Some Good News at Last

Amongst all the paranoia about bombers with pants of terror, and the machinations of Iran, there is some good news at last. That smug git, Ben Southall, who landed the world's best job on that island in Australia, which would would be a big draw back, has been stung by a deadly jellyfish.
He's still alive, so not that deadly.
But, still, well done that jellyfish, surely some sort of New Year's honour?

Irony

Who says homophobic bigots don't have a sense of irony. The Northern Ireland MP Iris Robinson, who earlier had said that she believed homosexuality was an abomination and made her feel sick, is to retire due to ill health.

Adieu Sweet SBS

So, farewell the South Bank Show and Melvyn Bragg. Another victim of the crassness of today's television.

But it went out with more of a whimper than a bang. It preferred to go back to the old lovey-strewn haunts of the aRSC. So many good shows, but why return to the precious lovies, and their preening and posturing? But, I suppose it is still a whole lot better than the preening and posturing of talentless non entities and the puffed up celebrities of much of today's television.

And like some of the best works that the RSC has put on, there will be much going over of the texts of whether Melvyn voluntarily retired, or retired after ITV axed the show.

So for the last time I will pinch my nostrils together and adenoidally say goodbye.

Terry Has Left the Building

So farewell then, Terry, we'll miss you and your laid back charm, and soft eccentricity. And now to Chris Evans....back to radio 4 or 5 I think, but then that's what the beeb want, isn't it? I've enjoyed listening to Terry in the office. I remember him on the radio when I was a kid, getting ready to go to school, the floral dance and some sort of get fit with wogan, "Go on Madam, another little sit up and you can have that sausage roll." As some mum said the other week, emailing the show, "I had to endure Wogan on the radio when I was a kid; so I inflict you on the kids now."

Auschwitz Sign Set Free

The apparent theft of the Auschwitz sign the other night sends chills down the spine and drives home the point that there are those out there, who at best deny the mass killings by the nazis, but at worst dream of continuing.

No Defence

That press conference summarised:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Go, go, go like a soldier,

Go, go, go like a soldier,

Go, go, go like a soldier,

So-oldier ~of~ the Queen!

Thanks to Mr Kipling who does do exceedingly good poetry.

Package for Mr Blair

Ramsay Profits Fucking Fall

Floor Eternity for Paradise

So Mrs Slocombe has shuffled off the sales floor.

"Floor Eternity for paradise, reincarnation, nothingness

and clouds with dull angels plucking a harp."

A Load of Cox

Is that right is it? Thank you Janet.

A World in Mourning

A black day indeed for the world as a great talent leaves to fly among the stars. Who can forget the ground breaking Charlie's Angels in which, amazingly, Farrah only did the first series. prior to that she starred in Logan's Run, a film about the introduction of yoof television. Later she was to add star quality to films by doing voices for such blockbusters as The Brave Little Toaster Goes To Mars, where she played Faucet, no really. But she will be best remembered for her iconic poster of the seventies with a nipple that launched millions of furtive fumblings by adolescent boys.

oh, and Wacko Jacko died of a heart attack.....or did he?

Mumbling Murray

Ah, the charisma of this gentleman of Scotland.

Come on Murray's opponent!

Purnell Makes a Career Move

Blears Sods Off

If Blears returns to the grass roots, as she so earnestly and enthusiastically has told us she is going to, then it might be difficult to see her down there. She also says she wants to return to campaigning; campaigning against Brown by the look of it. One word to sum up Blears, duplicitous.

Jacqui Resigns

Jacquie has apparently said that she'll resign

at the next cabinet reshuffle.

Sounds a bit like

"No, no I'm dumping you."

"No, no I'm dumping you, I said it first."

"I thought it first."

Off you go. Sitting there lecturing us, off on your bike.

Danny la Rue Has Cross Dressed to the Other Side

1928 - 2009

Guantanamo

Just a guess, at the moment.

Bye Bye

Off you go, you incompetent, secretive, obstructive pillock.

Martin to Head Off

A Great and Good Fucking Off

I'm beginning to see the Great and Good's plan of attack,

first there was Lord Fuck Off of Gimme Moor-and-Moor

Then Mad Martin

Then Lady of the Undead Beckett

There is No Justice Minister

Justicve Minister Shamed Malik has to stand down

while his rent in Dewsbury is examined.

When did You Stop Abusing Your Expenses?

A traditional part of the job, doorstepping somebody, this time Mr Broon's brother, I think he was basically saying, "I canna come out, I havena got me trooosers on."



And the sight of Hazel Blears with a rictus grin plastered across her stupid face as she faced reporters was beautiful to see.

To paraphrase Shakespeare,

"Cry havoc and unleash the news hounds."

And here's a man explaining why everything was above board

and he should know he's only had to resign twice over stuff.

