Reviews Category
We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.
Cellular Solutions: The Hove Company Where Middle-Aged White Males Manage Lots Of Young White Females
CELLULAR Solutions is an equal opportunities employer. Young, attractive women are not prejudiced against when it comes to picking staff to work at the company’s offices in Hove, East Sussex. And white males can be leaders:
And:
Of course, all staff were picked on merit. It just looks odd.
Posted: 15th, November 2013 | In: Key Posts, Money, Reviews | Comment
Baby P’s Mum Tracey Connelly Is Free: But Why Did The Sun And David Cameron Let Police Evade Justice?
PETER Connelly’s mother is free from prison. Tracey Connelly is pout of prison six years after the death of her 17-month-old son. The Sun calls her a “beat”. It says he is “evil”. She is the “monster mum”.
Tracey Connelly is said to have had “barely a care in the world as she popped out shopping from her bail hostel”.
She went to a supermarket. The Sun adds the peculiar fact: “She walked into town and nipped into supermarket Aldi, passing Christmas ad posters outside.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 15th, November 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Arsenal fan now homeless thanks to Man United bet
FOOTBALL does wonderfully peculiar things to people. Human adults wear suits to play finals of matches on computer games while others will name their children after entire teams from the 70s.
Yes, we’re looking at you Charlie Oatway of Sunderland FC, or to give him his full name, Anthony Philip David Terry Frank Donald Stanley Gerry Gordon Stephen James Oatway (he’s named after the entire promotion-winning QPR team of 1973).
More recently, there’s an Arsenal fan who has come a cropper thanks to his football fanaticism and he learned that you shouldn’t ever bet your house on anything.
Literally.
Henry Dhabasani put a wager on, involving his two-room property on the Arsenal beating Manchester United at Old Trafford. Rashid Yiga was more than happy to see the bet and they both settled down to the grudge game on Sunday.
Dhabasani gambled his house while Yiga offered up his new Toyota Premio AND his wife. The two signed their bet in front of local leaders and other football fans in Iganga.
Manchester United won the game 1-0 and Dhabasani promptly fainted on the final whistle. Reports say that, the next day, several United fans stormed the place where Henry lived with his three wives and five children and chucked them out onto the street.
[via MEN]
Posted: 15th, November 2013 | In: Arsenal, manchester united, Reviews, Sports | Comment
UK Border Police Seize A Dead Owl – Photos
THE UK Border Force has been showing off the goods its seized at Queens Warehouse, London. One item was an owl.
Why would you import a dead owl?
Read the rest of this entry »
FLASHBACK to 03/11/1973: Celebrities Pose For Paul McCartney’s Band On The Run
FLASHBACK to 03/11/1973: Faces of celebrities in various walks of life illustrate the cover of a new long-playing record, Band on the Run, from the Paul McCartney group, Wings. From left,…
Well, can you name them all? Scroll down for the famous names, or VIPs , as they were called back then:
*
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 14th, November 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Music | Comment
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham Mistakenly Decpitates One Of Its Own
THE Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham regrets the error. Syria’s al Qaeda-affiliate misread the manual and decapitated Mohammed Fares, a commander with fellow rebel organisation Ahrar al-Sham. They didn’t mean to. They meant to murder someone else:
An ISIS spokesman, Omar al-Qahtani, confirmed that Mr Fares had been injured and, thinking he had been captured by members of a Shia militia against which he was fighting, asked them to kill him in terms misunderstood by the ISIS members in fact taking him to hospital…
In explaining the error Mr al-Qahtani made reference to a story in which Mohammed said Allah would forgive a man who killed a believer in error.
Read the rest of this entry »
It Wasn’t Derivatives That Caused The Financial Crash So Why Regulate Them?
