News Category
Transfer balls: Arsenal offer Alexis Sanchez £300,000 a week one year deal and other tall stories
What news of Alexis Sanchez, the Chilean footballer last seen cradling the dog that most likely ate his homework when the Arsenal player was a lad? Is the Chilean as ill as she claims to be? That question to Arsenal manger, Arsene Wenger, who replies:
“Your job is to be suspicious. Your job is built on mistrust and my job is built on trust. That’s why I prefer my side… I had him [Sanchez] on text yesterday, he will come back as soon as possible. We were in touch with him and his doctor. There is no basic problem.
“He comes back on Tuesday. I cannot reveal what he says to me. I cannot reveal a secret conversation. He is flying back as soon as he is in position to fly back. He has flu, that is normally four to five days.”
The Sun gives its readers the side eye:
but the facts are the facts. Sanchez is returning to Arsenal and will not be old, something Wenger has stated previously. To date the frenzied press have spotted Sanchez in Paris, where he was meeting with PSG reps in Paris before agreeing a four-year contract, talking in code, met with Manchester City’s reps in London, was on his way to Chelsea, is definitely staying at Arsenal – who will sell him for £80m – and was on his way to live his “dream” and play for Bayern Munich.
Today the Mirror publish more total balls. The paper brings news of a “new twist in the Alexis Sanchez saga”.
The twist is:
Alexis Sanchez will tell Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger this week that he wants to join Manchester City.
How do we know this? We’re not told.
And, as exclusively revealed by Sunday Mirror Sport, he has priced himself out of moves to Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain by demanding £400,000 a week.
This would be the same Mirror newspaper that has told its readers:
Arsenal star Alexis Sanchez finalises deal to join Manchester City in blockbuster summer transfer signing – June 10, 2017
Bayern Munich prepared to make Alexis Sanchez their highest paid-player with £350,000-a-week offer – June 8, 2017
Arsenal superstar Alexis Sanchez targeted by super rich Inter Milan as “poster boy” of new era at San Siro – July 10, 2017
Arsenal transfer news and rumours: Paris Saint-Germain preparing £35million Alexis Sanchez bid? – July 30, 2017
So much for the Mirror’s scoops. And let’s not forget their news that Wenger has quite the club:
The paper adds today:
Wenger insists his star striker will not be sold – even for £50m, with less than 12 months left on his contract. Arsenal are preparing a compromise deal, with the offer of a one-year contract at £300,000 a week and a promise to review the situation next summer.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 30th, July 2017 | In: Arsenal, News, Sports | Comments (3)
Charlie Gard has died and journalists are ‘digging for dirt’
Charlie Gard, the 11-month-old boy whose life pitted reason against emotion, has died. Charlie’s mother, Connie Yates, tells the Mail, which seem to have bought the parents’ story from Alison Smith-Squire’s Featureworld: “Our beautiful little boy has gone, we are so proud of you Charlie.”
Over at Featureworld, another story is brewing. Smith-Squire writes an “open letter”:
While myself and the Charlie Gard family contemplate the death of a little boy, Alexi Mostrous ‘Investigations Editor’ at the Sunday Times is ringing me to dig up dirt on all of us for a nasty little story …
Smith-Squire addresses Mostrous:
Dear Alexi Mostrous
Do you have children? Are you a father? If you do you then you should be ashamed. Because in my opinion if you have any heart whatsoever you, Alexi Mostrous, never would never have rung me as you did today as Charlie is about to die and asked me how much money are myself and the Charlie Gard family making out of their story.
Many parents have been and are nasty sods. To be a breeder doesn’t make you any more or less compassionate than a man who has not fathered children. Are we impressed by people who have had children? Mostrous has merely asked a question. The top of the Featureworld site does include a section “HOW MUCH MONEY”.
The Mail framed Charlie Gard’s story as a “fight” not only for the child’s life but against medical advice and the ethics that underpins it. Surely a story can be told more than one way”? Isn’t Mostrous trying to do just that? As the late AA Gill noted, “Journalism isn’t an individual sport like books and plays; it’s a team effort. The power of the press is cumulative. It has a conscious human momentum. You can – and probably do – pick up bits of it and sneer or sigh or fling them with great force at the dog. But together they make up the most precious thing we own.”
You can read Smith-Squire’s letter in full here. In it she writes:
Let me tell you how it is. Let me show you, Alexi Mostrous, how compassion for interviewees and a desire to help them rather than ‘getting the story and making money’ is what my sort of journalism is about.
Let me guide you away from the nasty little world in my view you clearly exist in – where everyone is in it for money and you, a salaried staffer at the Oh so squeaky clean Sunday Times and The Times are apparently not…
Without someone like me ensuring vulnerable members of the public are guided through the media hell, some media individuals circle like vultures to take, take, take.
I am a mother myself of three children. So I can glimpse at the hell that Connie Yates and Chris Gard have gone through and the dark days to come.
Yes I am also a journalist . Of course I have to make a living. Like you, Alexi Mostrous I write stories for a living, I report on stories for a living, I supply photos to the media for a living.
This is why interviewees never pay me a penny. It is why I can represent them for free and indeed in some cases also broker deals so that newspapers and magazines are paying them.
The story of Charlie Gard’s plight captured hearts and minds. But ultimately it had something to do with money – if the child’s parents had more of it they could have funded treatment privately.
Transfer balls: Bale joins Manchester United is a recurring fantasy
Transfer balls: questioned by Real Madrid’s official website, the club’s manager Zinedine Zidane was asked if Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo (the so-called ‘BBC’) were likely to remain.
