News Category
Islington bans sale of fur – Hackney furriers rejoice
Islington Council has banned the sale of fur products – jackets, coats, merkins. Leather remains on sale – as do animals as food. The council says the fur industry is “cruel and awful”. Hard to argue with that.
Councillor Asima Shaikh tells us: “We also understand that it can be hard for consumers to be sure about the origins and production methods used in clothes and goods containing real fur.”
Can you have ethical real fur?
When Wearing Fur Was De Rigueur in London (1900 – 1950)
Posted: 10th, September 2019 | In: News, The Consumer | 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
The Pregnant Body in Japanese Woodcuts – 1800s
This Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of floating worlds”, takes inside a pregnant woman in mid-19th century Japan. There’s a lot going on in there.
Spotter: Illustrated Internal Bodily Functions in Japanese Woodcuts – 1800s
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,
Watch Sinead O’Connor perform ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ On Irish TV
This week, Sinead O’Connor performed Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ on Irish TV. She was spellbinding:
As a bonus, here’s the original version of Nothing Compares 2 U Prince wrote for The Family in 1985:
Brexit madness: Labour and SNP unite to keep ‘tin-pot dictator’ in Number 10
So much for Boris Johnson’s being a “tin-pot dictator“, as Nicola Sturgeon First minister of Scotland, labelled him. The SNP, the party she leads in Scotland, has rejected his call for a General Election. The SNP, Labour, the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru will unite against the government or abstain in Monday’s vote on whether to hold a snap poll.
Just when you think you’re getting some movement – finally – on the Brexit referendum, the MPs block it.
Ways to ‘defend democracy”:
- Shut ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ to anyone who vote leave (see LibDems)
- Call for another referendum to decide things ‘once and for all’
- Ignore the vote
Posted: 6th, September 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Designer makes pigeon shoes to attract birds
Japanese designer Kyoto Ohata attracts birds with her pigeon shoes. Ohata transforms her plain black pumps into wearable felt pigeons. She hopes birds will approach her to check out her pigeon feet as she strolls throughTokyo’s Ueno Park. As she says:
(translated) I like high heels as pigeons and I want to become popular with a group of pigeons.
Spotter: Neatorama
Posted: 6th, September 2019 | In: Fashion, News, The Consumer | Comment
Discovering John Locke: ‘Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with others’
A newly discovered manuscript by John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) -“Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with others” (1667-8) – sheds more light on the great English liberal and advocate of constitutional liberty. JC Walmsley spotted the document and has published it online. The work deals mainly with the toleration of Catholics prior to the Epistola de tolerantia.
Frank Furedi provide context:
Today, religious freedom and tolerance of competing beliefs are seen as foundational values of Western societies. However, in historical terms, tolerance is a very recent cultural and moral ideal. Until the 17th century, the toleration of different religions, opinions and beliefs was even interpreted as a form of moral cowardice, if not a symptom of heresy. As late as 1691, the French theologian Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet insisted that Catholicism was the least tolerant of all religions. He declared that: ‘I have the right to persecute you because I am right and you are wrong.’
Locke’s words continue to resonate. Knowledge is about questioning. As he writes in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding:
All Ideas come from Sensation or Reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: — How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either, about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.
Spotter: JOHN LOCKE AND THE TOLERATION OF CATHOLICS: A NEW MANUSCRIPT
John Glenn, Ham the Monkey and The Mercury 6 Story
John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth when he sat in a small pod atop a huge rocket and blasted into space. On Flashbak, you can see the story of how he got up there in photos. And why a monkey call Ham got there first – and one named Goliath didn’t…
Via: The Mercury 6 Flight Story In Photos
Posted: 4th, September 2019 | In: News, Photojournalism, Technology | Comment
Banned: Dairylea ad is too dangerous for kids
Like most of you, I’ve got Tango-induced tinnitus. But I won’t be getting DailyLea eye because the advert in which a woman is hit in the face by the cheese has been banned. The BBC says: ‘Parents of children with dairy allergies said it was “dangerous”, “disgraceful” and “insensitive”.’
On parent is Rina Cheema. Her son Karanbir “died after cheese was thrown at him at school in London in June 2017”.
A food fight can result in a fight for life. Why didn’t anyone tell the milkshakers? “Milkshaking’s power lies in the sheer ridiculousness of the situation,” said Vice, which featured instruction on how to make a milkshake to throw at someone with whom you disagree. “Someone’s thrown a milkshake at you! A milkshake! That’s silly as hell!”
DairyFree, naturally…
Posted: 4th, September 2019 | In: News, The Consumer | 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.”
Football and betting: Stop using Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea to advertise your own sound morals
Stop promoting 1xBet or else. News is that the Russian gambling company has no licence to operate in the UK. The Gambling Commission tells the Sunday Times it has written to Spurs, Chelsea and Liverpool, warning them to sever tis with 1xBet. The penalty for non-compliance, according to the paper: unlimited fines and up to 51 week’s prison. Spurs have terminated the deal.
The Sunday Times investigation into the firm’s global operations found that 1xBet was promoting a casino featuring topless croupiers, taking bets on children’s sports, advertising on illegal websites and cockfighting live streams emblazoned with the three club’s logos. In response to the findings, the Gambling Commission confirmed it had launched an investigation.
Some of the clubs’ top players, including Roberto Firmino, Willian and Olivier Giroud, have all fronted campaigns for the Russian company, which is now based in Cyprus.
xBet are quoted:
“We take very seriously the allegation that 1xBet’s brand has been promoted on prohibited sites, which is strictly against our policies, and we have launched an investigation. Pending the outcome . . . we believe it is responsible to temporarily suspend our advertising activity in the UK.”
