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.
Tia Sharp: Stuart Hazell’s drunken fist, the body in the loft and claiming a reward
TIA Sharp is front-page news. If it bleeds it leads, runs the old news mantra. Tia Sharp has died. Stuart Hazell, a man who lives with her grandmother, Christine Sharp. He is the last person believed to have seen her alive. He’s been arrested on suspicion of her murder. The news round-up:
Update: Christine Sharp, 46, was arrested on suspicion of murder yesterday and is being held at a south London police station.
Update 2: South-East London Area Commander Neil Basu said: “An early review has been conducted and it is now clear that human error delayed the discovery of the body within the house. We have apologised to Tia’s mother that our procedures did not lead to the discovery of the body on this search.”
Daily Mail (front page): “SHAMBLES – Despite a week-long hunt by 100 police with dogs, Tia was found dead in her granny’s house, which officers had searched THREE times…and man they quizzed has disappeared.”
The Mail blames the police, names the victim but steers clear of naming the accused man in its headline.
The Yorkshire Post sees the Mail’s three searches and trumps it:
Tia detectives ‘searched house four times before body found’
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Posted: 11th, August 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | 0 Comments
IN photos: The Janmashtami festival celebrations in Mathura, India
IN photos: The Janmashtami festival celebrations in Mathura, India. Janmashtami is the festival that marks the birth of Hindu God Krishna:
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Bradley Wiggins is living in Hackney as a rabbit
LOCAL news story of the day is found in the Hackney Gazette, where “Bunnies bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Olympic cycling champion Bradley Wiggins were dumped at a Hackney vets“.
Rabbits most often looks like Ken Dodd or Cilla Black. But Wiggins is in vogue. If his name can inspire animal lovers to adopt a rabbit, then so be it:
Head veterinary nurse Janice Godfrey said: “We have our very own Team GB here – but in our case ‘GB’ stands for ‘Gorgeous Bunnies’. They are beautiful animals and the sideburns on the boys give them a distinguished air. They’re not interested in gold medals – a loving new home is what they need.”
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Tia Sharp: Newspapers target Stuart Hazell, two hours and what the neighbour didn’t see
TIA Sharp: Day 7 of the search for the missing Surrey 12-year-old and she’s no longer front-page news. As before, the newspapers are focusing on Stuart Hazell, Tia’s step-grand-father. Today’s round-up:
Daily Telegraph: “Tia Sharp’s step-grandfather admits ‘shady past’ but denies harming 12-year-old”
That he needs to deny anything in public is a pity. Hazell is stood in the dock in the court of public opinion. He is a witness. He is not under arrest. He is not a suspect – at least he isn’t in the eyes of the law. This is a missing person’s case.
Mr Hazell, who previously dated Tia’s mother Natalie Sharp, 30, and has served two jail sentences for supplying crack cocaine and the possession of a machete, said: “My previous has got nothing to do with it. Everyone’s got a shady past. Did I do anything to Tia? No I bloody didn’t. I’d never think of that. I loved her to bits, she’s like my own daughter. She’s got a lovely home. I can’t work out what’s going on. She’s a happy-go-lucky golden angel. She’s perfect.”
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Posted: 10th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 6 Comments
Man mistaken for James Bulger killer Robert Thompson kills himself
HAVE James Bulger’s killers Jon Venables and Robert Thompson claimed another life? Or should we blame someone else? The Lancashire Telegraph delivers the headline:
Ramsbottom dad took his own life over Bulger killer accusations
The story runs that Ramsbottom’s Scott Bradley, 36, “endured months of abuse after malicious gossips accused him of being murderer Robert Thompson.”
Who to blame for his suffering?
She [his mother Sue] has told how her son’s life became a ‘living hell’ after a hate mob in the seaside village of Garlieston, Wigtownshire, Scotland, turned on him over a play about the sickening killing.