IT wasn’t derivatives that cauded the financial crash. Therefore regulating derivatives won’t be the magic wand that prevents another financial crash. This is something that they seem to have forgotten over at The Guardian:
The CFTC, under Gensler, has been a darling of the few remaining policymakers who listened to the complaints of Occupy Wall Street. The agency has been largely openly antagonistic towards Wall Street in the sense that it has insisted on more regulation of derivatives, the Jekyll-and-Hyde financial instruments that are as speculative as they are about reducing risk. The financial crisis showed us that derivatives, which are meant to help investors hedge against risk, are often abused as vehicles of profitable speculation. The question that is before Congress right now is: how do you allow derivatives while curbing the abuse?
Read the rest of this entry »
The Story Of Sonja Suder And Germany’s Armed Revolutionaries: From Opec To Entebbe
SONJA Suder is 80. She has been on trial at a court in Frankfurt, Germany. Suder was part of a leftist terrorist organisation Revolutionary Cells (RZ).
* The RZ is most commonly known as an urban guerrilla organization aimed towards weakening the German government. Self-described as an autonomist, the RZ aimed to establish a self-ruling society. In order to achieve this goal, the RZ stated: “We will not hesitate from shooting, bombing, extortion and taking hostages. The whole ruling class will be made to feel insecure.
The judge acquitted her a role in the deadly 1975 terror attack on OPEC headquarters in Vienna. The raid saw there people murdered.
Outside view of OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Five unidentified terrorists took 11 oil ministers of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) hostages in this building. Date: 21/12/1975
The raid on OPEC was organised by Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, apparently on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Undated 1970s file of Illich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as ” Carlos The Jackal”, who was sentenced to life in prison by a French court in Paris early Wednesday Dec 24, 1997. He’s been jailed since 1994 after French agents seized him in Sudan.
He was aided by Hans-Joachim Klein, of the RZ, who was arrested in 1998, prosecuted for his role in the OPEC attack, and sentenced to nine years imprisonment. He was paroled in 2003.
Venezuelan international terrorist Carlos the Jackal, foreground, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, sits in a Paris courtroom Tuesday, Nov. 28 2000 as his lawyer Francis Vuillemin, left, looks on. Carlos, already serving a 50-year sentence in a French jail for the murder of two French secret agents and an informer in 1975, appears in court Tuesday as a witness in the trial of Hans-Joachim Klein, of Germany, who is accused of taking part in an attack of an OPEC oil ministers conference in Austria in 1975.
* Hans-Joachim Klein, who renounced terrorism shortly after the OPEC attack, sat with his head bowed as Judge Heinrich Gehrke read his sentence of nine years’ imprisonment on three counts each of murder and attempted murder and hostage taking. ”Whoever thinks this is too light must think of everyone who was involved,” Judge Gehrke said. ”He alone has been sentenced, although he played the smallest role and was the only one who distanced himself from terrorism.”
Hostages among them eleven oil ministers board Austrian Airlines DC9 at Vienna’s Schwechat airport on December 22, 1975, before they are flown to Algiers under guard of six terrorists. The terrorists, among them a woman, had stormed the OPEC building in Vienna yesterday and took them captive. Date: 22/12/1975
* Carlos the Jackal demanded that the Austrian authorities read a communiqué about the Palestinian cause on Austrian radio and television networks every two hours. To avoid the threatened execution of a hostage every 15 minutes, the Austrian government agreed and the communiqué was broadcast as requested. Vienna Police said that 96 hostages were taken during the siege.
Outside the OPEC Headquarters the attackers freed about 50 Vienna resident hostages.
On December 22, the government provided the PFLP and 42 hostages an Austrian Airlines DC-9 which flew them to Algiers, as demanded for the hostages’ release. When they arrived at Algiers airport, local government begun negotiations; five oil-ministers and 31 other hostages were released, five oil ministers were kept.
Ex-Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilot Neville Atkinson, at that time the personal pilot for Libya’s leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, flew them, including Hans-Joachim Klein, a supporter of the imprisoned Baader-Meinhof group and a member of the Revolutionary Cells, and Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann, from Algiers to Tripoli, where some hostages were freed. Finally, they returned to Algiers where the last hostages were freed and some of the attackers were granted asylum.