“I hope the BBC stay for this season,” he replied. “I hope everyone remains. I want everyone who is here now to stay…but anything can happen right up until August 31.”
On the chance of Kylian Mbappe joining Real, Zidane added: “I’m the coach here and you’d have to ask someone else about that. We’re working on things and we’ll see what happens. We’ve got the players who are here now and we’ll just have to see what happens.”
All coy stuff, then. But stick it through the tabloid mincer and you get:
That follows the Daily Express’s news of July 19 2017:
Real Madrid star Gareth Bale has secret agreement to join Man Utd next summer
And there was the Manchester Evening News story of May 8 2017:
Gareth Bale has agreed to join Jose Mourinho at Old Trafford next season, should the club be able to guarantee involvement in next season’s elite European competition by winning the Europa League .
The story of Bale to United is a familiar one. In November 2015, the Sun said Bale was heading to Old Trafford and Real were in “crisis”. Bale never came. Real went on to win the Champions League.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 28th, July 2017 | In: Back pages, manchester united, News, Sports | Comment
Charlie Gard: an emotive trial by media
Charlie Gard’s face is splashed across the Daily Mail’s front page. His face hovers above the word “MANSLAUGHTER”. The accusation is not levelled at those who have ruled that the child should die but given some of the reaction to his story it might as well be.
A judge, a rank the Mail not long ago labelled “enemies of the people”, has “ruled” that Charlie Gard cannot die at home. His parents’ words – “We’ve been denied out final wish” – complete the picture. This is another chapter of the story of parents v State – and once gain the State is winning.
Charlie Gard has featured on the Mail’s front page many times. His loving parents sold their story and we got to know about the chronically ill baby boy and his parents’ fight to defy the experts and allow him to leave hospital and undergo experimental treatment.
The court case is now over. Charlie Gard will not be subjected to any further treatment. His parents conceded defeat in their legal battle. He is being allowed to die. Reason has triumphed over hope. One US website told is readers that Charlie Gard is the baby the “British courts sentenced to death”. But the ruling was never that callous. Nothing close to it. The therapy on offer was no cure. The High Court judge heard from eight doctors and two nurses. He told the court: “The entire highly experienced UK team, all those who provided second opinions and the consultant instructed by the parents in these proceedings share a common view that further treatment would be futile.”‘ Charlie Gard is living what might be termed a faux life, kept going by machinery but not living autonomously. Medical opinion is in total agreement: he will never get better.
The judge added: “If Charlie’s damaged brain function cannot be improved, as all seem to agree, then how can he be any better off than he is now, which is in a condition that his parents believe should not be sustained?… with complete conviction… that it is in Charlie’s best interests that I accede to these applications and rule that Great Ormond Street Hospital (SOSH) may lawfully withdraw all treatment, save for palliative care, to permit Charlie to die with dignity.”
But emotions run high. Reason fails to inspire. The Star notes how “some on social media channels for campaign group ‘Charlie’s Army’ believe the tot will breathe on his own.” Would you take belief over medial knowledge?
So now news that Charlie’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, have been denied time with their child. They wanted to spend “a week or so” in a hospice with their son before the machines keeping him alive were switched off. But GOSH says that would require a round-the-clock intensive care team. And with none forthcoming by the courts’ deadline, a GOSH spokesman tells media: “Sadly, as the judge has now ruled, there is simply no way that Charlie, a patient with such severe and complex needs, can spend any significant time outside of an intensive care environment safely. The risk of an unplanned and chaotic end to Charlie’s life is an unthinkable outcome for all concerned and would rob his parents of precious last moments with him. As the judge has now ruled, we will arrange for Charlie to be transferred to a specialist children’s hospice, whose remarkable and compassionate staff will support his family at this impossible time.”
Intensive life support cannot be supplied away from a hospital intensive care unit. So Charlie Gard cannot die at home.
This, says the Mail, is “heart-wrenching”. Charlie’s mother tells the paper amid photos of a family picnic by GOSH: “We just want some peace with our son, no hospital, no lawyers, no courts, no media just quality time with Charlie away from everything to say goodbye to him in the most loving way. Most people won’t ever have to go through what we have been through, we’ve had no control over our son’s life and no control over our son’s death.”
The parents now agree with his son’s doctors that he should die in a hospice. They want him to be kept alive for up to a week but medics say he should “slip away” within a few hours of arriving.
And so a baby kept alive for five months will be allowed to die. The medics who looked after Charlie Gard are not uncaring pen-pushers. GOSH and the courts are not places where children are sentenced to death and human life is cheap. Ethics matter.
But something nags. Was it all about money? And if it was – and money must always be a factor when resources are not infinite – why can’t a rich country provide for its own?
This struggle was for Charlie Gard and the future for us all. It was for those not yet born. It was for love, reason and force of argument. Through that we hope to get to the truth.
Reject new trolling laws: free speech means being free to lampoon and abuse MPs
British politicians have been subjected to a wave “of racism, sexism and homophobia” on social media, spiking during the General Election. Not all of it is satirical lampooning of our elected and unelected representatives. A fair amount of it is cruel and vindictive. But – yep, there’s the ‘but’ – so what? If you trammel what can and cannot be said to an MP, you have lost an essential part of democracy.
Tory MP Simon Hart said things have taken a turn for the worse. The “robust banter followed by a shake of the hand and a pint in the pub” of past campaigns has mutated into ‘”death threats, criminal damage, sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and general thuggishness”. Was none of that there before? And can the downturn in pubic discourse be linked to the death of pubs, hastened by the smoking ban and tax on booze? The problem is not one of less pubs, of course, but more internet, which has given voice not only to the oppressed and isolated but also to the bigots, prudes, nutters, mentally negligible and mouth breathers.
