Making Coins At The Royal Mint (Photos)

AT the Royal Mint in Pontyclun, Wales, new coins have been minted. Five new coin designs will enter circulation in 2014 to commemorate historic events including the First World War and the Commonwealth Games.

Anorak

Posted: 5th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Money | Comment

Death For Land: Israel And Palestine Peace Deal Makes More Trouble Ahead

ONE man’s hero is another man’s terrorist or murderer. What to make of the news in the New York Times of peace deals between Israel and the Palestinians? The BBC reports:

Israeli authorities have freed a group of 26 Palestinian prisoners as part of a US-brokered agreement to resume direct peace talks. The prisoners were greeted by cheering crowds on their return to the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel approved the releases on Saturday, but they were delayed to allow victims’ families to appeal. The prisoners committed murder or attempted murder before the 1993 Oslo accords and have served 19 to 28 years.

The New York Times notes this:

As part of the negotiating process, Mr. Netanyahu agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails over nine months rather than halt settlement construction. But when Mr. Abbas welcomed the latest group to the West Bank this week, Mr. Netanyahu accused him of embracing terrorists, even though Mr. Abbas never condoned the prisoners’ crimes.

Really?

What he said was:

“Today is a day of joy for our people, our families and our prisoner heroes. We promise that this won’t be the last time that prisoners are released.”

Israeli settlers gather during a visit of Israeli politicians at Gitit settlement in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2014.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the hero’s welcome:

“While we prepare to take very painful steps in an effort to try and reach an agreement that would end the conflict, they, along with their top leadership, are celebrating.”

The Times of Israel has list of the released prisoners and their crimes:

Abu al Rub Mustafa Mahmoud Faisal and Kamil Awad Ali Ahmad, convicted of murder in the killing of 20-year-old IDF soldier Yoram Cohen in a shootout in the West Bank town of Jenin. Ali Ahmad was also convicted of kidnapping, torturing and murdering 15 Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. Faisal was convicted of manslaughter in four of those cases.

Is he a hero? He sounds a lot like a murdering lunatic.

Are child killers Hakim and Amjad Awad heroes? Rumours abound they are to be released. But Abbas is not out for blood. He called their crimes “despicable and inhuman”.

But what about the victims’ families?

“One of the things we knew when we captured these detainees is that they needed to stay in prison for the maximum period,” Meir Indor of Israeli victims’ association, Almagor, told the Jerusalem Post. “These men are time-bombs. Wherever they go they kill, because that’s the purpose of their lives.”

A young Palestinian shepherd lights a cigaret near the settlement of Mehola in the Jordan Valley, a strip of West Bank land along the border with Jordan, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2014.

YNet news has more on what the Israeli government seek from the deal:

Israel’s move to release the 104 Palestinian prisoners jailed from before the 1993 Oslo Accords as a goodwill gesture to the Palestinians came in response to right-wing reluctance to accept a freeze in settlement construction. Thus, following every round of prisoner releases, Netanyahu’s office is quick to publish new tenders for construction of thousands of new housing units beyond Jerusalem’s 1967 borders. 

Netanyahu chose a prisoner release over a freeze in settlement construction. He agreed to the killers going free.

Science Minister Jacob Perry unimpressed:

“I am angry that the prime minister and other elements in the government are tying the prisoner release with construction. Will the bereaved families be consoled by the fact we’re going to build a thousand more [housing] units in Itamar or Alfei Menashe? What’s the connection? This irritates me.”

This view speaks for many. If Netanyahu has already undertaken to make this goodwill gesture, it would be best if he were to enjoy the international dividend that comes with it and not ruin things with a populist announcement about new construction,” said Shimon Shiffer, a columnist with the Yediot Ahronot daily paper. Netanyahu is like a cow that gives a bucketful of milk, only to kick the bucket over.”

Anorak

Posted: 5th, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment

Gun Control: Carrying A Concealed Weapon Won’t Protect You From Idiots

Emma Gilhooly studies the USA Dollar bill covered AK47 machine gun by Bran Symondson, at the AKA Peace one day show in which artists adapt the favourite weapon of terrorists into works of art, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
Picture date: Wednesday September 26, 2012.

