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.
Preston drugs users deal safely online – police close ‘illegal’ forum
HAVE you ever bought illegal drugs online? It seems like a good idea for drug users to buy and deal from the comfort of their own mobile phone or PC. It makes the job of the police easier, the streets less iffy and enables bad dealers of corrupted narcotics to be exposed and thus cause less damage to the public’s health.
But it is illegal. The Lancashire Evening Post reports on “brazen drug users and dealers” using an internet forum to buy and sell illegal drugs in Preston. The paper does not name the forum but does identify the drugs: cannabis, valium, diazepam, tramadol and amphetamine.
Three of those are prescription drugs. Cannabis should be. Amphetamine was once a treatment for low blood pressure, asthma, migraine and slimming.
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Who is the Eltham lift shitter?
DO you know the Eltham lift bespoiler, the shadowy figure who poos, vomits and wees in lifts “on an almost daily basis this year” in two lifts on Soweby Close?
One man can poo, wee and vomit at the same sitting every day of the year? Stake out the local takeaways and looks out anyone using a loyalty card.
The News Shopper says “Greenwich Council has blamed the mess on a dog”.
A dog who takes the lift?
“…but at a meeting last week, calls were made for forensic tests on the poo, which residents are confident will prove it is manmade”.
Oh, for those pre-CSI days when dogs shat out white poo.
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Alex MacFarlane, Mauro Demetrio and the anti-racist police’s lack of direction and value
AFTER PC Alex MacFarlane meet his colleague PC Joe Harrington. Harrington allegedly assaulted a 15-year-old black teenager at an east London police station. PC Joe Harrington has been placed on restricted duties. MacFarlane was recorded calling black 21-year-old Mauro Demetrio, 21, a “nigger”, allegedly. Another voice calls Demetrio a “cunt”. Harrington was with MacFarlane at the time of the Demetrio incident.
The alleged incidents occurred in the summer of 2011, in the shadow of the riots trigged by the police killing of Marc Duggan – the black man who never fired a bullet.
MacFarlane has been suspended.
Demetrio claims he saw Harrington allegedly attack the 15-year-old.
And that’s all we know. The Guardian says there is CCTV footage of the Harrington matter, but is grainy and might not be of any use.
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Posted: 3rd, April 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Why Daniel Bartlam did it: explaining matricide with God, the Devil and John Snape
DANIEL Bartlam the Nottingham boy who murdered his mother, Jacqueline Bartlam at 14, is the Daily Mirror’s “DEVIL CHILD”. No. He isn’t. He’s the teenager who lived in a fantasy world and murdered his mother in cold blood while she was sleeping with this then 6-year-old younger brother. Daniel Bartlam did not murder his young brother but took him outside into the street. He then doused his mother in petrol and set the family home on fire. At no point in the court case against him was religion mentioned.
The Mirror said he watched and played:
Violent video games and films, including The Amityville Horror and Final Destination – suitable only for people aged over 18 – were also found [in his room].
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Posted: 3rd, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (12)
The Conflict after 30 years: 3,140 Falkland Islanders want to be British
THE Falklands Islands are British because the 3,140 Falkland Islanders who live there want them to be…
Pictures of the war are here.
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Posted: 2nd, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Anna Chapman was getting close to Obama’s ‘inner circle’
WAS Anna Chapman, the femme fatale spy, getting too close to someone in Barack Obama’s inner circle? The FBI says this special someone was a “sitting cabinet official”.
Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got “closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership… she got close enough to disturb us”.The fear that Chapman would compromise a senior US official in a “honey trap” was a key reason for the arrest and deportation of the Russian spy ring of 10 people, of which she was a part, in 2010.
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Posted: 2nd, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Priest plays gay porn at Holy Communion get together
WE join the action ast St Mary’s School in Pomeroy, County Tyrone, just as Father Martin McVeigh, slides a USB stick into the laptop to give a presentation to parents and one child about the wonders of for Holy Communion. The screen flickers into life, broadcasting images of gay porn to the massed. As reported, Father McVeigh legs it.
A statement from parents tells us:
“Twenty minutes later he returned, he continued with the meeting and wrapped up by saying that the children get lots of money for their Holy Communion and should consider giving some of it to the church.”
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Posted: 2nd, April 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
Are PC Karl Bartlett and Simon Hardwood symptoms of a failing police force?
PC Karl Bartlett has been spared prison. The 42-year-old copper head-butted a 14-year-old boy and manhandled him into the side of a parked car. The lad was left with “unquantifiable emotional injuries”. It was a “disgraceful incident of gratuitous violence”.
The boy was in a car being driving by Lee Rosier, who was using his mobile phone. Both wer forcibly removed from their car.