So Theresa May PM has ordered the Committee on Standards in Public Life to investigate whether existing laws governing threats against MPs are enough. The mood is that new laws are required to keep MPs protected and the less attractive elements of the demos at bay. The Independent says the MPs are looking at “online trolling laws”.
Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, had a word on her own experiences. “We are talking about mindless abuse and in my case the mindless abuse has been characteristically racist and sexist,” she said. “And just to outline I’ve had death threats, I’ve had people tweeting that I should be hung if ‘they could find a tree big enough to take the fat bitch’s weight’. There was an EDL-affiliated Twitter account BurnDianeAbbott, I’ve had rape threats, described as a pathetic, useless, fat, black, piece of shit, ugly, fat, black bitch.”
Nasty. But is being “pathetic” the same as being threatened with rape? Can mindlessness be banned? What about the figures?
Research undertaken by Buzzfeed News and the University of Sheffield looked at 840,000 tweets sent during the month before June 8.
It found that male Conservative MP candidates received the highest percentage of abuse on Twitter while male Ukip candidates were second with just over four per cent of their mentions deemed to be abusive.
Male Labour candidates were next with just under four per cent while female Conservative candidates were also on about four per cent.
Meanwhile, just over two per cent of female Labour candidate mentions were abusive.
What’s considered abusive?
Moron. Twat. Coward. Should such words be banned? Of course not. A new law that protects politicians from being hailed by such words – a law that criminalises us from using them when addressing one of our elected reps – is abhorrent.
In 1964, the US Supreme Court ruled that “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
Well said.
Freedom of speech is, as AA Gill noted, “what all other human rights and freedoms balance on.” Don’t let them or anyone own it.
Posted: 27th, July 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Man knifes mind-controlling pig before hiding at bottom of swimming pool
Bobby Andreas Heck, 41, is charged with assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest and animal cruelty. Before his arrest, Heck was standing in his family’s home, accusing Mr. Oinkers, a pet pig, of “trying to control his mind”, it being known well that “all pigs are brainworkers”.
Heck claimed the pig was trying to force him to kill other pigs.
He then stabbed the pig.
Heck’s father grabbed Heck. Heck turned the knife on his father, knifing him in buttocks. Police were called. Heck fled. The cops found Heck holding his breath at the bottom of a neighbor’s swimming pool.
“It must be some kind of record for how long he held his breath underwater,” says an arresting officer. “I don’t think it was as long as ten minutes, but, heck, it had to have been at least six minutes, maybe seven. We were all amazed.”
Heck was pulled from the pool and roasted with a stun gun. His hairline (see above) remained undisturbed throughout.
The mind-controlling pig is recovering well and moving into the hairdressing business. Be afraid.
Posted: 27th, July 2017 | In: News, Strange But True | Comment
Police find 30 eyeballs in man’s anus
Having stopped a car being driven by Roy Tilbott, 51, Wyoming police spotted a few eyeballs on the road close to where the suspect was standing. They seemed to have have slid down from somewhere inside Tilbott’s shorts.
When challenged at gunpoint, Tilbott told police the eyeballs were not human, rather cow eyeballs he’d stolen from Johnson Meats (a slaughterhouse) where he worked as a butcher.
“Company won’t let us take animal scraps home and instead toss them in the landfill,” said Tilbott according to the police report. “They’re a very wasteful company. We should be allowed to take scrap meat and other parts home. The company should start a green initiative. They don’t even have recycling at the plant. I enjoy eating bovine eyeballs and smuggling them out in my colon was the only way I knew how to get them out without potentially getting caught and fired. I put them in soups. They’re beneficial for erectile dysfunction, which I currently battle, but I also just like the texture and taste.”
Tilbott was breathalyzed and arrested for driving under the influence. He was also in possession of a number of large carving knives. Police don’t know what else to charge Tilbott with because no theft has been reported.
File under: no kebabs in Wyoming?
Posted: 27th, July 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Strange But True | Comment
Arsenal clickbait balls: Wenger gone and Ozil is buried in the Gunners’ (wooden) box
In recent days the Sun’s Neil Ashton has told Arsenal fans that Mesut Ozil is staying at the club (proof: the German Ashton said wasn’t worth “two bob” has renewed his box at the Emirates), Chelsea have been “beaten” Arsenal to £50m Virgil Van Van Dijk (proof: none) and Hector Bellerin will remain at Arsenal (proof: nothing to say that he won’t).
The question is: do these players all know Arsenal are dead? It’s not Arsenal fans burying the club – a group Ashton says “are only ever one defeat away from another meltdown” – it’s Ashton, who opined;
‘ARSENAL Football Club, Rest In Peace. This institution, one of the most famous clubs in the world, is dead and buried. Here at the Emirates, the heart finally stopped beating.’
“So it’s goodnight Arsenal. Goodbye Arsene,” said Ashton after Arsenal were thrashed by Bayern Munich.
Proof to the contrary: Arsenal live on. Arsene Wenger is manager.
It”s almost as if football writers just churn stuff out to fill a space.
Posted: 27th, July 2017 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, News, Sports | Comments (2)
When a child goes missing in Carrara global media rings the bell
Tales of missing children are as rare as they are are indelible. So when a child went missing in Australia, the media was on the case. ‘Every parent’s worst nightmare’ is an emotive story that travels.
To the Carrara childcare centre on Birmingham Road, Australia, then, where a child is leaving the premises at around 3.50pm local time. But who is she with?
The Sun broadcast “chilling CCTV” images of the “missing Queensland girl, 5, dressed in man’s coat as she is led away after being snatched from her childcare centre”.
The child “may be at ‘significant risk'”.
Just in case anyone in Basildon can help, the Sun tells its readers, “They were travelling in a creme-coloured Citroen hatchback with license plate 633XFU”. In the Daily Mail, the “desperate” search is looking for a “brown” car.
Australia’s 7 News wanted its viewers also to look for the child. This posse might have had even less to go on than Sun and Mail readers. The channel saw fit to smudge the missing child’s features. Have you seen her?
Sky News then adds with a dash of menace: “A man was seen taking the girl.”
One day on and the story is that the child went off with her father. Both have been found safe and well.
A cynic might suppose that not everyone in media-land is delighted with the swift and happy outcome.
Charlie Gard is allowed to die
The legal fight for Charlie Gard’s future is over. The desperately ill child’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, have ended their five-month court battle for their son to be released from care at Great Ormond Street Hospital and undergo experimental treatment in the USA. They accept that the damage to their 11-month-old’s muscle and tissue is “irreversible”.
It was ever the expert opinion heard at the High Court, the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights and the Vatican that Charlie Gard should be allowed to die. His parents and thousands of others, many of whom donated to a fund to send Charlie to the US, disagreed. On twitter they pleaded #dontkillcharlie and became part of #charliesarmy.
Big media fanned the story. In the Daily Mail, we read Connie’ words: “When I think about willingly turning off Charlie’s life support, with him dying in our arms, I cry uncontrollably… He has chubby, squeezable little legs, his hair needs to be combed more.”
Emotion or ethics? Hope or reason? Parental love or the pragmatic State? Pick you side.
Today Connie Yates told the the judge: “We have always believed that Charlie deserved a chance at life.” He said time had been “wasted” on legalities. “Had Charlie been given the treatment sooner he would have had the potential to be a normal, healthy little boy,” she continued. “He may well have had some disabilities later on in life but his quality of life could have been improved greatly… Now we will never know what would have happened if he got treatment but it’s not about us. It’s never been about us. It’s about what’s best for Charlie now. At the point in time when it has become too late for Charlie we have made the agonising decision to let him go.”
Mr Justice Francis was at pains to remind everyone that in “this country children have rights independent of their parents”. He added: “The world of social media doubtless has very many benefits but one of its pitfalls, I suggest, is that when cases such as this go viral, the watching world feels entitled to express opinions, whether or not they are evidence-based.”
The watching word expressing opinion is never a pitfall. It’s glorious. But ultimately, it was futile.
Americans are banned from visiting North Korea
Best hurry up with that romantic break to North Korea. Donald Trump has alerted American tourists to the risk of “long-term detention” in Mr Kim’s dystopia. You might argue that being locked up in North Korea is akin to getting the full experience, a chance to be total immersed in the place. Like making a Buckingham Palace guard laugh or setting fire to a car in Paris, a diet of tree bark and curfew is to live like a North Korean.
But US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has signed a “Geographical Travel Restriction” . It makes it vorboten for Americans to enter North Korea. Tillerson’s spokeswoman Heather Nauert tells media:
“Once in effect, U.S. passports will be invalid for travel to, through and in North Korea, and individuals will be required to obtain a passport with a special validation in order to travel to or within North Korea.”
This harks back to the fate of Otto Warmbier, the 22-year-old American who having been sentenced to 15 years hard labor in North Korea last year for trying to steal a propaganda sign while on a tourist visit, returned to the USA in a coma. He died soon after.
North Korea called Warmbier’s death “a mystery”. Other mysteries thought to be befuddling the North Koreans are: why Katie Price sleeps on her back? How come Mr Kim is so fat when his fellow North Koreans are so very thin? And what do materialistic men see in Bernie Ecclestone’s daughters.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports: “North Korea is currently holding two Korean-American academics and a missionary, a Canadian pastor and three South Korean nationals who were doing missionary work. Japan says North Korea has also detained at least several dozen of its nationals.”
Posted: 24th, July 2017 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Arsenal Transfer Balls: Alexis Sanchez goes missing in Paris
Transfer Balls: How much money is Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez’s worth? Much guff has been written about the Chilean player whose Arsenal contract expires in a year’s time. The pick of the stories is the one that placed Sanchez in a Paris hotel room in readiness for his move to the city’s PSG. He’d been “spotted” in Paris by a raft of top media titles – but no-one of them had had the presence of mind to take a photo of the player. Moreover, not a single passer-by, hotel worker or fan has produced a photo of Sanchez in Paris.
With not a muon of evidence of Sanchez ever having been in Paris last week, the Metro nonetheless managed to connive the headline:
Alexis Sanchez agrees four-year contract with Paris Saint-Germain
Alexis Sanchez agrees four-year contract with Paris Saint-Germain
The Metro adds that PSG will secure Sanchez on a £36m transfer and pay him £275,000 a week – £5,000-a-week less than Arsenal have offered. Really? No. It’s total balls.
The Telegraph counters:
Wenger’s conviction that Sanchez will stay has been strengthened by influential French daily newspaper L’Equipe reporting that PSG have now switched their attention to Barcelona’s Neymar.
Plus Arsenal have already stated their resolve to keep Sanchez.
“My mind has been made up for a while now. I think I’ve made it clear a few times that this is my stance [he will stay at Arsenal],” said Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger yesterday. “Sanchez has got one year to go on his contract and we have no need to make money. He will be part of the team next year and after that I can understand it. We are in a strong financial situation so we want to keep our best players. Has he asked to leave? No.”
So much for the facts. What about the fee?