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Posted: 9th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 3 Comments
The Green Shirt Population Institute wants lots of you dead
YOU are the human virus. Michael Meacher was right. John Porrit was right. She was right. You need to die. Not all of you. Just some. Other human viruses have seen the light:
Population 7 Billion: It’s Time to Talk: All across the planet, people are speaking up about about population growth. According to the U.N. Population Division, the world population surpassed the 7 billion mark on October 31st, 2011 and it’s time for a broader public discussion. Help Spread the Word. Help Build the Movement. Help Find the Balance. http://www.populationspeakout.org
The Population Institute could start by, you know, disappearing themselves…
Spotter: Brendan O’Neill
Posted: 9th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 0 Comments
Gay Day celebration attacked by Rapists For God
TO Grand Rapids, Michigan, the enlightened rock up at the Gay Day celebration of the area’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents to tell the good people that they are going to rape them in the name of the Lord. The Black Supremicist Hebrew Israelite preachers are here to do God’s raping less you take away their chicken sandwiches:
At the moment when I walked into Gay Day this past Saturday, it was surreal, like some kind of charming French romance… But, OH, we couldn’t have that for long. A group of protestors showed up to harass from the other side of a chain link fence. They came armed with Bibles. And it wasn’t the usual, “repent or go to Hell.” Rather, it was the decree that all races would war against each other and the losers would have their women ravished. Which, according to one of the vitrolic protestors meant, “you ass is gonna get raped.”
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Posted: 9th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 4 Comments
Journalism student relives newsroom horror: the intern’s story
JOURNALISTS should especially enjoy this report from a Melbourne University journalism student who spent two weeks toiling at a newspaper’s office. She wrote up her experiences at the coalface for us to enjoy. Highlights are many. For those of you spent your training being bawled at, having a heavy telephone chucked at your face by an upset editor (ahem) and made to work hard and fast, this testimony should be an entertaining read.
Bastards!
Throughout the week, I was consistently subjected to patronising attitudes, being referred to as ‘Little Bud’, ‘Champ’ and ‘Kidlet.’ Men were also continuously and unnecessarily sexist, waiting for me to walk through doors and leave the elevator before them.
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Posted: 9th, August 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | 3 Comments
Tia Sharp: The Daily Express smells ‘bodies and blood’ in New Addington
TIA SHARP is now front-page news. So too is Stuart Hazell. The 12-year-old girl has been missing for 6 days. The Daily Star leads with:
“TOYBOY LOVER OF TIA GRAN QUIZZED”
Stuarts Hazell is 37. He’s the boyfriend of Chritine Sharp, 46, Tia’s grandma. The media is whispering about Stuart Hazell. He’s not under arrest. He’s not a named suspect in a any crime. He is a witness helping the police with their enquiries. As for being her toyboy… Well, if a nine-year age gap makes them stop and stare, know that Daily Star owner Richard Desmond is 60. His fiancee is Joy Canfield. She’s in her late 30s. Is he is toygirl?
The Star adds:
THE boyfriend of Tia Sharp’s grandmother was quizzed by police over her disappearance yesterday. Stuart Hazell, who lives with Christine Sharp, 46, was led away by detectives after sniffer dogs scoured their house for clues.
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Posted: 9th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 7 Comments
Tia Sharp: When is a police car not a police car?
TIA Sharp: The media focuses on Stuart Hazell. He has been charged with no crime. The police have not arrested him. Still, the media are painting a picture of a man “helping police with their enquiries”. Mr Hazell (left) is the 37-year-old boyfriend of Tia’s grandmother.
The Daily Telegraph produces a headline:
“Boyfriend of Tia Sharp’s grandmother taken from house by detectives”
Taken? He’s not under arrest.
Two plain-clothed officers arrived at the house Mr Hazell shares with Tia’s grandmother Christine Sharp at 5.30pm and left with him five minutes later. Mr Hazell, 37, who was wearing a grey hooded top, a black jacket and jeans, got into an unmarked police car and was taken to an undisclosed location. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “A man is being interviewed as a witness. He has not been arrested.”
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Posted: 8th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 0 Comments
The Boy Scouts of America perversion files feature not a single gay
GRIM news in the latimes.com that the Boy Scouts of America has a secret dossier of “perversion files” used to tracks sexual deviants in woggles. Oddly, the BSA has a policy of bigotry, banning gays and lesbian adults from working with children.
The BSA website trills:
The Boy Scouts of America takes great pride in the quality of our adult leadership. Being a leader in the BSA is a privilege, not a right. While no current screening techniques exist that can identify every potential child molester, we can reduce the risk of accepting a child molester by learning all we can about an applicant for a leadership position—his or her experience with children, why he or she wants to be a Scout leader, and what discipline techniques he or she would use…
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Posted: 8th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 0 Comments
Groucho Marx endorses lightbulb snatching and more
GROUCHO Marx was a funny man.But could he make you buy thing? Would a Groucho Marx endorsement make housewives buy products, like lightbulbs, shaving goods, breakfast frosted flakes and peanut butter? Someone thought so:
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Posted: 8th, August 2012 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, The Consumer | 1 Comment
Tia Sharp: Is the media monstering Stuart Hazell?
TIA Sharp: News round-up: Is the media monstering Stuart Hazell?
Hundreds of “missing” posters have been distributed around New Addington and Tia’s face looks out from most local shops and noticeboards. At a bus stop close to her grandmother’s house in The Lindens, well-wishers have left dozens of burning candles and tea lights with hand-written signs asking for Tia to be brought home.
Community group New Addington Pathfinders (NAP) have printed over 70,000 posters, that have been distributed across Croydon and surrounding areas. Kirsty Pearce of NAP said: “We have been co-ordinating searches with the police who have told us where to search, how to search and what to so with anything we find.”
The Sun now owns Tia Sharp
TIA Sharp: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at the missing 12-year-old girl in the news:
The Sun has issued a £25,000 reward for information that “will lead police to find missing Tia Sharp”. Does the reward get a result? The Sun seems to think so. It selflessly has offered rewards in the cases of missing Joanna Yeates and missing Shannon Matthews. The Sun’s now dead sister paper the News of the World offered a hug reward for anyone who could find Madeleine McCann. All these appeals came with a free poster you can stick on your shops, window or car. Selflessly, all posters carry the newspaper’s logo, co-branding the missing and murdered with a tabloid banner. So what that the Sun’s owners and former editors are in the mire for allegedly hacking the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and perverting the course of justice. The Sun will show one and all how much it cares by offering up some cash.
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Posted: 8th, August 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | 13 Comments
Mexican tabloid spices up drugs war deaths with images of strumpets
IN Mexico, El Grafico is the paper of sensation. The front pages feature shots of the dead victims of the country’s drugs war alongside shots of scantily-clad strumpets. El Grafico is the sister paper of El Universal, “The Great Newspaper of Mexico.” Are the juxtaposions of sex and death the epitome of the tabloid mantra: “If it bleeds, it leads”?
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Posted: 8th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 0 Comments
Tia Sharp: The bus, the tram, the cynical Sun and Stuart Hazell’s regret
TIA Sharp has been missing for four days. Having introduced by speculation and inference the grim spectres of murder and abduction, the media moves on. The last known sighting was of Tia leaving her grandmother Christine Sharp’s home in The Lindens, New Addington, last Friday.
As ever, the Sun has sought to own the missing woman, offering a £25,000 reward for information. The Sun might be sister organ to the News of the World that hacked missing girls’ mobile phones, but its cares enough to use money to get itself involved in the story. Is it caring or just deeply cynical?
A shopkeeper in Mitcham is offering £500 reward for anyone who knows where Tia Sharp is. Javid Iqval, owner of UK Household Goods, a second hand furniture shop, on Mitcham Road, said he wanted to help find Tia. Mr Iqval, 60, who has two daughters said: “I am a family man and everyone has got a daughter. She is only 12 years old and I just want to help them. I know £500 isn’t a lot of money but that is what I can afford and I will offer that.”
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Half of all Palestinian men beat their women – blame the Israelis
IN the Guardian Angela Robson looks at the lot of women living in Gaza. We meet Eman:
Eman, 23, is dressed in a black, veiled jilbab and lives in a collapsing shack on the outskirts of Gaza City. She left school at 10 and seven years later she was married, with a baby daughter… “Before the blockade, my husband used to make good money working in Israel,” she says. “With the blockade, that all stopped. When he can’t find any work and we have nothing to eat, he blames me. He is a like a crazy animal. I stay quiet when he hits me. Afterwards, he cries and says, if he had a job, he wouldn’t beat me.”
Does she believe him? We’re not told. Robson talks about the Israeli blockade on Gaza:
“The challenges of unemployment, fear of violence and restriction on movement can often mean that women and children are at the receiving end of men’s frustration,” says Ghada al-Najar from Oxfam Gaza. “There are many reasons why domestic violence is on the increase, including psychological trauma, the feeling of being trapped, and rampant poverty.”
What about men and attitudes to women? It’s grim:
Violence against women has reached alarming levels. A December 2011 study by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, PCBS, revealed that 51% of all married women in Gaza had experienced violence from their husbands in the previous 12 months.