PC Karl Bartlett is an officer with the Territorial Support Group. That’s the militia-styled Territorial Support Group. PC Simon Hardwood was in the TSG. He pushed Ian Tomlinson to the ground at the G20 protests in 2009. He hit him with a baton. Ian Tomlonson died. He was unlawfully killed. Hardwood used “excessive and unreasonable force”.
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Posted: 2nd, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (11)
Daniel Bartlam gets 16 years of murdering his mother – the media get Coronation Street
DANIEL Bartlam was 14 when he murder his mother Jacqueline Bartlam, 47, with a hammer as she slept at their home in Redhill, Notts. Bartlam then poured petrover his mother’s body and set it on fire. He claimed burglars had committed the heinous crime. At Nottingham Crown Court Bartlam has been sent to prison for a minmum of 16 years.
Detective Chief Inspector Kate Meynell, from Nottinghamshire Police tells all media:
“The level of violence, the degree of planning and the extent of his lies is not only shocking, but it’s also chilling that a boy could do this.
“I’ve never dealt with something like this and I’m not aware of any other case in this country. He thought he could commit the perfect murder and get away with it.”
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Posted: 2nd, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (15)
Correction of the Week – Carlo Padavani is John Travolta’s drugs baron
CORRECTION of the week in The Metro:
Several readers have pointed out that alleged crime lord Carlo Padovani (Metro Friday) is said to have modelled himself on Tony Montana, the fictional Cuban drug dealer played by Al Pacino in the 1983 movie Scarface – not Tony Manero, who was played by John Travolta in Saturday Nigh Fever. Metro strives for complete accuracy but, in the heat of meeting deadlines, mistakes do sometimes slip in.”
Faces of the day: The Navratri festival in India
FACES of the Day: Hindu devotees take part in the Navratri festival in Bhopal, India; and an Indian barber cuts the hair of a young girl as part of a ritual during the Hindu festival of Ram Navami, at a temple in Allahabad. Ram Navami is a celebration of the birthday of the Hindu God Lord Rama. Other Hindus carry knives and flex their muscles…
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Posted: 1st, April 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (5)
Blue Jeans magazine and naming those 1980s heartthrobs
BLUE Jeans magazine was great. There photo casebooks were how a generation learnt about sexual relations and how to match two types of denim (tip: tuck your jumper in). On the back of each issue was a heartthrob, like John Taylor of Duran Duran, Bono, Howard Jones, Dr Robert, Jim Kerr, Lloyd Cole, Paul King, Michael Praed and, erm, Nick Sexton…
Posted: 1st, April 2012 | In: Flashback | Comments (3)
Ex-BBC TV reporter aks young schoolchildren to be quiet in school playground
GRAHAM Purches politely requests that four to seven-year-olds at Elmlea Infants’ School in Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol are not allowed to “scream or shout near our home”. The message is ended with the words “thank you”.
As he says:
“It is a very polite notice. The last thing we want to do is to stop children enjoying themselves. We just don’t want a lot of excessive screaming and shouting.”
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Earth Hour 2012 in photos – presented by Sachin Tendukar’s halo
IT’S Earth Hour. Full Beam Ahead! Before the photos a few words from this year’s sponsor Sachin Tendukar?
I give my best to cricket and if, through this medium, I am able to raise awareness on the impact of climate change, then I would very much like to use this opportunity to reach out to my fans and ignite the fire in them to strive towards a better planet.
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The Federation of Student Islamic Societies in Dublin, George Galloway and sectarianism for Syria
DAYS after the ‘true Muslim‘ George Galloway became an MP, members of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies in Dublin staged a flash mob on O’Connell Street to highlight human rights abuses by the Assad regime in Syria. Why pick on Galloway? Well, it was he who said that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was a “breath of fresh air”.
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Old-school toy makes a comeback thanks to political aide’s gaffe
ETCH A SKETCH, the mechanical drawing toy, is making a comeback thanks to a political gaffe by an aide to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who compared the toy to his election strategy. A new ad campaign by the 104-year-old makers of Etch A Sketch pokes fun at politics with the hopes of boosting sales for the analog classic.
Asked how Romney’s politics next autumn will compare to now, strategist Eric Fehrnstrom likened the campaign to an Etch A Sketch, which lets you create drawings on a grey slate by turning two knobs and then erase them by a simple shake. “You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again”, Fehrnstrom said of the campaign. Queue Romney’s rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich using Etch A Sketches as props and accusing Romney of being a flip-flopper.
The Ohio Art Company, makers of the Etch A Sketch, are hoping to capitalise on the brouhaha and to stage a comeback for a toy that may have qualified as a gizmo back in the 1960s but looks distinctly arcane in the era of Wiis and Xboxes. The company’s new “Shake it Up, America” ad will be doing the rounds on social networking sites soon.
One of the ad slogans says “Etch A Sketch is a lot like politics, there’s a lot of grey area”. Another reads: “We have a left knob and a right knob for each political party. (But remember, when both work together, we can do loop de loops.)”
To emphasise its political neutrality Ohio Art Co plans to make a blue version of the traditionally red toy. There will also be a red-and-blue collector’s edition with etchings of an elephant and a donkey, the symbols for the Republican and Democrat parties.
But despite the wall-to-wall media coverage that the gaffe received and despite the old-school toy’s appearance on the campaign trail, will the public know just what the “Shake it Up” ads are on about? After all, just days before the announcement of the ad campaign, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 55 per cent of people were unaware of the Etch A Sketch incident and out of those who did know about it 44 per cent said it would have no effect on their opinion of Romney. As the Washington Post pointed out, “simply because 100 per cent of people who do politics for a living… are closely following a story, it’s no guarantee that the story is penetrating nearly as broadly among the general public”.
But if the old-fashioned toy does manage to achieve that modern marker of advertising success – going viral – then the Etch A Sketch gibe may be hard for Romney to shake after all.
40 Days for Life vigilantes intimidate women in Bedford Square – photos
IN Bedford Square, London, outside the British Pregnancy Advisory Service’s Bedford Square clinic, the anti-abortion campaigners 40 Days for Life have hosted an anti-abortion “vigil”. It’s intimidating to those seeking help. The 40 Dayers are praying in public. They are making a show of their spirituality and superior knowledge about other people’s lives. They are God’s self-declared representatives on Earth. A group of Pro-choice demonstrators are there too. They are not praying. They are living in the here and the now…
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Posted: 31st, March 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
That Archbishop of Canterbury job advert in full
FANCY working as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury? You get £55,560 a year. You get free accommodation in Lambeth Palace (zone 1 and 25 staff) and Canterbury. You get to debate every word you say as you say it – in real time. The competition will be fierce, with front runners tipped to be: Dawn French, Katie Price, Euan Blair, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Kim Kardashian, Paul Dacre, John Prescott and Eddie The Eagle Edwards.
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‘Human fireball’ Diane Hill – who to blame?
DIANE Hill is the woman burnt whilst decanting petrol in her kitchen. The 46-year-old was cooking dinner at her home in York when she poured petrol into a glass jug to give to her daughter whose car was low on petrol.
Mrs Hill’s daughter Grace wrote online:
“I’m gonna be f***** if the petrol stations in York close cos I have zero money to top up & I’m already flashing.”
The Daily Express ups the ante:
Mrs Hill, 46 – trying to help her stricken teenage daughter whose car had run dry
Grace Hill was in her mum’s garden. Stricken?
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Posted: 31st, March 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (5)
87-year-old guilty of hydrangea rage
Black man records police officer’s racist abuse – video
IN London, a black man aged 21 records his time with the police. The man has been placed in handcuffs and sat in the back of the police van. It is the day after last summer’s riots – the riots that followed the police killing of black Marc Duggan.
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Posted: 30th, March 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (14)
Climate sceptics are the new slave traders
DID you know that climate sceptics are the news slave traders? Well, it’s true:
Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be “treated”, according to an Oregon-based professor of “sociology and environmental studies”. Professor Kari Norgaard compares the struggle against climate scepticism to that against racism and slavery in the US South.
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The Sun’s London Olympic’s cyanide plot is thin on facts
NO more news on the Sun’s alarming news that “al-Qaeda fanatics are plotting a deadly cyanide poison attack on the London Olympics”. The paper had news from a website forum (unnamed) that one “Abu Hija Ansari” had published instructions in Arabic for blending hand-cream with cyanide.
A second extremist said on the website: “It is a good idea and you need to plan well.” She added chillingly under a logo of the 2012 Games: “It’s time to prepare for the event, as once again they are interfering with innocent Muslims.”
The Daily Mail added:
It is not known if the security service has uncovered any terrorist plots, however, there is said to be ‘chatter’ among jihadist groups.
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Great Moobs: It’s National Cleavage Day (photos)
IT’S National Cleavage Days, that day when women unite their breasts for good causes and builders loosen their belts a notch.
The AKAI ‘portable’ VTR 1/4″ video tape recorder – the birth of home-made porn
WHEN was user-generated pornography born? Before the camera phone it was 1972 and amateur filmmakers were getting to grips with the AKAI “portable” VTR 1/4″ video tape recorder. The tapes required no processing, so negating any need for trips to that special shop at the back of the precinct. It had a “hands-off operation”.
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Posted: 30th, March 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology, The Consumer | Comment (1)
