Broadsheets Category
Top news from The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Indepedent and The Guardian newspapers
George Monbiot: vegans against cow shit
George Monbiot wants to tell us about his meals in the Guardian. We live in an age of narcissism, so a broadsheet writer talking about his dinner is staple fare:
I’ve converted to veganism to reduce my impacts on the living world
Cows swoon:
The world can cope with 7 or even 10 billion people. But only if we stop eating meat. Livestock farming is the most potent means by which we amplify our presence on the planet. It is the amount of land an animal-based diet needs that makes it so destructive.
We should slaughter all the animals?
An analysis by the farmer and scholar Simon Fairlie suggests that Britain could easily feed itself within its own borders. But while a diet containing a moderate amount of meat, dairy and eggs would require the use of 11m hectares of land (4m of which would be arable), a vegan diet would demand a total of just 3m.
And lots of manure to grow the stuff with? Human shit is only good for columnists to make a living. The rest of us need horse, bird, pig and cow shit.
Rothamsted tells us:
Livestock manures are a valuable source of nutrients in many organic rotations. Making best use of these nutrients:
• contributes towards economic sustainability
• minimises pollution of the wider environment
Can you have good animal shit without animals to do the shitting? Monbiot adds:
Not only do humans need no pasture, but we use grains and pulses more efficiently when we eat them ourselves, rather than feed them to cows and chickens.
If not more animals to create more animal manure to grow crops with, is the option to go for increased GM crops and artificial fertilisers?
This would enable 15m hectares of the land now used for farming in Britain to be set aside for nature.
Nature? Are human beings not natural?
File under: show us your shit.
Posted: 10th, August 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
Policy Exchange Übermensch want British people barcoded
Policy Exchange sound like a revolting bunch. The Guardian reports on their plans to bran you all with a barcode:
British people should be given a “unique person number” to help the government keep track of the population following the vote for Brexit, according to a new report by a leading thinktank.
What has Brexit to do with being anti-human?
The paper from Policy Exchange said people feel Britain is being used as an “economic transit camp” and these fears could be allayed by creating a “population register”.
The Übermensch at Policy Exchange can go first. Form an orderly queue while we heat up the banding irons.
Posted: 8th, August 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
UKIP wants to ban Muslim schools: first they came for the kids and the parents
What is the point of education? The Telegraph looks at Lisa Duffy’s views on the matter of who decides what children learn at school. Duffy is a councillor in Cambridgeshire. She wants to lead UKIP. She wants a say in what children can be taught at school.
A “total ban” on Muslim state schools has been called for by Lisa Duffy, the Ukip leadership hopeful.
Ms Duffy, who is expected to be announced as once of the candidates in the party’s leadership race at noon today, has called for Islamic faith schools to be shut down in a bid to tackle radicalisation.
Duffy knows best. She wants to ban traditions she considers to be the wrong ones. An attack on freedom of education can be readily linked to an attack on freedom of worship, something any liberal country should hold dear.
Maybe Duffy doesn’t like what she sees as intolerance preached as faith schools. Maybe this is why Duffy wants to ban them, censor views alternative to her own? Duffy is a bansturbator. She tells the Express:
“I will be calling for the Government to close British Islamic faith schools. That doesn’t mean I am picking on British Islam…
Wrong. It does.
“…but if you think about what our security services are looking at 2,000 individuals that have come from those faith schools. When does indoctrination start?”
Dunno, Lisa. Where did you learn your illiberal views?
She adds:
“I am not far right, I am very much common sense and centre right.”
Lisa affects to know what the country’s values are and then undermines them. Freedom for all is great so long as it is freedom from things Duffy doesn’t much like.
Why should the State know better than parents? Why should education be so politicised? Why should education adhere to a homogenous ‘norm’ proscribed by the elite? Parents must be free to chose the schools that reflect their own prejudices, views and wants.
Why doesn’t the State do something truly radical: ask teachers what they think and let them set the curriculum? (And interfering parents are every bit as dire as the State dictating what is right thinking.)
And if not religious schools, then why non-faith State schools, places where moving targets, new techniques and measures of learning create a system lacking substance – where children are schooled not educated. State schools are often out-performed by their religious-orientated rivals, where knowledge can be tested across ages and critical thinking is encouraged and engaged.
Lisa Duffy should try it.
Posted: 3rd, August 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Lidl Britain crisis: nuts might not contain nuts
The country is in crisis. The Telegraph reports on a consumer panic:
German discounter Lidl is removing its brand of fruit yoghurts and honey peanuts from the shelves because it fails to tell customers they might contain milk and peanuts.
Only ‘might’? Not ‘do’. Supermarkets are hedging their bets.
What else might a pot of yoghurt or packet of nuts contain? Pretty much anything, right?
Posted: 1st, August 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
Ansbach bomb mystery solved: why the victim did it
When a man armed with a bomb blew himself up outside a music festival in Germany, the media went into action. Why had he done it?
Reuters went into action: “Syrian man denied asylum killed in German blast.”
The poor man. He was killed in a country that denied him asylum. This man suffered terribly at our hands. Reuters continues:
A 27-year-old Syrian man who had been denied asylum in Germany a year ago died on Sunday when a bomb he was carrying exploded outside a music festival in Ansbach, Germany…
A bomb he was carrying exploded? Was he taking it a museum, having found it?
Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the man had tried to commit suicide twice before.
And he failed a third time. The “bomb exploded”. He was “killed”. He is the victim.
The Guardian leads with: “A 27-year-old man who had been denied asylum dies after explosion in southern German town”
An explosion.
The BBC: “Ansbach explosion: Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up in Germany.”
A failed Syrian asylum seeker has blown himself up and injured 15 other people with a backpack bomb near a festival in the south German town of Ansbach. The 27-year-old man, who faced deportation to Bulgaria, detonated the device after being refused entry to the music festival.
He was clearly an avid music fan. Denied entry he had nothing else to live for – well, aside from a new life in Bulgaria.
CNBC: “Bomb-carrying Syrian dies outside German music festival; 12 wounded.”
Al Jazeera: “A 27-year-old Syrian man died when a bomb he was carrying in a rucksack went off outside a music festival in Germany and wounded 12 people, an official said. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Ansbach said the attacker’s motive wasn’t clear.”
The bomb went off. He did not detonate the bomb. It just went off. Why he died remains a mystery.
The Mail: “Syrian suicide bomber – nicknamed ‘Rambo’ – who blew himself up outside German music festival had pledged allegiance to ISIS, had Islamist videos at his home and had enough chemicals to make ANOTHER bomb.”
Ah. That’s why the asylum seeker was killed when the bomb he was carrying went off. He was an Islamist trying to murder people. Thanks to the Mail, the mystery has been cleared up.
Posted: 31st, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Jeremy Corbyn flying pig news: ‘Labour can win snap General election under my leadership’
The Guardian creates the world-class clickbait headline: “Jeremy Corbyn: Labour could win snap general election.”
But wait a moment. Did Corbyn actually says it? Does he think Labour can win the General Election?
The Conservative government has had “a field day” amid Labour divisions, Jeremy Corbyn has said in a Guardian interview, while insisting he believes the party could win a snap general election…
…when asked whether Labour could win a potential snap election this autumn or next spring, Corbyn seemed confident. “We’re going to go for it and win it,” he said.
‘Seemed confident’. He seems delusional.
Posted: 30th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Guardian writer moans about her holiday ‘from hell’ in the super-expensive Hamptons
Is the Guardian beyond parody? In “The highway to summer hell leads straight through the Hamptons” Emma Brockes moans about holidaying in the exclusive enclave. Damned is she forced to holiday at one of the resort towns on the Long Island coast, where the average property goes for over $1m.
The American summer tradition of clearing out of cities for the beach every weekend is at odds with an equally strong tradition of avoiding inconvenience. But for some reason the beach always wins.
Six hours on the road with small children in the back? No problem. A two-hour tailback? Just part of the package. A three-hour journey out of Penn Station to East Hampton, on a train so crowded you have to stand the whole way? Deal with it.
She then knocks the UK:
Granted, unlike in Britain, where you can stand up for hours on a train to get to a beach that looks like a large mudflat, at least the sand on Long Island is pretty. The dunes are pristine, the weather is hot and, if you trudge far enough from the path, you don’t have to see another human for hours.
Hell is other people with loads of money.
And Emma is earning out of her hols to the Hamptons, having on June 30 this year written more about her jolly hols:
The apartment complex was on a stretch of idyllic, empty beach and a five-minute drive from a town where a litre of coffee, a bag of pistachios and a small strawberry ice cream cost a fortune…
Pass the bucket. No, not to be sick in it. If you and the other 1 per cent can chuck a few coins in the thing, we and The Guardian (£173 pre-tax loss!) would be ever so grateful…
Posted: 29th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Don’t ban sugar just force the fat to run to the shops
Oi, fatso! David Aaronovitch has a plan to win the “obesity war”. He writes in the Times:
It’s not enough to fiddle about with food labelling and a distant sugar tax. Bans may be draconian, but they’re essential
Bans are for censors. No ‘may’ about it. They are draconian. They are not essential.
He adds:
Of course, we could try to attach the same opprobrium to being fat as to being a smoker.
Second-hand fat? We are getting fatter, yes. We are getting fatter because we do less. We have more down time. More of us live in small flats – stairs burn calories (just ask the aged who downsize). We have central heating. We have telly. Is there shame in being a smoker? No. although people who light up electronic cigarettes, especially the ones with the glowing end, do look like twats.
And what of the facts? Chris Snowdon notes:
All the evidence indicates that per capita consumption of sugar, salt, fat and calories has been falling in Britain for decades. Per capita sugar consumption has fallen by 16 per cent since 1992 and per capita calorie consumption has fallen by 21 per cent since 1974.
And Tim Worstall has an interesting aside:
One more little factoid on this: the current average UK diet has fewer calories than the minimum acceptable diet under WWII rationing. Quite seriously: we are gaining weight on fewer calories than our grandparents lost weight on.
Back then you could be fat and jolly. Now you must be fat and unhappy. The bitter and thin want revenge.
Aaronovitch adds:
Ban fast-food outlets from stations and airports. Ban the sale of confectionery and sugary drinks to the under-16s. Ban the sale of over-sugared products in supermarkets (as measured by a ratio of sugar to other nutrients). Ban the bringing into schools of unhealthy foods. Ban the presence in offices (like our own here at The Times) of vending machines that seem to sell mainly crisps and chocolate. Specify a weight-to-height ratio limit on air passengers wishing to avoid a surcharge.
In short: bash the poor.
Posted: 28th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Transfer balls: Arsenal, Riyad Mahrez and the Olympian task of replacing Gnabry
Transfer Balls spots this utter drivel in the Daily Telegraph. Arsenal’s Serge Gnabry has been called up to Germany’s Olympic football team. Lest you suppose news that a bit-part Arsenal player missing a few games with an Olympic hangover was not big news, the Telegraph says you’d be wrong. It is huge.
Gnabry featured on loan for West Brom last season [3 matches played], but has impressed Arsene Wenger this pre-season, and has been tipped for a more important role at the Emirates this season.
More important than no games for Arsenal last season?
His departure for the Games leaves Arsenal a man short in their midfield, and could even force Wenger’s hand in the transfer market.
Who could replace Gnabry, the player who made nine starts for Arsenal? Richard Amofa Harry Yorke have an idea.
Who would be a suitable replacement? Either Alexandre Lacazette and Riyad Mahrez could probably do the job. Many would feel Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is also capable, but the forward today distanced himself from a move to the Gunners.
Got that? The Premier League’s best player last season, the exciting young French striker or the thrilling Dortmund striker could do the job of Gnabry.
Indeed. What about Ronaldo? Surely he deserves the chance.
Posted: 26th, July 2016 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, Broadsheets, Sports | Comment
Sports Direct: human rights and Mike Ashley’s legal redress
Former BBC staffer Paul Mason is making some sort of point about Sports Direct and Newcastle United FC tycoon Mike Ashley and his underlings:
What is striking, when you consider the modern reality of precarious work and coercive management, is how the concept of human rights stops at the factory gate.
Human rights?
The workers of Georgian England had no democratic rights or access to law. But the 21st century is supposed to be an age of universal rights. Every one of the practices described at Sports Direct appears to not just have broken employment law, but also violated the human right of the citizen not to be bullied, shamed, endangered or sexually harassed.
So things are better now because there are laws and human rights. Sports Direct’s working practises can be tested in a court of law. The workers have redress. Things are much improved. So what exactly is Mason’s point?
Spotter: Guardian
Posted: 26th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Money, Reviews | Comment
Transfer balls: Smoking Paul Pogba’s lost weekend in Manchester United
The Daily Pogba: an at-a-glance look at news of Juventus and Franc footballer Paul Pogba, wanted by Manchester United.
The Daily Star says Manchester United have bid £85m for Pogba. It’s not enough. Juventus have snubbed “Jose’s offer”. The idea that United manager Jose Mourinho has any say in how much the club should pay for the player is fanciful. United is run by the Glazer family from a shopping mall in the USA. They do the business.
The Guardian says the opening offer is not £85m, but £100m. And it’s not yet been made. The Guardian appears to be acting as a negotiator, adding: United are expected to make an opening bid of £100m with £13m of that performance-related add-ons.”
The Mirror also trumps the Star. Pogba is the paper’s “£100m man”. But it agrees with the Star that the money is Mourinho’s. According to both papers it is the manager not the Glazers who will make Pogba the world’s costliest player.
The Sun, having told us Pogba joined United for £105m last weekend, focuses on the player’s private life.
Today the Sun’s Phil Cadden reports: “MIAMI VICE Paul Pogba pictured smoking E-cigarette while on holiday with Romelu Lukaku in Miami.”
“These snaps of the £105million Manchester United target will have Jose Mourinho fuming,” writes Cadden of the player he told us had already joined United and is now reduced to a “target”. He adds: “Pogba, who met up with Everton’s Romelu Lukaku, is wanted by United and Real Madrid.”
Ah, yes, Real Madrid. AS (Spain) says Pogba has been using his clothes to speak of his desire to play for Real. Below the headline “Pogba’s little message to Real Madrid? He is ‘all in white'”, the Spanish tabloid reports:
Pogba posted a photo on Instagram, along with the words “all in white”, which of course set off speculation, some of it fevered, that this was a clear wink to Real Madrid, who of course play in all white…
Real Madrid do not play in trousers. Fact.
More Pogba balls all summer.
Posted: 20th, July 2016 | In: Back pages, Broadsheets, manchester united, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Brexit balls: nationalists stole my brie
Brexit Balls aplenty in the Guardian, where Rachel Cooke is remembering past holidays in those halcyon days of the 1970s, when Europe was still called ‘The Continent’:
In France she eats a croissant:
Even as I finished it, licking my finger to gather every last flake, I worried that such an ambrosial delight might never pass my lips again. If this turned out to be so, I wasn’t sure life was going to be worth living.
She would go on to drink fizzy water, eat white yoghurt, “sticky cheese that was stinky”, snails and enjoy the “superiority of French food”. She was a “miniature gastronomic zealot” high on French supermarket fodder. And then it all ended:
You know where this is going. Brexit feels to me like grief, and, deep in mourning, I can’t stop thinking of the loved one, and all that she brought me. Of course, it’s possible to exaggerate the effect the EU has had on our eating habits.
Possible. And here it is. The European Union makes the apricot jam thicker and the butter more creamy. The EU allowed you to travel to France and eat food. The EU gave you bottled water. The EU did it all.
Things would have changed anyway, in the end; British supermarkets, for better or worse, sell sushi now.
Sushi is from Japan – a country NOT in the EU (yet). We eat sushi and more expensive foods because we are richer than before, and many of us spend large chunks of our considerable down time watching cheap-to-make cooking shows and celebrity travelogues on the telly.
In the 1970s, British foodies could watch Graham Kerr on telly, The Galloping Gourmet, a celebrity chef the Guardian calls “The Roger Moore of the mandolin, the Nigel Havers of the hob, the David Niven of the knife block”.
The wealthy British imported coffee and tea and spices long before the EU existed.
Buy Cooke says “it’s difficult not to see this as a door closing – a refrigerator door, behind which there sits, in my dreams, an oozing brie de Meaux, a blushing hunk of culatello, and a small bowl of salty Nardin boquerones. How much more expensive are such treats likely soon to be?”
Well, that would depend on demand for already pricey foodstuffs. There’s a reason they don’t sell frozen snails at Tesco and they do sell sushi – “for better or worse.” They also sell Thai food (again, not from the EU) and lots of things from Australia, Canada and America.
She then accuses the people who voted for Brexit of being culturally backward, tasteless to the core, a slack-jawed, reactionary majority of bad-food lovers.
The celebrating Brexiteers are in a frenzy of nationalistic pride right now… Do they think freedom lies in grey meat and flaccid pastry?
No. See The Great British Bake Off.
Is it a case, for them, of better-the-cheap-British-cheese-you-know-than-the-dubious-foreign-stuff-you-don’t?
No. It’s a case of wine, a box of curry, a few spring rolls, kebabs, nachos, burgers and reruns of Fanny Cradock’s Fanny’s Kitchen on the magic box.
Posted: 19th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
Transfer balls: Arsenal sign Morata twice as Chelsea gazumped
Rub your eyes Arsenal fans. The Telegraph says Arsenal are planning to gazump Chelsea and bid – get this – £65m for Real Madrid’s Alvaro Morata.
The Sun tells us Arsenal will offer Morata £144,000-a-week, making him their third highest paid player behind Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez.
The Daily Mirror says Morata to Arsenal is very much on because the player wants Champions’ League football, something Chelsea can’t offer.
But would Arsenal really bid such a huge sum for a talented but far from sensational player? The Tele says Chelsea are “more than willing to pay that price”. The Blues want to stick Morata up front with new boy Michy Batshuayi. But Morata “would rather move to the Emirates than Stamford Bridge”.
The Standard says Arsenal are offering too much. “Chelsea bid £51m for Alvaro Morata,” says the London free paper.
The Indy says Morata to Arsenal is on. But in case it isn’t, the paper of record names NINE other strikers who could join Arsenal. The list is a sensation, featuring, as it does, Brazilian superstar Neymar. Neymar to Arsenal! That would be the same Neymar of whom the Indy wrote on July 1 this year:
Neymar’s contract with Barcelona has been extended until 2021… The announcement ended speculation that Neymar was unhappy in Spain and was looking to move to another club.
It did – unless the Indy has to find 10 names for a dire story on Arsenal strikers.
Of course, there is balls and there is utter balls. We’ll leave you with the news from 2014 that Morata already plays for Arsenal:
Such are the facts.
Posted: 10th, July 2016 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, Broadsheets, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
A referendum on Party members choosing leaders is pure folly
Phillip Collins is of the mind that “party members choosing leaders is pure folly“. Why? That’s how many clubs chose their leaders. Collins doesn’t write the headlines for his Times story, of course.
Below it he opines that Tory Party members acting “in the name of democracy, are making a shambles of our democracy”.
As it is with the Tories so it is with Labour, he argues: “The gap between the parliamentary party, in which 172 MPs have declared no confidence in their nominal leader, and the members at large is breaking Labour apart.”
You might not like who the members chose, but that’s the system. Collins should be more bothered by the EU Referendum in which anyone of voting age did get to choose. More than a week after the Leave campaign won nothing has been done to trigger Article 50 and with it UK’s Brexit from the European Union.
At this point Corbyn supporters piously intone that “democracy” is on their side. They say, as if it clinched the argument, that Mr Corbyn has a mandate from the membership which renders dissent illegitimate. The numbers from the Labour leadership ballot are, indeed, clear. Mr Corbyn won a handsome mandate to be leader of the party. But he did not also win a mandate to be a hopeless leader of the party. There is no mandate to trail a leaderless Tory party in the midst of a nervous breakdown by seven points in the polls. Mr Corbyn did not win a mandate to be a general who cannot command the confidence of his parliamentary cavalry.
Democracy is not a single event. The first clause of the Labour Party constitution commits it to taking the cause of working people to parliament. It is a charter for victory for a party that was founded, out of the trade union movement, to take control of the levers of the state as a government. Labour was therefore a parliamentary institution before it was a members club. Labour MPs represent, within the party, the voters who put them into parliament. They have a democratic mandate too, larger in number than the members and a viable leader has to retain the confidence of all parts of the Labour structure.
The catastrophic election system introduced by Ed Miliband in 2014 fails to respect the Labour Party’s tiered structure. Candidates are proposed by MPs but the vote is conducted entirely by the membership. Between 1922 and 1981 Labour’s leader was chosen entirely by the parliamentary party. In 1981, Tony Benn’s intervention established an unwieldy electoral college in which MPs held 30 per cent of the vote, members the same and trade unions 40 per cent.
The terrible answer that dropped out of the bottom of that Heath Robinson machine was Michael Foot. But at least the college made some reference to the different levels of Labour Party democracy. Certainly it was preferable to the current disaster in which any ex-member of the Socialist Workers Party can vote for less than the price of a pint. The Labour Party is left with just one option. Sign up the moderates, of whom there are more in the nation than the Corbynistas, and then let the new leader abolish the system.
There are 84 Conservative MPs, people actually paid out of public funds to conduct politics, who believe that Andrea Leadsom should be prime minister. Somebody as smart as former leader Michael Howard should be ashamed of himself
You might have thought, with Labour helpfully providing a primer in what not to do, that the Conservatives might draw the obvious lesson. Perhaps it will. Those who know the party better than I do suggest that Theresa May will win and that 199 Tory MPs took the sensible option in yesterday’s second leadership ballot. Yet there are 84 Conservative MPs, people actually paid out of public funds to conduct politics, who believe that Andrea Leadsom should be prime minister. Somebody as smart as former leader Michael Howard should be ashamed of himself. It is scarcely credible that, fired with fervour, Tory MPs will risk setting their membership against the bulk of their colleagues in parliament.
Mrs May’s victory yesterday was so overwhelming that the contest should be stopped. She should offer Mrs Leadsom the business brief and Mrs Leadsom should accept. Between 1965, when the system that Ian Macleod described as the “magic circle” was abolished, and 1998, when that dangerous radical William Hague gave the members a say, Tory MPs chose their leader. They should do so now. Then the party can get on with the task of forming a government without taking the risk that its membership is as far from political credibility as the Labour Party’s.
Yesterday, as Mrs Leadsom toured the television studios telling interviewers that she would absolutely tell Vladimir Putin to stop if he got a bit uppity and taking questions on her questionable curriculum vitae, Tim Loughton MP led a march from her rally to Parliament Square, chanting leaden Leadsom slogans along the way. As I watched the Leadsom march on Westminster I had a dream, of a deputy investment bod from a fund management company who voted both for and against gay marriage becoming prime minister. This was a delicious parallel to last Monday when, as Labour MPs gathered in parliament to declare his leadership defunct, Mr Corbyn chose to address a rally in the square outside. With the MPs lost, he took refuge in the members.
The Tories are choosing a prime minister and it would be a disaster if they did the same as Labour. It is, in any case, a democratic outrage that the next prime minister will be chosen by the 0.3 per cent of the electorate who happen to be odd enough to be members of the Conservative Party. Can any of them, I wonder, see the irony of their regular sermons about the lack of “democracy” in the EU? Probably not. These are people who have taken hold of the wrong end of the stick in order to beat the country with it. The candidate of their looking-glass world is the wholly ill-prepared Mrs Leadsom.
Just over 2 per cent of the nation are members of a political party. These members are not representative even of the people who vote for their party, let alone of the nation. They have no monopoly on the idea of democracy, which does not stop at the constituency meeting. Political parties are not sacrosanct organisations that bend to the whims of their votaries. They are simply useful agencies for gathering collective opinion. They have to look up as well as down, at the stars and not just the gutter. We will have to trust that the Tory members in the shires will do that.
Dunno really. I tend to think that chess club members get to choose the officers and leaders of the chess club. Tory party members get to choose the leader of the Tory party.
Posted: 9th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Divorce watch: Christina Estrada’s handbag allowance was made in Britian
Natalia Potanina, who claims to be exiled in Britain, wants £5 billion from the pockets of Russian Vladimir Potanin. Christina Estrada, 54, would like £196 million off her ex-husband Dr Walid Juffali, 61. Estrada’s claim includes £58,000 for two luxury handbags – every year. Seems reasonable.
Frances Gibb suggests that such claims, if approved, would “cement the UK’s reputation as the country favoured by the ultra-rich for their divorce disputes.” Well, not quite. The party who seeks the massive pay-off for martial services surely would give consideration to making a claim in a British court. The wealthy party would most likely prefer the case was heard elsewhere, like in, equal opportunity, Saudi Arabia, perhaps, or Russia.
Posted: 7th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
Winners are grinners: 47% of young Brexit voters wanted to cry
An odd little Brexit story in the Guardian, which reports that “almost half of voters aged 18 to 24 cried or felt like crying when they heard that the UK had voted to leave the European Union”.
A poll for the London School of Economics, called “Inside the mind of the voter”, found that 47% of the youngsters wanted to cry when they lost the vote. You will recall that just over 48% of voted for the losing side in the EU referendum.
And is news that young people cry, especially those who like the cosy EU, shocking?
PS : can anyone find the question the pollsters asked?
Posted: 4th, July 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews | Comments (3)
Remain voters flee UK for an EU passport
Mark Scott has news for those of you who voted Remain. You can Leave. Mark Scott is European technology correspondent for The New York Times. And he’s off:
I’ve grudgingly accepted that 52 percent of my fellow citizens wanted to leave the European Union… But… with a heavy heart, I’m applying to become an Irish citizen, saying goodbye to Britain just as it wants to say goodbye to Europe.
So long, Marc. You can work for a competing economy in another country that offers a better deal.
Remain supporter Oliver Imhof (one for nominative determinism, there) is getting his passport, too. He tells Guardian readers:
Above all other ideological affiliations, I am a democrat. And as a democrat I have to accept a defeat. I have to accept being oppressed by a majority of an older generation that seems intent on depriving us of our future. This is why I am leaving this country.
David Lammy, your snobby MP, doesn’t much like democracy. He can apply to join a country that shares his values, like Russia, Saudi Arabia or Zimbabwe. After all, as The Independent‘s Matthew Norman notes: “The Labour Party is over and Jeremy Corbyn’s stupidity brought it down.” Lammy might be looking for a job soon – and we can vote him out.
Posted: 27th, June 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
The 4 ‘real reasons’ Jamie Vardy snubbed Arsenal
So why did Jamie Vardy reject a move to Arsenal? Was it because when, as reported, his agent called Arsenal to tell them about the “escape clause” it was just a ruse to get a rival team to bid for his client and so kickstart negotiations on a new deal with Leicester City? Vardy was on £70,000 a week when the agent called Arsenal. After Arsenal bid the £20m (Sun) / £21m (Telegraph) / £22m (Guardian) to trigger Vardy’s release, and offered him a reported £120,000 a week, the player scored a new deal with the Foxes worth £100,000 a week basic and maybe bonuses for ‘loyalty’, goals and appearances.
Other reasons why Vardy snubbed Arsenal are all over the media.
Sky: “Vardy: Arsenal style put me off.”
Words from Vardy: nil.
The Guardian: “It appears as though Vardy feels that he has unfinished business at Leicester.”
Gary Lineker: “A show of loyalty from @vardy7″
Telegraph: “…it is understood he was always reluctant to leave Leicester.”
At least it had nothing to do with money.
Posted: 24th, June 2016 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, Broadsheets, Reviews, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Abdul Rahman Haroun: refugee, migrant, African, brave, desperate, criminal and free
Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, left his native Sudan in 2004. On August 4 2015, Mr Haroun walked through the 31-mile long Channel Tunnel and claimed asylum. The Express says there is “outrage” as “migrant is freed”. It laments the “border shambles” that allows Haroun to be a free man. Reading that you might suppose that Mr Haroun escaped any legal censure for his actions.
Not so.
The Independent’s headline is at odds with the Express. It turns Mr Haroun from migrant to “refugee”. The Indy sums up: “Refugee Abdul Rahman Haroun given nine-month prison sentence for walking through Channel Tunnel to reach UK… He was prosecuted under Victorian legislation – the Malicious Damage Act 1861 – for ‘obstructing an engine or a carriage using a railway’.”
The Express quotes an MP who says Haroun received only a “slap on the wrist”. The MP says Haroun should have been deported automatically. The Express says Haroun benefitted from a “soft touch” justice system. Haroun has been “rewarded [for his criminality] with leave to remain and taxpayer handouts”.
The Mail says Haroun is “free to work and live here… if he has a wife and child under 18 he can bring them to Britain”.
Mr Haroun is free. That much is true. But only because from the time of his arrest until January this year Mr Haroun was a prisoner at HMP Elmley in Kent. In December 2015, the “African migrant” (Telegraph) was granted permission to remain in the UK as a refugee.
In January, he was bailed. At Canterbury Crown Court Mr Haroun, who “braved speeding trains” (New York Times) pleaded guilty.
The Daily Star sees no bravery. It states: “Migrant who walked through Chunnel free to live here – despite guilty plea.” The paper adds: “The news comes after truck drivers told of their fears of another summer of migrant mayhem in Calais, France.”
The final word is with the judge, Adele Williams, who “acknowledged Haroun had travelled from Sudan ‘in a state of desperation'” (Sky News). She added: “The reason why the courts of the United Kingdom take such a serious view of this criminality is that those who enter in this way seek to evade the authorities, who can, therefore, have no check upon who is entering the country. In the world in which we live of international crime and terrorism that is a very serious matter.”
So was the bigger crime in letting a man wander through the Channel Tunnel undetected?
PS – Mr Haroun plans to appeal his conviction.
Posted: 23rd, June 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
EU Referendum: the newspaper front pages
It’s the EU Referendum, the day the country votes for independence (Sun) or not not fall into an abyss (Mirror).
The Express wants us to “VOTE LEAVE’. But not al that many people read the Express. The weight is with the Mail, the country’s most widely read newspaper. It says the EU are liars. It says vote out. If the Mail mobilises its readers, the Mail will have won it.
Vote now and vote often:
Posted: 23rd, June 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Wembley EU Referendum: newspaper sketch writers wear blinkers
Did you enjoy the EU referendum debate live from Wembley Arena? Helping us decide what we saw and missed are the newspapers’ political sketch writers. What did they see?
ON SADIQ KHAN (Labour, In)
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail (OUT!):
But the new London mayor is a feral little nipper and came up with the most vicious slurs of the first hour when he accused the Leave camp of running ‘Project Hate’ on immigration. The crowd oohed and booed.
Michael Deacon, Daily Telegraph (Dunno):
Inevitably the fiercest clashes concerned immigration. “Boris, your campaign has been Project Hate!” squawked Mr Khan. This won the night’s most furious cheer, followed by riotous stamping. It was like listening to an army charge across a tin roof.
John Crace Guardian (IN!):
“You’re not Project Fear, you’re Project Hate,” said Sadiq, to the biggest cheer of the evening.”
Mikey Smith, Daily Mirror (IN!):
Sadiq’s attack was the first damaging blow of the two hour event, and it attracted a long and loud round of applause from the audience.
What they said: Boos. Applause. Huge cheer.
ON RUTH DAVIDSON (Tory, In)
Michael Deacon, Daily Telegraph (Dunno):
Ms Davidson, though – surely the night’s star performer – won cheers with her rocket-powered zeal and patriotism.
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail (OUT!):
…did the highly rated Miss Davidson slightly underperform? She twice invoked the name of President Obama, who has supported Remain. Maybe that sort of thing works in Edinburgh but at Wembley last night it earned raspberries.
What they said: Star. Rubbish.
ON BORIS JOHNSON (Tory, Out)
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail (OUT!):
And then his closing remarks. Let Thursday be our ‘Independence Day’. As those south American commentators say, ‘Gooooallllll!’
Michael Deacon, Daily Telegraph (Dunno):
When Mr Johnson promised that June 23 would be Independence Day, the crowd nearly blew the roof off.
John Crace Guardian (IN!):
Boris bounced around on his feet, disappointed he hadn’t been able to get any of his favourite gags in. And that’s the way the rest of the night continued.
Daily Express (OUT!):
Huge cheers for Boris after his closing statement. The Wembley crowd are on their feet and chanting his name.
What they said: Scores. Disappointing.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 22nd, June 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Jo Cox murder: Guardian blames Boris Johnson, tweeters blame Muslims
Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed and shot outside her surgery in Yorkshire. Many reports claim her alleged killer yelled “Britain First” before striking.
A 52-year-old man, named as Thomas Mair, has been arrested. What do we know about him? The Guardian notes:
Neighbours say suspect, named locally as Thomas Mair, would help them with gardening and did voluntary work
Adding:
His half brother, who is mixed race, claimed he had been volunteering at a school for children with disabilities for several years and had never expressed any racist views.
The paper says he has “mental health issues”.
Nick Gannon, 33, who lived two doors away from Mair, has known him since he was 10 years old…”He was friendly. If you said hello to him, he would say hello back. He was not aggressive or anything. He wasn’t frightening.”
Britain Stronger In Europe and Vote Leave have stopped their campaigns.
Britain First have moved to distance themselves from the assassination:
On twitter, a few voices sense a conspiracy:
Staying with the Guardian, Polly Tonybee knows why it happened. Even with no access to police records and interviews, she knows:
This attack on a public official cannot be viewed in isolation. It occurs against a backdrop of an ugly public mood in which we have been told to despise the political class, to distrust those who serve, to dehumanise those with whom we do not readily identify…
Her words drip in bias and opportunism. She mentioned Hitler, and how a goon or goons in “my local Labour councillor in Camden, north London” stuck a neo-Nazi stickers on their car windscreen. She records the words on the flyer: “This is a lave [leave] area. We hate the foriner. Nex time do not park your car with remain sign on. Hi Hitler. White Power.”
Others have been more erudite on racism and Hitler, people like Labour’s Ken Livingstone and Labour MP Naz Shah, both of whom Tonybee does not mention. She does, however have a point to make about right-wingers, apparently keen to paint Brexit voters as bigots:
It’s been part of a noxious brew, with a dangerous anti-politics and anti-MP stereotypes fomented by leave and their media backers mixed in. Only an hour before this shooting Nigel Farage unveiled a huge poster showing Syrian refugees fleeing to Slovenia last year, nothing to do with EU free movement – and none arriving here. Leave’s poster read: “Breaking Point. We must break free from the EU and take control of our borders.” Nicola Sturgeon, Caroline Lucas and many others condemned it as “disgusting”, and so it is…
This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to outbursts from the far fringes of British politics. The justice minister, Michael Gove, and the leader of the house, Chris Grayling – together with former London mayor Boris Johnson – have allied themselves to divisive anti-foreigner sentiment ramped up to a level unprecedented in our lifetime. Ted Heath expelled Enoch Powell from the Tory front ranks for it. Oswald Mosley was ejected from his party for it. Gove and Grayling remain in the cabinet.
This is a new low. A woman is dead. Murdered. And people are using using her death to campaign for the EU Referendum. On twitter, we know what we get, but in the national Press we should expect better.
Posted: 17th, June 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Key Posts, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Owen Jones: Philip Green is an upper-class Jewish tax exile on a night bus
Owen Jones is talking about “The appalling Philip Green” in the Guardian. to Jones, Green is one of the “elite” who epitomises “broken Britain”.
Green’s testimony to the parliamentary inquiry into the collapse of British Home Stores was a crude, depressing but revealing insight into the psychology and workings of the upper reaches of British society.
Green might come across as a greedy bastard – he could well be one – but to claim him as a member of the upper reaches of British society is pushing it. Green is a Jew (and we know how much the aristocrats love Jews (clue: they don’t)). When he was 12, Green’s father dad died. Green left school at 15. Though from middle-class money, Green is not one of the British upper-class elite.
He oozed open contempt for the MPs questioning him. “Sir, do you mind not looking at me like that all the time, it’s really disturbing,” he snapped at a Tory MP, like a drunk spoiling for a fight on a night bus.
More bullyboy then Bullingdon boy, then. But the confusion over what Green is is nothing to Jones’ grasp on the the system he decries:
And here he has a point. No, “the system” doesn’t compel the likes of Green to behave as they do; “the system” didn’t put a gun to his head and force him to become a tax exile…
Green is not a tax exile.
Posted: 16th, June 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
Manchester United: David De Gea decides on Real Madrid transfer this Wednesday
Having declined to join Real Madrid from Manchester Untied last summer, David De Gea is once more being tipped for a move to Spain. The Sunday Times leads with news that the United goalkeeper “faces an ultimatum” this Wednesday. That’s when an “exit clause” in his contract says he can join Real Madrid for £47m.
The story goes that De Gea was mentally winning Champions’ Leagues with Real when the a mix up with fax machines and deadlines caused him to sing a new four-year contract with United and eye next season’s Europa League.
Now we read that De Gea is even less decided than he was last summer, thinking that the arrival of new Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho could make the Red Devils a better team than Louis Van Gaal’s army. On the other side, Real’s president Florentino Perez wants De Gea has asked Madrid’s Spain national team players to use the country’s Euro 2016 campaign to convince De Gea to move.
Whichever way De Gea falls, he will surely kiss that club’s badge and tell everyone he has made the correct decision – until next summer…
Posted: 12th, June 2016 | In: Back pages, Broadsheets, manchester united, Sports | Comment
England football fans are all racist scum and the Queen is their idol
You will remember all that stuff about football fans being “slum people watching a slum sport“. You will remember how casting all football fans as scum who deserved to be caged was what led to Hillsborough, when police sent for the attacks dogs as fans corralled into a too-small terrace not fit for purpose gasped for life.
Football fans were the Untermenschen on which all new methods of control could be tested. One doctor present at Hillsborough said the only difference ID cards could have made that day was to make it easier to identify the young corpses.
You remember that?
As the truth emerged after a mere 27 years years of waiting for the State-sanctioned police lies to dissolve, the Hillsborough campaigners calls for justice were dampened by a wall of sanctimonious bilge about their fight being a great day for Britain, a triumph of law and modernity, how today’s political, police and media elite had “learned lessons” to ensure “it will never happen again”. But we didn’t have to wait long before the same old dislike of football fans to seep out. Guardian readers were told “The authorities failed Liverpool fans at Hillsborough. But so did the real hooligans.”
What hooligans? The fans who ran amuck when Luton Town played Millwall? The Liverpool fans who charged Juventus fans at Heysel, causing a stampede and a wall in a dilapidated stadium to break, killing 39? Yes, we know there were acts of hooliganism. But there was no aggro as the fans at Hillsborough died. The police were not attacked. Fans did not urinate on corpses and rob from the dead, as the Sun claimed (and finally apologised for). In the cages, the innocent begged for help. The police replied by forming ranks, by forcing the desperate fans back into the pens, by looking like an Army. They put on a show of force and menace as the innocent died.
Sticking with the Guardian, in today’s edition Dawn Foster writes beneath the headline “The Queen’s birthday has unleashed a pernicious new patriotism”. Her Majesty is 90. Foster is unimpressed and offended:
“…the celebrations for the Queen’s 90th birthday have crept up; if you’re lucky, you’ll suffer nothing more than a bombardment of Union Jacks this weekend – but many of us will experience something much worse: the performative cheeriness of the street party.
Friends of mine who live in areas where street parties are in the works have, without exception, reported that the people responsible are the perennially furious residents who spend most of their lives in a rage about parking. Shifting their attention from the contentious temporary ownership of asphalt, they have decided the neighbourhood needs to commemorate the birthday of a 90-year-old woman none of the residents have met.
It is all sneery stuff.
The party will follow the usual template: tea, cupcakes, flags upon flags upon flags, wartime slogans and songs, and the performance of a very specific type of Englishness – the Englishness of Fry and Laurie rather than This Is England. One harks back to the empire while the other attempts social realism.
This kind of middle-class nationalism, rooted in a confected history of postwar austerity, has been resurgent in the years since the last royal wedding. The ubiquity of the Keep Calm and Carry On poster is the most obvious symbol…
And then football fans get a kicking. The old hatred is back:
Nationalism now has two faces: that of the far right, signified by a certain sort of caricature of a football supporter and England flags, and now the middle-class right, posh enough to wear chinos while raising a glass to “her maj” in front of a Union Jack. The two aren’t entirely separate: the former is openly racist, the latter a frequent apologist for the British empire.
The football fan wrapped in and England flag and replica kit is “openly racist”, says Foster. In short, the England fans are scum, slum people, the embodiment of everything the knowing liberal elite despise.
Lessons learned? Never again? Nothing of it. The knowing have just found new ways to control the working-classes they deride. Don’t say that. Don’t sing this. Sit down. Pay up. Stay home and watch it on the telly because the seats have been made too pricy for you.
Let’s all have a street party. It’s part of British culture. It’s what the British do. If you want to serve humus, wear a Mexican hat, cheer for the French or tell everyone they’re sad losers, you can. Live and let live is part of the same culture.
Now, where is that flag and Jamie Vardy mask? C’mon In-ger-land. If we win, we’re having a party…in the street, the fountain, the shopping precinct, the hospital…
Posted: 11th, June 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Key Posts, Reviews, Sports | Comment
