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Philip Roth RIP – with replies by John Updike, The Atlantic and Wikipedia
Philip Roth, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1998, has died. He was 85. Claudia Roth Pierpont said his books looked at “the Jewish family, sex, American ideals, the betrayal of American ideals, political zealotry, personal identity [and] the human body (usually male) in its strength, its frailty, and its often ridiculous need.” And, boy, was he funny.
In 1996 Roth reacted to Claire Bloom’s memoir Leaving a Doll’s House. The actress commented at length on her and Roth’s marriage. “He’s tense; she’s tense,” said Gore Vidal said. “Each is neurotic. They were together 17 years; it couldn’t have been all that bad. It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.”
The book was trailed thus in the NY Times:
Ms. Bloom was 47 when she began her romance with Mr. Roth. In the memoir, the opening scene of their relationship reads like a parody of the daily life of two cultivated New Yorkers, with Mr. Roth on his way to his psychoanalyst, and Ms. Bloom on her way to her yoga class….
But soon there were signs of trouble. Mr. Roth was suspicious and mistrustful, she said, and pressed her to send her daughter elsewhere. In the memoir, Ms. Bloom expresses guilt for having done so. But the real problems began when Mr. Roth had a knee operation, she said, and became addicted to sleeping pills and an anti-anxiety drug. She writes that a terrible depression ensued, and that the couple took refuge on Martha’s Vineyard in the home of their friend William Styron, who has written a moving book about his own depression.
Later, when Mr. Roth wrote ”Deception,” he named the character of the deceived wife ”Claire,” Ms. Bloom writes, changing it only after she begged him to do so. Still, as if teasing his readers, Mr. Roth reserved the name of ”Philip” for the book’s narrator.
In 1999, when the book came up in a John Updike essay about literary biography in The New York Review of Books, Roth wrote to the Editors:
To the Editors:
In your February 4, 1999, issue, John Updike, commenting on Claire Bloom’s 1996 memoir Leaving the Doll’s House, writes: “Claire Bloom, as the wronged ex-wife of Philip Roth, shows him to have been, as their marriage rapidly unraveled, neurasthenic to the point of hospitalization, adulterous, callously selfish, and financially vindictive.” Allow me to imagine a slight revision of this sentence: “Claire Bloom, presenting herself as the wronged ex-wife of Philip Roth, alleges him to have been neurasthenic to the point of hospitalization, adulterous, callously selfish, and financially vindictive.” Written thus, the sentence would have had the neutral tone that Mr. Updike is careful to maintain elsewhere in this essay on literary biography when he is addressing Paul Theroux’s characterization of V.S. Naipaul and Joyce Maynard’s characterization of J.D. Salinger. Would that he had maintained that neutral tone in my case as well.
Over the past three years I have become accustomed to finding Miss Bloom’s characterization of me taken at face value. One Sara Nelson, reviewing my novel American Pastoral, digressed long enough to write: “In her memoir, Leaving the Doll’s House, Roth’s ex, Claire Bloom, outed the author as a verbally abusive neurotic, a womanizer, a venal nutcase. Do we believe her? Pretty much:Roth is, after all, the guy who glamorized sex-with-liver in Portnoy’s Complaint.” Mr. Updike offers the same bill of particulars (“neurasthenic…, adulterous, callously selfish, and financially vindictive”) as does Ms. Nelson (“neurotic, a womanizer, a venal nutcase”). Like her, he adduces no evidence other than Miss Bloom’s book. But while I might ignore her in an obscure review on the World Wide Web, I cannot ignore him in a lead essay in The New York Review of Books.
Philip Roth
Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut
John Updike reply was slo printed in the magazine:
Mr. Roth’s imagined revisions sound fine to me, but my own wording conveys, I think, the same sense of one-sided allegations.
In 2012, Roth had more words for the World Wie Web. He wrote an open letter to persuade Wikipedia to let him adjust inaccurate description of his novel The Human Stain. Wikipedia refused to accept him as a credible source.
Dear Wikipedia,
I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.
Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”
Also in 2012, Roth wrote to the The Atlantic over an essay’s claims that he suffered “a ‘crack-up’ in his mid-50s”.
“The statement is not true nor is there reliable biographical evidence to support it,” wrote Roth at the time. “After knee surgery in March 1987, when I was 54, I was prescribed the sleeping pill Halcion, a sedative hypnotic in the benzodiazepine class of medications that can induce a debilitating cluster of adverse effects … My own adverse reaction to Halcion … started when I began taking the drug and resolved promptly when, with the helpful intervention of my family doctor, I stopped.”
The letters have stopped. But the books remain brilliant.
Spotter: Dangerous Minds, NYRoB
Posted: 23rd, May 2018 | In: Books, Celebrities, News | Comment
9 key thoughts On The Gun debate
Can we talk abut guns in America? Last week, gunman shot dead ten people in Santa Fe, Texas. We’e seen it all before. Jason Kottke has collected a few articles about America and guns. It’s a good list, making for a good read. The gun lobby is allergic to gun control. It’s not all about death. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 467,321 persons were victims of a crime committed with a firearm in 2011.
Who gets to control the guns? The National Rifle Association says: “The historical purpose of gun-control laws in America has been one of discrimination and disenfranchisement of blacks, immigrants and other minorities.” Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is for less gun control (My Extraordinary Family, by Condi Rice, p. 94 , Jan 10, 2012):
…after the first explosion, Daddy just went outside and sat on the porch with his gun on his lap. He sat there all night looking for white night riders. Eventually Daddy and the men of the neighborhood formed a watch. They would take shifts at the head of the entrances to our streets. Occasionally they would fire a gun into the air to scare off intruders, but they never actually shot anyone. Because of this experience, I’m a fierce defender of the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms. Had my father and his neighbors registered their weapons, Bull Connor surely would have confiscated them or worse. The Constitution speaks of the right to a well-regulated militia. The inspiration for this was the Founding Fathers’ fear of the government. They insisted that citizens have the right, if necessary, to resist the authorities themselves. What better example of responsible gun ownership is there than what the men of my neighborhood did in response to the KKK and Bull Connor?
Is gun control about the elite keeping control, disarming what they fear?
Via Kottke:
An armed society is not a free society:
Arendt offers two points that are salient to our thinking about guns: for one, they insert a hierarchy of some kind, but fundamental nonetheless, and thereby undermine equality. But furthermore, guns pose a monumental challenge to freedom, and particular, the liberty that is the hallmark of any democracy worthy of the name — that is, freedom of speech. Guns do communicate, after all, but in a way that is contrary to free speech aspirations: for, guns chasten speech.
This becomes clear if only you pry a little more deeply into the N.R.A.’s logic behind an armed society. An armed society is polite, by their thinking, precisely because guns would compel everyone to tamp down eccentric behavior, and refrain from actions that might seem threatening. The suggestion is that guns liberally interspersed throughout society would cause us all to walk gingerly — not make any sudden, unexpected moves — and watch what we say, how we act, whom we might offend.
We’re sacrificing America’s children to “our great god Gun”:
Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains — “besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily — sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).