GUN crime USA. Is carrying a gun a good thing?

Take the story of the two teenagers who entered the Suburban Armory gun shop, Delaware,  wearing “Muslim-type clothing” and pulled a gun on the clerk.

The 15 and 17 have been arrested and charged with robbery, possessing an instrument of crime, reckless endangerment and possession of a controlled substance. But before that the store worker shot them. 

Anorak

Posted: 5th, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment

Jim Davidson Is Always 59: The Media Licked Its Lips When The Celebrity ‘Savile’ Cops Swooped

Presenter Emma Willis speaks to Linda Nolan and Jim Davidson as they are handcuffed together before entering the Celebrity Big Brother House, Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire.

“TV Jim” is Jim Davidson, who when flying back to appear on Celebrity Big Brother was arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of abusing a young woman decades previously. The Celebrity Police Force swooped, nicking Davidson in full view in a public place. He wasn’t flying out of the country; he was flying in. He’d have headed to his Hampshire home. Why didn’t the police arrest him there? Are the police now our moral vigilantes?

Anorak

Posted: 5th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Reviews | Comment

Smell Like I Sound: Top Ten Lyrical Low Points of the 1980s

Smell Like I Sound: Top Ten Lyrical Low Points of the 1980s 

10. “Hungry Like the Wolf” by Duran Duran

Smell like I sound.  I’m lost in a crowd

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 4th, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)

The Ronnie Biggs Story: Money, Arsenal And Going Punk In Rio

FAREWELL then, Ronnie Biggs.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

Madeleine McCann: Three ‘Suspects’ And Meeting Harry Redknapp

MADELEINE McCANN: a look at the missing child in the news. The papers have news:

The Sun: “Gerry and Kate ban in ‘lie cop’ libel case”

This is the libel case against Goncalo Amaral, and his book The Truth of The Lie.

PARENTS Kate and Gerry McCann have been banned from giving evidence in their libel case against an ex-police chief who led the search for daughter Madeleine. The couple wanted to confront Goncalo Amaral when the case resumes in Portugal on Tuesday — and brand him a liar.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, January 2014 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment

North Korea: Did Kim Jong-Un Eat His Uncle? The 120 Dogs Continue To Starve

IN June 2013, about 100 protesters from a South Korean right-wing civic group staged an anti-North Korea demonstration, slashing a North Korean flag and burning an effigy of leader Kim Jong-Un.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)

Antarctica’s Climate Change Leave Huge Carbon Footprint On The Ice They Polluted

CHRIS Turney and his band of climate experts once holidaying aboard the MV Akademik Shokalskiyv not only learned that Antarctica is cold and man-made fibres excellent and helicopters faster than global warming , they know what certainty is.

Turney wife Annette and children Kara and Robert tells us:

“It’s 100 percent we’re off!” Chris Turney, a professor and a leader of the scientific expedition, said on Twitter with a link to a video of the Snow Eagle landing.

100%. No room for scepticism, there. Fact.

Ross Clark reports: 

The Xue Long, the Chinese ship which provided the helicopter to airlift Turney and his colleagues from the Akademik Shokalskiy to the Aurora Australis, has itself now become stuck in ice. Meanwhile 22 Russian crew remain aboard the Shokalskiy. Both ships are stronger than the Endurance, Shackleton’s ship whose timbers were crushed in similar circumstances in 1915, prompting his famous voyage and trek to the whaling station on South Georgia, but both ships remain in danger from further movements of the ice.

Tracy Rogers, Turney’s colleague at the University of New South Wales, is upbeat:

“The Chinese captain is an incredible ambassador for his country,” she said today. She is very lucky that China, which normally incurs the wrath of the climate change lobby due to its fondness for new coal-fired power stations, has chosen the path to wealth – which includes ships and helicopters able to rescue scientists in distress – rather than a path to carbon-free enlightenment.

Anyone worked out the carbon footprint of Turney and his gang of fossil-fuel driven climate change experts?