Hostage Saudi Arabian oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani.
Suder was found guilty of participating in arson attacks in the 1970s. On Tuesday, she was sentenced to 3 years in prison.
Suder had fled to France in 1978 but was extradited to Germany in 2011 to face trial.
* The most dramatic case involving RZ was the hijacking of an Air France flight in cooperation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and diverting it to Uganda’s Entebbe Airport with 248 passengers taken hostage.
After the release of the non-Israeli hostages, an Israeli counter-terrorist mission attempted to rescue the remaining Jewish passengers and the non-Jewish pilot, who were threatened with death.
Operation Entebbe, which freed 102 hostages, resulted in the death of Lt Col Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. All the terrorists were killed along with three hostages and 45 Ugandan soldiers.
The West German cabinet and the parliamentary floor leaders met in Bonn, July 1, 1976 to discuss the situation after Arab hi-jackers had commandeered an Aif France plane and flown it to Entebbe, Uganda, holding about 200 passengers as hostages. The hi-jackers demanded the realease of about 50 terrorists from Israel, German, French prison. Here, l/r Chacellor Helmut Schmidt Labor Minister Walter Arondt, Social Democratic Party Leader Willy Brandt, his Christian Democratic counterpart Helmut Kohl during the emergency session.
* The crisis began on 27 June, 1976, when four militants seized an Air France flight, flying from Israel to Paris via Athens, with 250 people on board. The hijackers – two from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two from Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang – diverted the plane to Entebbe, where it arrived on 28 June.
The hijackers – who were joined by three more colleagues – demanded the release of 53 militants held in jails in Israel and four other countries. Uganda’s President and dictator Idi Amin arrived at the airport to give a speech in support of the PFLP and supplied the hijackers with extra troops and weapons.
On 1 July, the hijackers released a large number of hostages but continued to hold captive the remaining 100 passengers who were Israelis or Jews.
The hijackers then set a deadline for 1100GMT for their demands to be met or they would blow up the airliner and its passengers. But their plan was foiled by the dramatic Israeli raid.
A cheering crowd at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport raises a member of the rescue squad which freed the hijack hostages from Uganda earlier in the day, July 4, 1976. In the background is the C-130 transport plane which took part in the raid. The rescuer’s face is obscured for security reasons.
Fearing arrest, Suder fled Germany in 1978. In 2000 she was arrested in her Paris home. She had being living with her fellow accused Christian Gauger. In 2011, France extradited them to Germany.
* Her partner, Christian Gauger, had originally been charged in the bombings, but eventually had his case separated from Suder’s. It was later suspended because of his health problems.
Time moves on…
Posted: 14th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, Reviews | Comment
Edward Snowden Reveals A Good Idea: The NSA Spies On OPEC
THERE have indeed been some revelations from Edward Snowden and the rest over things that the NSA and GCHQ are doing that shouldn’t please the rest of us. Widespread spying on us, the citizens that actually pay for the spies for example, isn’t one of the things that we want them to do.
However, spying on the enemies who would do us harm sounds like an excellent thing for them to do doing. And they have been, they’ve been spying on OPEC:
The latest earth-shattering Snowden revelation emanating from the Russian Front (aka Der Spiegel) is that NSA and GCHC have spied on OPEC.
Read the rest of this entry »
Who In The Vatican Stole A Copy Of Football Manager 2013?
WHO in the Vatican downloaded a pirated version of Football Manager 2013?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 14th, November 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Firoozeh Bazrafkan’s Passion For Freedom: The Elite Censor The Artist Scared Of Islamism
WHO is speaking truth to power? Nick Cohen writes:
If you listen to artists, writers, academics and journalists, you would think that thousands of them operate in a radical underground. They say the right things. They ‘speak truth to power’, ‘transgress boundaries’, and all the rest of it. But you will have noticed that they are careful only to challenge religions that won’t hurt them (Christianity) and governments that won’t arrest them (democracies).