The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?
Roger Ebert on the media’s coverage of mass shootings:
Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.
Jill Lepore on the United States of Guns:
There are nearly three hundred million privately owned firearms in the United States: a hundred and six million handguns, a hundred and five million rifles, and eighty-three million shotguns. That works out to about one gun for every American. The gun that T. J. Lane brought to Chardon High School belonged to his uncle, who had bought it in 2010, at a gun shop. Both of Lane’s parents had been arrested on charges of domestic violence over the years. Lane found the gun in his grandfather’s barn.
The United States is the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world. (The second highest is Yemen, where the rate is nevertheless only half that of the U.S.) No civilian population is more powerfully armed. Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more. According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades. In 1973, there were guns in roughly one in two households in the United States; in 2010, one in three. In 1980, nearly one in three Americans owned a gun; in 2010, that figure had dropped to one in five.
A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths:
The only guns that Japanese citizens can legally buy and use are shotguns and air rifles, and it’s not easy to do. The process is detailed in David Kopel’s landmark study on Japanese gun control, published in the 1993 Asia Pacific Law Review, still cited as current. (Kopel, no left-wing loony, is a member of the National Rifle Association and once wrote in National Review that looser gun control laws could have stopped Adolf Hitler.)
To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you’ll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don’t forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.
Australia’s gun laws stopped mass shootings and reduced homicides, study finds:
From 1979 to 1996, the average annual rate of total non-firearm suicide and homicide deaths was rising at 2.1% per year. Since then, the average annual rate of total non-firearm suicide and homicide deaths has been declining by 1.4%, with the researchers concluding there was no evidence of murderers moving to other methods, and that the same was true for suicide.
The average decline in total firearm deaths accelerated significantly, from a 3% decline annually before the reforms to a 5% decline afterwards, the study found.
In the 18 years to 1996, Australia experienced 13 fatal mass shootings in which 104 victims were killed and at least another 52 were wounded. There have been no fatal mass shootings since that time, with the study defining a mass shooting as having at least five victims.
From The Onion, ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens:
At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”
But America is not Australia or Japan. Dan Hodges said on Twitter a few years ago:
In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.
What next?
New Look charges the fat more for their clothes
This is being trailed as something of a scandal but it’s actually just great, the way the system should work. Some people should be charged more:
High street retailer New Look has been criticised by shoppers for allegedly imposing a “fat tax” across its plus-sized range.
What’s the standard complaint from fatty lardbuckets the average sized British woman?
Here, she found that the Green Stripe Tres Jolie Slogan T-Shirt was being sold for £9.99 in the standard range and £12.99 in the Curves range – a 30 per cent difference in cost.
So, what’s happening here then?
Firstly, realise that no one does price things by adding up their costs then trying to sell them at that plus a profit. So, arguments that larger sizes require more cloth don’t work. Instead, what everyone does is look at absolutely the maximum they think they can get away with charging. Then they charge that.
Hey, that’s capitalism, every producer of absolutely everything really is out to screw you. It’s markets which temper this. So, someone realises that there’s loads of fatty lardbuckets average sized British women out there looking for clothing more attractive than a Soviet potato sack circa 1955. They go make and sell them and make a fortune doing so. They really do set out to screw those fatty lardbuckets average sized British women. And they do screw them – unlike anyone else to hear the complaining.
Then other manufacturers spot those profits and copy what they’re doing. Prices fall, the range available expands, everyone – other than the original manufacturer – is happy. That’s just how the system works. It’s also how it’s supposed to work, it’s all in Adam Smith.
If New Look can get away with charging higher prices to fatty lardbuckets average sized British women then this tells us that there aren’t enough plus sized ranges out there with decent looking clothing. And the fact that New Look can charge higher prices is what will create the competition and cure the problem.
No, really, markets do in fact work. Which is why we’re not all in Soviet potato sacks, you know, the place which abolished markets and the price system?
Posted: 22nd, May 2018 | In: Money, News, The Consumer | Comment
Chelsea owner Abramovich is not dead
CHELSEA FC owner Roman Abramovich is “BANNED FROM UK”. Well, so says the Daily Star. And it’s wrong. He’s just “faced delays in renewing his UK visa” the BBC “understands”. No that the Beeb knows much about the Russian billionaire who wasn’t at Wembley to see his investment win the FA Cup. This is its story in a nutshell:
Asked about the visa, Security Minister Ben Wallace said: “We do not routinely comment on individual cases.” Mr Abramovich’s office said it does not discuss personal matters with the media. Reports suggest his investor visa expired three weeks ago.
Apropos of nothing much, the BBC then adds: “He is believed to be close to current Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Whatever anyone suggests and believes, the Star is happy to go out on a limb and scream on Page 7: “ROMAN TOLD: YOU’RE NOT WELCOME ANY MORE.” But just one line in and the bold statement is undone as the Star says Abramovich’s visa has “reportedly run out”.
It all promised so much. What football fan was not smirking and mentally counting the seasons as Chelsea, shawn of Russian money, slide to those pre-Roman days of lower-league football and in-fighting. Not that a club’s overseas-domiciled owner needs to be a fan nor show up to games – see Man City, Man United, Spurs, Arsenal and Liverpool. But Chelsea is Roman’s alone. It’s a one-man empire. “What happens if he suddenly dropped dead, as Russian oligarchs have been known to do?” muses the Daily Mail. Dunno. Maybe a family man wily enough to be a billionaire has thought about that made plans?
He’s not dead. He’s “stranded in Russia,” says the Express. It adds that Roman “could become the first major casualty of the tensions since the Salisbury nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.” Of maybe, you know, he could not.
The Sun makes the link between poison and footy overt in its headline: “Chelsea owner stuck in Moscow after poison row.” But there’s no link between the two things. The headline might just as easily say: “Chelsea owner escapes Wembley bore-fest.”
It’s “Roman’s own goal” in the Mirror. Roman news shares a page with the story “Cut off dirty money, MPs plead” – “Fresh sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s cronies will be urged today to stem ‘dirty money’ harming UK security.” No suggestion whatsoever Abramovich has down anything wrong – other than fund Chelsea, the club that since his investment in 2003 have won 15 trophies. And that’s unforgivable, of course. Still, if could have been worse: he could have bought Spurs.
Posted: 21st, May 2018 | In: Chelsea, News, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Transfer balls: Manchester City want Hazard; Chelsea star ‘agrees’ Real Madrid move with mind
Pick a top player. Any player. And then say Manchester City want him. The BBC says Manchester City are “planning” a £100m deal for Chelsea’s Eden Hazard. Pep Guardiola has earmarked the 27-year-old Belgium forward as “his top transfer target”. Over in the Daily Star, we get not only the same peak at City’s summer spending plan but also an insight into Pep’s head. News is that he’s “confident” of getting Hazard. And – get this – Hazard is “aware” that City like him.
The Daily Star can read minds. But it can’t conjure a quote of single fact to support its scoop – and neither can the BBC.