Anorak

Posted: 4th, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment

Morrissey Is Writing Books Because No-One Likes His Records Anymore

FANS of The Smiths, and in particular Morrissey, are a weirdly devoted bunch. Their fervour isn’t matched by the output they receive from the Grand Miserablist.

The Smiths, of course, deserve their place in the annals of popular music simply for popularising an outcast spirit of disenfranchisement. They turned it into an artform and teenagers the world over fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Their records, objectively, weren’t great for the most part… but like The Clash or The Doors, it is what The Smiths stood for which made them so loved.

Mof Gimmers

Posted: 3rd, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Music, Reviews | Comments (3)

Azealia Banks: Once Promising, Now Dead In The Water

WHEN 212 crash landed, Azealia Banks looked for all the world like she was going to be the most famous human on the planet. She had it all – a quick tongue, a great look and a tune so huge that the rest of hip hop was going to have to keep tabs on her. And then we waited. And waited some more.

2011 was the time she set the world alight and since then, she’s done nothing. Sure, there have been releases, but they’ve been stodgy, sub-par affairs, blighted by Banks’ insistence on maintaining eye-contact with everyone through the medium of thoroughly pointless beefs.

Mof Gimmers

Posted: 3rd, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)

All The Cool Cats Chewed Beatmint Gum In 1964

FLASHBACK to Weekend February 4th 1964. All the cool cats were chewing Beatmint gum. Groovy…

Spotter: Vintage Scans

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, January 2014 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment

The Guardian’s Reporting On The Akademik Shokalskiy Is Selective, Biased And Hilarious

Dr Douglas Mawson, an Australian explorer with fellow Antarctic explorer, Dr Ernest Shackleton.
Date: 01/01/1907

GUARDIAN journalists Alok Jha and Laurence Topham were onboard the trapped Akademik Shokalskiy, the ship occupied by University of New South Wales climate scientists looking for signs of global warming but found only ice.

How did the paper report on the laugh-in?

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)

MV Akademik Shokalskiyv Laugh In: Trapped Climate Scientists Discover Helicopters Are Faster Than Global Warming

THE ANTARCTIC is home to the coldest place on Earth. On August 10, 2010, satellites recorded the temperature at minus 93.2C (-135.8F), in East Antarctic Plateau at an altitude of about 3,900m (12,800ft).  The coldest temperature on the ground was recorded in July 1983 at minus 89.2 C (-128.6F) by the Vostok Research Station, Antarctica.

So. God speed Russian scientific ship MV Akademik Shokalskiyv (Academik Stuck-a-lotski), which embarked on a mission to record low ice levels and ended up trapped in the ice with 74 people on board. The ship became wedged into the frozen wastes around 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart.

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment

Car-B-Cue Season In France: ‘Just’ 1,067 Vehicles Torched On New Year’s Eve

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)

Strange and Terrible Fitness Products from the 1970s

THE NEW YEAR has arrived.  Time to once again pledge to stop eating like a starved cow and get going on a weight loss program.   Catalogs and magazines in decades past were full of wonderfully terrible options to start you on the Grand New Year’s Tradition of Fitness Plans Doomed to Failure.  Let’s have a look at a few.

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 3rd, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment

Pink Floyd: Syd Barrett’s First Trip (Magic Mushrooms) Filmed In 1966

SYD Barrett’s first trip (magic mushrooms) as filmed in 1966 by Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon.

This experimental silent short is very rare (filmed in 8mm) and only lasts 11 minutes. Nigel Gordon, film student, filmed Syd Barrett while he tripped on mushrooms. This film is made up of two parts. Part 1: Syd tripping at Gog Magog Hills. Part 2: April ’67, Pink Floyd right after they signed their first recording contract, with EMI Records at Abbey Road Studios.

Pink Floyd – 1967. Back row: Roger Waters (l) and Nick Mason. Front row: Syd Barrett (l) and Rick Wright.

