Beat Box Vicar Gavin Tyte Introduces Five Mind Melting Christmas Carols

THE Rev Gavin Tyte is rapoping the story ofnativity form his perch at the Uplyme and Axmouth churches in Devon. He’s the Bible beater. But is his song the worst Christmas carol ever?

Let’s see:

Coventry Carol – music to murder the innocent by:

God Rest Ye Gerry Mental Men… You must sing this as if envying the turkey being slow-roasted in a gas oven…

I Wonder as I Wander

Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anorak

Posted: 15th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment

Kelvin McKenzie V Nick Davies: Sun’s Hillsborough Hypocrite Slams Guardian’s Milly Dowler Error

FORMER Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie is upset that The Guardian’s Nick Davies might not have been right when he stated that the News Of The World had deleted messages from Milly Dowler’s phone – the one it hacked.

MacKenzie write in The Spectator:

Welcome to the world of journalism, Nick Davies. So the cops in Surrey told you the story was true — or so you claim. The cops at the Yard told you it was true — or so you claim. Every aching bone in your reporter’s anti-Murdoch body told you it was true. But there was a problem — as we all now know today. The Milly Dowler story that led The Guardian on that fateful day back in July was untrue: there is no evidence to show that the News of the World deleted Milly’s voicemails.

Biased reporting! Is that what McKenzie is accusing Davies of?

Anorak

Posted: 15th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)

Georgina Ray Is Jimmy Savile’s Daughter: The Joy Of Greasy Spoon Sex On A Rollercoaster

IS Georgina Ray, Jimmy Savile’s love child? The Sun say the woman with the straw blonde hair, shiny gold tracksuit and gibbery “arseabowt dat den” turn of phrase IS Savile’s daughter.

If she is, then who’s the mum? Is it:

Princess Diana?
Joan Collins?
David “Diddy’ Hamilton?

Georgina, of Cannock, Staffs, tells a “friend“, who tells the Sun:

“Jimmy Savile is my dad — my mum told me.”

It’s easy to believe Georgina. But Anorak sympathsies with the single mum who keen to inject a spot of pizazz into a fatherless child’s life points at the telly and says: “See him… He’s yer dad!”

Anorak

Posted: 15th, December 2011 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment (1)

Baby Seal Breaks Into Home And Watches TV On Sofa: Photos

A CUTE as hell baby seal has flopped though Annette Swoffer’s front-door cat flap and cuddled up on the sofa at her Bay of Plenty home in New Zealand.

As she says:

“I was in my office and I heard an awful racket down below… I thought the cats have brought a rabbit or something in so I went down and had a look – and there’s a seal in my kitchen. I thought ‘I’m hallucinating, this is just wrong’. I’m looking and I’m definitely seeing flippers and not paws.”

Anorak

Posted: 14th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment (1)

Luluvise: Girls Just Wanna Have Their Own Social Networking Site?

ALL women really want to do is gossip, talk fashion and discuss boys – and they want to do so in a safe space, sheltered from men who can easily hurt their feelings.

Or at least that’s the premise of Britain’s latest start-up, social networking site Luluvise, which is a kind of girls-only Facebook. That this initiative is described as “empowering” for women shows what a skewed idea some ladies have of feminism these days. Because Luluvise promotes the most reductive, trite notion of womanhood: that females are sensitive creatures in need of protection, and that what they like most is talking about feelings, clothes and relationships.

It all started two years ago, when Luluvise founder Alexandra Chong, a former member of Jamaica’s Olympic tennis team, had a Valentine’s Day story she wanted to share with her girlfriends but didn’t feel comfortable posting on Facebook. Neither did she want to go through the hassle of contacting all her female friends individually. So she came up with the idea of creating a ladies-only social networking site.

Luluvise may be targeted at women aged 18 to 35, but the behaviour it encourages is hardly mature. Instead, the site comes across as a silly, wannabe combo of Sex and the City and High School Musical. Luluvise users first create an “Inner Circle”, which is accessible only to selected girlfriends – or, as Luluvise puts it, “BFFS”, Best Friends Forever. Users can then start sharing “news, gossip and scandals” with their BFFS, using four different tools: text scoop, photo scoop, poll scoop and the WikiDate scoop. The last one is a tool for rating men and the overall scores they receive are made public. Users can also flag up their scoops with an OMG tag (for juicy news) or an SOS tag (for urgent news).

Nathalie Rothschild

Posted: 14th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Technology | Comments (3)

The Biggest News Moments Of 2011 In Lego

THE biggest news moments of 2011 in Lego is a joy. If you want more, you can see the Best Celebrity Photos of 2011 and The Best News Photos of 2011:

osama-death-lego

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Anorak

Posted: 14th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Photojournalism | Comment

Richard Smith: Pudsey Family ‘Slaughter’ Becomes A Play Along Murder Mystery

RICHARD Smith murdered his wife Claire two young children, Ben, nine, and Aaron, one, with a knife. He then set fire to the family home in Pudsey, West Yorkshire. Richard Smith died from smoke inhalation.

The Daily Mirror leads with a studio portrait of the family taken a few months before the horror and states: “SENSELESS.”

The paper couches the loss of life in the mundanity of the day to day:

“A trip to see Santa, a kids’ football team Christmas party, but hours later thy were all dead. So how did a row over dad’s flirting lead him to slaughter his perfect wife and children?”

The Mirror calls the children “adorable“. It says the wife was “perfect“. The Mirror is tugging at heartstrings. It seeks to stir emotion with a heavy spoon.

The Sun says the picture of the family is “heartrending“. The paper even manages to tell readers what Richard Smith was thinking:

Proud dad Richard Smith poses for an idyllic family portrait — alongside the “perfect” wife and sons he killed at the weekend.

Who needs phone hacking when you can read minds?

Anorak

Posted: 14th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)

Daily Telegraph, Washington Post And Huffington Post Report Twitter Lie As Fact: Liege Killer ‘Nordine Amrani Was Muslim Terrorist’

NORDINE Amrani, 33, has killed five people and himself in Liege, Belgium. There is not a shred of evidence that this known criminal had any links to terrorism and militant Islam. But he did have an Islamic name. And that’s enough for the  Telegraph to report:

The Karachi Post in Pakistan claimed that the attack was linked to a sentence in an honour killing case. It said the parents of Sadia Sheikh were sentenced on Monday when there had been a bomb alert in the court.

That line has now been removed.

Anorak

Posted: 13th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)

Nordine Amrani: Profile And Photos Of Liege Killer

NORDINE Amrani, 33, has murdered five people in Place Saint Lambert, Liege, Belgium. He has murdered a 17-year-old boy, a 15-year-old girl, a 65-year-old woman, a two-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man. So far, 123 people have been reported injured.

Other reports say he did not act alone.

Other reports are that he was a militant Muslim.

Amrani murdered with bullets and grenades.

What do we know about Mr Amrani? So far, not much.

Nordine Amrani was born in Belgium on November 15, 1978. He is the son of North African immigrants from Morocco.

In September 2008, he was sentenced to 58 months in prison and fined €11,000 for possession of 10 firearms, 9,500 gun parts along and 2,800 cannabis plants. He kept them in his metal shop.

Amrani was granted parole in October last year.

He has a conviction for sexual abuse.

Anorak

Posted: 13th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (6)

Madeleine McCann: Viscount Rothmere Fails To Explain The Daily Mail’s Omissions

MADELEINE McCann’s name has been evoked at a parliamentary committee hearing on privacy and injunctions.

Viscount Rothermere, the controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail, says he is “very deeply sympathetic to everything the McCanns have gone through“. However, he but that he stood by Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail editor-in-chief’s coverage of the missing child.

Says Rothermere:

“My paper writes about many things that give me personal cause for concern but I feel it’s my duty to allow editors the job to edit.

“If I picked up the phone every single time I disagreed with an article then I would make their job a lot harder to do. I rely on the processes within the organisation and their obeyance of them in order to run a professional outfit…

“I had personal concerns, yes. I think what the McCanns went through was very difficult for them but I did not bring up the issue with Paul Dacre, if that answers your question.”

Anorak

Posted: 13th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann | Comment

After Yue Yue Dies, Chinese Save Child Run Over By SUV (Video)

Anorak

Posted: 12th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

Understanding The Eurodeal: All They’ve Saved Are The Banks And Saddled Us With Inflation

OF course, saving the banks is an inportant thing to do: a world without banks is one which is much poorer than the one we live in. However, really, last week’s eurodeal, that is all they’ve done: saved the banks:

What the ECB can do is pull out all the stops to save Euroland’s €23 trillion banking system, and that is what it did last week by extending unlimited credit to banks (LTRO’s) to three years, halving the reserve ratio to 1pc, and relaxing collateral rules to allow banks running out of eligible “kit” to pawn almost anything at Frankfurt’s lending window.

This is the closest we have come a “game-changer” in two years of rolling crisis. The banks can play the “carry trade”, borrowing at 1pc until 2015 with gearing to buy Italian debt at 6.4pc. That is how you rebuild a shattered banking system, and how to finance governments covertly without breaching any Treaty clause.

Everything else is just, well, we’ll agree to agree about something some other time. This however does indeed work.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 12th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Money | Comments (5)

Who Gave The NoTW Journalist Milly Dowler’s Pin Number And Why Did The Paper Then Hire Glenn Mulcaire?

NICK Davies writes on the Milly Dowler phone hacking crime:

A week ago, I discovered that the police had found new evidence about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone – lots of it.

Can we trust the police? (image: the NoTW’s man at Scotland Yard, Neil Wallis – “I’ve never heard of a policeman, a civil servant or a lawyer wanting me to pay them for information“.)

In London, Scotland Yard had finally gained access to 300m emails on News International’s servers. In Surrey, officers had retrieved all the logs and records from the inquiry that they ran after the 13-year-old schoolgirl was abducted in March 2002.

All the logs they retrieved… No all the logs.

Happily for both police forces, this confirmed almost everything they had previously discovered. The News of the World had indeed hired a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, to hack into the voicemail of the missing girl; he had succeeded; reporters had listened to her messages; Surrey police had known this at the time and taken no action; some messages were deleted; as a result the Dowlers were given false hope that Milly was still alive.

Anorak

Posted: 12th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (4)

Are You A Rapist Or A Lads’ Mag Reader? Take The Test

WHAT do we make of the Middlesex University and Surrey University report that likens comments made by convicted rapists to those found in lads’ mags? Most men presented with words uttered by rapists and found in lads’ mags “identified themselves more with the language expressed by the convicted rapists”.

The rapists’ quotes were taken from the book The Rapist Files: Interviews With Convicted Rapists. Other quotes were taken from men’s mags like FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo. How many rapists have read Loaded is not said. We also are not told how many men who read lads’ mags also read hard core porn magazines or look at XXX-rated websites. We are not told why rape jokes are acceptable and what it says about men who laugh at them and men who tell them.

We learn that “when presented with descriptions of women taken from lads’ mags, and comments about women made by convicted rapists, most people who took part in the study could not distinguish the source of the quotes”.

Men identified more with the comments made by rapists more than the quotes made in lads’ mags, but men identified more with quotes said to have been drawn from lads’ mags more than those said to have been comments by convicted rapists. The researchers also asked a separate group of women and men aged between 19 and 30 to rank the quotes on how derogatory they were, and to try to identify the source of the quotes.

Men and women rated the quotes from lads’ mags as somewhat more derogatory, and could categorize the quotes by source little better than chance.

Anorak

Posted: 12th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

Little Mix Win X Factor As Rachel Crow Asks Her Mom Why She Never Fell Ill And Nearly Died?

ON the night Little Mix are voted winners of the X Factor 2011 and band most likely to sing a dreary single – didn’t you prefer their old stuff when they were Rhythmix? – a thought for Rachel Crow. She’s the 13-year-old who when told that America had voted her off the US X Factor sank to her knees in a manner a penitent King Herod would consider a little OTT and did a passable impression of Violet Elizabeth Bott.

Everyone cried. Well, everyone aside from the show’s host Steve Jones, the animatronic Man At Burton’s suit dummy who went down on one knee like Bruce Forsyth lining up a pro-celebrity putt with Tarby and missed.

The wonderful tear ducts were opened when Nicole Scherzinger failed at her job of judging and took it to a phone vote. Nicole just wanted the world to know that sending home a teenager was so hard. Nicole is no high school teacher. She dabbed her eyes with Rachel’s cuddle cloth and held her hands over her heart to check it was still there. Then the American pubic voted. Rachel was gone to the celebrity butter mountain.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comments (4)

San Juan Mayor Jorge Santini Delivers The World’s Greatest Christmas Cards

THE Americans’ habit of sending out Christmas cards featuring their own faces tests British cynicism. We British, for whom Christmas goodwill and warm wishes is manifest in a robin perched on a snowy log, consider such behaviour brash, showy and over-confident. We are minded of the habit by a card sent out by Mayor Jorge Santini, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico. For him, Christmas is all about a leopard killing a vegetarian in a promotional still for the San Juan Wildlife Museum and Rug Emporium. It’s what Jesus would have wanted.

mayor-jorge-santini

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Anorak

Posted: 11th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comments (3)

Tommaso The Second Richest Cat In The World Lives 37 Lives On €10m Fortune

TOMMASO is the world’s second richest Tom cat, second only to Prince Harry in the litter tray stakes.

It was Tommaso’s cunning plan to be adopted off the streets of Rome by childless widow Maria Assunta, an ancient woman who has just died aged 94. Scratched into her will by a long nail dipped in what looks and smells like cabbage water is details for her €10 million fortune to go to Tommaso.

Tomasso no longer has a cat flap in the door – he has a porter dressed a Jerry Mouse to open the thing and then shut it on his own fingers. Tommaso loves slapstick.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment

Kerry Katona Sees Her Stalker In The Mirror

KERRY Katona may be one of the hottest and trashiest Z listers in Britain but according to my old friend Dean Piper over at the Sunday Mirror today Kerry’s now got her very own stalker.

Mike Wheeler

Posted: 11th, December 2011 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment

Police Bottom Pincher Admits Assault: But Police Rapists And Sex Criminals Are More Likely To Escape

BRADLEY Richards has admitted to the charge of common assault for pinching the bottom of a female  police community support officer (PCSO) on Merseyside. He had originally been charged with – get his – sexual assault. Bit last month – he had goosed the PCOP in April 2010 – the  Crown Prosecution Service accepted a guilty plea to common assault.

A judge at Liverpool Crown Court said the PCSO had suffered “embarrassment, distress and anxiety“. Richards is sentenced to a two-month curfew between 20:00 and 06:00 GMT, running over the Christmas period.

Says Judge David Aubrey QC:

“I am well aware that we are about to enter the festive season. That is one of the reasons why I am imposing this order. I am going to give you an opportunity to reflect upon that which you did and punish you for that which you did.”

Anorak

Posted: 11th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

Louis Walsh Had No Idea He Was Going Bald Until Simon Cowell Told Him

IT’S the morning of the X Factor live final and the Daily Mirror begins the expected news of hype and hoopla. Yes – Louis Walsh has had a hair transplant. Now as you roll your eyes at the singing and judgements you can study the top of Walsh’s head. And that used to be no easy thing. Walsh’s head acts as if it’s on a spring, bobbling here and there like an incontinent Weeble top-toeing thruogh a Glastonbury portaloo. We thought it was raw excitement or itching powder that kept up Walsh’s perpetual motion, but it was most likely the Irishman aiming to be a moving target and so harder to hit with barbs.

It turns out that even Walsh could not see Walsh’s head, having to be told he was thinning by the ever helpful Simon Cowell. Walsh had been labouring under the impression his hair was a blur or iron grey filings.

He tells the Mirror:

“He [Cowell]came up to me and said, ‘You know, you’re starting to lose your hair, dear.” I said, ‘I am not, dear! And anyway, you’re going grey!’”

Anorak

Posted: 10th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment

Gravesend Baby Rape: Who Told The Tabloids The Child Had Been Sexually Assaulted, Allegedly?

STILL no more news on the Gravesend baby hospitalised with severe injuries. The tabloids used the word “rape“. Tens of people took part in a vigil in the street – an outpouring of orchestrated grief in the grim post Diana ritual of mourn porn.

The Bexley Shopper says that the man aged 35 and a woman aged 33 remain on police bail.

The paper says the pair were “arrested on suspicion of assaulting a baby boy“.

Says Chief Superintendent Neil Jerome:

“There has been a lot of unhelpful speculation around social media and also what’s going on in the local community. It’s our job to establish the facts and to conduct a thorough and professional investigation. That is what we are doing and when the investigation is reaching the correct and appropriate stage then we will announce further details.”

Later, he adds:

“First of all I would like to thank everyone in the community for the compassionate way you have pulled together and expressed support for the baby boy who was admitted to hospital last week with serious, unexplained injuries.”

Anorak

Posted: 9th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)

The Greatest Album Covers In Lego: A Gallery of Brilliance

BOYS never grow out of their toys: artist Aaron Savage has recreated great album covers with Lego. Which one’s your favourite? (Lily Allen, Michael Jackson and Blondie and brilliant)…

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Anorak

Posted: 9th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment (1)

Does Scottish UFO hunter Gary McKinnon deserve 60 years in a US prison?

GARY McKinnon’s timing was disastrous. For a 13-month period between 2001 and 2002, the then 35-year-old Scotsman hacked into nearly 100 Pentagon and NASA databases. He claims he was searching for extra-terrestrial energies and cover-ups of UFO activity.

Not long after McKinnon got busted the 2003 Extradition Act was enacted. This was an agreement drawn up between the UK and the US in the wake of September 11. Though originally designed to fight terrorism it has been used as a tool to combat a range of other crimes. The US demanded McKinnon’s extradition and so his expected sentencing to six months of community service in the UK turned into a potential 60-year prison term in the US.

McKinnon and his mother, Janis Sharp, have spent the past decade trying to fight the extradition order, urging for McKinnon to be tried at home instead. Backed up by the Daily Mail, Sharp has urged for reform of the 2003 Extradition Act. Meanwhile, the WikiLeaks phenomenon has heightened US sensitivities to hacking and security breaches, a situation which hardly plays in McKinnon’s favour.

McKinnon has said that he was smoking a lot of marijuana at the time of his hacking ventures and he has since been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. Doctors are warning he may commit suicide if forced to board a plane to the US. But at least he has garnered a lot of sympathy. The Daily Mail‘s Affront to British Justice campaign has been backed by a number of MPs — including the now UK prime minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg — as well as celebrities, medical experts and civil liberties groups.

This week, the campaign took a leap forward as the House of Commons called on the government to reform the 2003 Extradition Act, as well as the European Arrest Warrant regime, which is currently being invoked to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden. At the Commons hearing, Conservative MP Dominic Raab said: “Gary McKinnon should not be treated like some gangland mobster or al-Qaeda mastermind.”

A central gripe of the reform proponents is that the 2003 Extradition Act places unequal demands on the British and UK judiciary systems. The US can demand the extradition of British citizens based only on “reasonable suspicion”, whereas US judges can reject a British application if no “probable cause” is shown. In other words, if the UK wants to extradite someone from the US, a prosecutor must produce proof of the crime, but not the other way around.  Since 2004, 29 UK nationals or dual nationals have been extradited to the US, and only five US nationals have been handed over to Britain.

Nathalie Rothschild

Posted: 9th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)

Islamic Cleric Warns Women Against Handling Sexy Bananas And Cucumbers

THE unnamed Islamic cleric says that women should avoid handling cucumbers, carrots and bananas lest doing so stir “sexual thoughts”, reports El-Senousa.

The male cleric, who sees the threat of lust in all things, advises that a male related to the women, such as their a father or husband (but not cousin Ishmael nor his friend Barry), should be in sole charge of such depraved food stuffs. These items should be hidden from women, possibly out of the kitchen and under the man’s bed or in a locked briefcase behind the stack of tiles in the garage.

Anorak

Posted: 9th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comments (3)

Daily Mail Spots A Muslim In McDonald’s On Christmas Day And Smells Church ‘Fury’

THIS Daily Mail story almost has the lot: angry Christians; a Muslim and fast food.

The headline tells readers much:

Church fury over opening of McDonald’s on Christmas Day as Muslim manager is drafted in

The Daily Mail Reporter writes:

Church leaders have hit out at a branch of McDonald’s which is to open on Christmas Day.

Anorak

Posted: 9th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)