It might be worth have a look at what other Eden Hazard headlines the tabloids have provided us with:
Chelsea may offer Eden Hazard in a swap deal for Barcelona star Ousmane Dembele – Daily Star, Jan 21 2018
Eden Hazard AGREES Real Madrid move after snubbing Chelsea contract offer – Daily Express, Jan 10, 2018
EDEN TO REAL Eden Hazard agrees deal to join Real Madrid with Alvaro Morata moving the other way to Chelsea – The Sun, Jul 10, 2017
Eden Hazard reaches agreement with Real Madrid after secret transfer talks – The Metro, April 26, 2017
Hazard has done all that by communicating telepathically. Fact.
Posted: 21st, May 2018 | In: Back pages, Chelsea, Manchester City, News, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
English fans told not to celebrate St George at World Cup
The police are telling England fans that they shouldn’t try to fly St George’s Cross – you know, the national flag of England – at the World Cup in Russia this summer. Because it’s colonialism or something. Locals, Russians, will be so outraged that something or other might happen.
Well, no, not really:
England fans are being urged by police not to display St George’s flag at the World Cup in Russia because it could bee seen as ‘imperialistic’ and ‘antagonistic’.
Deputy Chief Constable Mark Roberts, the head of football policing, said the flags were the trophies of choice for hooligans from rival countries.
It comes after Russian hooligans attacked England fans in 2016 and posted pictures of dozens of ‘captured’ St George’s flags.
That one group of fans might try to take and make off with the treasured flag of another group is obviously entirely possible. But it’s not going to be because it’s St George and England and not because of anything about patriotism, colonialism, imperialism or anything like that.
For St George isn’t in fact just the patron saint of England, he spreads his favours rather more widely than that. Bits and pieces of Northern Italy for example, and they use the cross itself as well. The Republic of Georgia in fact, what used to be a bit of the Soviet Union. Even, the city of Moscow – although unlike Georgia they don’t use the cross on their flag.
Yes, quite, the police are arguing that English fans should not, when in Moscow, display the flag of St George when St George is the patron saint of Moscow. Because imperialism.
If only the police had a clue, eh?
Meghan’s spare wedding dress cost £100,000 (or not)
Thomas who? Thomas Markle… Anyone? Having rolled over Megan Markle’s father, the news cycle gets to focus on the honeymoon and the dress. Not that the new Duchess of Sussex’s dress was a surprise to Daily Mail readers who on April 4 got a sneak peak of her walk-on look. Rebecca English told us:
EXCLUSIVE: Meghan’s £100,000 wedding dress revealed: Royal bride will wear hand-stitched, beaded design made by British couturiers Ralph & Russo (and paid for by Prince Harry’s family)
The price then doubled. And the designer changed their name. Although no longer an “exclusive”, the story remained a revelation: “Givenchy’s Clare Waight Keller has been revealed as Meghan’s wedding dress designer.” There had been lots of “speculation” – surely “exclusives”? – with with “Ralph & Russo hotly tipped”:
But if it’s guff you’re after, step forward and take long obsequious bow, Robin Givhan, who writes in the Washington Post:
…what was most noticeable were all the things that the dress was not. It was not a Hollywood red-carpet statement. It was not a Disney-princess fantasy. It was not a mountain of camouflaging tulle and chiffon.
The dress, designed by Clare Waight Keller, was free of extravagant embellishments. It was not covered in yards of delicate lace. It did not have a single ruffle — no pearls or crystals. Its beauty was in its architectural lines and its confident restraint. It was a romantic dress, but one that suggested a clear-eyed understanding that a real-life romance is not the stuff of fairy tales. The dress was a backdrop; it was in service to the woman.
Weekend in Blackpool, right?
Posted: 19th, May 2018 | In: Fashion, News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Chinese corruption crackdown screwed Cartier watches
These aren’t things you’d really think would be connected. How much corruption there is or isn’t in the Chinese economy and the profits of a Swiss watchmaker. But there is indeed a link and it’s worth about £400 million.
The connection is that when people Out East make buckets of cash money from doing something they shouldn’t have done then they’ll invest some of the proceeds in a good looking watch. And the brand matters – because the watch is a signifier of being one of the rich guys. Therefore it has to be one of the brands which is seen as showing that you’re one of the rich guys.
Sure, it’s showing off but with a purpose. It shows you’re a player and if you can show you’re one of those them more games to play in will be offered.
Then what happens with a crackdown upon corruption? Fewer people have the cash to buy them of course. But also, even those who can legitimately buy them from properly earned money won’t – who wants to be market out as a player when there’s a crackdown?
The company took action after stocks of its wristwatches began building up in display cabinets in Asian markets amid a crackdown on corruption in China, where luxury products such as watches and whisky had been dished out as lavish gifts to curry favour with officials, as well as a wider sales slowdown. It was worried that unsold stock would end up being discounted in the so-called “grey market” of unauthorised resellers, damaging the image and pricing power of its brands.
There’s also that point that fewer “presents” were being bought. The effect is rather large:
Shares in Richemont fell sharply on Friday after the Swiss luxury goods group reported annual profits had been hit by more than €200m spent buying back excess stocks of watches to protect its brands from “grey market” discounted sales.
It was a couple of hundred million the year before too.
The real lesson here is that the world economy is a hellishly complex place. Less corruption in China means smaller Swiss watch profits. How can anyone plan something of this complexity? And that really is why planned economies don’t work, it’s just not possible to even know what’s going on let alone predict what will.
Posted: 19th, May 2018 | In: Key Posts, Money, News | Comment
Standing in a betting shop made women want me
They shoot horses and put greyhounds out to graze on the hard shoulder. And now there’s “bloodbath at the bookies” featuring human beings. The Star is labouring under the impression that bookmakers give two hoots about their staff as it leads with how the Government has “slashed maximum stakes at fixed odds betting terminals from £100 to £2”. This will, we’re told, lead to job cuts among the people detailed to scoop up the proceeds of the pitiless gambling industry and deposit the filthy lucre into the burgeoning bank accounts of the big companies running the show.
Betting is sexy!
Who sane dials these lines?
The Association of British Bookmakers warns that curbs on “crack cocaine” betting machines will lead to the loss of 21,000 jobs as 4,000 high-street bookies shut. All balls, of course. The big betting companies spend fortunes telling us to bet online, offering inducements for a more fun sporting experience from your smart phone. They don’t do that to improve the lot of their shop workers. Online bookies are often based overseas. They’re happy for British punters to chuck their money to non-British workers.
Switch on pretty much any televised sporting event and someone will tell you how betting is for hard men – men ‘hard’ to argue with, like actor Ray Winstone, or ‘hard’ to touch, like the priapic saddos who think betting on Harry Kane will get them laid, possibly with an actual flesh-and-bone woman.
Inside today’s Star there are plenty of adverts for gambling. “Bets plan is a loser,” says the Star’s editorial. The adverts agree – it’s free FUN and you GET YOUR MONEY BACK:
Page 50: topless stunna Michelle Marsh advises readers to “BET HARD & FAST” (see above). Subtle it ain’t.
Pages 46- 48: horse racing times are wrapped round adverts for tipster hotlines (£1.50-a-minute); and more ads for Ladbrokes and Coral – “Bet £5.. .& Get £20 in Free Bets” – “When The Fun Stops Stop – Be Gamble Aware.” Yeah, right.
Pages 27-30: An entire section advertising Paddy Power bets on the FA Cup final – “The Craziest bets punters have placed this weekend.”
And it’s all done to keep people in work and the high-street bustling. It’s selfless stuff…
Posted: 18th, May 2018 | In: Key Posts, Money, News, Tabloids | Comment
Meghan Markle: darts walk-on girls and The Naked Rambler should get the nod
As Meghan Markle straps an inflatable bellend to her neck and brandishes Harry’s loyalty card for for the mother of all hen nights at SophistiCats night club, the papers all lead with the “sad” announcement that her dad, the much-maligned Thomas Markle, will no be walking her down the aisle. Who will is the matter of heated debate, the smart money being on the her mother, darts walk-on girls, Naomi Campbell, the Naked Rambler and Ian Botham, should he be seeking a new sponsorship role: it’s £1000-a-yard for charity. (TV executives, call me I have ideas – Sue Perkins presents The Hard Yards, a pro-celebrity walk down the aisle.)
The Sun plan for the next generation
Anyhow, California-gal Meghan stuffed in a plum and issued a statement via the Kensington palace twitter feed: “Sadly my father will not be attending our wedding. I have always cared for my father and hope he can be given the space he needs to focus on his health.” Shades of Adrian Mole’s mother saying she’s “fond” of him. Harry has never met Thomas. But “nothing’s going to spoil our big day,” thunders the Daily Mail’s lead headline – although you’d imagine a few of the paper’s hacks will give it a whirl.
In the Sun there’s lots of gush about Meghan being a “silver-lining girl”as the paper joins “fans” sleeping on the streets of Windsor. Best not get there too early, mind, lest the police give you a kick and move you on. The homeless and rough sleepers have been swept from the town’s streets. “Crazy Corner” looks like the “Calais Jungle”, says the Sun’s man on patio furniture. But there’s no Lily Allen, just people like Skye London – “People call us mad. Well, we are mad but we always gets the best seats” – and Terry Hunt – “I’ve been doing this since I was four. I’m at every wedding and outside the hospital at every birth.”
Posted: 18th, May 2018 | In: News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Hunter S Thompson’s letter to Tom Wolfe- the ‘pig in the ‘filthy white suit’
Tom Wolfe (1931- 2018), leading light of the ‘New Journalism’, writer of the terrific The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and much else has died. Joseph Epstein writes in his profile of Wolfe in The New Republic: “His prose style is normally shotgun baroque, sometimes edging over into machine-gun rococo, as in his article on Las Vegas which begins by repeating the word ‘hernia’ 57 times.” “He is probably the most skillful writer in America — I mean by that he can do more things with words than anyone else,” says William F. Buckley Jr., in National Review. But if it’s high praise you’re after, getting up Hunter S. Thompson’s nose is hard to top.
The writers exchanged letters, the pick of which is this missive from Thomson to Wolfe dated Mash 3 1971. Thompson was not exactly chuffed at being shuffled inside Wolf’s New Journalism project:
March 3, 1971
Woody Creek, CODear Tom…
You worthless scumsucking bastard. I just got your letter of Feb 25 from Le Grande Hotel in Roma, you swine! Here you are running around fucking Italy in that filthy white suit at a thousand bucks a day laying all kinds of stone gibberish & honky bullshit on those poor wops who can’t tell the difference . . . while I’m out here in the middle of these goddamn frozen mountains in a death-battle with the taxman & nursing cheap wine while my dogs go hungry & my cars explode and a legion of nazi layers makes my life a goddamn Wobbly nightmare…
You decadent pig. Where the fuck do you get the nerve to go around telling those wops that I’m crazy? You worthless cocksucker. My Italian tour is already arranged for next spring & I’m going to do the whole goddamn trip wearing a bright red field marshal’s uniform & accompanied by six speed-freak bodyguards bristling with Mace bombs & when I start talking about American writers & the name Tom Wolfe comes up, by god, you’re going to wish you were born a fucking iguana!!
OK for that, you thieving pile of albino warts. You better settle your goddamn affairs because your deal is about to go down. “Unprofessorial,” indeed! You scurvy wop! I’ll have your goddamn femurs ground into bone splinters if you ever mention my name again in connection with that horrible “new journalism” shuck you’re promoting.
Ah, this greed, this malignancy! Where will it end? What filthy weight in your soul has made you sink so low? Doctor Bloor was wright! Hyenas are taking over the world! Oh Jesus!!! What else can I say? Except to warn you, once again, that the hammer of justice looms, and that your filthy white suit will become a flaming shroud!
Sincerely,
Hunter
Adrian Chen is more succinct on twitter: “RIP to Tom Wolfe, who gave a generation of young writers wildly unrealistic expectations about how glamorous and lucrative a career in magazine journalism would be.”
Posted: 16th, May 2018 | In: Celebrities, News | Comment
Thomas Markle declared clinically sane
Thomas Markle will not be at this daughter Meghan Markle’s wedding to Harry Windsor. The groom’s family is hosting the do, which means Thomas Markle flying from his home in Mexico to London, meeting myriads of strangers, being shackled and shaped by their huge teams of minted PRs, obsequious lackeys and armed goons, and welcomed warmly into the bosom of what absurdly passes for a modern twist on monarchy. All tabloids lead with the news. But none of them know for certain. He might come. He might not.
In this age of fluid gender roles, it’s a gentleman’s prerogative to arrive at the wedding. We used to like the story of the groom being jilted at the alter, now we’re wondering if a 73-year-old bloke can be arsed to go though all that guff to see his daughter married for the second time.
Get Thomas!
The Mail, which “exposed” “fake” photos of Thomas being boring as he looked at screengrabs of his daughter and her Chinger prince, tried on a suit and rode a cheap exercise bike, now invites Richard Kay to says the “world” feels “nothing but sympathy” for a man possessed of a “quiet dignity”. But he is “humiliated” by his “reckless agreement” to broadcast and allegedly flog photos of himself to the Press rather than lettering the Mail broadcast and flog photos of him without his permission. It is “regrettable and sad” that this “basically honourable man” will be absent from Meg’s big day. The Sun calls it a “bombshell”.
The Express says Thomas doesn’t want to “embarrass the Royal Family”, something you’d think impossible to do, given that the clan of feckless ninnies ride around in gold coaches, suck toes, cheat on their spouses, hang out with paedos (allegedly), dress up as Nazis (both real and for larks) and gave us this:
The Star and Mirror, however, wonder if Thomas has suffered a heart attack. The Mirror also says Thomas “claims” he has “been harassed by snappers”. Or as the Sun notes: “He was pictured driving away from his home last Wednesday and staying the night at a motel in San Diego after crossing the US border. The next day… he lifted two heavy pots of flowering plants on Doria’s [Meghan’s mother] doorstep in Los Angeles with a card. He was then seen driving around LA, visiting the post office, pharmacy and bank before heading bak to Mexico that evening.”
Who’d envy that?
Posted: 15th, May 2018 | In: News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Top Tories profit from the cannabis they say only criminals sell
Cannabis is a dull drug that induces apathy. Maybe something in the air confused Victoria Atkins, the drugs minister. Her husband, Paul Kenward, is managing director at British Sugar, operator of Britain’s biggest legal cannabis farm. But there’s no conflict of interest between he and she’s jobs. Perish the thought. The Home Office said she had “voluntarily recused herself from policy or decisions relating to cannabis”. It’s all ok because the drugs minister won’t talk about, er, drugs.
The drugs policy is a mess. If you grow cannabis illegally, you can be locked away for 14 years. Kenward’s business is fine because it grows the banned weed for a new epilepsy medicine soon to be approved in the US – it was licensed in 2016; Atkins became a minister in 2017. Sill it all stinks stronger than that nasty skunk crap.
The Sundays Times adds:
[Atkins] She does not declare Kenward’s role in the register of ministerial or MPs’ interests, though she mentioned it in a debate when she was a backbencher. Cabinet Office guidelines say interests held by the “close family members” of ministers should be declared where they “are, or might reasonably be perceived to be, directly relevant to a minister’s ministerial responsibilities”.
Whoops!
Steve Moore, of Volteface, a think-tank on drug policy, tells the paper: “The medical use of cannabis and its wider decriminalisation is rising up the political agenda. But we have the ridiculous situation of the drugs minister being unable to speak in parliament or make decisions on one of the most important parts of her job.”
Ridiculous. Hypocritical. Wrong. Stupid. And useless for people who suffer from conditions that cannabis can alleviate.
Atkins, a barrister and former criminal drugs prosecutor, has been a firm opponent of decriminalising or regulating cannabis, saying its brief downgrading to a class C drug during the Blair government had a “terrible” impact and that the “gun-toting criminals” who control the trade would not suddenly “become law-abiding citizens” if it was legalised.
In 2017, she opined:
“We are talking about gun-toting criminals, who think nothing of shooting each other and the people who carry their drugs for them. What on Earth does my Honorable Friend think their reaction will be to the idea of drugs being regulated? Does he really think that these awful people are suddenly going to become law-abiding citizens? I do not share the optimism of others about tackling the problem through regulation.”
Maybe they’ll all get jobs at her husband’s firm?
The paper adds:
In her first three months in her post, between November and early February, Atkins gave 17 Commons speeches or ministerial parliamentary answers about drugs, including several on cannabis-based drugs known as cannabinoids. In the three months since, she has not spoken about drugs in the Commons and has answered only six written questions on the subject.
And there’s more.
The majority of this “legal” cannabis is produced by one company: GW Pharmaceuticals.
GW made headlines in 2010 after releasing Sativex: a controversial, cannabinoid-based, medication, legal to purchase in the UK.
Sativex is “an oromucosal spray of a formulated extract of the cannabis sativa plant that contains the principal cannabinoids delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) in a 1:1 ratio.”
GW is legally growing cannabis containing THC despite the British Government viewing cannabis as having “no medicinal properties,” refusing to remove it from Schedule I, the strictest level of drug schedule.
And:
GW was granted a licence from the Home Office in 1998 to grow cannabis plants for medical use and in 2010 the UK became the first country in the world to authorise a prescription medicine derived from cannabis.
This site adds:
[Theresa] May’s husband, Philip May works for Capital group, which has a 19% holding in GW through its subsidiary, Capital Research Management Company.
Bit hypocritial?
It’s no what you know, it;’s who you blow…
Stephen Hawking’s time travel proof – none turned up to his funeral
Time travellers are invited to come to Stephen Hawking’s memorial service in June. We expect – as he himself would have expected – none of them to turn up. There being rather an in-joke going on here.
Hawking’s work was rather famously about black holes, wormholes an other bits and pieces of weird physics mixed with astronomy. And it’s those weird bits which some think hold the secret to time travel if that is indeed possible at all. We’re really pretty certain that there isn’t – and isn’t going to be – some little box that allows us to go forward to next Tuesday nor to go back. All those sci-fi stories about being able to get the racing results and make a fortune aren’t going to come true.
But Hawking’s work was all about this sort of thing. And some of his theoretical results said that it might be possible using these weird bits of astrophysics. Or not, as the case may be. So, thus the joke about the memorial service:
A thousand people have been invited to attend a June memorial service for theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, whose ashes will forever be interred next to Sir Isaac Newton’s in the halls of the 11th century Westminster Abbey church.
And travelers from the future, it seems, are permitted to attend.
The joke here being that Hawking had already tested the idea a few years back:
I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible. I gave a party for time-travellers, but I didn’t send out the invitations until after the party. I sat there a long time, but no one came.
No, really, he did.
And that’s a rather good proof of time travel too. Imagine that it does exist. So, where the hell are they all? That there aren’t any is rather evidence that it’s not possible, isn’t it?
Posted: 13th, May 2018 | In: News, Technology | Comment
Former Arsenal player invited to join pale and shadowy World Economic Forum
Former Arsenal midfielder Mathieu Flamini, 34, has been invited to join the World Economic Forum’s community of Young Global Leaders (YGL). We know what that is – and what it aims to be – from the group’s website.
The YGL was “established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.” No profits and it’s based in Switzerland, with a big annual meeting in Davos? What are the wages and perks like? Why do they host their shindig away from other humans and flowers – are they scared they petals will wilt and fall as the selfless do-gooders walk by?
The Transnational Institute describes the World Economic Forum’s main purpose as being “to function as a socializing institution for the emerging global elite, globalization’s ‘Mafiocracy’ of bankers, industrialists, oligarchs, technocrats and politicians. They promote common ideas, and serve common interests: their own.” Bono calls them “fat cats in the snow”. It is the “most exclusive private social network in the world”.
A look at the Board of Trustees reveals not a single black face – which seems a peculiar oversight for an outfit keen to improve the entire world and the lot of its peoples. There is also not a black face on Managing Board. There is one on the Executive Committee. So that’s one black face in 82 leading positions in an institution that will “bring attention to challenges that affect the future of global society”.
One hundred of the world’s most promising artists, business leaders, public servants, technologists and social entrepreneurs have been asked to join the World Economic Forum’s community of Young Global Leaders. They are joining a community and five-year programme that will challenge them to think beyond their scope of expertise and be more impactful leaders. They were nominated because of their ground-breaking work, creative approaches to problems and ability to build bridges across cultures and between business, government, and civil society.
They want Flamini. But why would Famini want them? He works with GF Biochemicals, which works to develop technology to produce sustainable alternatives to oil-based products. His company produces levulinic acid, which could be an alternative to petrol. But not air fuel for private jets – not yet.
Posted: 10th, May 2018 | In: Arsenal, Money, News, Sports | Comment
The scandal of Motorway coffee costing more
The Daily Mail has noticed that a coffee at a motorway services station costs more from McDonalds, Costa or KFC than it does from the same outlets not at a motorway services station. The explanation for this is really very simple – rent – and it’s the one explanation that we’re not given. Which is a pity because it is a very simple explanation.
Breaking up your journey with a coffee stop at a motorway service station? You may find it breaks the bank too.
An investigation has found that roadside stores charge up to 28 per cent more for a medium latte – costing motorists an extra 74p compared with the high street.
How desperately awful, eh?
Breaking up your journey with a coffee stop at a motorway service station? You may find it breaks the bank too.
An investigation has found that roadside stores charge up to 28 per cent more for a medium latte – costing motorists an extra 74p compared with the high street.
We’re given varied reasons for this, including the station operators claiming that it’s more expensive to operate such stations than general run of the mill services so therefore prices are higher. But it’s why costs are higher than matters and that’s rent.
The basic underlying story here goes all the way back to the very dawn of economics when David Ricardo published his book on rent, in 1817. If you can produce more crop from a piece of land then the rent on it will be higher than land that produces less. We can say the same thing by insisting that the cost of the land will be higher where there’s more money to be made. A third way of saying just that same thing is that the landlord always gets a chunk of whatever can be produced from a piece of land.
This is actually why Starbucks was making no profit – thus paying no tax – a few years back. They had lots of leases on lots of buildings that would be good to sell coffee out of. Because the landlords get a piece of that action places good to sell coffee out of have higher rents. Starbucks wasn’t making a profit selling lots of coffee but the landlords were doing just fine.
But that’s where there are lots of shops around. Starbucks couldn’t raise the price of coffee in those expensive places because if they did then we’d go to the one around the corner. Where prices were lower because they were paying less rent. That landlord’s share was thus coming out of Starbucks profits, not ours, the customers.
Now replay the same game but where there isn’t another shop just around the corner. We all know that lots of money can be made running a services station. Once people have decided to go there they’re a rather captive market though. So rents are high. But instead of those high rents coming out of the profits of the operators, they come out of our pockets in the form of higher prices. Because once we’re there we cannot go to another coffee shop.
There is no solution to this either. Just because there are only so many service stations, and once we stop at one we’re going to be doing our buying there, there’s lots of money to be had from running a service station. That means high rents – and that will, because of the lack of competition, lead to higher prices.
It really is all there in Ricardo’s book from 1817. It’s about time everyone understood it too, isn’t it? Two centuries being long enough?
Image: The Drive of Our Lives – The Heyday of the Motorway Service Station
Posted: 8th, May 2018 | In: Key Posts, Money, News, The Consumer | Comment
Prince Harry can’t recall meeting Meghan’s dad Thomas in Toronto?
Time to catch up with Thomas Markle, Meghan Markle’s dad. The Mail says the “virtual recluse” has still to meet Prince Harry. In the build up to the wedding, the Queen will be hosting a do at which Thomas will meet Her Maj and the rest of The Munsters. “Remarkably,” says the Mail, “it will be the first time that Prince Harry will meet his fiancee’s father.”
Aside from Thomas Markle being anything but a recluse, the Mail might care to note on January 4th 2017 we read that Thomas and Harry met in Toronto a while back. And where did we read that news? In the Mail:
Such are the facts.
Posted: 7th, May 2018 | In: News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Racism is only unacceptable if McDonnell and Corbyn notice it in Pendle
The story of the Tory and the racist joke features Pendle Council, Lancashire, and Rosemary Carroll’s return to the Conservative party’s ranks. In July 2017, Carroll was suspended from the Conservative Party for sharing a joke on Facebook. The Lancashire Evening Post added a dash of tautology and called the joke “racist and derogatory”. Council leader Mohammed Iqbal made an official complaint and called for Carroll councillor to be expelled from the Council and the Conservative Party.
Pendle Tory leader Coun. Cooney acknowlegded the “racist post which had been shared on Facebook by one of our councillors” and stated: “We will not tolerate racism of any form.”
By now you want to know two things: what was the joke and what happened next? Well, the Daily Mirror reproduces the joke. Most other newspapers and the BBC do not. Indeed the BBC says: “Tories urged to act in ‘racist joke’ row at Pendle Council,” the broadcaster unsure what is racist. Without the joke, the story is lacking. Here it is:
“I took my dog to the dole office to see what he was entitled to. The bloke behind the counter said ‘you idiot, we don’t give benefits to dogs’. “I argued ‘why not? He’s brown, he stinks, he’s never worked a f***ing day in his life & he can’t speak a f***ing word of English’. “The man replied: ‘His first payment will be Monday’.”
Nasty stuff.
Carroll spoked to LADbible. Her apology contained a blend of sympathetic back story and the caveat now routine in all apologies, the one that places the onus on the recipient and their reaction, ‘if I have caused offence’. She said:
“It was a mistake, obviously, somebody posted it to me and I thought I was deleting it. I don’t use Facebook much. Everything has gone over the top now. It was a genuine mistake. I can only apologise, because I am not racist by any means. All I can say is, if I’ve caused offence, I am truly sorry. I don’t do stuff like this and have closed that Facebook thing.”
In May, Carroll rejoined the Tories.
Tory leader Paul White says Ms Carroll had “learned form her mistake”. Mohammmed Iqbal says: “They should have done the decent thing and distanced themselves from her. I’m appalled. The suspension was a gimmick.”
Carroll’s return was timely. In the council elections, the Tories won control of Pendle council by a single seat. The Conservatives control Pendle with 25 seats, ahead of Labour’s 15 and the Liberal Democrats’ nine.
And then the story got bigger. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said it was “unacceptable” for Carroll to return. “To have the Conservative Party take control of that council by reinstating a councillor who used the foulest, foulest joke, a racist joke is unacceptable,” he said.
If Carroll’s return is wrong is – and argue amongst yourselves if it is – is it also wrong for Naz Shah, Jeremy Corbyn and others accused of racism to be in the Labour Party?
Shah was John McDonnell’s PPS. Shah is the Bradford West MP – and what if her job gave the Labour Party an overall Commons majority? – who shared on Facebook the idea of “transporting” citizens of the world’s only Jewish state (that’s Israel, not New York) to the middle of the USA. Having called for a country to be obliterated and “foreigner” Jews forcibly relocated away from what many see as their ancient home, she added the comment “problem solved”.
The JC added: “Shah also posted a tweet with a link to a blog which claimed Zionism had been used to ‘groom’ Jews to ‘exert political influence at the highest levels of public office’.” The BBC adds: “A number of other posts emerged, with her comparing Israel to the Nazis and saying ‘the Jews are rallying’.”
Nasty. Labour suspended Shah. But she apologised, kept her job and her salary. After a brief suspension (a little over 3 months), Shah was back.
Former Labour major of London Ken Livingstone is still suspended by Labour. He said Shah’s comments were “rude and over-the-top” but not anti-Semitic – even though Shah accepted it was and apologised. And then he doubled down, opining: “When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
John Rentoul noted:
Livingstone’s refusal to accept that he had ever come across anti-Semitism in his 47 years in the Labour Party. And hence his refusal when pressed on the BBC’s Daily Politics today to accept that Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, whom he invited to London and who wrote that “every Jew in the world” should be fought by “every Muslim”, was anti-Semitic because he had never said anything anti-Semitic to him.
Back to Jeremy Corbyn, then, of whom Nick Cohen writes:
Corbyn invited Hamas and Hizbollah to Parliament and called them his ‘friends’. Bear in mind that Hamas’s Charter is explicitly genocidal – it makes it clear its supporters want to kill Jews and repeats Nazi conspiracy theories. Their founding Charter also rules out any peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestine problem. It says:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.
See a pattern?
Ben McIntrye has a good article in the Times on why Livingstone is no historian:
The suggestion that Hitler backed the idea of a Jewish homeland underpins an association between Nazism and Zionism that is fundamentally antisemitic. It is also wrong. “You can’t expel someone for stating historical fact,” Livingstone insists. But his claim is not a fact: it is a distortion of history, a defence of the indefensible that has undoubtedly emboldened antisemites within his party, leading to the current meltdown…
The Haavara Agreement was really just one more way of ethnically cleansing the Jews from Germany and taking their wealth. The idea that it represented any kind of support for a Jewish homeland, a central tenet of Zionism, is ludicrous and a deliberate perversion of its real import…
The idea that the Holocaust was due to the onset of “madness” on Hitler’s part is also wrong, reducing a programme of collective evil to an act of insanity on the part of one man. Hitler’s genocide was not the unexpected policy of a lone madman but premeditated, rational by Nazi logic, and purely wicked.
The oldest trick in the book of cornered politicians is to claim to have been accused of something they have not been accused of, and deny it. “I did not say Hitler was a Zionist,” the former London mayor said. “And that was why I was suspended.” Again, not true: he was punished because he claimed Nazi “support” for Zionism, a more subtle insinuation and a misreading of historical fact.
After Livingstone’s comments, things escalated. The Times again:
John Mann, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, branded Mr Livingstone a “Nazi apologist” in a confrontation outside a TV studio that was captured live on camera. Mr Mann is reported to have called him a “f***ing disgrace”.
When the party released a statement early in the afternoon to announce Mr Livingstone’s suspension, a spokesman added that Mr Mann had been summoned to see the chief whip about his conduct.
Michael Dugher, Labour MP for Barnsley East and a former frontbencher, said that announcing the actions at the same time represented “drawing some kind of moral equivalence between John Mann and Ken Livingstone”.
“Yet again they’ve prevaricated because it was another of their close allies up to their necks in antisemitism again,” Mr Dugher said.
Is any of that “unacceptable” to John McDonnell?
In January, we got more:
On Saturday, International Holocaust Memorial Day, Mr Livingstone, 72, a former mayor of London, appeared in a programme called Has the Holocaust been exploited to oppress others? on the Iranian state-owned channel Press TV.
He said that Hitler had worked with the Zionist movement to move Jewish people to Israel: “He worked with the Zionist movement to move . . . to get 60,000 to go, but it was about half a million — and then he changed his policy and went for genocide.”
The presenter, Roshan Muhammed Salih, told viewers that Mr Livingstone, who has been suspended from Labour since April 2016, had been “targeted by the Zionist lobby here in the UK”.
You know who else used to appear on Press TV? Yeah: Jeremy Corbyn who used to present a show on the channel – although since Labour was exposed as haven for anti-Semites, traces of Corbyn’s journalism seem to have vanished from YouTube.
Corbyn and ‘Yvonne Ridley’ – someone of that name also used to present a show on Press TV – both voice their support for an anti-Semitic mural in East London.
If Rosemary Carroll’s return to the Tories is “unacceptable” to Labour – she underwent diversity training and apologised; Shah went on a “journey” of self-discovery and apologised fully; Corbyn says of supporting a huge painting of Jewish bankers sat on the backs of naked workers, something the Guardian says “resembled a homage to the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer”, “I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on.”
Labour only notices racism when it’s not about them and everyone else is pointing at it.
Posted: 7th, May 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Transfer balls: Mahrez to Arsenal is clickbait
The BBC says Leicester forward Riyad Mahrez is “keen to join Arsenal”. The 27-year-old Algerian is on his way to the Emirates, says the Sunday Express in what it hails as a “transfer exclusive”.
Daily Express – EXCLUSIVE
The story contains not a single new fact. But we do learn that “Express Sport understands” Mahrez “favours a move to Arsenal”. Apparently, Mahrez “has a house in the capital and would prefer a switch there over a move to Manchester”. So not withstanding Mahrez’s shock realisation that people live in houses in Manchester and, unlike in London, anyone on a mere £100,000-a-week can afford one, Arsenal it is, then.
Maybe. Because the Express also ‘understands’, “Tottenham and Chelsea remain alternative options”, to say nothing of West Ham, Crystal Palace and Watford, which the Express doesn’t.
Of course, this guesswork is based on previous reports linking Mahrez to Arsenal. You might have read them in the Express:
Another Express scoop
Not that the Express is the only newspaper to have told us that Mahrez to Arsenal was a done deal:
The Daily Mirror poses the story as question – but Google doesn’t recognise question marks – so the story is presented as fact to any readers searching for Mahrez, Leicester City and Arsenal news.
Teamtalks opts for invested commas
The Telegraph also opts for inverted commas
The Metro
Mahrez to Arsenal it is, then…
Posted: 6th, May 2018 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, News, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Manchester United Alex Ferguson ‘fights for life’ and privacy
The red-top tabloids agree on one thing: former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is “fighting for his life”:
The Sun on Sunday, Mirror and Star all lead on Sir Alex Ferguson’s emergency operation for a brain haemorrhage. The former Manchester United boss is in intensive care at Salford Royal Hospital.
The news is peppered with good will wishes from many, including Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s unlikely Fergie is reading them. But such public displays of support serve to pad out the single-thread news and cast a light on the tweeters and Instagramers.
Ferguson’s family have asked for privacy – which is presumably why the news media is camped outside the hospital. Sky News’ man in the car park told us this morning that Fergie is “in the best place”. You think?
Amidst much guff, credit, then to Everton manager Sam Allardyce who rather than shining a light on himself, offered instead: “I hope he’s in good hands and I hope the operation is a major success.”
Well said. And well said too, Man United’s Ashley Young: “Gutted to hear the news tonight about Sir Alex. Don’t really know what else to say other than thoughts and prayers with you and your family, boss.”
A bit less well said was is what former United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar noted: “Devastated about the news about Sir Alex and knowing all too well about the situation ourselves. Stay strong and hope together with everyone you recover.”
He is alive, Edwin.
Posted: 6th, May 2018 | In: manchester united, News, Sports | Comment
Crystal Palace player apologies for scoring against Stoke
Patrick an Aanholt says he’s sorry for scoring a goal for Crystal Palace in the South Londoners 2-1 win over Stoke City. Van Aanholt has never played for Stoke. So it’s not yet another example of that sad, pathetic and po-faced non-celebration celebration enacted by players who score against a former club. Van Aanholt is sorry because his goal means Stoke City are relegated from the Premier League.