Subs Love Onions

This blog is ostensibly about journalism, sort of, and one of the fun parts of the job is subbing puns on a good name, and the subs love onions, see the article at the Guardian.
Enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Weasel Woolas

A weasel caught in a trap.

Watch this government try to weasel their way out

of acting honorably and

don't forget they are going to leave

the Iraqi translators behind.

Broon and co putting the perfidy into Albion.

----------------------------------

A long time ago, just after the dawn of time, in fact,

I was sitting in a meeting for NOLS, as was,

looking at Phil Woolas waffle on, and

I can remember thinking,

you're a useless wanker.

Still the boy's done well for himself, though,

but he won't be hanging around long after

getting a good licking from Joanna,

which is a totally beguiling thought.

The Usual Suspects

You are all guilty until proven, for the moment, unguilty

This is a little place We found

From a Guardian photo competition

"Susanna Wickes: "I took the vaporetto to the tiny island of San Giorgio in Venice and found myself completely alone in the bell tower of the church there. I was able to enjoy a peaceful, tourist-free sunset over the beautiful city."

Brilliant, so you're not a tourist then or you hate yourself. I always find this annoying, especially when the lesbian hobbit on her travel program on radio 4 goes on about how a place was so untouristy, undiscovered and such like; so you're broadcasting a program about travel, which is tourism, and you are exhorting all your listeners go to a place because it's untouristy, so when they get there it will still be untouristy?

Travel journalism is some of the worst journalism, free trips for puffs for areas, hotels, resorts; you hardly ever see a bad report do you? I prefer John Betjeman's approach travel writing where he doesn't tell you exactly where a place is. It's just somewhere in southern Oxfordshire etc, if you really must go there then you'll have to work a bit. But people don't really want to work for a destination, they very rarely travel far from the beaten track, thank god. Without travel programs there woould be a lot fewer tourists.

Look at the word tourists; to do a tour, a preset, organized circuit, principally for fun, amusement or as a consumerist intangible diversion.

But to travel, well in the OED it kicks off with

"To torment, distress; to suffer affliction; to labour, toil; to suffer the pains of parturition; etc.: see TRAVAIL v. 1-4.
2. a. intr. To make a journey; to go from one place to another; to journey."

Travelling is full of pain or boredom sometimes of just plain toil. And note that it's the opposite of to tour; this is to go from one place to another.

I'm not sure about having a baby, but it does feel like that sometimes, though with fewer varicoase veins.

So I'm not going to tell you about all the interesting places I know.
You'll have to find them yourselves.

Don't Panic

After Albrecht Durer's Knight, Death and the Devil

HyperBollockery

As the financial thing continues on-and-on, columnists are having to dig deeper to unearth fresh similes, references and metaphors, but it seems that the strain of working so deep in the word mine, hacking away at dictionaries, quoteries and, errr that's enough of that, has begun to send some columnists mad.

Simon Jenkins, in the Grauniad, is like some jaded Roman emperor, bored with the usual sexual excesses, the orgies of metaphors and the incestous use of references but still he seeks something yet more exotic, to make his column stand up, witness the sheer baudelairesque depravity of this lede ;

"The barbarians are at the gates. Towers are falling, people are screaming, temple economists are rending their garments, gibbering with dread. And where is the prince at this time of trouble? He is walking in the garden of heavenly delight, feeding the sacred crocodiles. Here there is no credit crunch, only fountains tinkling money. While the ­citizens starve, the precious ones are fed. On them the gods will always shine."

and on it rolls....panjandrums.... Money streams down gilded rivulets into the pockets of consultants...Lord Coe, vestal virgin on this acropolis, is purring with pleasure...

But it serves its purpose to point up the babylonic excesses of the olympics.

WMD

A brilliant letter in the Indie, yes I happen to be perusing it this morning, by Robert Sather Writing Most Destructively

What Blair knew
Stuart Russell (letter, 23 April) claims that "Blair was only repeating what every world authority knew to be true" about Iraq's WMDs. Except, of course, for Robin Cook, Clare Short, Mohammed ElBaradei, the UN inspectors themselves, Kofi Annan, the heads of state of Germany, France, and Russia, Senator Barack Obama, Dr David Kelly, a million people who marched in London, 90 per cent of Spaniards, most of Africa, all Arabs, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and Cat Stevens. But aside from them Blair was in good company, with George Bush and his personal spooks.
Robert Sather

Nowhere to Hide

The Indie has found a new hobby, Geocoaching. Shoot that sub.

Transport Photos Verboten

It's just another plod story, but deeply symptomatic of the mindset of those in plod uniforms these days but two plod insisted to two Austrian tourists that it was illegal to take photos of any transport in the UK. Are they stupid or arrogant or both?

Read the comments, what has Nulabor done to this country?

Bomb Plot is a Damp Squib

Remember that list of targets those bombers were in the north west of England were going to bomb? Yes, that list the police produced, errr big shops in Manchester, errr Old Trafford football ground, that's quite big and errr probably a shopping centre and errr a club, make that a couple of clubs.

Well I don't know where they got that list from, the seargent's mess maybe, who knows the vaguries of British policing, but those bombers, terrorists, or indeed threats to western civilization have been released with no charges.

But they've been released into the hands of the British Border Police to be deported at her majestie's pleasure because they've been involved in Islamist extremist activity. God forbid that the evidence that they were involved in extremist activity is based on them being arrested by the police in yet another bungled operation.

Matthew Norman covers this at the Indie.

Errr

April Fool Redux

I should have guessed that the plod would have another April Fool up their uniform sleeves. The first postmortem said Tomlinson had died of a heart attack, could happen to anybody, anywhere, anytime, nothing to see here, move on, brush it under the carpet.

Unfortunately for the plod, there had to be another postmortem, which found he had died of internal bleeding, less likely to happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime; more likely to happen after being attacked.

All the way down the line the plod have tried to cover up, cheat and lie their way out of this. The officer only came forward when the film showing him actually appeared, otherwise he would have just sat back at the station, drinking tea and laughing about rolling a G20 protester.

Little Hitler Jobsworths Get a Boot

One little blow has been dealt to those in the town halls up and down the country, those who have been perving off on their misuse of the terrorism acts to snoop on people, to see whether their dogs have been fouling the pavements, or god forbid their bins are out on the wrong day "Hot" Jacqui Smith, who lives in the broom cupboard at he sister's, has said she's going to rein in the coincils and stop them using terrorism powers to check up on overdue library books.

You can sense that maybe the convention on modern liberty that took place over a month ago, may be bearing some fruit. But we need to push these people all the way, they'll never willingly give up any of their creepy big brother powers.

How these people in the local councils thought it was acceptable that they sit outside people's house taking photos of bins, dogs and children and generally wanking off, fantasising they were Jack Bauer, I find difficult to understand.

In one of the worst examples a family was spied upon by the council in Poole to check whether they were in the right school catchment area.

But one should be aware that, as soon as a lot of these little jobsworths are given powers such as these, relatively petty though they are, they start to be corupted almost immediately and begin to misuse them. A lot of these people cannot be trusted; a whiff of power and they're pulling on the shiny jack boots, saluting big flags and marching around very stiff-leggedly.

Anyway the general rule here is Mission Creeps. Give a creep a bit of power and they will find a mission to misuse it on.

The Liberal Democrat's under a freedom of information request found that in five years local councils had used these powers 10,333 times in 5 years, all of which resulted in 9% leading to prosecutions. Which probably means that say 9,000 times they were wrong. 9,000 times they felt it necessary to intrude upon, spy upon and mess around with somebody's life.

This is totally unacceptable.

April Fool

It now comes all abundantly clear that the incident with Ian Tomlinson was just an April Fool.

When the MetPlod said that they attended a man who had collapsed from natural causes:

that was an April Fool.

When the MetPlod said that they had to move him because people were throwing bottles:

that was an April Fool.

When the MetPlod said that there had been no previous contact with them:

that was an April Fool.

When the MetPlod said that the policing of the demonstrations had been succesful:

that was an April Fool.

In fact the police do love their jokes, and whenever anything bad happens always like to lighten the mood with with a few little jokes. My how we laughed when the MetPlod said that

Charles de Menezes was wearer a bulky puffer jacket to possibly hide a bomb:

they were only joking.

Charles de Menezes jumped the barriers at Stockwell tube station:

they were only joking.

Charles de Menezes ran down the escalators:

they were only joking.

Charles de Menezes resisted them in the underground carriage:

they were only joking.

The MetPlod have always been fond of a joke, how we laughed when they tried to trap Colin Stagg for the Rachel Nickel murder with an office pretending be interested in sado-masochism:

they were only joking.

How about the shooting of Harry Stanley in Hackney as he was carrying a gun:

they were only joking, it was a chairleg.

Or indeed the latest joker, Bob "Not Very" Quick, waving around secret documents around in the street.

What we have here is a plod force which is out of control, unaccountable, deeply racist and largely incompetent, the subject of their joke rape investigations hasn't even been touched.

Also they are starting to make policy themselves, who decided that "kettling" was the thing to do on demonstrations and why? It seems that the police have taken it upon themselves to punish people who go on demonstrations by holding them there for hours. Unaccountable and stupid.

What's that Flipper? Existentialism?

Scientist attempts to build a machine to deciper dolphin talk.

the veil drops

Bye Bye Strangelove

Nice to see DICK Cheney

being wheeled away yesterday

frothing at the mouth.

Happy Inauguration

Bearing in mind how that dawn on the Southbank turned out, with D:Reams "Things Can Only Get Better" blairing out, and how happy I felt, that yes things would change in this country, we would build a more free, more open society, we would try to eradicate poverty and concentrate on education and try to tackle the environmental problems. But Blair and then Brown have done none of these things and indeed they seem to have concentrated on making the rich richer and the poor poorer and this country a more repressive one. And on top of that we have fought a war on a pack of trumped up lies.

Bearing all that in mind I will say on this American morning, "Good Luck to you Obama," and yes I feel really hopeful. Now I'm going to crack open a cola. Yee-hah!

Vision Off

Tony Hart,

a presenter of Vision On has died,

a great teacher and inspirer.

15 October 1925 – 18 January 2009

as a reminder

here's the Left Bank 2 theme

One Fishy, Two Fishy

Deep Sea World in North Queensferry, I kid you not, has asked the public to help count the fish in its acquariums. OK let's give it go, "1, 2, 3, 4...oh fuck 1, 2, 3, did I count that before? 1, 2, 3 ...."

John Mortimer has gone to One Who Must be Obeyed

A great defender of liberty and the downtrodden.

April 21 1923 - January 16 2009

Parliamentary Pollution

Big Brother News Speak

OK, I've been ill, a severe case of man flu involving a lot of toast, tea and chocolate but sitting at my desk this morning, listening to yet another draconian, big brother, fascist (I don't use the word lightly) scheme for surveillance which can track people and cars using every cctv system in London.

I think I heard the above security expert say that we shouldn't be worried about this scheme creeping into other areas of our life as it was clearly stated what it was meant to do, and that is to be able to watch anybody all across London. Well that's OK then.

They've crossed the line from Big Brother to actually using Newspeak to hide and cover what they are up to.

"Yes, don't worry, it is limited, just to all of London and only the people that we can see with our cameras will be watched. So don't worry now."

This is another chip away at our freedoms.

While this guy, another "Security Expert" seems to want up the level of fear and paranoia.

Peter French when interviewed on SkyNews said that basically, yes there was a rising level of threat and yes we would need more surveillance.

Well, just a moment he's a security expert, what's he going to say? Oh no everything's OK, this stuff doesn't actually work anyway that much does it?

And also, anybody who uses the noun UK PLC, just discount anything they have to say; if they equate their country to some sort of business corporation where you have to pay money to have a voice in the entity and then only the richest will make their voices heard, well he's not going to give that much for the concepts of liberties, freedom and privacy.

Difficult to Believe in Atheist Campaign

Some people say they have seen these buses carrying the atheist slogan about there is probably no god. But I haven't. I find I can't believe in such things, they say if you believe you will see it passing before your eyes but honestly how can intelligent people really believe that such an advertisement exists.

Hun Ginga in Racist Jibe Slip-up

Prince Charles' youngest son the renowned ginga Harry Wellington Henry St Crispian Alamein Mountbatten Schleswig-Hollstein von Windsor may have slipped up with his matey paki and raghead joshing somewhat.

Still, he seems to be doing something more useful than the collection of offence merchants jumping onto this three-year old bandwagon.

Close Encounters of the Third Blade

Great story in the Sun about a UFO.

Are Aliens really out there?

Will they be like ET

or be

Extra Terrible

like in

Independence Day?

I was going to say this is another UFO,

an Unidentified Fat Object,

but I won't, as that would be rude.

Taking the Punch and Judy

"I have a sense of humour, however I don't find Punch and Judy funny or enjoyable. That domestic abuse can be trivialised like this is terrible. If domestic abuse was minimal or non-existent then yes, the jokes may be funny. But in the UK two women every week are killed by their partners. Making domestic abuse and misogyny acceptable entertainment will not affect all children's ideas of relationships, but it will condition some to think it's normal when daddy hits mummy. I don't want everything to be politically correct but we should be more careful about the messages we send to children about serious issues like this. Just because something is a tradition doesn't make it OK."

Sabre, London

Whilst enjoying as short article on the BBC site about Punch and Judy I came across this twaddle, the usual whiny attack on Punch and Judy making the mistake that representation is akin to brain washing.

It's a dead give away when somebody says they have a sense of humour; they don't. Then it follows on with the usual puerile arguments and when they say they don't want everything to be politically correct; they do.

But I really wouldn't waste space on this clod-hopping, box-ticking puritanism except for the delightful irony of the name. Sabre!

So when he says, it's supposed to be a boy's name, though of course it might be a lady writing in, so when it says "we should be more careful about the messages we send to children," it's OK to call your children, Claymore, Daisy Cutter or possibly Napalm.

The first symptom of a humourless sod is the death of their irony.