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.
The Sun brands April Jones with its logo
WITH grim predictability, the Sun newspaper shoves its logo April Jones, the five-year-old girl who went missing from her home in Machynlleth, mid-Wales. No price on her head yet. Just the news that the Sun cares enough to make April Jones one of its own.
In other news, in September a Sun journalist was arrested on suspicion of handling a stolen mobile phone. He was arrested by Scotland Yard police working on Operation Tuleta, the investigation into computer hacking. The Met’s Operation Tuleta is linked to Operation Weeting (the News of the World phone-hacking investigation) and Operation Elveden (journalists paying public officials).
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Massive surprise as Vatican act like thundering berks!
THE Catholic Church is not a kind institution. Everyone knows about their feelings on homosexuality, abortion, women, contraception, child-abuse and Nazi gold.
So, with little surprise, the Vatican is acting like primitive, brutal arsehats over the Pope’s butler who has been accused of stealing some of Benny the Pontiff’s letters.
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Posted: 2nd, October 2012 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment (1)
April Jones: What we know about Mark Bridger
APRIL Jones, 5, is missing from the mid-Wales town of Machynlleth. Police have arrested 46-year-old Mark Bridger, Sky News reports. What do we know about him?
UPDATE: Mark Bridger has been charged with the murder of April Jones.
Well, right now the entire British media is searching Facebook for him. You pity all people named Mark Bridger.
He lives near to the missing girl.
He was born in Surrey.
He was arrested while walking along the side of the road a couple of miles outside the mid-Wales town of Machynlleth.
Police say he has a vehicle similar to the one described by witnesses who saw April’s abduction. Police have the vehicle.
Is he known to the missing child’s family? Says Detective Superintendent Reg Bevan, from Dyfed Powys Police:
“It’s very early stages. He is clearly a local man, it’s a small community, I wouldn’t like to speculate further, but I may have some more information later on.”
Don’t want to speculate. Sky News named him. The BBC passed it on as fact. Speculation will be rife.
Update: Police have confirmed that the arrested man is called Mark Leonard Bridger.
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Posted: 2nd, October 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (116)
April Jones – the story in photos
APRIL Jones: The five-year-old went missing from her home in Machynlleth, Wales. The story foes that she got into her abductor’s van willingly. The little girl was last seen by another child getting into the driver’s side of a grey van which drove off in the Mid Wales town of Machynlleth at about 7pm on October 2, 2012. A 46-year-old man who knew her family has been arrested:
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1961: Ham the chimpanzee is shot into space
IN 1961, Ham the chimpanzee was removed from his home in at the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, located at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Ham had the Right Stuff. The four-year-old chimpanzee had been rescued from meat markets in Cameroon. Well, so they say. On January 3rd, 1961 the hairy crash-test dummy was strapped inside a Mercury rocket and shot 155 miles space ata speed of 5,000mph. Onboard, he pulled levers in response to lights. Thanks to Ham, the craft as modified. Four months later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
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Posted: 2nd, October 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment
April Jones is missing in Machynlleth: news round-up
APRIL Jones is missing. The five-year-old was abducted last night while out playing on her bike near the Brynygog estats in Machynlleth, Wales. Dyfed-Powys Police are searching for her. The media is excited.
UPDATE: A 46-year-old man has been arrested.
Update 2: He’s called Mark Bridger.
Detective Superintendent Reg Bevan, from Dyfed Powys Police, says:
“We were pursuing a number of inquiries, some of those were searching addresses. We were looking for this individual, so we knew who we were looking for and as a result we have had a number of patrols in the area and we have come across this individual.”
Voices says he knew the girl’s family.
A police spokeswoman says:
“While the details of what happened are vague at the current time, it appears the suspect left the scene and drove off with April. At the time of her disappearance, April was wearing a purple knee-length coat with grey fur around the hood, her school white polo top and black trousers.”
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Posted: 2nd, October 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
Dutch abortion boat heads to Morocco
HARD luck on sea sick women. A Dutch “abortion boat” is steaming towards Morocco, where abortion is illegal unless it will save the life of the mother. The ship is operated by Women on Waves (WoW), invited to Morocco by Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties.
Wow’s Rebecca Gomperts tells media:
“The ship is on its way. We can’t yet disclose the place and time of arrival… We expect it to stay for up to a week.”
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Pussy Riot sack their lawyers and play to the crowd
TO Moscow, where feminist punk group Pussy Riot – the famous group whose songs you can’t name, let alone hum – are in court. Maria Alekhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, sat in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow. The trio are appealing their two year sentences for performing a “punk prayer” against President Vladimir Putin at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Russian Orthodox Cathedral. They’ll be back in court on October 10, because Samutsevich sacked her lawyers. The delay allows her to hire new lawyers. She and her two co-appellants say they committed no crime.
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Is Megan Stammers a victim of rape culture?
MEGAN Stammers is back in the UK. Emily Forrest is clearing Jermey Forrest’s stuff out of the couple’s martial home in Ringmer, East Sussex. Jeremy Forrest is under arrest for child abduction.
Not everyone is au fait with the law. Amanda Bancroft tweets:
Just seen some old dear suggest “Megan Stammers should write the book ‘How I ruined my maths teacher‘s career‘.” What amindset!
Megan Stammers victimised in press. Though at 15 I suspect sheknew what she was doing. Should also be in custody. Forrest‘s life ruined.
You can bone up on the sexual offences act.
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Posted: 1st, October 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (5)
1965: Discotheque Dances with Dick Blake
FLASHBACK to 1965. All the cool kids are learning Discotheque Dances with Dick Blake:
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Posted: 1st, October 2012 | In: Flashback | Comment (1)
Aberdeen fire crew rescue man with head stuck in bin
MEANWHILE…in Aberdeen, a man has gotten his head stck inside a bin:
1936: Dimples are made to order
IT’S 1936 and dimples are made to order:
Spotter: Modern Mechanix
Posted: 30th, September 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Bangladesh Buddhists attacked by outraged Muslims
RESULT! Osama has found something on the internet that offends Islam. No. Not Spurs’ 3-2 win at Manchester United over the weekend (a million poxes on your house!). This is a Facebook page featuring a burnt Koran.
Without delay, Muslim militants trash Buddhist villages in Bangladesh, torching temples, monasteries and homes. Near Chittagong, the enlightened assaulted a Hindu temple.
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Man arrested for FAcebook site lampoonish Greek Orthodox monk Elder Paisios
IN Greece, a man has been jailed for blasphemy. His crime was to have creating satirised Orthodox monk named Elder Paisios on the Facebook page “Pastafarian”. “Elder Pastitsios” is covered by the Center for Inquiry’s Free Thinking blog, which tells us that the offending page garnered “one hundred thousand complaints. Moreover, it came to the attention of the country’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.
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Norman Rockwell’s models are all grown up (photos)
NORMAN Rockwell, the great American artist, used models. They’ve grown up.
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Posted: 30th, September 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
The best and worst practical jokes: arrested development for winners
DO you know the practical jokers who glued the doors shot of 25 homes in Letterkenny, County Donegal? They glued some of the car doors, too.
John McGeever from Ballymacool Terrace in the town, tells the BBC:
“Some people went out of their homes and couldn’t get back in again. Then some people realised when they were in they couldn’t get out. Whoever did this must have a lorry load of glue because it was running down the doors. When we got down to the local locksmiths he had to replace most of the locks because he said whatever way this glue was inserted it actually went into the springs in the doors.”
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Posted: 30th, September 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
How many were on the the pro-choice ‘March for Choice’ in Dublin?
THE Irish Times now says “several thousand people” joined the pro-choice ‘March for Choice’ in Dublin”.
The Journal put the number at 2,500.
Only, earlier, the Garda had told the Irish Times that 500 people had turned up for the event. The paper’s headline trilled:
“Low turn out for pro-choice rally”
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In Photos: The Orange Order march in Clifton Street, Belfast
FACES of the day: Women dressed in the Union flag colours near Orange Hall in Clifton Street, Belfast, ahead of the start of a massive loyal order parade to mark the centenary of the signing of the pro-Union Ulster Covenant. An estimated 30,000 marchers will take part in the Orange Order event which will see a huge cultural festival staged in the grounds of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont in east Belfast, held to commemorate the 1912 proclamation against plans for Home Rule in Ireland.
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The anti fascists need the SDL at the Scottish Parliament (photos)
TO Edinburgh, where the Scottish Defence League, scion of the EDL, have held a static rally outside the Scottish Parliament after the council denied permission for a full demonstration. Their shouting was met by a rival protest by anti-fascists. It can be hard to see which side is the least tolerant. The Socialist Worker signs demanded an end to Islamophobia. This is the SW that noted: “I would suggest that perhaps we should face it once and for all: the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus who, by the way, was himself a Palestinian Jew”, think Hezbollah are ok and backed the bigoted Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt. Fair enough. It’s all about freedom of expression.
The other thing about the SDL is that ther wer only about 60 of them. There wer around 300 on the Unite Against Fascism march. If it wasn’t for the anti-fascists, the SDL would have been a small group of people stood by a closed building on a Saturday afternoon. Easy to ignore.
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Megan Stammers: vapid teenager spends few days in France with ageing teacher
MEGAN Stammers is coming home. The 15-year-old who ran off with Jeremy Forrest, her maths teacher, is heading back to the family. Forrest is heading to jail, charged with child abduction. The media laps it up:
Daily Mail (front page): “Secrets of Megan’s 8 days on the run”
The paper says it has “Extraordinary details of couple’s eight days on the run”.
Only, the paper has no details at all.
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Posted: 29th, September 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Megan Stammers’ lover Jeremy Forrest sings Home, Where Have You Gone
MEGAN Stammers and Jeremy Forrest are in Paris. Maybe. He’s been arrested in France.
Before the facts, a few views:
In the Sunderland Echo, an expert writes:
“I FELT sick to my stomach that she could have been groomed for so long. Seven months is a long time. You would think schools would be on top of things like this.”
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Posted: 28th, September 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Pakistani rape gangs demonise Asians and the trashy white working class
THERE’S talk of a nationwide forum to save underage girls from being sexual exploited. This new “special interest” outfit will share information and knowledge on paedophiles who abuse vulnerable and impressionable children. There will not be another Rochdale. There will not be another Rotherham. Another Derby. And so on…
In soem parts of the country, gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani heritage, have been raping predominately white girls. They are, of course, not the norm. Most paedophiles and deviants are solitary white males. But it’s these gangs that have been ignored by the police and the State.
Edward Timpson, the Children’s Minister, says “too many agencies have failed to get a grip on sexual exploitation and have allowed abusers to escape justice. It is plain wrong if cultural sensitivities or political correctness ever stop crimes being investigated fully.”
Jeremy Browne, the Minister for Crime Prevention, says he’s “political sensitivities must not get in the way of preventing and uncovering child abuse”.
Jim Taylor, the chief executive of Rochdale council, says:
“This is all about understanding how to give the victims confidence to come forward, and how to get from there to a prosecution. Some areas of the country are still in denial about what is happening. You get the feeling they’re more interested in protecting their reputations than in doing the right thing. We have taken the decision to be as open and transparent as we can.”
You can start by prosecuting the police, social workers and other officials who failed to listen to the vulnerable, who ignored they testimonies and please for help.
Jack Straw, the Labour former Home Secretary, says the organised rape gangs had “an ethnic dimension which is typically of Asian men on white girls”.
Asian? They are pussy-footing around. Are Chinese gangs behind the crimewave? Indians? Most of the men come from a Muslim background. They are nominally Muslim. They are a minute minority in a big community. This is not a crime rooted in their culture. It is one rooted in British culture that sees the white, working class British as a mob who if told that a few gangs of Pakistani men are targeting white girls will turn uniformly racist. So warped is the fear of stirring the great unwashed to riot that the word Asian is as close as many in power will let themselves get to identifying the likely culprits. It’s that kind of stupidity that allowed girls to be systematically abused for at least ten years before anything was done.
The prattish Labour MP Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs select committee, said:
“It’s totally wrong to say that [these crimes are unique to Muslim Pakistani men], because you open up a Pandora’s box as far as race relations is concerned and I don’t think that’s necessarily what we want.”
It’s not them. It’s you. It’s the poor whites, who, upon hearing the truth, will look anew at their neighbours, their friends, their co-workers of Pakistani heritage and burn their houses down. So thick are the whites that they will demonise an entire community on the strength of a small number of perverts. It is, however, perfectly ok for the elite to demonise the whites. Get this from Michael White in the Guardian:
But all sorts of people who are usually quite willing (in some cases eager) to categorise many of society’s ills in terms of discrimination over race and racism – yes, Keith Vaz, MP, I include you – when the victim comes from an ethnic or national minority, throw their hands up in horror at those who highlight the Pakistani or “Asian” connection here. The race relations industry goes into a curious reverse.
At one level we can understand why. The BNP, English Defence League and other professional racists are keen to get their crowbars into cases such as this.
His thinking seems to be that if the extremists get their “crowbars” in, the slack-jawed, reactionary, dumb white working class then will obediently follow the racists.
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, put it in bolder terms:
“[British Pakistani males] think that white teenage girls are worthless and can be abused without a second thought; it is this sort of behaviour that is bringing shame on our community.”
One other person talking sense is Simon Danczuk, the MP for Rochdale, who says the “young girls’ cries for help were systematically ignored…I’m in no doubt that the poor response by council services would have emboldened the criminals to make them think they could carry on abusing with impunity.”
You don’t need talking shops. You need to listen.You need to stop viewing the girls as an underclass, a kind go “white trash”, a hideous phrase that belittles and rubbishes an entire group of people. Asians did not invent that phrase and make it acceptable to say in public and in print. Other whites did. And the police and social services believed it.
Posted: 28th, September 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
FLASHBACK to 1970: fabulous furry fight fans for Muhammad Ali
FLASHBACK to December 7, 1970. Muhammad Ali was fighting Oscar Natalio Bonavena from Argentina, at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The fans wer there. The fans’ fashion was memorably:
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Posted: 27th, September 2012 | In: Flashback, Sports | Comment
Cannon Towels put the gay into the Army
THOSE vintage gay adverts did not feature the work of Cannon Towels. With a Cannon Towel, every days a homoerotic toga party:
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Posted: 27th, September 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comments (3)
Police want to arrest Jeremy Forrest for child abduction: Megan Stammers was groomed?
IF he wasn’t running before, Jeremy Forrest might now be. Police have issued a European Arrest Warrant for child abduction against the maths teacher who went on holiday with Megan Stammers, his 15-year-old pupil.
One story is that Forrest legged it after being tipped off that he was just about to be suspended by the school for his interest in Stammers.
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Posted: 27th, September 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