£90m – Daily Star, July 11
£80m – Daily Express, July 9
£70m – London Evening Standard, July 23
£50m – Daily Mirror, april 17
£45m – The Metro, July 22
£40m – Daily Express, June 8
More fake news every day in the trusty mainstream media.
Posted: 24th, July 2017 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, News, Sports | Comment
Brexit supporting Daily Mail plans to stay in the EU by relocating to Ireland
The Daily Mail’s owners are considering relocating from Kensington, London, to Ireland (EU). The Times reports:
July 1, 2017:
Spencer-Churchill also let slip that the Daily Mail’s publishers are considering upping sticks after the Brexit vote. “I was talking to my friend Viscount Rothermere yesterday,” he said. “He’s thinking about moving his whole operation of Associated Newspapers [now DMG Media] to Ireland.” So much for crushing the saboteurs.
Previously in the Mail:
Take a bow (out), Daily Mail!
Spotter: @bellamackie
Posted: 23rd, July 2017 | In: Broadsheets, News, Tabloids | Comment
Donald Trump pretends he can’t speak Japanese as Akie Abe forgets her English
You know how it is: you’re sat next to some awful bore at a dinner party. Donald Trump feels your pain. The New York Times spots him sat alongside the interminably dull Akie Abe, wife of Japan Prime Minister Abe, at the G20 bun fight. They didn’t talk – which is wise because once Akie gets started on depictions of women on Manga comics, drip-dry toilets, why Japan hasn’t apologised for its treatment of prisoners in World War 2, the absence of a memorial to the thousands of Korean slaves killed at Hiroshima and the subjugation of females in her contry you’ll need a wall to stop her. Japanese women, eh, they’re such rule breakers.
So, I was seated next to the wife of Prime Minister Abe [Shinzo Abe of Japan], who I think is a terrific guy, and she’s a terrific woman, but doesn’t speak English.
HABERMAN: Like, nothing, right? Like zero?
TRUMP: Like, not “hello.”
HABERMAN: That must make for an awkward seating.
TRUMP: Well, it’s hard, because you know, you’re sitting there for——
HABERMAN: Hours.
TRUMP: So the dinner was probably an hour and 45 minutes.
But she does – or at least she can read English.
And did Trump forget his fluent Japanese?
Posted: 21st, July 2017 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Top Secret files reveals how Churchill saved Britain’s Nazi King
Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower didn’t want us to know about King Edward VIII’s plans for peace with Adolf Hitler and Nazis. Papers released by The National Archives considered “too difficult, too sensitive” include a 1953 “top secret” memo from Churchill discussing German telegrams carrying reports by Nazi-sympathiser the Duke of Windsor, as Edward VIII was known after he abdicated in 1936.
“He is convinced that had he remained on throne war would have been avoided and describes himself as firm supporter of a peaceful compromise with Germany,” says one telegram from Portugal, where the duke was staying in July 1940. “Duke believes with certainty that continued heavy bombing will make England ready for peace.”
Edward ‘teaching the Queen how to give the Nazi salute’
Edward abdicated so he could marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. The couple set up home in France, but when World War II broke out they moved to Spain. The government in Madrid, formally neutral but sympathetic to Germany, asked for guidance from Berlin as to what should be done with them. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop replied, asking if they could be kept there. Then he ordered a watch on their house.
Ribbentrop’s interest was piqued when he was told, a few days later, that in private “Windsor spoke strongly against Churchill and against this war.” While he considered what to do, the duke and duchess made their way to Portugal, where they made similar comments. The Nazis decided to act.
“The duke should return to Spain under all circumstances,” Ribbentrop wrote, adding that they should then be “persuaded or forced” to stay there. His plan was then to offer the duke “the granting of any wish,” including “the ascension of the English throne.”
Churchill duly made the Nazi Windsor governor of the Bahamas.
When the Windsors were reluctant to leave Europe, Churchill threatened Edward, who held honorary military rank, with court-martial. Ribbentrop, anxious not to let his prize escape, launched Operation Willi to persuade the Windsors to return to Spain, kidnapping them if necessary. But despite sabotage attempts and bomb threats, the Germans failed.
The plan was “to persuade the duke to leave Lisbon in a car as if he were going on a fairly long pleasure jaunt, and then to cross the border at a specified place, where Spanish secret police will ensure a safe crossing,” according to a note sent to Ribbentrop.
You can read more on how close the UK came to being overrun by Nazis in this great story on Flashbak.
Posted: 21st, July 2017 | In: News, Politicians, Royal Family | Comment
The ASA war on gender means mum gets the power drill and dad goes to Iceland
The Advertising Standards Authority once complained about this site. An advert featuring Page 3 stunna Lucy Pinder was sexist, they alleged. Pinder welcomed readers to Old Mr Anorak’s throbbing organ, which for filthy lucre had been sheep-dipped in Lynx, the stuff that drives women wild with lust. It was all a lot of nonsense. Pinder was willing. No readers were damaged. And rumours abound of a whole generation of young Anoraks. Now the ASA is going for other “gender-stereotypical” commercials, seeking to censor inappropriate ads “that feature stereotypical gender roles”.
There’ll be no more Pinder presenting her primary sexual characteristics like Saint Agatha in a bikini. No more Oxo mum feeding her family. No more Ronseal man telling us it does “exactly” what it says on the tin. And no more ads for yoghurts in which a baby-voiced female celebrity talks about her “tummy”.
Such amplification of “stereotypical gender roles” can “cause harm”. These ads “reinforce assumptions that adversely limit how people see themselves and how others see them”. It turns out that Lynda Bellingham is a bigger role model than your actual mum and dad.
So mum gets the power drill for Christmas after all, and dad gets a trip to Iceland for own-brand ketchup and other tastes of regret.