Van Aanholt scored when he took full advantage of Ryan Shawcross’s calamitous under-hit backpass. A more cogent argument for Stoke’s demise than the vibrant opposition trying to score, and succeeding twice, would be to point the finger at Shawcross and then point lots more fingers at the rest of the Stoke side who failed to protect a 1-0 lead in a vital match.
Stoke fans can shake a fist at a club that forgot how to beat a team – winning once since January – that in Xherdan Shaqiri, have a single capable of posing a threat, and are overseen by board that took too long to sack the wildly overrated Mark Hughes.
Paul Lambert, Stoke’s manager, says relegation is a “change to rebuild”. Although he’s yet to tweet a word of thanks to Van Aanholt.
UKIP vows to return the county to the Middle Ages
UKIP is going to kill you. Kill your first born. Kill everyone you love. Following a hammering at the polls, UKIP’s General Secretary went on the BBC’s Today programme, telling Nick Robinson about the party’s plans for a dramatic return to the fore:
“Think of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. It comes along, it causes disruption then it goes dormant. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Sod all that guff about UKIP turning the clock back to the 1950s or even the 1930s – it’s the 1340s.
Image: Rats dancing at the time of the plague. Oil on canvas by an unknown Flemish artist, 17th century.
Posted: 5th, May 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Transfer balls: Arsenal’s £200m budget for £25m-a-year-Enrique
How much money will the next Arsenal manager be given to splurge on players? The coach who replaces Arsene Wenger should read the small print on any contract because the newspapers and the trusty BBC are very confused.
The BBC says “Arsene Wenger’s successor at Arsenal will be given a £200m transfer budget”. That’s a huge amount of money. Wenger could have bought 5 Granit Xhakas for that.
The source for the BBC’s story is the no less trusty Daily Star. It reports the headline figure as an “exclusive” but offers not a single shred of proof to support the story – not even an unnamed “insider” is coughed up to say it’s all true.
It’s wrong, of course. We know the £200m figure is wrong because on April 23 the Daily Telegraph said the next Arsenal manger will have a transfer kitty of…£50m.
That lower figure sounds more in keeping with Arsenal’s history than the £200m. So how did it come about? Well, a few days ago, the Sun said former Barcelona manager Luis Enrique wants £200m spending money to take over at Arsenal. But Arsenal don’t have that sum so it’s no deal.
Did the Star just see the figure and echo it?
As for the uninspiring Enrique arriving at Arsenal, the Sun of May 2 noted: “ARSENAL target Luis Enrique’s staggering £25million wage demands could rule him out of the running to replace Arsene Wenger.”
Only ‘could’? On April 29, the Times told its readers:
Arsenal have stepped away from making Luis Enrique the managerial successor to Arsene Wenger… The Sunday Times understands that senior executives consider Enrique an inappropriate fit to the position.
In short: no-one outside the club knows who Arsenal will appoint, let alone what the transfer budget will be.
Posted: 5th, May 2018 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, News, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Transfers: Arsenal, Soyuncu and the truth about Turkish football
Arsenal have seen off a bid from Bayern Munich to sign 21-year-old Turkish defender Caglar Soyuncu, says the BBC. Not that it requires much thought for a hungry defender to pick the Gunners – any defender with even a modicum of pace, power, poise and positional awareness will walk into the current Arsenal team.
But the Beeb is wrong. Soyuncu hasn’t signed. He remains on the books of Bundesliga club Freiburg. News of his arrival at Arsenal is fanned by Altinordu president Seyit Mehmet Ozkan.
Who?
Well, Soyuncu used to play at Turkish club Altinordu. “Caglar Soyuncu is set to join Arsenal,” Ozkan is reported to have told the “International Football Economic Forum”.
The what?
“Arsenal demanded his youth information from us,” says Ozkan. “We’ll earn from him, if he joins Arsenal. Bayern Munich wants him too, but he’s on the way to the Premier League.”
Back to the International Football Economic Forum, something introduced to readers by the Standard, which is the source for the Beeb’s ‘fake’ news on Soyuncu signing for Arsenal. Not much information on this body appears on the web.
But a bit of digging reveals that it was held at the Grand Tarabya Hotel, Istanbul. Sabah newspaper, which hosted the event, lists the international names on the rostrum:
Youth Sports Minister Osman Aşkın Bak, TFF President Yıldırım Demirören , TFF 1st Vice President and Member of UEFA Board of Directors Servet Yardımcı, G.Saray President Mustafa Cengiz , Beşiktaş President Fikret Forest , Başakşehir President Göksel Gümüşdağ, Altınordu President Mehmet Ozkan, former director of Manchester United and Chelsea Peter Kenyon, star players Gomis, Adebayor, Babel, Rodallega, SABAH Sports Manager Murat Özbostan, Fotomaç Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Zeki Uzundurukan, İnteltek AŞ. General Manager Ahmet Sezer, Passolig General Manager Ceyhun Kazancı, Aktif Bank General Manager Assist. Ahmet Erdal Güncan, Director of Türk Telekom Services Özlem Kalkan Karabulut, G. Saray Commercial Operations Director Kerem Ertan, F. General Manager of Communication Services Hakan Demir, writer Levent Tuzemen, Bülent Timurlenk and Spanish journalist J. Castro Nogale.
The only non-Turks on the panels appear to be: 4 “star players”, Peter Kenyon and a Spanish journalist.
It’s aims:
The International Football Economy Forum… aims to increase knowledge and awareness by creating rational, visionary, creative, sustainable and qualified targets and to increase the brand value of Turkish football by creating public opinion…
Fikret Orman tells the lads:
“Taking a glance at the star players’ perceptions about Turkey; It seems to be a stop before going to the Middle East. If we increase the brand value of the Super League, we can transfer the appropriate players to more economic conditions…
“If we increase the traceability, as in the case of Cenk Tosun [now at Everton], soccer player sales will come at a high price, all of them related with traceability and if we can increase this, the revenue rights of broadcasting rights will increase too. The majority of the sponsors in the league are doing it to become a world brand ..
In light of this marketing drive, are Arsenal really looking to sign Soyuncu for a fee as high as £40m? Ozkan’s words to the Forum are sieved through the wonders of Google Translate:
Speaking at the International Football Economy Forum… Özkan stated that they will continue to trust and provide young players with “We have won Çağlar Söyüncü and Cengiz Ünder for Turkish and European football. I will go to Germany for Sunday and to follow Chelsea to England on Sunday, and I’m going to sell football to both of them.”
And on Arsenal:
Of Turkey in the world take place in the football market, emphasizing that it is linked to the universal Seyit Mehmet Ozkan, “beginning of last season we sold Freiburg Ages Söyünc is to be transferred to Arsenal.”
Well, maybe… Only to the trusty BBC is Soynucu to Arsenal a done deal. And look out for the BBC’s scoop that Roma’s Cengiz Ünder has joined Chelsea. He hasn’t.
Posted: 4th, May 2018 | In: Arsenal, Chelsea, Key Posts, News, Sports | Comment