He goes on to talk of a who by Iranian-born artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan. You might not like her. But you have to admit she’s not easily intimidated. This how she celebrates the Iranian Revolution:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 14th, November 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Why Have The Tories Been Hiding All Their Speeches Under Their Beds?
ONCE, politicians were thrilled with their speeches. They’d be written down and shared and MPs would pat themselves on the back, all the way to the House of Lords.
However, the Conservatives have been acting really weird and looking for all the world like they’re ashamed of their past.
They have attempted to erase a record of all party speeches from the internet; the ones given in the decade before they came to power. What are they up to?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 13th, November 2013 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Sheffield Man With Fire Extinguisher Hose Up His Bum Racially Abused Staff At London Premier Inn
TO the Premier Inn on London’s Leicester Square, where CCTV records a man emerging from a storage cupboard with a fire extinguisher hose up his bottom. He is pleasuring himself. He then urinates on the carpets. A hotel worker arrives. He is carrying a towel. This worker is Bangladeshi. He wraps the man in the towel. Police are called.
Wind the clock forward and Joseph Small, 20, is in the dock at Westminster magistrates’ court. The court hears that he told the hotel worker: ‘This country has been taken over by al-Qaeda – go back to Pakistan.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 13th, November 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Why Did A Thief Steal A Wheelchair Ramp From Liverpool’s Lime Street Station?
Posted: 13th, November 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment (1)
Cockney Of The North: Northumberland Widow Receives ‘Brown Bread’ Letter For Dead Husband
ARE you brown bread? That’s Cockney rhyming slang for “dead”. Sheila Delhoy spotted the phrase on a letter sent to her husband Ken who died in February 2008. In 2010, Northumberland-based building suppliers Wack wrote to “Brown Bread” Ken. Now the same firm has delivered another letter to “Brown Bread”.
Says Sheila: “When my son Tony found out he rang the company straight away. He said to them ‘are you going to make this an annual thing to remind my mum her husband is dead and make her upset?’”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 13th, November 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Sexist Husband Left Bomb For Wife On Kitchen Counter
MAYBE letting men into the kitchen was not such a great idea. To Florida, where Randolph Troy Smith has left a ‘bomb’ on his estranged wife’s kitchen counter.
Read the rest of this entry »
Terrible Food: WeightWatchers Crown Roast of Frankfurters
TERRIBLE Food: WeightWatchers Crown Roast of Frankfurters. Because nothing says ‘slim’ like being sick:
More terrifying food from yesteryear…
Posted: 13th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Ray Davies Reviews The Beatles Revolver: ‘Really It’s A Load Of Rubbish’
IN 1966, The Kinks; Ray Davis reviewed the The Beatles’ Revolver for Disc and Music Echo magazine.
Here’s Ray:
Side One:
“Taxman” – “It sounds like a cross between the Who and Batman. It’s a bit limited, but the Beatles get over this by the sexy double-tracking. It’s surprising how sexy double-tracking makes a voice sound.”
“Eleanor Rigby” – “I bought a Haydn LP the other day and this sounds just like it. It’s all sort of quartet stuff and it sounds like they’re out to please music teachers in primary schools. I can imagine John saying: ‘I’m going to write this for my old schoolmistress’. Still it’s very commercial.”
“I’m Only Sleeping” – “It’s a most beautiful song, much prettier than ‘Eleanor Rigby’. A jolly old thing, really, and definitely the best track on the album.
“Love You Too” – “George wrote this – he must have quite a big influence on the group now. This sort of song I was doing two years ago – now I’m doing what the Beatles were doing two years ago. It’s not a bad song – it’s well performed which is always true of a Beatles track.”
“Here There and Everywhere” – “This proves that the Beatles have got good memories, because there are a lot of busy chords in it. It’s nice – like one instrument with the voice and the guitar merging. Third best track on the album.”