How’s that for progress?
Posted: 20th, July 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment
Clickbait Balls: Manchester United and Arsenal fans tricked by world’s worst journalism
Transfer Balls: The Manchester Evening News has big news for Arsenal and Manchester United fans: “Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho talks Alexis Sanchez.”
Can it be that Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez is on Manchester United’s shopping list? Having reached the MEN’s scoop through Google News, the story begins:
Jose Mourinho has admitted it is a ‘shame’ Manchester United did not sign Alvaro Morata and appeared to dismiss any chance of a move for Arsenal forward Alexis Sanchez.
He only “appeared” to. So there’s a chance Mourinho wants Sanchez.
When Mourinho was asked by a Spanish journalist if United were attempting to sign Morata, he replied in Spanish: “It is a question for Florentino [Perez, the Real president]. I don’t know the first thing about Sanchez.”‘
Weird answer, no? Mourinho just tags Sanchez onto the end of a reply. Has he done that to wind up Arsenal and Manchester City, who were said to be keen on the Chilean? No. He’s not talking about Alexis Sanchez. He’s talking about Jose Angel Sanchez, Real Madrid’s director general.
Mourinho: “A possibilidade de Morata jogar no United é uma questão para Florentino Pérez e Jose Angel Sanchez.” pic.twitter.com/MPK28aTI4P
— Portal Madridista (@RMadrid11BR) July 16, 2017
But The Metro didn’t even bother to read that. It thunders:
Freudian slip? Jose Mourinho mentions Alexis Sanchez to send Manchester United fans into transfer meltdown
Undeterred by fact, the Metro coughs up a cut-out-and-keep guff of dire journalism. This is it pretty much the clickbait balls in full:
Jose Mourinho has got Manchester United fans very excited by accidentally mentioning Alexis Sanchez’s name when asked an unrelated question at his post-match press conference.
The Portuguese oversaw a 5-2 victory against LA Galaxy in the early hours of Sunday morning, and afterwards he was asked, among other things, about Real Madrid frontman Alvaro Morata.
But curiously, Mourinho appeared to get the Spanish striker and Arsenal’s wantaway Chilean mixed up, with many fans now speculating that it was a Freudian slip hinting at genuine interest.
When Mourinho was asked by a Spanish journalist if United were attempting to sign Morata, he replied in Spanish: ‘It is a question for Florentino [Perez, the Real president]. I don’t know the first thing about Sanchez.’
The exchange got pulses racing, with United fans debating whether it was an accidental slip of the tongue or something more substantial…
Of course, it is possible that the Special One innocently misspoke, or he would even have been referring to a different player – midfielder Renato Sanches, perhaps.
But even his choice of language – saying ‘I don’t know’ rather than categorically ruling out a transfer… has got United fans hot under the collar.
One day on from that total balls, the Metro reads the clicks, senses that it’s on to something and produces the follow-up piece:
Why Jose Mourinho – not Pep Guardiola – is the perfect manager for Alexis Sanchez
Ewan Roberts didn’t bother to check the source of his opinion piece. He just thunders:
Jose Mourinho doesn’t do innocent slips of the tongue. Depending on how cynical you are, his name-dropping of Alexis Sanchez over the weekend ranks somewhere between a Freudian slip or the planting of a seed. Whether he intended to or not, the Portuguese has inserted Manchester United onto the list of potential suitors for the Chilean – and they may even top it, with Old Trafford arguably a better fit than their sky blue rivals down the road.
The article based on poor research and what looks like a cynical disregard for readers trawls on and on, pausing a while to produce a graphic of what Sanchez would look like in the United side:
It’s “random” stuff says one writer at the clickbait-driven Telegraph:
More great journalism when we spot it.
Posted: 20th, July 2017 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, Key Posts, manchester united, News, Sports | Comment
Arsenal balls: Sanchez stays and Gooners should rejoice
Barring a gigantic transfer fee that makes his departure irresistible, Alexis Sánchez will be at Arsenal next season. The club has done the sums and worked out that selling their best player to a rival would be a failure. So they’ll keep him and wave goodbye to the Chilean when he leaves as a free agent next summer. They’ll keep the £140,000 a week extra they were going to pay him in a new contract – one he rejected. And, vitally, Arsenal will field a player who boosts their team’s chances of a swift return to Champions’ League football, which they missed out on for the first time in over 20 years with last season’s fifth-placed finish.
“The decision has been made and we will stick to that,” Arsene Wenger, the team’s manager, told media. “The decision is not to sell.”
So Sanchez stays. Keeping him also means Arsenal need not look around for his replacement, which given their status outside the Champions’ League makes signing top talent even more expensive. Just look at the huge premium Manchester United had to fork out to get Paul Pogba.
Arsenal fans should be happy. The deal shows that the club has a long-term plan for success.
Posted: 19th, July 2017 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, News, Sports | Comment
Radiohead and Slash sticks it to BDS bigots: Jewish Devils get the best tunes
When Thom Yorke’s gave BDS the finger, we cheered. You should cheer too. The monocular Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) mob demanded Radiohead cancel their show in Tel Aviv, Israel – a country vast in the Bible and Leftish dogma but in reality small and dusty. “Their ill-advised concert in Tel Aviv suggests to me that they only want to hear one side – the one that supports apartheid,” said Jeremy Corbyn’s mate Ken Loach in the Independent. “Every international artist who plays in Israel serves as a propaganda tool for the Israeli government.”
Anyone who saw and enjoyed the Corbyn set at Glastonbury will hope the Jewish state finally sees sense and Tel Aviv gets twinned with Somerset and Islington. Politics is music and music is politics, hymns the popular song of the correct, compassionate and knowing.
Many more have added their voices to the chorus seeking to impose a cultural blockade on Israel, its peoples and anyone who agrees with them in the spirit of – get this – inclusivity, equality and diversity. Desmond Tutu, Roger Waters, Thurston Moore and Dave Randall were all aghast at Radiohead’s concert in the Israeli beach-side city. “Music helps drown out the cries of the oppressed,” opined Randall without irony. Music does more harm than good. It’s the kind of message sure to get a sympathetic ear among the Taliban.
“Anybody who’s tempted to do that, like our friends in Radiohead, if only they would actually educate themselves,” advises knowing Waters, who addresses Yorke in an open letter on a BDS live chat: “I look forward to – if you feel like it, when you finish your trip to Israel, because you probably still will go – write me a letter and tell me how much good you did and how much change you managed to affect by chatting with musicians.”
In the face of the scholarly and superior Waters, Yorke is defiant. “We’ve played in Israel for over 20 years through a succession of governments, some more liberal than others,” he said. “As we have in America. We don’t endorse Netanyahu any more than Trump, but we still play in America. Music, art and academia is about crossing borders, not building them, about open minds not closed ones, about shared humanity, dialogue and freedom of expression.”
He goes on. “Imagine how offensive that is for Jonny.. [Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood is married to an Arab-Jew]. Just to assume that we know nothing about this. Just to throw the word ‘apartheid’ around and think that’s enough. It’s fucking weird. It’s such an extraordinary waste of energy.”
Although it’s not weird to make the world’s one Jewish state a special case for censorship. Israel’s unique status among the enlightened too-often smells of something horribly familiar and nasty. Throughout history the people of God’s dad are often a special case.
But never fear, Jews and your apologists. The Devil always has the best tunes. Pink Floyd’s Waters – a fair-minded and reasoned man who compares modern-day Israel to Germany under the Nazis – can’t make it. But Guns ‘n Rose can. Take it away, Slash:
Posted: 19th, July 2017 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment
Transfer balls: Bakayoko makes Chelsea panic and Manchester United fans click
Transfer Balls – a look at dire football reporting.
When Tiemoue Bakayoko was on his way from Monaco to Chelsea, the media was fanning the baseless news story that he was contemplating a last-minute switch to Manchester United,
Above a story about Bakayoko having his medial at Chelsea, the Manchester Evening News told its readers: “Monaco star Tiemoue Bakayoko’s Manchester tweet sends Chelsea fans into meltdown.” The headline had nothing to do with the story, which went on to explain that Bakayoko had been prodded and probed at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground before heading out for dinner with some of the club’s players.
What Chelsea fans were in meltdown over that? The MEN didn’t say.
But that total tosh was topped by the London Evening Standard which managed to corrupt the simple fact ‘Footballer Undergoes Chelsea Medical’ into “Tiemoue Bakayoko tweet sparks panic among Chelsea fans as he arrives in England for £40m transfer”.
Meltdowns. Panics. Might be an idea for jittery Chelsea fans to stay away from the news, which operated in the twilight zone between utter balls and economical truth.
The Express had previously told its readers: “MANCHESTER UNITED have agreed a £35million deal to hijack Chelsea’s move for Tiemoue Bakayoko.”
One day and on even the Express clickbait farm admitted the story was bilge: “MANCHESTER UNITED do not want to sign Chelsea target Tiemoue Bakayoko and have not submitted a bid for the Monaco midfielder.”
Such are the facts.
Posted: 19th, July 2017 | In: Back pages, Chelsea, manchester united, News, Sports | Comment
Jodie Whittaker: the naked Dr Who photos too racy for tea-time telly
That the latest incarnation of Dr Who is a woman and not a child or a fridge freezer has not escaped the Sun and the Daily Mail. The papers reviewed Jodie Whittaker’s pre-postgrad career in time travel and noticed that she’s appeared starkers.
Both tabloids have shown their readers pictures of Whittaker naked or topless in previous acting work. To which you might wonder, ‘So what?’ She’s a grown woman who took the roles that required disrobing in the best possible taste under free will. But something called the Equal Representation for Actresses (ERA), is upset. “We are delighted by the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor,” says the camping group without humour, mistaking the BBC’s Verne-fed gurn-fest for an actual character. “However, we are surprised and disappointed by the Daily Mail and the Sun’s reductive and irresponsible decision to run a story featuring pictures of Jodie in various nude scenes.”
The show’s Daleks were naked, moreover the Cyberman and K-9, Dr Who’s robot dog. All nude. Why is it different for Whittaker? Is it because women are so weak that she needs special protection?
Doctor of Morals
Everything about the BBC’s cash-cow is contrived to milk viewers. What began as a bit of fun is now a marketing campaign so message-laden Dr Who should be recast as a Royal Mail van driver. The last Dr Who looked like your grandfather, or at least the head of English at an inner-city Academy. He was tooled-up with a magic screwdriver in place of plot. When that MacGuffin flagged, he scored a gay female sidekick, who for added twitter-appeal was also black. “It shouldn’t be a big deal in the 21st Century. It’s about time isn’t it?” Pearl Mackie, who played the sidekick told the BBC. “That representation is important, especially on a mainstream show.”
Good for her. But the suspicion is that her identity-first role was led less by desire for change than it was it to suppress desire of a more base sort in the Beeb’s post-Savile era. There was no chance of the Aunty who tuned a blind eye to depravity letting old man Peter Capaldi anywhere near someone young and female who could be perceived as some kind of love interest.
So now you get Dr Who who looks most like a primary school teacher, albeit one with a racier past. She’s safe around children, and on parents’ evening, there’s something for dad to contemplate.
Posted: 18th, July 2017 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment
Mobikes in the canal restores faith in the spirit of Manchester
In Manchester new Chinese bikes are creating artificial reefs in the city’s waterways. It’s terrific. Although it might not be what the Chinese company behind bicycle sharing service Mobike envisioned when it launched in the UK. Can Mobike disrupt Manchester travel?
I really wanted to believe that Mancunians could be trusted with nice things. Just over a fortnight ago, a Chinese company called Mobike brought 1,000 shiny new silver and orange bikes to my city. Unlockable with a smartphone and available to rent for just 50p for half an hour, they could be ridden wherever you liked within Manchester and Salford and, crucially, could be left anywhere public once you were done.
I was an immediate convert, boasting about the superiority of our new bike-sharing system over London’s, pitying sadsacks in the capital who had to trundle around looking for a docking station. One sunny evening shortly after the launch, I rode a Mobike to Salford Quays, where I swam a mile in the filtered water of the glistening Lowry, reflecting as I did my backstroke that Manchester was starting to feel rather European. I had always fancied living in Copenhagen, where the cyclist is king and the harbour has been turned into a lido. Was I now living that continental dream?
Two weeks on and I fear that a dream is all it was. There are Mobikes in the canal, Mobikes in bins and I am fed up with following the app to a residential street where there is clearly a Mobike stashed in someone’s garden. On launch day, the Chinese designer told me the bikes were basically indestructible and should last four years without maintenance. It took a matter of hours before local scallies worked out how to disable the GPS trackers and smash off the back wheel locks.
On Thursday, none of the eight bikes showing on the app as being near my house were actually there. I was so incensed when I reached the location of the ninth and could see it locked away in a backyard that I lost control of my senses and knocked on the door. A young man opened it and I asked nicely if I could rent the bike. He looked surprised and said, no, it was his, and anyway, he needed it later. I explained that was not how the system worked, that the bikes were public, and that if everyone was as selfish as him the whole thing would collapse. He rolled his eyes and told me I would be trespassing if I dared try to fetch it.
You see, what works in a totalitarian state where everyone’s being monitored doesn’t work in Manchester. Good-oh. Theft isn’t right, of course not. But to assume compliance and that people offered a 50p bike ride home will treat the thing with dutiful respect represents a failure to understand your target market.
PS: Chinese airline Wings of China can update its advice to travellers visiting the UK. The 2016 Air China guide told its passengers to avoid visiting areas of London “populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people” – and “We advise tourists not to go out alone at night, and females always to be accompanied by another person when travelling.”
The chapter on Manchester should be a hoot.
Spotter: The Guardian:
Posted: 17th, July 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment
Donald Trump’s Mexico wall will be higher than a man on 60 pounds of marijuana
Donald Trump was the wall between Mexico and the USA to be made of glass, or Sellotape or whatever it is they spray of ageing A-listers faces to keep the skin tight. “One of the things with the wall is you need transparency,” he told media aboard Air Force One on his way to Paris for Bastille Day. “You have to be able to see through it. So it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what’s on the other wide of the wall. And I’ll give you an example. As horrible as it sounds, when they throw large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them. hey hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.’”
Maybe Trump means a chain-link fence, something the Republican Congress passed in the Secure Fence Act of 2006. The Act, signed by Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and George W. Bush, approved 700 miles of fencing between the border of the United States and Mexico. The wall / fence would feature checkpoints, drones and lighting to stop illegal immigration.
Dugs remain optional.
Posted: 16th, July 2017 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Nothing To Do With Arbroath’s Kevin Gray has died
I’m very sad to learn that Kevin Gray had died. He was the brains behind the brilliant Nothing To Do With Arbroath. Kevin was just 56 years old.
We spoke many times. In December he told he that he’d been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer that “has spread to as yet unidentified other places…
I’ve not been able to get internet access in hospital and was surprisingly told I could go home for a few days just before lunchtime today.
I have to return on Thursday for a lung biopsy before the real horrors are revealed and the nasty stuff really begins.
I’m just about to write a cheery post on my blog.
All the very best, mate,
Kev.
Hundreds of thousands of people read and enjoyed his work. He never got the reward his great eye for a story and humour deserved.
Donations should be given to Cancer Research UK.
Thank God for Conor McGregor: antidote to the age of doubt
I’ll remember seeing Conor McGregor waiting in the ring for Floyd Mayweather (video below). How could I forget? What a sight. What style and substance. What panache. What a hoot. In the current era of can’t say that, when “inappropriate” is the watchword and Outraged of Twitter commands compliance in speech and deed, McGregor’s swaggering and shadow boxing was a visit from another world, a more exciting time when mistakes were glorious, failures radiant and life was about daring to do with a big toothy grin and gaping, irresistible laugher.
McGregor knows what he is and wants to be. It’s a clarity out of step with snowflakes, safe spaces, blaming everyone else for your own errors, excruciating debates over gender and identity, and so much guff about cultural appropriation, virtue signalling and a navel-gazing search for fluid indefinites.
McGregor commands admiration. “There’s two things I really like to do and that’s whoop ass and look good,” says McGregor.” He said of an opponent: “How could I hate someone who has the same dreams as me?” And most tellingly of all: “There is no opponent … you’re against yourself…Defeat is the secret ingredient to success.”
The golden age of derring-do hasn’t been eradicated. It’s been throbbing in a tough part of Dublin. It’s out there. And it’s glorious. “I know who I am,” says McGregor. And we love it:
Posted: 15th, July 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Sports | Comment
