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.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner wants everyone tested for drugs: what’s he on?
IDIOT of the day is Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the The Metropolitan Police Commissioner. He’s talking about drugs:
“It seems to me we have got to plant in people’s minds something to affect the demand as well as supply. You can think of many occupations where if you were working with a colleague you would want to be sure in fact that they were drug free.”
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Posted: 30th, January 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Can Tobacco Make You Healthier?
THE Sydney Morning Herald‘s Jessica Wright, (billed as “federal political correspondent for The Sunday Age and the Sun-Herald“) revealed an incredible plot to make smoking appear healthy:
A sister pro-tobacco lobbying organisation and corporate member of ALEC, the Heartland Institute, paid for Senator Bernardi’s accommodation and travel to the US on four separate occasions in 2010 and 2011. The institute recently ran a two-day conference in the US entitled “Can Tobacco Make You Healthier?’’
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PETA don’t like monkeys in space
IRAN have announced that they are going to send a monkey into space, and despite the fact half the celebrity world is fighting for a place on Richard Branson’s spaceflights, PETA aren’t happy about it. Don’t they realise how clever a monkey has to be to be able to fly a spaceship?
Wait. The monkey isn’t willingly going? Ah.
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Julie Burchill’s Tannoy trannies and the Guardian trolls
WHEN the Observer erased Julie Burchill’s article on transsexuals, the paper’s editor John Mulholland, apologising for “the hurt and offence caused“. Alan Rusbridger, Mulholland’s boss, went further, passing the buck with the tweet, “It’s actually an Observer piece.”
Marko Attila Hoare considers the ensuing media shitstorm:
Vile, bigoted and hateful as Burchill’s article was, it was actually the least shocking element in this whole sorry story, which reveals the full extent of the moral degeneration of the British chattering classes. Much more shocking was the fact that one of our leading liberal newspapers would publish hate-speech directed against a vulnerable and widely persecuted minority. Not only did The Observer commission Burchill to write the piece in the full knowledge of what she was likely to say, it allegedly encouraged her to make the article more extreme and offensive than she might otherwise have done, in order to provoke a greater storm and increase its own viewing figures.
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Posted: 29th, January 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
MPs consider ‘Don’t Come To Britain’ advertising campaign
IMMIGRATION is still a super hot topic amongst politicians and racists. And so, in a big to discourage migrants coming to Britain, some ministers have had a rather barking idea, which involves an advertising campaign which shows how rubbish Britain is.
The campaign will reportedly be tested out in Bulgaria and Romania, and will focus on the worst aspects of British life.
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Posted: 28th, January 2013 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Road safety heroes: time to honour Ditchingham’s ‘chicken roundabout’
WHY did the chicken cross the road? It didn’t. For 21 years, the 300-odd wild chickens were tended by Gordon Knowles on the “chicken roundabout” in Ditchingham, Norfolk. In late 2012, Bungay town councillor Deirdre Shepherd said of Mr Knowles:
“Not often have I had the privilege of standing next to a living legend. He looked after the birds for many years and even when he could not do it any more he made sure they were safe and passed them on. He’s one of the last of the great eccentrics and we all need people like him to stop making life so boring.”
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Mary Kay Beckham sues match.com for introducing her to a women killer
MARY Kay Beckman, 50, of Las Vegas, is suing dating site Match.com for leading her toward Wade Ridley, 53.
The couple dated for ten days before Ms Beckham ened it. Four months later, Ridley stabbed her ten times and kicked her in the head. Ms Beckham required surgery to her skull. Her sight and hearing were saved.
Ridley is now dead. He killed himself in prison. Before dying he admitted to the murder of Anne Simenson, an Arizona woman he met on Match.com.
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Posted: 28th, January 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Sunday Times cartoon shows bloodstained Netanyahu burying Obama in his wall of death
HOW did the Sunday Times mark Holocaust Memorial Day? In a week that has seen LibDem MP David Ward lament that those Jews still haven’t learned their lesson, the Sunday Times publishes this cartoon of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s using the blood of innocents’ to make his wall. The caption reads: “Will cementing peace continue?” Is this a satirical response to agression? Or is the imagery tapping into something darker, as some allege..?
PS – Is that Obama dying in the bloody wall?
Posted: 27th, January 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Will we remember the Holocaust in 10 years? Holocaust Memorial Day photos
WILL the Holocaust be remembered in 100 years? Yes? No? Today was Holocaust Memorial Day, the day when Auschwitz was liberated. The best book I’ve read on the Holocaust is Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man. When the heavy-hand of taught history has blunted the humanity with function and learning to order, and the facts have been reduced by time to flat statistics, stories and art will be what resonate. Levi’s is compelling. His was one of millions.
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Posted: 27th, January 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Can you be white and African? No, says the Guardian, you can’t
IN his “special report” from Zimbabwe, Jonathan Steele writes in the Guardian that the country is in good health under President Mugabe. He turns to race:
The evidence is contained in Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land…The authors criticise Mugabe’s economic mismanagement, which led to hyperinflation between 2005 and 2008. It was not the land reform that caused hyperinflation, but bad economic decisions. They say the introduction of the US dollar by the unity government four years ago brought a quicker economic recovery and hence greater benefits for farm producers than anyone expected. They have the courage to criticise Amnesty International for exaggerating the plight of farm workers who were forced off formerly “white” land taken over by Africans, and say that by 2011 the number of people working on resettlement land had increased more th
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Posted: 26th, January 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Australians showcase new national flag: the Stars and Stripes
AUSFLAG is the Australian pressure group calling for the land Down Under to wave a ne-style flag.
The group’s chairman, Robert Webster, says the Olympic Games in London showcased “what a confusing and embarrassing flag the Australian flag really is”.
Well, it was rarely seen.
“Australia entered the Olympic stadium with a defaced British ensign, along with a line up of other competitors who also had Union Jacks dominating their flags. But all those competitors, with the exception of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tuvalu (population 8000) are colonies of Great Britain, not independent countries. With the recent announcement that Fiji will change its flag, soon there will be only three nations out of 54 in the Commonwealth whose flags are still dominated by the Union Jack.”
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Posted: 26th, January 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Newsreader falls into canal while texting… and it’s on video!
CCTV footage has emerged, capturing a local newsreader falling arse-over-tit into a frozen canal after being distracted by her phone.
Laura Safe (raises eyebrows at the nominative determinism) works for Capital FM Birmingham, and was sending her boyfriend a text when she failed to look up and found herself immersed in dirty, freezing water. She’s probably got polio now or something, but it is still funny.
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Posted: 25th, January 2013 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
Baptist minister arrested for demanding marriage to same-sex partner
REV. Maurice “Bojangles” Blanchard and Dominique James want to be married. Blanchard, a Baptist minister in Kentucky, was arrested when he refiused to elave the county clerk’s office until they;’d been granted a licence. He knew one would not be forthcoming/
He tells the Louisville Courier-Journal:
We’re here today to give nonviolence witness and let folks know that even people of faith, most definitely people of faith are going to stand up to and say this is wrong… We anticipate being denied and upon that denial we are going to sit down and not be moved and not leave as a sign of a method of nonviolent resistance. Because we feel if we do not resist we’re silent accomplices to our own discrimination.
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Cats to be culled in New Zealand?
ANYONE who has ever used Instagram or Facebook, will be thoroughly sick of the sight of people’s stupid cats. They’re everywhere at the moment, with childless hipster couples treating the feline fur-gits like they’re human babies or something.
Well, someone in New Zealand hates cats more than anyone else. So much so that they want them banned from the whole of NZ, which is clearly a brilliant move.
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The creepiest adverts from the 1980s
THE creepiest adverts from the 1980s:
Spotter: SmashTV
Posted: 25th, January 2013 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
1974: Truck & Bus Transportation reviews Bimbo’s
FOOD has become such a hot topic in the rich West that we are offended by cheap protein in cheap meat products, and hipsters take photos of fine dining meals for tasteless blogs. Once upon a time, it was different. In 1974 Australia, for instance, Bluey Tucker used to write food reviews for Truck & Bus Transportation.
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Posted: 25th, January 2013 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
In photos: Chicago’s frozen fire
LAST Tuesday, a warehouse on Chicago’s South Side went up in flame. Fire crews attended. They blasted cold water at a building engulfed in flames. The water froze. Then the building caught fire for a second time. More than 170 firefighters responded to the five-alarm blaze that started at about 9 p.m. Tuesday Jan, 22, 2013. Temperatures in the city are currently falling to -7C (19F) at night. Would you fancy this job?
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Nuclear North Korea aims all its missiles at the USA
THE email from CNN tells us:
“North Korea said Thursday that it plans to carry out a ‘high-level nuclear test’ and further long-range rocket launches, all of which it said are ‘aimed at the U.S. – The statement from the North’s National Defense Commission was carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.”
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Not all Turks are Muslims: Daily Mail and bigots twist Stars Wars Lego race row to target Islam
ISLAMISTS are a rigid bunch. They don’t do angles. As such, they are ideally suited to becoming Lego figures or playing parts of reticulated Stormtroopers in Star Wars. And that’s good. Men like Lego. They like Star Wars. And front-line Islamists are always men. Lock Al-Qaeda in a room for a week, chuck in some Lego and Darth Vader masks and you’d have world peace, right there.
So. To Austria, where local men have been enjoying Lego and Star Wars. But – egads! – a problem. A Turkish group says that Jabba’s Palace (£119.99) looks too much like Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia mosque. Reactionary voices identify that as a Muslim matter. The Atlas Shrugs website screams:
#MYJIHAD IN AUSTRIA: MUSLIMS DEFAME LEGO WITH ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM OVER STAR WARS TOY SET
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How the Guardian works: Alan Rusbridger passes the buck on Julie Burchill
HOW the Guardian newspaper works. Observer editor John Mulholland’s weak decision to censor an article by Julie Burchill reached the attention of Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media. Having deemed the piece by the riling journalistic firebrand fit for publication, the Observer saw a few comments calling it offensive, and erased it. So much for sticking up for your writers. So much for free speech.
But what did the man in charge, the editor-in-chief do an outraged readers told him about the article? He tweeted:
It’s actually an Observer piece.
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Mirror ignores Simon Fox in its biased story of how HMV died
THE Daily Mirror live blogged HMV’s demise. One day the old media will live blog a record as it’s being played in an effort to look up-to-date.
Mirror columnist Tony Parson knew who to blame:
It took a lot of people to kill the great British high street. Spiv bankers who drove capitalism to the edge of ruin, internet giants who don’t pay their fair share of tax, greedy landlords who want sky high rents even during a recession, a Government incapable of making our economy grow and – yes – hypocrites like me, who wipe away a tear for HMV with one hand while one-click buying from Amazon on the other.
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Posted: 23rd, January 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment (1)
France smells of sweat, garlic and bd eggs
A CLOUD of gas has hit Kent. It’s source: France. It’s methyl mercaptan, a gas added to natural gas to make it detectable at even minute concentrations. It makes it easy to spot a gas leak. So. What does it smell like? The Prefect of Police, Prefect of the Zone Defense and Security of Paris, issues a press release:
During the morning of 21 January, a leak occurred in the company Lubrizol in Seine-Maritime. Disengagement of a MERCAPTAN diffuses into the atmosphere and the smell is felt in several departments… The MERCAPTAN is a compound giving sulfur odors of sweat, garlic or rotten egg. It is associated with town gas to help detect a gas leak.It presents no inhalation toxicity and presents no risk.
French cloud smells of bad eggs, garlic and sweat. Who knew..?
Police at schools bring their prejudice to the playground
SO. The NRA wants more police with guns at schools. But“the number of students who are suspended or expelled nationwide has been on the increase for the last decade.” Why? The cops:
Schools with more police might be safer from violence, but there are also unintended consequences to exposing students to law enforcement. “With the increase of police in schools, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in school-based student arrests, particularly of youth of color,” writes Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil-rights group. “Instead of addressing infrequent, serious threats to safety, police officers in schools often respond to minor student misbehavior by handcuffing, arresting, and criminalizing the very young people they are intended to protect.”
“Criminalizing” is the key word here; police aren’t arresting students for illegal behavior as much as they are detaining them for breaking rules and violating codes of conduct.
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