Key Posts Category
From Leicester to Galashiels and North Pickenham, cannabis is the drug of choice
Would you hide a 1kg brick of cannabis in a place where it could go up in smoke in one huge hit? Two people in Leicester have bene arrested for allegedly hiding the stash in a barbecue.
In Scotland, a man has been found living with 700 cannabis plants in a former bookmakers in Galashiels town centre. He too has been arrested.
In North Pickenham, Norfolk, police arrested a man who claims the 693 cannabis plants growing in his garden shed were to ease his chronic pain.
In Sixmilecross, Northern Ireland, police found a “cannabis factory”. A local policeman tells media: “We will continue to do everything possible to prevent the supply of drugs and identify those involved while at the same time, make people aware of the real danger posed to their health and their lives by illegal drugs.”
But not all cannabis is illegal. It’s only illegal if the State doesn’t agree that you should have it. Patients can be prescribed medicinal cannabis by specialist doctors.
With moves to legalise the drug afoot across the UK, how long before police stop arresting people for growing the drug and there’s an amnesty for anyone who has been?
Posted: 12th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
Public Library receipt shows how much cheaper it is to borrow than buy books
Save the libraries. They’re one of the few place you can go and sit without needing to buying anything. And you can read the books, too. But not everyone appreciates the library until the burghers say it no longer pays and it’s gone. Staff at the Wichita Public Library understand. They’ve come up with a great way to out a price on library services and show us their monetary value.
They write:
“Every time materials are borrowed from the Wichita Public Library (WPL) customers receive a receipt showing how much they have saved in that visit, the year to date, and their lifetime savings. The information is displayed on the receipt similar to the ways that retail stores show savings to club members or coupon users…
“So far this year, the highest dollar amount saved by a customer’s account is $64,734.12. And the highest dollar amount saved by a customer’s account since this feature was implemented is $196,076.21.”
Keep your local library up by using it.
Spotter: Flashbak, Open Culture
Posted: 11th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, Money, News | Comment
Raising a penguin without ‘assigned gender roles’
Did you know you a human being can raise a penguin living in the UK without “assigned gender roles? This is not a parody (I think):
Meanwhile…on the Island of Dr Moreau…
Posted: 11th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment
Nine things American women were banned from doing in 1971
We’ve come a long way, baby. On Twitter @WPCelebratio compiled a list of nine everyday things American women were banned from doing in 1971 (via):
- A woman couldn’t get a credit card in her own name. They often needed a man to co-sign for a card. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act put a stop to this discrimination in 1974.
- Until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, women could be fired for getting pregnant (or not hired if they were pregnant). Despite the act, pregnancy discrimination continues today.
- Fight on the front lines – admitted into military academies in 1976, it wasn’t until 2013 that the military ban on women in combat was lifted.
- Women couldn’t attend certain Ivy League schools. Harvard did not fully admit women into its undergraduate program until 1977, Dartmouth took until 1972, and Columbia waited until 1983.
- In some states, women couldn’t say “no” to sex with their husbands. In 1993, the last two states (Oklahoma and North Carolina) withdrew their marital rape exemptions. But even today, several states treat marital rape as a lesser offense with smaller penalties compared to non-marital rape.
- Until a 1972 Supreme Court case, unmarried women in some states were prohibited from purchasing birth control pills.
Readers’ responses are illuminating:
The Telegraph looked at what women in the UK could not do in 1918:
Applying for a credit card or loan in their own name
Working in the legal profession and civil service
Inheriting and bequeathing property on the same terms as men
Claiming equal pay for doing the same work as men
Prosecuting a spouse for rape
no images were found
Posted: 11th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
Dentist promises sedation – GPs doll out uppers
Where America leads, the UK follows. Look out, then,. for a dentist advertising sedation. Rob Beschizza saw a sign of the times:
Driving near Pittsburgh, PA, my wife Heather noticed this excellent billboard featuring a woman saying “Scared of the dentist? No, I called and got SEDATED!”.
The chemical cosh is wielded with abandon. A Public Health England review at the end of March 2018 found that half of people prescribed strong painkillers, antidepressants and sleeping tablets had been on them for at least 12 months.
The numbers of people being fed these drugs are huge:
Nearly 12 million people took drugs such as antidepressants, sleeping pills and painkillers between 2017 and last year,
Worrying stuff.
Posted: 10th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
Legalised cannabis will give police less excuse to target black people
When cannabis is legalised in the UK, it will be, says one writer, “dominated by white men in suits”. Why would big co. marijuana be different from every other industry? UK citizens will get to smoke weed legally when those in power decide it’s worth the effort.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explained why recreational cannabis is legal in Canada: “To ensure that we keep marijuana out of the hands of children, and the profits out of the hands of criminals, we will legalise, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.”
The Canadian Government isn’t about freedom of choice. It simply wants to control the industry and the money that comes with it.
UK crime figures for 2017/18 tells us that black people were over 3 times as likely to be arrested as white people. Police recorded 35 arrests for every 1,000 Black people, and 11 arrests for every 1,000 white people. Black people had the highest arrest rates per 1,000 people in every police force area for which there was data. Why? “Black Caribbean people were 9.6 times as likely to stopped and searched as White British people.” Overall, 87.7 of conviction were for drugs.
Release, the ‘national centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law’, tells us in a report: “Across London black people are charged for possession of cannabis at 5 times the rate of white people.”
While tens of thousands of people are being criminalised every year for low level possession offences, it is those from the black community who are a greater risk of criminalisation and harsher sanctions.
An LSE blog post explains the money:
The amount spent by Canadians on cannabis in 2017 was estimated by Statistics Canada to be around C$5.5 billion, with the black market in recreational use estimated to be around 90 per cent of that, or around C$5 billion (the remainder being legal purchases for medicinal use. This compares with spending of around C$23 billion and C$17 billion on alcohol and tobacco respectively. Statistics Canada estimates that legal consumer spending for cannabis will range between C$0.816 billion and C$1.018 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018 (C$3.85 billion-C$4.8 billion annualised), with around 25 per cent of the market remaining illegal.
Smoking tobacco is bad for you. Smoking weed may have some health benefits. The cool kids have heard the message. Estimates suggest the global legal cannabis industry will grow to $66.3bn by 2023.
A poll in the Times found 47 per cent of people living in Scotland support the legalisation of cannabis – 37 per cent were opposed and 17 per cent unsure.
The rewards for whoever controls the marijuana industry are huge. The losers will be many,
When Iggy Pop could have been a Neil Diamond impersonator
Iggy Pop, the electric punk musician who made Cole Porter growl, one-time member of The Prime Movers, thriller of high schoolers and Zanzibar nights might have been a Neil Diamond impersonator.
“You know, I finally got the voice that I was supposed to have in some senses. When I was 21, I was in love with a girl from Cleveland and we actually got married for a couple of weeks,” he explains.
“I had just put out the first Stooges album and I met her dad, he was a big shot in business. He said, ‘Well, meeting and listening to you talk I guess you probably sing like Neil Diamond right?’
“I’ve since learned a lot of respect for Neil but at that time, you don’t tell Iggy Pop that he sounds like Neil Diamond. But on the other hand, a part of me was thinking, ‘Damn, if I sang like Neil Diamond, I’d have a lot more money you know’.”
Iggy Pop was talking to the BBC about his new album Free.
Posted: 6th, September 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Music | Comment
The teen who did not go blind from eating crisps, chips and sausages
Hear about the boy “blinded by chips and sausages”? Or as the BBC’s headline puts it, a little more accurately: “Teenager ‘blind’ from living off crisps and chips.”
The tabloid’s headline conjures all kinds of images (see above). But the story is less bizarre. The 17-year-old has long-standing eating issues for which he sought help. And for that we can only feel sympathy. Things got so bad that the lack of nutrients affected his vision. His diet is a composite mix of: French fries, Pringles, white bread, the occasional slice of ham or a sausage.
Truth is that the sausage might well be the heartiest thing he ate. Sausage did not make the teenager blind.
The boy’s visit to the Bristol Eye Hospital is recorded in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Dr Denize Atan, who treated him at the hospital, notes: “His diet was essentially a portion of chips from the local fish and chip shop every day. He also used to snack on crisps – Pringles – and sometimes slices of white bread and occasional slices of ham, and not really any fruit and vegetables. He explained this as an aversion to certain textures of food that he really could not tolerate, and so chips and crisps were really the only types of food that he wanted and felt that he could eat. He had blind spots right in the middle of his vision. That means he can’t drive and would find it really difficult to read, watch TV or discern faces. He can walk around on his own though because he has got peripheral vision.”
Sausages are innocent. Mental health should not be mocked.
Posted: 3rd, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Strange But True, Tabloids | Comment
Carl Beech’s lies earned him £22,000 – Mohammed Banares is short-changed
Carl Beech doesn’t have to pay back the £22,000 handed to him by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA). He could feel a pang of guilt at his lies and dig deep into his prison overalls for spare change, leftovers from the compensation payout he received on the strength of Wiltshire Police’s support for his claims that he’d been tortured and raped by a ‘ring’ of child-killing VIP peadophiles. We know Beech invested £10,000 of his windfall as down payment on a £34,000 Ford Mustang.
What the man found guilty of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud – prison sentence: 18 years – is unknown. Beech needed to provide no evidence of his ordeal for politicians and police to find it ‘credible and true’.
Not everything about police work is so subjective as believing in tales of VIP peados. It’s pretty easy to see what happened to Mohammed Banares, who, reportedly, lost both his legs in an unprovoked machete attack in Birmingham. The CICA priced his ordeal at £32,000. “I’m at the point of giving up. I was hoping that CICA would help me to recover,” he says. “The stress of what should be a straightforward claim has left me depressed and without hope. I don’t know how I will manage my life going forward.”
Going Prorogue – MPs fight to be the least democratic
The Government’s decision to prorogue parliament means MPs have less time to debate Brexit before the UK is legally obliged to leave the EU on October 31 – with or without a deal. Between three and eight parliamentary days will be lost. A parliamentary session usually lasts for one year but the current one has been going on for two years. The new session is hailed by the Queen’s Speech in which Her Maj lets us know the Government’s plans. Boris Johnson’s move is a high-wire act to achieve Brexit by giving MPs less time to block no deal, topple the government via a vote of ‘no confidence’ and keep kicking Brexit into the long grass with the aim of stopping it. The UK was supposed to leave the EU on 29 March. MPs rejected the deal negotiated with the EU three times. So the deadline was extended until 31 October.
Many protesting against a “coup” are more than happy to support a coup against democracy when the vote went against them. People like Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson. She tweets:
By suspending Parliament to force through a No Deal, Boris Johnson and the Government would remove the voice of the people. It is a dangerous and unacceptable course of action which the @LibDems will strongly oppose.
Noble stuff. the problem is that she also says she would do “whatever it takes to stop Brexit” and when she would implement Brexit in Parliament if voters backed it again in a second referendum replied: “No, because I was elected on a firm manifesto pledge for Scotland’s pledge in the UK and Britain’s place in the European Union and that’s what Liberal Democrats are here to do. That is the mandate that we have.”
Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle is upset by Johnson’s entirely legal move. He tells the Mirror: “If the government tries to drive no deal through by stopping parliament from sitting, we cannot just rely on the courts and parliamentary process. We need a mass movement of resistance, with marches, civil disobedience and protests in every village, town and city of this country.”
And what about Jeremy Corbyn, a man who lead by asking what others would do and then does nothing? He’s written to the Queen asking for her to stop it all. How’s that for sticking it to the elites?
Posted: 29th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Royal Mint needs Enid Blyton and Paddington Bear coins to make bankers appear human
Do you know what’s on a 20 euro note? Yes, yes, the number 20. Very good. But what’s the picture of? It’s an image of “Gothic architecture”. Euro banknotes “show architectural styles from various periods in Europe’s history, but do not show any actual existing monuments or bridges.” They’re works of fiction based on the something familiar and hackneyed.
In the UK, we don’t have Euros, of course, preferring sterling and pictures of Prince Andrew’s mother – and nothing honouring children’s author Enid Blyton. The commemorative coin to mark the 50th anniversary of her death (a morbid plan) has been shelved because the Royal Mint’s advisory committee says Blyton is “racist”, “sexist” and “homophobic”. None of which is desirable. Fearing an unfavourable response, the coin to celebrate (?) the death of the best-selling children’s writer won’t be made.
So we’re stuck with British money featuring “people who have shaped UK society through their thought innovation, leadership or values”, such as the anti-creationist Charles Darwin.
Perhaps the bigger question is not how the Royal Mint choses certain people and non-people – Paddington Bear, Harry Potter, C3P0 and characters from Game of Thrones – to be on its commemorative 50p pieces but if those people want to be associated with the nastiness and horrors of banking.
Carly Barton’s amnesty – a campaign for legal cannabis
Carly Barton was hit by a stroke in her early 20s. She discovered that cannabis alleviated the continual pain, what she describes as a “ridiculous amount of all-over pain – it just feels like you’re burning from the inside out, like my bones have been replaced by red hot pokers.” But cannabis was illegal in the UK.
Medics gave her strong painkillers. Over time she developed a tolerance to the effects of the legal opiates – “a cocktail of substances which included morphine and fentanyl.” She says: “I was struggling to feel the world as I hobbled along in a zombified state; this was not sustainable. I started looking at end-of-life clinics online.”
She became the first person in the UK to be legally given herbal cannabis . But with regulation comes increased costs. It cost £2,500 of her own money for three-months of pain relief. Her prescription comes from a private specialist. The NHS won’t provide it. “We are going to be put in a position where the rich are patients and the poor are criminals,” she told the Daily Mirror.
“I am going to openly break the law until I can access my medicine or they give me some kind of exemption,” said Carly in April. “I do not see myself as a criminal. There are two doctors who have prescribed it to me and now there is a vague law which does not seem to see it as a potential medicine.”
Carley’s Amnesty is a campaign she runs which seeks to allow other patients afflicted by chronic pain to use cannabis legally.
Haddon Salt was the king of fish and chips from Skegness to California
Yorkshireman Haddon Salt run a fish and chips empire that in the 1960s exceeded 500 stores. Kentucky Fried Chicken noticed the immigrant’s success. In 1969 the chicken mongers bought all of the H. Salt, Esq. Authentic English Fish and Chips outlets. The NY Times:
An initial Google search revealed that this shop was the last gasp of a once-sprawling fish-and-chips empire with hundreds of locations that started with an immigrant’s secret family recipe, flourished into an eight-figure deal with Colonel Sanders and ended in collapse.
It took several years and the research help of friends to track down Mr. Salt. We found him in a remote retirement community in Southern California’s desert. The rest you can see in the film before you.
For every icon there are those who were almost famous. And perhaps they, even more than their conqueror, have the lessons we need to hear.
Image: H. Salt Fish and Chips restaurant on Vineland Ave. in North Hollywood.
Spotter: Flashbak
Posted: 28th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment
Hal is coming: Russian Spacecraft carrying humanoid Robot aborts Space Station docking
Have Ronald Reagan’s ray guns readied. An uncrewed Russian Soyuz Spacecraft carrying a humanoid robot has aborted docking at International Space Station.
Onboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft is the humanoid robot Skybot F-850. On its final approach to the ISS, the automated docking system failed to lock on to its intended docking port.
“At no point was the crew in any danger,” says NASA spokesperson Rob Navias of the ISS’s six-person crew. But it’s not just the humans we’re worried about, is it. It’s the robot, aka Fedor.
“Like any person, Skybot f-850 is very sociable and has a sense of humor,’” says Alexander Bloshenko, science adviser to Roscosmos state space corporation’s director general. “As I have mentioned before, it can support any topic of conversation and answer a variety of questions: from welcoming remarks, continuing with a speech about its creators and ending with the philosophy of space.”
Hal… Come in Hal…
Image: The Russian Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft carrying the humanoid robot Skybot F-850 is seen during final approach to the International Space Station on Aug. 24, 2019. The Soyuz’s docking was aborted due to a problem with its Kurs rendezvous system.
Via: Russian Soyuz Spacecraft Carrying Humanoid Robot Aborts Docking at Space Station
Posted: 25th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, Technology | Comment
Jeffrey Epstein: Prince Andrew’s pathetic defence in full
Prince Andrew has issued a statement about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. It’s utter bilge. Quite extraordinary nonsense.
“I have said previously that it was a mistake and an error to see him after his release in 2010 and I can only reiterate my regret that I was mistaken to think that what I thought I knew of him was evidently not the real person, given what we now know.”
Andrew seems to be saying that when he hung out with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the Prince thought the American billionaire was a really good bloke, but after the convicted paedophile was arrested on suspicion of molesting lots more children (see: Epstein’s “lifestyle”), the Prince come to realise that Epstein might not be the top person he thought him to be when he had been in prison for over a year during the course of their friendship for having sex with a 14-year-old.
That, says the Prince, is “closure”. And that, dear readers, is the best the finest minds among the Palace’s contingent of PRs can muster. The allegations are worse than the actual crime? Andrew’s in a bigger hole than even he can fill.
Posted: 24th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment
Situations vacant : young women to rub Prince Andrew’s post-Epstein feet
Before he was “appalled” by Jeffrey Epstein’s corpse and the financier’s “alleged crimes”, Prince Andrew was seen getting a foot massage from a young woman at Epstein’s apartment. Writing in the New Republic, Evgeny Morozov paints a tableaux of what life is like for Randy Andy in one of those distilled culture war moments. You, the civilised, think ‘who is that pompous twat in the suit’. Entitled knobs think: keep the lower orders in their place?
Last time I visited his house (the largest private residence in NYC), I walked in to find him in a sweatsuit and a British guy in a suit with suspenders, getting foot massages from two young well-dressed Russian women. After grilling me for a while about cyber-security, the Brit, named Andy, was commenting on the Swedish authorities and the charges against Julian Assange.
“We think they’re liberal in Sweden, but it’s more like Northern England as opposed to Southern Europe,” he said. “In Monaco, Albert works 12 hours a day but at 9pm, when he goes out, he does whatever he wants, and nobody cares. But, if I do it, I’m in big trouble.” At that point I realized that the recipient of Irina’s foot massage was his Royal Highness, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.
Indeed, a week later, on a slow news day, the cover of the NYPost had a full-page photo of Jeffrey and Andrew walking in Central Park under the headline: “The Prince and the Perv.” (That was the end of Andrew’s role at the UK trade ambassador.)
It’s not just the word that the foot rubbers are young women and the bores all middle-aged blokes, but that the women are “well-dressed’, their clothes adding a mask of decency to the sleaze, like stashing your porn in a Smythson briefcase and hiring expensive lawyers to muzzle accusers.
Anyhow, Andrew is “appalled by recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes”. Whether Andrew is more of less appalled by Epstein’s 2008 conviction of sex with a 14-year-old is not known. All we know is that in 2010, they were hanging out in New York together…
Posted: 24th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment
Falsettos : Jews and Non-Jews can pretend to be Jews
Set in New York City in 1979, Falsettos is the musical that begins with the number “Four Jews in a Room Bitching”: “Marvin, his ten-year-old son Jason, his psychiatrist Mendel, and his boyfriend Whizzer are in the midst of an argument.” The show about a Jewish family has won Tony Awards for book and score. But the London outing has hit a snag: there are no actual Jews on the show:
Miriam Margolyes and Maureen Lipman have accused West End producers of “overt appropriation” after they cast non-Jewish actors in a musical about a Jewish family. They are among a group of 20 Jewish artists who signed an open letter to the team behind Falsettos, which opens at The Other Palace Theatre in Westminster on August 30. It claims that the UK debut of the award-winning show – which has a plot centred around a boy’s bar mitzvah – features no Jewish talent.
Can Jews play non-Jews? Isn’t a play all about, you know, pretending? Playing yourself isn’t really acting is it, not of the sort that makes you a dame. And what of a black Jews – are they able to black Muslims and Hasidic Jews or just one or the other, or neither? Does Hamlet have a Danish accent? Is Maureen looking for a job?
The row was ignited when the message, backed by Harry Potter actress Ms Margolyes, 78, and Coronation Street star Ms Lipman, 73, was published by The Stage website on Wednesday. “To the best of our knowledge no one in the cast of the UK premiere is Jewish, and neither is the director or anyone on the team,” it states. “Jewishness is easy to caricature and this seems all the more disappointing when Jewish representation is absent and the ability of Jews to tell or contribute to their own stories is dismissed.”
Why not trust the actors not to caricature the roles? The best actors can pick up accents and slight facial expression. The worst play versions of themselves on Hollyoaks, The Only Way is Essex and The Producers. The best plays are not racially-driven propaganda. And then this:
Selladoor Worldwide, the production company, said it could not confirm if its company members were Jewish because it would be discriminatory to ask them.
I don’t think they’re Jewish, but their agent might be?
Lead image: Miriam Margolyes playing ‘not a Jew’ in Blackadder
Posted: 24th, August 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment
Jeffrey Epstein: Prince Andrew and an obsession with holes
Jeffrey Epstein is the BBC’s “shamed financier Jeffrey Epstein”. But he wasn’t was he? We’ve no clue if Epstein felt shame for molesting underage girls. And we know that after his 2008 conviction for procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18 he was still pals with Prince Andrew. If shame results from being shunned by society, Epstein was shameless. It was only after the tabloids published a photo of Andrew walking in the park with Epstein that the royal hole hunter apparently cut ties with the convicted paedophile. And let’s note that Buckingham Palace deny Andrew’s involvement in any wrongdoing.
We don’t know what drove Epstein to apparently take his own life in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. If he left a note explaining all, we’ve not seen it. If he confided in anyone, their lips are sealed.
Did Einstein feel his wrongdoing, something akin to what E.F. Schumacher wrote in 1973 on “The power of ‘the Eye of the Heart’, which produces insight, is vastly superior to the power of thought, which produces opinions”? Was Epstein suddenly acutely aware of his crimes, seeing what once was inaccessible to his limited view? Did Epstein experience embarrassment and found the resulting fall into self knowledge unbearable? Credo ut intelligam.
No Epstein. No way of knowing. Instead a look at some the women on his planet because women sell news.
The Times and Telegraph both lead with big photos of Katherine Keating. It’s “believed” she was seen on video leaving Epstein’s home in NYC, waving goodbye to Prince Andrew as she left.
The footage, shot on December 6, 2010, shows a relaxed Prince Andrew peering out from behind the door of Epstein’s New York home, a lavish residence in which the financier allegedly carried out the systematic grooming, abuse and rape of young girls. The Duke of York was bidding a friendly farewell to a brunette woman who bears a striking resemblance to Ms Keating, now 37, the middle daughter of Paul Keating, the Labor leader who served as Australia’s prime minister from 1991 until 1996.
But, well, so what? Keating has done nothing wrong. She hung out with very rich people in New York. What light does it shed on Epstein?
While the full allegations against him had not emerged in December 2010, he had pleaded guilty, in 2008, to soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14. It seemed to make little difference to his standing in international high society.
Why not? A conspiracy? That a very rich man knew very rich, very connected, very materialistic people is nothing shocking. His little black book was a social network. It’s not the only one. Do we trust the people in these elite groups? What are their values? Chances are they’re as hypocritical as the rest of us.
In a world obsessed with imaginary VIP paedophiles, Jeffrey Epstein was the real deal. Don’t focus on the holes – all the things we don’t know. The good news is that the law caught up with him.
Posted: 21st, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment
Jeffrey Epstein: Release the tabloid dogs lest Prince Andrew slip away
The better news for Prince Andrew is that the New of The World’s death came long before Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide by committee in a New York jail. The convicted paedophile who hung out with Randy Andy in the palace and the park was the topic of the March 2011 NoTW front page “Prince Andy and the Paedo”. The paper loved a tale of sex and scandal, and would have pursued the story of Andrew and the now dead depraved pervert with vigour. The phone-hacking was deplorable. But there’s a big hole where the hugely popular paper used to be.
Back then, the knowing celebrated the NoTW’s demise. Hugh Grant told BBC Question Time: “I’m not for regulating the proper press, the broadsheet press. But we need regulation of the tabloid press.” Today Jeremy Corbyn agrees with that biased view: tabloid bad, broadsheet good. Or to put it in clearer terms: people who read the tabloids are the wrong sort and must be schooled by their knowing betters. We can know only what our betters think we should know.
Hacking is wrong but, you know, would you quite like to hear a phone call between Andrew and Epstein? Perhaps the hack would be more to your tastes if it were via Wikileaks and published in the Guardian?
It’s left to the Mail on Sunday to take up the cudgel. It published new photographs of Andrew’s visit to Epstein’s New York mansion in December 2010 – two years after the host pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Good on the Mail, then. Or not. Because according to Corbyn: “Just because it’s on the front page of The Sun or the Mail doesn’t automatically make it news.” Wrong. It does. Whether or not you choose to read it is another story. We’ll decide what’s worth knowing. You can stick your “ethical journalism” up your organic punter.
In a world where the press are compliant and controlled, newspapers will be run by the State and full of press releases, advertorials and PR, like this missive from Buckingham Palace, which says:
“The Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes. His Royal Highness deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he would condone, participate in or encourage any such behavior is abhorrent.”
Nothing to see here. Move on. Andrew is His Royal Highness – he never has been a human being like you slobs beset by the foibles of lust, pride and desire. Even the Sun is kowtowed, calling Andrew “foolish”. Better a fool than a paedophile’s princely pal. “What was he doing at the home of a convicted paedophile? What on earth was he thinking?” asks the Times. His thoughts are his own affair. His doings are what we want to know about.
Posted: 20th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
How to apologise for Brexit
Why are public figures so bad at apologising? Brexit is a mess. Are we leaving? Why can’t politicians just own up and say: we were utterly shocked by the referendum result and are still reeling from it; We want to stop it because the EU is an umbrella beneath which we can hide; I love chlorinated chicken.
Jay Hendricks has a guide to getting it right:
- Own up to the mistake. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
- Focus on your emotions, not how you hurt someone else. Say how bad you feel about screwing up.
- Show how your mistake was an exception to the rule. You’re a great, thoughtful person who temporarily lapsed.
- Promise improvement and show what you’re going to do to fix any remaining problems.
Image: Operation Black Vote launched this dire campaign to encourage people from ethnic minorities to register and vote in the EU referendum.
Posted: 20th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
The Beatus Facundus: beautifying good and evil
We’ve not witnessed the end of the world. So the rich industry in predicting it continues. One day it really will be all over, the huge whimper triggering the race in the afterlife to scream ‘first!’. Beatus was not the first to peer into the future and see a decisive battle between God and the Devil. The Spanish monk created his Beatus Of Liébana in the 8th Century, a chronicle of the biblical book of Revelations. In the 11th Century King Ferdinand I of León, Castile, and Galicia wanted an updated version of Beatus’s work. So he shipped in a monk called Facundus to copy it. You can see lots more of the Beatus Facundus on Flashbak.
Childhood is dead
On the beach in lovely Dorset, I saw a party of school children. They were all dressed in high-vis jackets. All the adults around them were early middle-aged women dressed in light blue tabards, words on the back displaying their roles: ‘security’, ‘teacher’, ‘parent’ and ‘assistant’. A day out at the beach was an exercise in crowd control and policing. The message was clear: danger was all around. Lest the children be protected and watched at all times, strangers, the sea (calm and watched by lifeguards sat at beach pods), seagulls, men, sand and, well, anything would destroy them.
Maybe the children’s parents were tuning at home, their phones altered by apps into CCTV devices with which to observe junior’s every waking moment. For older children, which these were, mum should only use baby monitors to check if anyone’s coming down the stairs to catch them smoking in the garden. Anything else is spying.
As the children were trained in techniques that should serve them well for future careers as uber-compliant drones in corporate factories or the Labour Party, I read the New York Times:
School days are longer and more regimented. Kindergarten, which used to be focused on play, is now an academic training ground for the first grade. Young children are assigned homework even though numerous studies have found it harmful. STEM, standardized testing and active-shooter drills have largely replaced recess, leisurely lunches, art and music.
The role of school stress in mental distress is backed up by data on the timing of child suicide. “The suicide rate for children is twice what it is for children during months when school is in session than when it’s not in session,” according to Dr. Gray. “That’s true for suicide completion, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, whereas for adults, it’s higher in the summer.” . . .
And so for many children, when the school day is over, it hardly matters; the hours outside school are more like school than ever. Children spend afternoons, weekends and summers in aftercare and camps while their parents work. The areas where children once congregated for unstructured, unsupervised play are now often off limits. And so those who can afford it drive their children from one structured activity to another. Those who can’t keep them inside. Free play and childhood independence have become relics, insurance risks, at times criminal offenses. . . .
Kids need recess. They need longer lunches. They need free play, family time, meal time. They need less homework, fewer tests, a greater emphasis on social-emotional learning.
In short: leave them alone. True love is giving people space to be alone, bored and make up their own rules. Meanwhile… the drugs and therapy industries are booming.