Early signs of the Pink Floyd front-man’s mental disintegration were apparent in 1967. That year he appeared on stage with an entire tube of Brylcreem in his hair into which – according to some accounts – he had crushed a handful of Mandrax tablets. Mandies or not, the lotion melted under the lights, leaving him looking like ‘a guttered candle’. The song Vegetable Man (unreleased) reflected Syd’s self-loathing at the time…

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Music | Comment

Which Newspaper Hates Migrants The Most? A Look At Those 2013 Front Pages

THE ROGARIANS are among us. On January 1 2014, the Romanian and Bulgarians united to invade the British Isles. Armed with a EU Directive, these villains are right now stealing your kids, using your cashcards, moving into your bedroom (quick, go check) and doing nothing – NOTHING – to help the England cricket team.

Liz Gerard investigates the horror:

Scene 1: A group of Romanians runs a car wash franchise in the car park of a DIY store. It’s a cold, drizzly day and there are few customers. A woman drives up and the entire dozen-strong workforce emerge from their warm hut and get to work on her car. No one sits back to watch others work, and with everyone pitching in, the job is done in five minutes.

Scene 2: A gang of Romanians cases a London antiques fair and follows one of the jewellery dealers home. They set up camp in woodland at the bottom of her garden and watch her movements for a few days. They see her coming home with new stock. At 3am they remove the bolts and padlocks on her doors and break in to steal everything. Her life’s work gone in minutes.

Which would is the better news story?

No contest. One is an everyday occurrence, the other a cruel assault on a woman’s home and life. And we know that an essential element of news is that it should be out of the ordinary.

So why does SubScribe suspect that the raid would be reported by many of our newspapers not as something unusual, but as an indication of the sort of behaviour to be expected of eastern European immigrants?

And why, given our endless fascination with the subject and the reams of newsprint devoted to it, is so little written about work ethic and immigrants’ contribution to the economy?

As Big Ben chimed midnight yesterday, thousands – even millions – of Romanians and Bulgarians were supposed to swarm into Britain to steal our jobs, our benefits and our wallets.

The mass migration did not materialise on cue, but that doesn’t mean we’re safe. You never know with sneaky foreigners; they might be biding their time, waiting for us to be preoccupied with the storms, before invading.

And there’s plenty to fear, as the Daily Star warned us yesterday:

“Fears grew of a crimewave last night as hordes of Romanians and Bulgarians bought every seat on planes and buses to the UK…

Police experts predicted a fresh wave of crime as the country already struggles with an influx of foreign crooks.

Shock figures revealed that the eastern Europeans already topped the crime league tables before Britain opened its borders to millions from the two countries today.

Almost 1,000 Romanians were detained by police in just one county alone over the past three years…”

As SubScribe wrote on Tuesday, the new rules on immigration change little. Seasonal workers, those in other specific trades and the self-employed were already able to come to Britain to work. They also had the same right as other EU nationals to enter the country for up to three months as a visitor – and to be deported if they engaged in criminal activity. Romanians and Bulgarians may now come to seek work in any field and stay for any length of time. But they still won’t be allowed to stay if they start begging or stealing.

The newspapers most terrified of this foreign invasion have been reluctant to make this clear. They don’t seem to have grasped the notion that if someone’s intention is to come to Britain to break the law, they didn’t need to wait for the law to change to do so. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to pop over, make hay for as long as they could without getting caught, and then go home with their ill-gotten gains? They could have been doing this for seven years.

Twitter has been a joy the past couple of days, mocking the tabs that predicted floods of evil migrants. Buzzfeed, as ever, put together a good compendium – and just going on to Twitter and searching ‘Romanians and Bulgarians’ brings a rich harvest.

SubScribe would like to make a two-part contribution to the conversation. The first was published on Tuesday. The second, below, are British front page splashes from the past 12 months that have focused on the subject of them darn foreigners. So here goes:

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

And the winner is…

Well, it was neck-and-neck into the final strait. The Express  made the early running and built up a good lead over the Mail. But then it got distracted by the scorching summer and, possibly suffering from a touch of arthritis, started to flag. It rallied in the autumn, but the Mail had  kept enough in reserve for one last push to come home the winner by a single edition. The iwas the dark horse and ran in third, but well adrift of the leaders.

The Times and Telegraph did their best, but didn’t really grasp the rules. This wasn’t about referendums on staying within the EU or the ascent of Ukip; it was about nasty foreigners. The Guardian suffered from the same failing and barely left the starting gate.

The  Sun and the Star understood the nature of the race, but woke up only at the very last moment, so had no chance. They must have had other things on their minds.

The Result

Mail 18; Express 17; i 5; Times 4; Telegraph 3; Guardian 1; Sun 1; Star 1

And the losers are…

Our national reputation and anyone who looks to the popular Press for a fair and balanced view of the value – or cost – of immigrants to society.

liz gerard

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

FLASHBACK To 4 May 1945. The “Instrument of Surrender of All German Armed Forces In Holland, In Northwest Germany And in Denmark”

FLASHBACK to 04/05/1945. This is the “Instrument of Surrender of all German armed forces in Holland, in north west Germany including all islands, and in Denmark”. The pact was signed by Britain’s Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, and agreed by Germany’s Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg and other members of the German high command, at Luneburg Heath, May 4, 1945. The ceasefire took effect from 8am on May 5.

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Flashback | Comment

No, The NSA Can’t Hack Your iPhone Any Time It Likes

ONE of the claims that was made over the break was that the NSA, the US crypto spies, could hack into anyone’s iPhone any time. This was all as a result of the Edward Snowden documents of course. The sad thing about this is that it was rather blown up out of proportion by one Jacob Appelbaum, one of the hangers on along with Glen Greenwald and Laura Poitras, around those Snowden documents.

Appelbaum went on to demand that Apple reveal which of the two dastardly things it had been doing: had it been cooperating with the NSA? Or had it just left the most appalling security breach open just for the hell of it?

Tim Worstall

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, Technology | Comment

My Cloud Pal: Danielle Bruckman Recreates 2013 In Selfies Taken On Her Lost iPhone

MY Cloud Pal is Danielle Bruckman’s journey though the selfies of the man who has her iPhone.

On January 1, 2013 my phone escaped me and somehow fell into the hands of a man with a killer mustache. Thanks to Apple and some kinks in the cloud, I receive all of his pictures in my photo stream. Here are his selfies as re-enacted by yours truly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment

BBC Wusses Out Of Top Of The Pops Anniversary Special Because of Jimmy Savile

THIS year would mark the 50th anniversary of Top Of The Pops. The show was, until relatively recently, a cornerstone of British television. A mixture of people’s interest shifting to the internet, and the BBC’s complete failure to stay in touch with youth culture and an over-reliance on the Glastonbury coverage saw TOTP falling by the wayside.

And then there’s the ongoing Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal.

Mof Gimmers

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Music, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment

Train Fares Rise: Blithering Sutpidity From The Campaign For Better Transport

Transport- Station Staff – Ticket Clipper – London – 1973: A British Rail ticket clipper waits for passengers for the last train to Bedford from St.Pancras at 18.08.

THEY’RE whining about how train fares are going up again: and as usual, they’re managing to get entirely the wrong end of the stick. Here’s their complaint about fares:

Rail fares are rising so quickly that the government will soon be making a profit from the commuting public, campaigners claimed as the new year ushered in higher annual season ticket prices.

According to a report from the consultants Credo, for the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT), by 2018 the fares collected from passengers will cover 103% of railways’ operating costs, compared with 80% in 2009.

There is a very slight problem with this analysis: operating profits are not profits. Operating profits are the costs of goods sold minus the costs of goods purchased. If you thought about Sainsbury’s for example, then it would be the cost of everything they sell minus the costs of buying the things that they sell. And the perceptive will note that those aren’t all the costs of running a supermarket. It’s necessary, for example, to have buildings in which to operate the supermarkets. Vans and trucks to move the stuff around. To pay for advertising to get people to come in and buy the stuff.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment

Independent Uses Mandela’s Funeral To Bash Israel

DO you shape the news to fit your agenda? Do you see in every news story the chance to bang a drum for what it you believe in or desire? In his “2013 – the year in review. Peter Popham writer in the Independent of Nelson Mandela. He tells us:

It took his death, but the world came together for a moment for Nelson Mandela

The world came together. But what’s this? The lead photo has a caption:

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment

Drop The Dead Possum: Things Dropped on New Year’s Eve

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment