mail scare stories: The Pill gives you brain cancer and the NHS approves sex with 10-year-olds
Health Tuesday: Anorak’s look at news ways to fall ill and die in the Daily Mail’s mid-week illness special.
Page 5: “How popular hayfever pills could raise Alzheimer’s risk”
Or could not.
Page 9: “Contraceptive implants for girl as young as ten”
In the past five years four ten-year-olds, “one aged 11 and 53 aged 12” have been fitted with the devices. Why? Ollie Gillman and Sophie Borland can’t find out, what with ppatient confidentiality. So. They guess..
“…the implant would be fitted only if there were serious concerns over the exploitation and abuse of a vulnerable child”.
So. Rather than removing the child to palce of safety , the NHS just does them up with drugs? Really?
The Mail then quotes a “senior GP from Leicester”, “one area where girls of ten were given devices.” No. Not girls. The Mail found one 10-year-old.
The implant releases progesterone. The NHS explains:
Progesterone (Proh-jest-er-rone) is a medicine which is used in premenstrual syndrome and post-natal depression.
So. The drugs could be salving crippling period pains or acute hormone imbalance, leading to, say, severe anxiety? But who nees facts when news that the NHS is encouraging children to have sex.
Page 32-33: “Why Were We All Misdiagnosed?”
As more and more of us are told we’ve an irritable bowel, how doctors may be missing problems that are evern WORSE
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Teenage, Muslim, Geordie racists go ‘Jew hunting’ in Newcastle
At Newcastle Crown Court the victim of a racist beating tells us:
“I feel shaken and unsafe to walk the streets in my own community. I have never experienced fear and terror like it and I have no doubt I was attacked for being Jewish.”
Prosecutor Bridie Smurthwaite:
“The defendants had deliberately travelled to the area in Gateshead where there were members of the Jewish community with the particular intention of targeting someone from that community. The Crown say the victim was targeted because he was wearing traditional Jewish attire, a black suit and white shirt and a black hat.”
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Posted: 27th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Humanity wins: Auschwitz survivor Dora bathes her granddaughter
Commandment 11: Never forget.
Commandment 12: Don’t be a bystander.
Madeleine McCann: Mark Warner pulls out of Praia da Luz and Amaral’s libel case rumbles on
Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child in the news.
The Daily Star (Page 21): “McCann Blow Over Cop’s Maddie Book”
The story beings:
“The top police officer in the Madeleine McCann case expect her parents to lose their £1m libel battle against him”
Portugal achieved its freedom of speech laws after a period of brutal dicatorship. And that should be ‘former “top police officer”.
The Daily Mail online reads the Star and adds:
McCanns ‘set to lose £1m libel action’ over claims they faked Madeleine’s disappearance to cover-up her death, says police chief who made allegations in book..
The former police chief who published astonishing claims that Kate and Gerry McCann faked their daughter Madeleine’s disappearance to cover up her death expects them to lose their libel battle against him, it was claimed today.
Goncalo Amaral is reported to have said the early rulings by the judge in the case suggested her verdict may be ‘favourable’ to him.
The 57-year-old told Portuguese television on Friday that Maria Emilia Melo e Castro’s indications so far led him to believe he would win the case, according to the Daily Star.
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Posted: 26th, January 2015 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment
ISIS football team recruits five footy flops: Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Figo are not imposters
Are ISIS buliding a football team? Monday’s Daily Star leads with the news: “5 footie aces are secret jihadis.”
A strawl poll of Anorak Towers’ experts reveals the five we think are aiming to destroy Western civilisation:
John Terry
Luis Suarez
Joe Mourinho
Robin Van Persie
Pepe
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Transfer Balls: Arsenal wannabe Loic Perrin wants Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpoool, Spurs switch
Transfer Balls: What news on Loic Perrin, the St Etienne player linked in print with a move to Arsenal. He is (at the time of writing) one of the 65 players linked with a moves to Arsenal this January.
The Mirror catches up with Perrin news by telling readers:
Liam Corless has news. Well, the headline above his name does. The story beneath the screamer contains not a single menion of Perrin. The headline is everything. It is utter, utter balls.
One day earlier the Daily Star did have some words from Perrin:
“Arsenal have not contacted St Etienne, so it makes no sense to talk about it anyway. And I haven’t had any news from my side either, which cannot be a good sign. The fact that I have been included in the French national squad has alerted certain clubs. Great.”
Look out for the Mirror hwadline: “Perrin wants Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpoool, Spurs switch” soon*…
* See above.
Jon Venables’ dating profile: Everton, GSOH and sexual deviancy get the sleuths hunting
Right now hundreds of people are scouring dating websites for Jon Venables, one of Jamie Bulger’s two killers. Find the man will nto easy, given that he has new identity and no longer looks like the 10-year-old who sat in the dock.
Go on a date with Venables. Then sell your story.
The Mirror reports that Venables is not on a dating website for ghouls who fancy killers. He’s on a mainstream site open to anyone:
Jon Venables has joined a popular dating website – where women who contact him have no way of knowing they are letting the James Bulger murderer into their lives.
Well, no. He’s not allowed to reveal his true identity. He has to live a lie. The Mirror does not include this salient point. So. Anyone who meets him socially won’t know he’s Jon Venables.
We cannot also identify the website, which has many young single and divorced mums among its users, who will not know his background if they contact – and possibly meet – the killer.
Well, anyone can be anyone online:
* Mary Kay Beckman first met Wade Ridley after the online service paired the two up in September 2010, and knew him for only 10 days before breaking up with him. Four months later, according to Courthouse News Service, on the night of Jan. 21, 2011, Ridley hid in her garage and eventually attacked her, stabbing her 10 times and kicking her in the head…
*45 and date-raped: One woman’s online dating warning…
The Mirror adds:
…but experts told of their shock that he is allowed free rein to trawl the web chatting up young single mums – just five years after admitting downloading and distributing child abuse material, for which he was jailed for two years.
Is he free? Is he not being supervised? Is he not meeting his handler? The Mirror’s “expert” is guessing.
The Sunday Mirror discovered Venables inviting women to contact him online in a joint probe with TV investigative reporter and child protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas. He said: “The horrific nature of James’s murder should mean that his killers should remain under constant supervision and be unable to freely roam the internet.”
But we don’t know that he isn’t.
The Mirror then provides clues to help sleuths track down Venables.
In his dating profile, Venables claims his best quality is his sense of humour. He tells of his love of music and football – he supports Everton – and asks women to contact him via his social media account.
So. If we all find out who is is, then he will need yet another identity. How is this helpful?
Venables pays a monthly fee to be featured on the dating site and is able to exchange messages and photographs with any women who choose to contact him. The site also has a feature allowing him to video himself and share clips with any of the site’s thousands of members, some of whom have young children.
There was outrage when it emerged in 2013 that Venables had been released from jail after downloading and distributing child abuse images after posing as a mum on a chatroom online.
Videos he downloaded showed girls said to appear as young as eight being raped. Other images found on Venables’s computer involved children as young as two.
And after that, and the story that he’s been shagging his hander at Red Bank prison, maybe the justice department is being litle more cautious with Vanables.
No story of Venables is complete without a word from his victim’s mother. In the Mail, Denise Fergus is quoted:
Denise Fergus, 47, said it was frightening women may have unwittingly contacted Jon Venables without having any idea of his true identity… “It’s quite disgusting that a child murderer and paedophile can have access to online dating websites. I feel so sorry for the girls and women who do not know who they’re chatting to. He’s capable of anything. Who’s to say that he’s not prowling the internet, looking for mothers and targeting their children? That’s the most frightening thing.”
Well, he’s under observation. He can look at legal material. He can talk to people. He can do anything that does not break the law and the terms of his sentence.
“The Parole Board should have some kind of system where they can watch what he is doing on the internet. He seems to be left to his own devices and getting away with it all the time.”
Seems to be. But isn’t.
Mr Williams-Thomas then adds:
‘The thing about child sex offenders is that their behaviour does not change – he will always be a child sex offender.’
Why is the sex now seen as more notable than the killing? We live in changed times, where child sexual abuse is always the top story.
In other news, Jon Venables is a cottage industry
A prison officer has pleaded guilty to selling information about one of James Bulger’s killers to the Sun newspaper. David Hobbs, 67 and from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to misconduct in a public office between February and April 2010. The charge is understood to relate to a single payment of £750 for information about Jon Venables while he was in prison. No story was published as a result…
Last year, ex-prison officer Scott Chapman was convicted of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office for selling details about Jon Venables to a journalist for up to £40,000…
A former News of the World journalist, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for the same offence.
The journalist said:
“He had been taken in by the prison service, given millions of pounds for a new identity and then repeat-offended, and the prison service deal with it by making his life as comfortable as possible. Public interest. What sort of message are they sending out to him that it’s OK to look at two-year-olds being raped?..
“I think I would have been thinking about the public interest of the story rather than the impact on Jon Venables’s mental state.I would have thought the fact he had to live with the fact he murdered a two-year-old would have more affected his mental state than a piece in the News of the World that he may or may not have seen.”
The child who killed a child never moves on…
Posted: 26th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
GCHQ hoax caller identified as well-educated man on drugs: George Osborne is away
In “Con Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, the Sun tells how a hoax caller managed to speak with the cheif of GCHQ and David Cameron. The Sun knows this because the – get this – hoax caller called the Sun and told them about it.
The caller, described as “boozy”, managed to contact “top spy” Robert Hannigan, Cameron before calling the Sun “to brag about it”.
He boasted he was drunk and on drugs but still got to speak to the chief of the GCHQ surveillance base.
But it has all been confirmed by a spokeswoman in a, er, phone call:
“The Prime Minister ended the call when it became clear it was a hoax. In neither instance was sensitive information disclosed. Both GCHQ and No10 take security seriously and both are currently reviewing procedures.”
That spokesman, of course, could be a fake. But the anonymous caller can be totally trusted, telling the Sun:
“I’ve just made complete monkeys out of GCHQ. I’ve got the mobile number of the director. What’s more, I am off my face on booze and cocaine. I had some spliffs too.I’ve been up all night. I’m utterly wasted. Hilarious.”
But the best line comes from the Sun:
The man — who sounded well-educated and from the South East…
We’re looking for a well-educated Home Counties man on drugs. Seal the doors at Westminster. This looks like an inside job…
Posted: 26th, January 2015 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Rod Liddle on The Sun’s Page 3 and the prigs who want it banned
Rod Liddle looks at The Sun’s Page 3, and the prigs who want it banned.
To my mind, Page 3 is is bit naff, a throw back to the say when old the tall and athletic could reach the newsagent’s porn shelf, ‘Continental’ was a euphemism for hardcore and not better coffee and Denmark was the place of adolescents’ sticky dreams.
The Sun could just as easily put one of these Bamforth postcards on Page 3.
Je Suis Grub Street: Salman Rushie and the But Brigade love Charlie Hebdo but hate the British Tabloids
Salman Rushdie has been taking on the ‘but Brigade’, whose newfound committment to free speech after the Charlie Hebdo massacre has been steadily vanishing, who see moral equivalence and relativism in the murders:
“The French satirical tradition has always been very pointed and very harsh, and still is, you know. The thing that I really resent is the way in which these, our dead comrades … who died using the same implement that I use, which is a pen or pencil, have been almost immediately vilified and called racists and I don’t know what else… Both John F Kennedy and Nelson Mandela use the same three-word phrase which in my mind says it all, which is, ‘Freedom is Indivisible’. You can’t slice it up, otherwise it ceases to be freedom. You can dislike Charlie Hedbo. But the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak.”
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Posted: 25th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Morgan Freeman nails Black History Month and ends racism, just like Rosa Parks and her fried chicken did
Morgan Freedman nails Black History M0nth and the obsession with division:
The Republican National Committee has congratulated civil rights hero Rosa Parks for her role in ending racism”.
Meanwhile…over at NBC it’s fried chicken fot all the folks (via):
Such are the facts…
Posted: 25th, January 2015 | In: Celebrities, Reviews | Comment
Asbos for vocal victims who attack Muslims: rally for truth
News in the Daily Mail is that a “Muslim gang” has been “barred from gathering in large groups and burning flags after violent outbursts at rallies led by hate preacher Anjem Choudary”.
Choudary is a showy irritant, the familiar face of British Islamism on the telly because gurning loons Omar Barki – the ‘Tottenham Taliban’ – and Abu Hamza – the one-eyed, no-handed purple people eater – have left the country. The British media interviewed all the men who shout at pigeons in the precinct to be the face of Islamism UK and came up with nothing very frightening. So. Image-conscious Choudary stepped forward, a man who ticks boxes to be a radical Islamist but fails to be the full tonto.
Back to the Mail’s news that 12 men have received Asbos.
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World Economic Forum Watch: 10 messages from Davos to make the 99% puke
The great and good are meeting in Davos. It’s the World Economic Forum, dummy, the rich and powerful’s AGM. It’s here they elect what free gifts banks can give customers, who Prince Andrew shags and if attacking Mars is worth it.
We’ve had look at some of the tweets and news emerging from on high.
Grab a bucket. It’s a puke-arama!
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Posted: 23rd, January 2015 | In: Money, Reviews | Comments (2)
Watching The Sun: Page 3 turns to the often naked Miranda Kerr
The Sun follows it’s return to Page 3 with Nicole from Bournemouth with a Page 3 double spread.
It’s Miranda Kerr. And the shocking news is that the topless supermodel isn’t topless. Because she is nearly always topless.
The Daily Mirror is now the same as the Sun for it too has Miranda Kerr on Page 3:
But over in the Daily Star, Sophie (“she loves rowing” – phwoar!!) from Staffs is topless:
Will the Sun now go with or without a topless stunna tomorrow? Will Richard Desmond’s Star be the only place to reach for topless babes on the newsagent’s bottom shelf?
Will readers wonder where-oh-wher they can see photos of naked women if not in the Sun and the Star? And will you all be in tonight to watch Richard Desmond’s hardcore porn shows through Rupert Mudroch’s Sky boxes?
Stay tuned…
The sensational death of Christina Annesley: desperate newspapers piggyback on Koh Tao murders
Daily Mail
Christina Annesley died on holiday. The young British woman was travelling when she died on the Thai island of Koh Tao. Terrible news. But can the news of a woman’s death from natural caues be spun and sensationalised? Yep:
The Daily Mail reports – and this is the URL of the scoop:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2921704/Young-British-tourist-dies-unknown-circumstances-Koh-Tao-island-two-UK-backpackers-murdered.html
The story runs:
Christina Annesley, 23, from Orpington in south London, was part-way through a four-month trip across south-east Asia when she died on Wednesday.
She was found dead on the island of Koh Tao- the same location where British backpackers David Miller and Hannah Witheridge were found murdered last September.
But Christina Annesley’s death has nothing to do with those murders.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 23rd, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Madeleine McCann: people are still donating to the find Maddie fund
News on Madeleine McCann, the innocent missing child, has been thin on the ground. But today the Sun has some news:
Find Maddie fund dries up as donations shrink
Donations to the fund have dropped. Well, the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Grange is on the case. So. Why donate to private detectives who have in years of looking and earning come up with zilch? And The Met is having some success, as the Indy reports:
Operation Grange, which is believed to have cost in the region of £7.3 million, has uncovered a number of significant leads.
The Sun adds:
PUBLIC donations to a fund set up to find missing Madeleine McCann dwindled to just £21,000 in the last financial year, latest accounts reveal.
That sounds pretty generous.
The Find Madeleine campaign made £21,264 from fundraising in the 12 months to March 31, 2014. That figure compares to £70,250 the previous year and £306,393 the year before that.
It raked in £1.8million at its height shortly after Madeleine, three, vanished from a holiday home in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.
The £21,264 of donations last year were made up of £2,744 in wrist band and T-shirt sales, with the rest collected.
Money for Maddie used to be big. Remember the News of the World’s huge reward? Hey, remember the News of the World?
The Sun goes on:
But administration costs such as accountancy fees and an audit swallowed up £21,005 of that cash.
So much for charity. No-one has to work for free.
But papers filed with Companies House in London last week show the charity’s account still currently has a healthy total balance of £753,056.
That’s a lot of money. If that’s just sitting there, why give more?
That is through unspent money brought forward from previous years and around £1million from mum Kate McCann’s 384-page best-seller Madeleine: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her.
Madeleine disappeared from her bed in the family’s apartment on May 3, 2007, while Kate and dad Gerry were eating at a nearby tapas restaurant.
A spokesman for the McCanns, who are from Rothley in Leicestershire, said: “Kate and Gerry and the board of directors remain extremely grateful to everybody who has helped in the search for Madeleine by donating to the fund.”
Just last month Kate and Gerry, both 46, said they had been “amazed” by the support they have received.
The organisation, which has six directors including Kate and Gerry, pays for a 24/7 helpline for tipsters to call.
Or you could just call the police…
Posted: 22nd, January 2015 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment
