Key Posts Category
The 1951 Festival of Britain – maps, thrills and the Skylon (photos)
THE 1951 Festival of Britain aimed to break all that post-war austerity with a display if the best of British art, design and industry. It would cost a packet but what the heck. Britain would show the subjects and the world that when it came to science, technology, graft and a rosey-fingered dawn, Great Briain was tops… Of the big venues, only the Royal Festival Hall remains. The Dome of Discovery went; its dismantling necessary for the largest sheet of glass in the world to be taken away – the Dome had been built around it. The Indian railway engine – the wrong gauge for British tracks – was removed by sea. And the Skylon – the 300ft sky-high pylon that pointed to the stars where dreams are made – was torn down. The metal was used for weapons.
Here is the gallery of the maps to get you around the festival, the sights, the buildings and that Skylon:
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More hypocrisy over Joey Barton’s rise and fall among the ‘chatterati’
JOEY Barton has been sacked as Queens Park Rangers captain following his 12-match ban and £75,000 FA fine for acts of stupidity and violence on the Manchester City pitch. In the Times, Rory Smith writes:
‘He was jeered by his own fans when substituted against Liverpool, a game, in his absence, that QPR managed to win; just as they survived his recklessness at the Etihad Stadium.’
QPR lost on the final day of the season at the Etihad, when City won the Premier League title. Had Bolton Wanderers not been let down by some horrible refereeing at Stoke City, QPR would not have survived to face another season of top-flight football.
But odder than that reworking of the facts is the Times‘ football editor Tony Evans’ comment piece. In it, Evans says:
‘Joey Barton’s Twitter profile sums up his lack of awareness…the 29-year-old has laid bare the scale of his lack of self-awareness. He has attempted to use Twitter as a vehicle to restyle his image.’
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Posted: 24th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comments (5)
Ben Needham, Madeleine McCann but not Charlene Downes: sensation points to alien abduction
YESTERDAY saw the relaunch of the pan-European 116000 missing children hotline at a Downing Street reception hosted by Home Secretary Theresa May. Tomorrow, it’s International Missing Children’s Day. Furthermore, www.missingkids.co.uk, the country’s official website for news on missing children, has been updated. A pre-summer holiday push is going on.
Which leads news hounds to Kate McCann, who was there. Which, in turn, leads to a story in the Daily Express:
‘NEW LIFELINE IN MADELEINE MCCANN HUNT’
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Posted: 24th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment (1)
Lady Gaga: The Far East your in photos and disguise
LADY Gaga has been to the Far East. The woman who would have been the white Grace Jones had Madonna not beaten her to it has been in Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. In Manila, some Christians say Lady Gaga is the devil incarnate and must be banned for: a) taking Jesus’ name in vain; and/or b) not billing herself as Lady LaLa, thereby helping the ticket bookers handle the phones with minimal confusion. In these photos, look out for the religionists and the fans, some of whom might actually be GaGa blowing her own trumpet, ecumenically speaking…
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South Korean Christians pray during a service as they call for the cancellation of a concert of U.S. pop star Lady Gaga at a church in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, April 22, 2012. Lady Gaga's April 27 concert in Seoul was banned to over-18s by the Korea Media Rating Board as Gender Equality Ministry considers one of her songs to be performed at the show as "inappropriate" for minors. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Priscilla Chan’s guide to marrying a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg (photos)
PRISCILLA Chan is now what Americans call Mrs Mark Zuckerberg. 
. Husband and wife now both get to call Mrs Zuckeberg ‘mom’. Psychiatrists, take that and run with it. Can is, of course, the Harvard graduate who presented Zuckenberg with a list of dating rules when she moved to be near him in Palo Alto, according to Sarah Lacy’s book Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good. As the book told us:
One date per week, a minimum of a hundred minutes of alone time, not in his apartment and definitely not at Facebook.
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Posted: 20th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Technology | Comment (1)
Photos of inside Mukesh Ambani’s home – the world’s most expensive
MUKESH Ambani is India’s richest man. His compact and bijou home, named Antilia, sits on lots of Altamount Road, Mumbai. It has 27-stories (570 feet) and 400, 000 square of floor space. It cost $1bn. It features a snow room. Mr Ambani’s wife, Nita, tells Vanity Fair: “It’s a modern home with an Indian heart.” And its own seat on the UN. Want to look around?
Photos: News beats
Posted: 18th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Warrington victim’s memorial stolen by thieves – other are legally sold off by the state
SHOULD memorials stand for ever? News is that part of the River of Life memorial to victims of the 1993 Warrington bombing has been stolen form the town’s Bridge Street. On March 20 1993, an IRA bomb murdered Johnathan Ball, 3, and Tim Parry, 12. A further 56 people were injured. Two bombs had been hidden in litter bins. At 11:58 am, The Samaritans had received a coded warning that a bomb had bee planted by a branch of Boots in Liverpool. At 12:12 the bombs went off in Warrington, 16 miles away.
The IRA had targeted Warrington not long before. On 25 February 1993, a trio of IRA operatives planted Semtex in a Warrington gas storage depot. In making their escape, they shot a police officer. The men were soon arrested.
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Posted: 18th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
South Shields restaurant fines diners for not clearing their plates
FOLLOWING news of the American who picketed his all-you-can-eat restaurant for not making him full, a story from Kylin Buffet in Ocean Road, South Shields, where Beverley Clark have been asked to pay an extra £20 or not eating enough.
When her party of three left on their plates two onion rings, a piece of prawn toast, and a spring roll, the staff surcharged them £20 for “wastage of food”, on top of the £18 food bill.
Miss Clark worked out that if she removed the food, the charge would be gone. So, like a hungry granny at a wake, she placed the leftovers in her handbag. That would show them. She tells the Shields Gazette that “the staff kept checking if we had eaten the food. In the end I wrapped it up in a serviette, and put it into my bag when they weren’t looking, so it looked like we had eaten it.”
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Posted: 18th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (2)
The leeching Sun turns Donna Summer’s death into a murder mystery
DONNA Summer has died. the media’s ‘Queen of Disco’ was just 63. The singer born Ladonna Adrian Gaines is on three front pages:
The Times: “Donna Summer, Queen of Disco, dies of cancer”
The Independent: “Death of a disco diva”
And the Sun, which pays tribute to a rare talent who gave pleasure to millions with the front-page screamer:
“‘9/11 dust’ Kills Donna Summer”
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Posted: 18th, May 2012 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment (1)
The best blow job faces in the world – photos
THE best blow job faces in the world, as taken by “Tadao Cern” in his series”Blow Job.” Turn up the leaf blower to 11 and take aim. (Reminds me of this.)
Spotters: Behance, Facebook
Posted: 17th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Photojournalism | Comment
Andre Breivik needs an idiot to get Call of Duty banned: here’s Keith Vaz creating a moral panic
ANDRE Breivik, a mass murderer says he “trained” to murder by playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a video game. Only a loon would think mass murder was triggered by a video game.
I love video games. I also enjoyed what the press in the 1980s called Video Nasties. Driller Killer, for example, was mindless fun, and I don’t even like DIY. The best bit about the Video Nasty panic was that fans of the films got to see a checklist of what they needed to watch. In all 72 films made the government’s ultimate video nasty list. The only British film on it was Expose, starring Fiona Richmond. The mind-altering film’s theme tune was called Approaching Menace, otherwise known as the theme from BBC quiz show Mastermind. It was scary stuff!
What you need for the words of a murderous lunatic to be taken at face value and turned into a moral panic to create censorship and curtail freedoms is a willing fool in an official post. Step forward Keith Vaz, vain chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
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Posted: 17th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (2)
How LOCOG cheated the Woolsack knitters – UPS could help
MAYBE the unpaid knitters of Woolsack, an official Olympic scheme to knit 14,000 woolly cushion covers to brighten up the athletes’ rooms in the London Olympic Village, should get in touch with UPS. The US postal firm is looking after the logistics for the London Olympics. Its website trills:
If UPS can handle a logistics challenge the size of the Olympic Games, just think what UPS can do for your business.
The site also features a Time and Money Calculator, to see “how money you could save”.
The UPS London Olympics deal is called the ‘FINAL MILE SERVICE’. All packages destined for the Olympics Park from January 10 2012 have been subject to a surcharge. Packages earmarked for any of the UK’s 34 Olympic sites are held in a depot. Going through UPS is the only way documents and freight can reach the venues, unless an operator has passed the Vendor Certification Programme.
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The story of Prince Charles’ comedy – from The Goons to nowhere
IN his introduction to Andy Secombe’s book, Growing Up With The Goons, Prince Charles has declared modern comedy to be witless, smutty and cruel. He appeared bewildered by the banter of national treasure Peter Kay when they met at a charity concert. He is a man out of time.
The Prince is honorary president of the Goon Show Preservation Society, and is never slow to display his own unique brand of humour. This month, he sportingly performed the weather forecast for BBC Scotland, and leavened the somewhat somber report with a few light-hearted, off-the-cuff remarks.
Nothing new there. Indeed, as early as 1970, the new Prince of Wales was entertaining Cambridge audiences as a weather forecaster in a Trinity College revue, ‘Quiet Flows The Don’.
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Posted: 16th, May 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Royal Family | Comments (2)
Alan Hansen remembers to forget Liverpool and that Arsenal curse
ALAN Hansen earns £40,000 a week to tell Match of the Day viewers that Arsenal can’t defend and Manchester United are a decent bet for the title whilst using a graphics package to track players about to score. Last Sunday night, we tuned in to see Manchester City clinch the Premier League title in a spellbinding thriller. The Premier League is not the best in the world (Italy is). It is not the most skilful (Spain). It is not the most watched (Germany). But it is the most exciting. City’s win was epic. What the show’s host, Gary Lineker, wanted to know was where City’s victory stood in history.
Gary Lineker asked Hansen: “Have you ever, in your life, seen anything like that?”
Hansen replied: “No.”
No? Never?
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Posted: 15th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comments (2)
Rebekah Brooks is Sharon Shoesmith – will David Cameron condemn her in an open letter to the Sun?
SO. Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie Brooks have been charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice during the phone-hacking investigation. The allegation is that the former editor of the News of the World and the Sun who was promoted to the role of Chief Executive Officer of News International concealed computers, information, and documents from the Metropolitan Police.
If guilty, then everything the Sun has ever stood for is dust. The couple say they are innocent, issuing this statement:
“We have this morning been informed by the Office of the Department of Public Prosecutions that we are to be charged with perverting the course of justice. We deplore this weak and unjust decision. After the further unprecedented posturing of the CPS we will respond later today after our return from the police station.”
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Posted: 15th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
Judge rules that urinating in public is legal – would you do it?
NEWS from Wheddon Cross, Somerset, where John and Cherry Pusey wanted the council to shut a lay-by close to their home because motorists were pulling over and taking a wazz. The court heard that 171 people – count them – has stopped to wee and/or poo in the lay-by in 2011. The court did not agree with the pro-decency Puseys.
So they took the matter further.
At the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Ward considered the argument, and found that urinating in public is not “cumulatively intolerable”. Why? Because, he says, the act was not “obviously visible” from the Pusey’s home. You have to crane your neck to see.
So. Going to the toilet in public is fine.
Only, it wasn’t fine when Philip Laing widdled on a Sheffield war memorial in 2009. District Judge Anthony Browne ordered Laing to do 250 hours community service.
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Photos of the Day – Joey Barton is The Dictator in the world’s best T-shirt
PHOTOS of the day: Joey Barton is The Dictator; The prom dress to impress; Carlos Tevez looks forward to Alex Ferguson’s death; dog pirates; the church missile; guards for guards; the pizza chopsticks; the worlds greatest T-shirt; the world’s second greatest T-shirt; the tree is low moving traffic; row, grandpa, row!; photoshop of the day; and Snoopy knows…
Posted: 15th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Photojournalism | Comment
Carlisle child rapist Azad Miah learned it was ok to abuse ‘white trash’ from the British elite
AZAD Miah raped children and enabled others to do the same. Miah has been found guilty of abusing five girls. The 44-year-old, used one of his four fast-food shops in Carlisle, Cumbria, as a brothel, using drugs, booze and cash to pay for vulnerable children to have sex with men.
At Carlisle Crown Court, Miah – who came to the UK from his native Bangldaesh at age 14 – spoke of the “white trash” he targeted. In his mind, the girls he abused deserved it. His own children would not be “out after 11pm in the town centre; they would not be in the city centre, drinking”.
Miah is a spokesman for Carlisle’s Muslims. He once lived in Rochdale, where nine Muslim men have been jailed for abusing children.
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Posted: 15th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (6)
Derek Acorah says Madeleine McCann will be reincarnated as Cheryl Cole’s baby
MADELEINE McCANN is dead. So says Derek Acorah. He tells the world: “She’s not on this earth any more.” But she in the celestial Sun, which leads with the opinions of a man who told us that Cheryl Cole and Ashley would have a baby in 2011, Michael Jackson is communicating, World Cup WAGS were going to jail and that Bournemouth and Brighton are about to be submerged beneath sea ice.
Still, Acorah hedges his bets and says that although Our Maddie is gone she is set to be reincarnated, most likely, perhaps, as Cheryl Cole’s baby.
“I know her parents are convinced Maddie is alive and I’m really sorry – but the little one has been over in the spirit world for some time. I don’t think she’ll be there long before she reincarnates. When children pass over who haven’t had full lives I believe they choose the time to come back in the same form again — as another little girl.”
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Posted: 15th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann | Comments (15)
Copper Feel: Femen’s topless activists battle Uefa’s gogo dancers in Kiev (photos)
AS the EURO 2012 Trophy was paraded on Kiev’s Independence Square, Ukraine’s football fans looked at the dancing girls. Then the local Femen protestors emerged from the crowd. Topless and fired up they stormed the stage. The Femen women are against prostitution, especially during the Euros, and in favour of emancipating women. The thoughts and ideals of the gogo dancers on the Uefa podium were not solicited. The Femen women yelled and scrapped. The all-male guards and police wrestled them into submission.
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Posted: 14th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (4)
The Manchester City tattoo story – Rooney, Mancini and Kaka’s European Champions
ROBERTO Mancini is under pressure to get a Manchester City crest tattooed on his leg. Why? Because his other leg already bears a Sampdoria crest, which he acquired after his team won Serie A in 1991.
He is reported to have said: “I have another leg. If I win the Premier League with Manchester City, I might get one.”
Note the word ‘if’ in that sentence.
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Posted: 14th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment (1)
Premier League last day photos – Barton, Furlop and Manchester City madness
PREMIER League Last Day Photos – Joey Barton loses it for QPR; former Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Marlon Furlop wins third spot for Arsenal (in place of Spurs; although Man United are still North London’s top team) and Manchester City provide a fitting and joyous minute of madness…
Hoffman, Kunis and Walsh star in Celebrity Savers
TV executives looking for the next big strand – a dog named Pudsey has just won Britain’s Got Talent, a sign that Simon Cowell’s dumb animal circuses have reached their goal – could consider Celebrity Savers, a TV show in which stars rescue ‘ordinary’ members of the public from a disaster. (Celebrity charity gigs and quiz shows are old hat. Direct action is required, and stopping short of getting Olly Murs to conduct open heart surgery on a child, heroism is the way to go.)
The ‘process’ in already well advanced. This week we’ve seen ‘Marathon Man’ Dustin Hoffman save the life of a jogger named Sam Dempster, who suffered a cardiac arrest while out jogging in London’s Hyde Park. Hoffman was billed as a hero in the press for dialling 999.
Paramedic Martin Macarthur and Luke Sullivan raced to the scene. They used a defibrillator on Mr Dempster. It could be argued that it was these trained medic who saved the jogger’s life. But the joy of spotting a star cannot be understated, and Mr Sullivan seems keen to appear on Celebrity Savers, telling media:
“He was the calmest person I have ever seen in that situation. He had witnessed someone collapse and crash into the tarmac, he witnessed us doing CPR and defibrillating, and witnessed him waking up. He said to us ‘good job guys’ and calmly walked away.”
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Posted: 13th, May 2012 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
The Argos catalogue 1976 – featuring the After Eight mints silver-style Gun Carriage
FLASHBACK to 1976. Argos is the high street darling. Richard Tompkins, creator of those Green Shield Stamps has rebranded his ‘Green Shield Gift House’ as Argos. Now cash would replace stamps as currency. The first store opened in July 1973, in Canterbury, Kent. And by 1976, all the family know where to get their general goods from. Just take a gander at the Olivetti typewriters, the After Eight mints silver-style Gun Carriage,the Pifco Hoverdryer Hood hairdryer, the Richochet Racers and much else besides…
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Posted: 12th, May 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