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Posted: 6th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 0 Comments
Media speculates on what has happened to missing Tia Sharp
TIA Sharp is missing. She was last seen on Friday August 3rd in New Addington Croydon, at her grandmother’s house. Tia Sharp lives in Pollards Hill, Merton. She’s 12. Tia Sharp left her grandmother’s home to buy flip-flops from the Whitgift shopping centre in Croydon. Her grandmother, 46, says Tia had just £10 on her. She carried no mobile phone.
The media react:
The Daily Mail stokes fear without fact:
Last night local residents claimed on Facebook that a white van or car had been recently seen in the area and had attempted to abduct a child within the last couple of days. Detectives said they had no knowledge of any attempted abduction previously in the area, although they could not rule out the possibility.
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Posted: 6th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 0 Comments
David Starkey talks of the ‘disproportionately black criminal class’ in London’s gangsta rap Armada
A FEW highlights from David Starkey’s comment on the London riots of 2011, as told to the Daily Telegraph. As before, the historian is giving full throat to his metaphorisation of black skin for criminality
Far from being merely opportunistic, the core of the rioters was formed of an already existing criminal class and that class is disproportionately black.
Of course, black might not refer to skin colour. Starkey is the prat who says “whites have become black”.
Starkey then goes on to attack black culture – the “violent, destructive, nihilistic, ‘gangsta’ culture” of the street.
As we said:
If only Elizabeth I or her dad Henry VIII – his favourite book and TV topics – had been black he might now be metaphorising white skin for criminality
Says Starkey:
Only one person is of the necessary stature: Doreen Lawrence.
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Austrian newspaper Die Kronen Zeitung accused of faking Syrian war images
A READER points us towards goings on in the Austrian press, where the allegation is that Photoshop has been used to illustrate fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Die Kronen Zeitung takes up the story of three people who haven’t changed much over the days:
Posted: 6th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 0 Comments
The Daily Mail has a problem with Jessica Ennis and race at the Olympics
AS the Daily Mail salutes Jessica Ennis and ‘plastic Brit’ Mo Farah, featuring photos of the 10,000 metre gold medalist celebrating with his family before a thrilled crowd and the heptathlon champion (Ennis) wrapped in the Union flag, we look back to what the paper’s Rick Dewsbury wrote on 28 July. Dewsbury watched the opening ceremony. The thing was overtly political. But that did not prevent it from being a great spectacle.
The headline announced:
The NHS did not deserve to be so disgracefully glorified in this bonanza of left-wing propaganda.
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Posted: 5th, August 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | 0 Comments
What do you do when a whale dies?
WHAT do you do when a whales dies. I’ve only seen one dead whale washed up on a beach. The Dorset officials called it Gilbert. It lay on the beach looking big and dark. Windbreaks were erected around it , as if to protect its dignity. It was then cut up by experts. I never saw anyone stand on it:
A dead12 meter Humpback whale lies in a rock pool at Newport on the northern beaches in Sydney, Australia, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012. Authorities say it is unclear how the whale died but the large swell and current had washed it into a swimming hole sometime in the evening.(AP Photo/Glenn Nicholls)
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The Huffy Radio Bike – With AM Radio!
CONTINUING Anorak’s look a bicycles and cycling, we bring you the 1955 Huffy Radio Bike. The bike contained an AM radio.
Boys Life: “Not a toy. Powerful radio has lock, sensitive tuner, volume control, clear-tone speaker. The bike’s a beauty; streamlined design, gearshift, new easy-pedal tires.”
The radio is in the body. It uses vacuum tubes. The batteries are on the back.
Wowzer!
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Posted: 4th, August 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | 0 Comments
Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life – the outtakes
IT’S 1953 and Groucho Marx’s television show You Bet Your Life is on the magic box. But not eveything is fit for broadcast. The outtakes are out:
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Posted: 4th, August 2012 | In: Flashback, TV & Radio | 0 Comments
Vermont farmer runs over seven police cars with tractor
TO Vermont, where farmer Roger Pion has taken his tractor roadshow to work on the police convoy. Having been charged with resisting arrest and marijuana possession, and upset Pion made it to the police station in Newport and totalled seven cruisers. Her then made off, slowly:
By the time they ran outside, the tractor was down the driveway and out onto the road. With their vehicles crushed, “We had nothing to pursue him with,” said Chief Deputy Philip Brooks.
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Posted: 4th, August 2012 | In: Reviews | 0 Comments