Has the company been unlucky? The Times links to a wider issue, telling readers of a “growing backlash over the bankrolling of football by the gambling industry”. There is from our knowing betters. “Players need to start using their considerable power to reject gambling’s influence on football,” opined Church of England gambling spokesperson Dr Alan Smith, the Bishop of St Albans in reaction to Wayne Rooney striking deal with betting firm 32Red. And this from Labour MP Carolyn Harris, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling: “When will celebrities realise that involvement in gambling is not right or moral? Many people look to Wayne Rooney as a role model and yet he is prepared to sell his soul.”
When did Wazza become employed by Public Heath England?
Troy Deeney, the Watford skipper, had a word on the tosh about role models: “I don’t like the word role model, first and foremost. The role model should be in the house at all times… What are we basing the role model on? Because we’re in the limelight. I don’t like that.”
One thing you can bet on: politicians scurrying around for a cause and sense of purpose by which to showcase their sound morals and protect the poor from themselves will keep hammering football and footballers. It’s a dead cert.
Posted: 1st, September 2019 | In: Money, News, Sports | Comment
CPS release video of ex-Liverpool footballer Dean Saunders ‘refusing a breath test’
Dean Saunders, the football pundit who used to played for Liverpool, was jailed for 10 weeks for refusing to provide a roadside breath test. He spent a day in prison before being released on appeal.
Judge Sanders told Saunders: “Throughout these proceedings you have shown yourself to be arrogant, thinking you are someone whose previous and current role in the public eye entitles you to be above the law. In fact the opposite is true – someone in the public eye should expect a deterrent sentence when they flout the law.”
But Saunders is not in the public eye because he’s employed by Public Health England or the police. He’s an ex-footballer who makes to-deadline opinions about football. He’s not a role model for anyone other than his children.
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
Boris Johnson, Remainers or democracy?
Lots of noise about Boris Johnson checking the legalities of closing down parliament for five weeks from early September to mid-October. The buzzword is “prorogue”.
If the democratic chamber is muzzled, Johnson can get on with his Brexit plans to ‘do or die” on October 31. Brexit is all.
Which makes you wonder what the point of parliament is? If it is to uphold and enact the will of the electorate, then MPs’ (around 70% of whom voted Remain in the EU against 48% of the people) continued blocks on Brexit are anti-democratic. If parliament exits to serve the Government, then parliament is equally corrupt.
Posted: 26th, August 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Chinese fakery : goods rebranded ‘Made In Vietnam’
Last week US President Donald Trump pledged a hike in tariffs on Chinese imports to the US. Trump accuses China of bad trading practices and intellectual property theft. USA Today has news of a Chinese work-around:
“Dozens” of products have been identified, Hoang Thi Thuy, a Vietnamese Customs Department official, told state-run media, and goods like textiles, fishery products, agricultural products, steel, aluminum, and processed wooden products were most vulnerable to the fraud.
Vietnamese state media noted that in 2017, the Customs Department exposed a company called INTERWYSE for trying to rebrand 600 Chinese-made speakers and phone chargers with a “Made in Vietnam” label.
“It will sabotage Vietnamese brands and products and it will also affect consumers. We could even get tariff retribution from other countries, and if that happens, it will hurt our economy,” Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh told the Vietnamese National Assembly last week.
Vietnam does not have any legal requirements for certification of the “Made in Vietnam” label. The country’s current regulations require that goods be produced partly or completely in Vietnam, but does not provide a mechanism for determining the veracity of the label.
What price that big US trade deal Trump’s promising for a post-Brexit UK features American goods as ‘Made in Britain’?
Posted: 26th, August 2019 | In: Money, News, Politicians | Comment
Southampton man guilty of growing small amount of cannabis; innocent City boys think bigger
All that talk of legalising cannabis and in the meanwhile people are having their lives damaged by raising a cash crop in their residence. Michael Antony Muirhead was growing a whopping two marijuana plants in his Southampton high-rise flat when police pounced. Local press cites “drug experts” offering their opinion that the ‘farm’ could have earned the nefarious felon as much as £200.
The accused said the plants were for his personal use. He has post-traumatic stress disorder and acute anxiety.
This nonsense reached court, where Muirhead, who pleaded guilty to producing cannabis, was given a 12 month conditional discharge, ordered to pay court costs of £85 and a victim surcharge of £20. Indeed, who the bloody hell is the victim on this heinous crime?
If you’ve acute anxiety and other afflictions that can be alleviated by cannabis, take the official advice: keep popping those addictive pills.
In other news, away from a city gardener growing a tiny bit of weed and doing his bit to combat climate change:
Medical cannabis firm Oxon is talking with investors about raising as much as $15m (£12m) as it prepares to launch a range of products in the UK and eyes a listing in London or the US.
The problem was that the Southampton farmer wasn’t thinking big enough.
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
Boris Johnson : the 30-day spin
When Boris Johnson met German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the outcome was, depending on your spin, a pledge to do a Brexit deal in 30 days or a threat to end it all after just 30 days. The backstop – the hope of avoiding a hard Irish border – can be re-negotiated. Maybe.
But as big as the story of politicking is, the remarkable bit is the realisation that even the Labour supporting Mirror now calls the Prime Minister ‘Boris’ and leads with an image of him looking jovial.
The Daily Express calls Merkel’s move “a major concession; The Sun says it is an “opportunity”. The i says Merkel has given “orders”. The Daily Telegraph says the PM has scored “a victory”. The Mail says Johnson could be “on the brink of a triumphant breakthrough”. The Guardian says Merkel has put “the responsibility for the UK crashing out of the EU firmly at the prime minister’s door”. The Financial Times hears the leader of German parliament’s foreign affairs committee says Johnson is using Merkel to show the British he had tried everything, so he could then blame EU when it all goes wrong.
Such is the spin.
Posted: 22nd, August 2019 | In: News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