“Yellow Submarine” – “”This is a load of rubbish, really. I take the mickey out of myself on the piano and play stuff like this. I think they know it’s not that good.”
“She Said She Said” – “This song is in to restore confidence in old Beatles sound. That’s all.”
“Good Day Sunshine” – “This’ll be a giant. It doesn’t force itself on you, but it stands out like ‘I’m Only Sleeping’. This is back to the real old Beatles. I just don’t like the electronic stuff. The Beatles were supposed to be like the boy next door only better.”
“And Your Bird Can Sing” – “Don’t like this. The song’s too predictable. It’s not a Beatles song at all.”
“Dr. Robert” – “It’s good – there’s a 12-bar beat and bits in it that are clever. Not my sort of thing, though.”
“I Want To Tell You” – “This helps the LP through though it’s not up to the Beatles standard.”
“Got To Get You Into My Life” – “Jazz backing – and it just goes to prove that Britain’s jazz musicians can’t swing. Paul’s sings better jazz than the musicians are playing which makes nonsense of people saying jazz and pop are very different. Paul sounds like Little Richard. Really, it’s the most vintage Beatles track on the LP.”
“Tomorrow Never Knows” – “Listen to all those crazy sounds! It’ll be popular in discotheques. I can imagine they had George Martin tied to a totem pole when they did this.”
“This is the first Beatles LP I’ve really listened to in it’s entirety but I must say there are better songs on ‘Rubber Soul’. Still, ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ is a standout. ‘Good Day Sunshine is second best and I also like ‘Here, There and Everywhere.’ But I don’t want to be harsh about the others. The balance and recording technique are as good as ever.”
Ends.
Discover 14 Neglected Beatles Gems
Posted: 12th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment (1)
Eva Braun’s Looted Knickers Are On Sale
PSST! Want to get into Eva Braun’s knickers? And – yep – they are brown, like her shirts.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 12th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Crank Up The Journalisomobile: Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney Is Back With A Hooker
HACKING was illegal. Still is. The perpetrators didn’t erase Milly Dowler’s phone messages. But they did illegal things. The phone hacking trial is well underway at the Old Bailey. And today we hear the name Patricia Tierney. Now 57, in 2004 Tierney was on the front desk at Diva’s massage parlour in Liverpool when Everton and later Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney came knocking.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 12th, November 2013 | In: manchester united, Reviews, Sports | Comment
The Guardian’s Nonsense About The Twitter IPO Cash
IT would appear that The Guardian is simply entirely ignorant of how this creative destruction stuff of capitalism works. Commenting on the Twitter IPO that made loads of millionaires they wonder why we the customers didn’t get any cash:
Finally, look at Twitter’s business. Or rather, look at its own assessment of its business, as stated in its S-1 stockmarket filing. Early on comes the delicious admission: “Our success depends on our ability to provide users of our products and services with valuable content, which in turn depends on the content contributed by our users.” Read that again: Twitter is in the business of selling us to us – our news and views and idle banter. Without those, without us, it is nothing. As with Facebook and Tumblr and all the other social media, we’re also part of Twitter’s workforce. But I bet you haven’t seen any stock options, either.
Read the rest of this entry »
Madeleine McCann: The Sun Cooks The Figures On Kate McCann’s Charity Appeal For Missing People
MADELEINE McCann: A look at the missing child in the news:
IBTimes: “Madeleine McCann Hunt: Witness ‘Disturbed’ by Encounter with Praia da Luz Suspect”
Police officers trying to discover what happened to Madeleine McCann have strengthened a lead thanks to a new report by a British holidaymaker.
OK.
The woman, who does not want to be named, told how she and her daughter were approached by a man near to where Madeleine vanished in the weeks before the little girl’s disappearance in 2007.
Go on.
The woman’s description of the stranger matches that given by two other witnesses in the holiday resort of Praia da Luz.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 12th, November 2013 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment
