Britain’s Worst Broadcaster Releases Erotic Novel (4/4/10)

Watching Kay Burley on TV is quite a polarising experience. Part of it is encouraging, as it shows that anyone, including myself, can get a top job in news/media, but another part of it makes me wonder: Is this the state of broadcast journalism these days? Kay’s tenure at Sky has been gaff-tastic for the most part, including such highlights as:

Asking the ex-partner of the Ipswich prostitute murderer “Do you think if you’d had a better sex life, he wouldn’t have done this?”.

Mistaking Joe Biden’s Ash Wednesday mark on his forehead as a bruise, in which she said, “He’s probably been having a go on those tea trays down the luge or something… It certainly looks like quite a bruise, doesn’t it?”.

Possibly worst of all, she made Peter Andre cry.

On top of this, there were also calls for her to be sacked after her farcical interview with an AV referendum campaigner following a protest, where instead of interviewing him, she just ended up berating him and his action, before suggesting ‘Why don’t you just go home? Why don’t you go home and watch it on Sky News?’. Watching her meander around Sky News’s palatial NEWS ZONE like a lost child in a shopping mall is quite the image.

Anyway, she’s had enough with the fuddy-duddies of politics and has decided to delve into the raunchy world of erotic literature. Cor blimey, guvnor; what would Adam Bolton say? Well, he would probably say something pithy and cutting about celebrity culture, if he could get his head out of Cameron’s arse for long enough, that is.

Her new book is set in the chambers of power, where ‘suave PM’ Julian Jensen, has been re-elected. Despite being the nation’s darling, however, cracks are beginning to show. His wife, Valerie, is apparently ‘tall and educated’, which are the only characteristics worth mention for the wife of a Prime Minister, according to Kay’s book.

Anyway, she’s unhappy and hitting the bottle hard. What develops is a four-way affair between Jenson, his wife and two other women, like a sort of ‘love rhombus’, or something. Woman No. 2 is Sally Simpson, who is the editor of Celeb, one of those proper shit Richard Desmond-esque publications that ‘Takes you inside the home of Darren Day, and a reveal all interview with former Crosswits presenter Tom O’Connor’.

The real star turn in the lurid tale of fantasy, seduction and Barnsley West by-elections is Woman No. 3, Isla Mcgovern. Described as a – no joke – ‘sexy TV reporter’, who will do anything to get to the top. Wow. As the blurb states;

‘When the three women meet, so begins a perfect storm, and only one can emerge as the First Lady.’

Kay describes it as a cross between Jilly Cooper and The Thick of It, but judging by the description, it reads more like a cross betweenYes Minister, Take Me Out and Battle Royale. However, don’t take my word for it, take the word of former Labour spin doctor and part time Voldemort impersonator, Lord Peter Mandelson.

“Kay Burley uses her unparalleled knowledge of the worlds of politics, media and celebrity to racy effect.”

Right, she definitely has naked pictures of him. Surely.

But Pedro Mandelson isn’t the only one with a glowing tribute to her new work. Novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford OBE gave the book a cover quote, writer Kathy Lee states on the back ‘Once I picked up this book, it wouldn’t put me down again!’, and Labour MP Chris Bryant described Burley as ‘a bit dim’. Wait, I don’t think she used the last one.

It seems that everyone is having their say on Kay’s new book, even - get this - lawyers! Turns out that some people aren’t too happy with the likeness between the characters and real life figures.

Burley, who said “readers will certainly recognise the three women in my novel”, has been asked to remove and revise several details inFirst Ladieswhich could identify the people on whom she has based her characters.

Among the details removed is the description of Simpson as “titian-haired” and “flame-haired,” both phrases regularly used to describe a prominent former supporter of Blair. The character of McGovern, meanwhile, is said to be not dissimilar to Gloria De Piero, the glamorous Labour MP and former political correspondent for GMTV.

Ooh dear, Kay. And unfortunately it gets worse. In an early review for the Guardian by Zoe Williams, she states that;

“The political shenanigans are even more embarrassing than either the sex or the cliches that vertically infect each act like cross-generational syphillis. Seriously, the politics is terrible. The politics make you want to hide your eyes”.

But don’t take Zoe’s word for it, enjoy a little taster of one of the books saucier scenes.

“He smiled at the memory of her slowly pouring champagne into a Waterford Crystal flute in his bedroom … she’d mischievously dribbled the contents of the glass onto the most eager parts of his anatomy. Leaning forward she had taken him to the very edge of control before lying back again and allowing herself to succumb to his meticulous attention.”

They say never judge a book by the cover. I think we’ve found the exception to the rule.

Magazine of the Week: Practical Poultry (31/3/2011)

Peridocials are a massive market, yet most of their content is the kind of acquired taste that the 4,000 television channels out there have deemed too niche a demographic to produce. So we’re talking about a special brand of odd. Most of the mainstream mags are like a lesson in stereotyping and sexism, with magazines aimed at blokes tending to be an amalgamation of tits, cars and more tits, whilst women’s ‘glossies’ are for the most part a mélange of haircuts, Topshop ads and methods for finding the perfect man. They really have honed in on society’s base instincts. The problem you have however is you need something to read for those long train journeys. You can’t buy a newspaper because the Daily Mail is the spawn of satan, The Telegraph employ Daniel Hannan and James Delingpole, The Sun is The Sun, The Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch and The Guardian don’t pay tax. So therefore you have to find a magazine where the content doesn’t make your brain hurt. So I decided to plump for ‘Practical Poultry’.

It claims to be ‘The UK’s bestselling poultry magazine’, beating off stiff competition from, I dunno, Cockerel Digest? Turkey Monthly? Chicken Tonight? It’s basically a monthly press of all the latest tips and products to enter the sphere of chicken breeding. It’s, odd, to say the least.

This edition includes a buying guide for the Sumatra, a type of Indonesian cockerel, saying what to look for when purchasing one. Now this is a vital guide because let me tell you, when buying cock, the last thing you want to do is get shafted. One tip is that ear lobes need to be as small as possible, which is probably why the ‘tunnels’ craze never really took off amongst the Indonesian Sumatra community. The guide states that the Sumatra is the ‘poultry equivalent of a luxury indulgence’, so it’s probably the sort of bird that the Duke of Edinburgh eats every Sunday. Then he goes and does other posh stuff, probably. Like, light a Cuban cigar with a tenner. And kick a homeless person. Bloody posh people…

Practical poultry also runs a Q and A section, which is a bit like Dear Deirdre but for problems with a misbehaving cock. So exactly like Dear Deirdre then, I guess. One reader has a problem with his Polish bantam (I wonder how much one of those weighs?) being noisy. I should add, a polish bantam looks exactly like a drably coloured feather duster. Eerily similar. The reader is told that all chickens are noisy, and maybe let it live in the house. Joined up thinking or what!

The gallery section sees readers send pictures of their birds into the magazine (no, not those sort of ‘birds’. This isn’t Readers Wives). Now, most of the pictures display the owner’s children with their poultry, you know, because it’s all nice and not remotely trite. Some nutters however like to be a bit inventive in this section, including one picture someone sent in of an egg their hen laid. Just a photo of an egg. That someone sent to a magazine. Worrying. Slightly more worrying though was Joely Pentlow, who sent in a snap of her chicken reading a newspaper. Now I have an issue with this. The humanisation of animals is a slippery slope; it starts as a few funny pictures people take and send to publications, and it escalates into bestiality scandals. I’ve seen the big eared boys on farms. One person who agrees with me is Sue Thomas, who in her letter ‘Santa Shocker’ was very annoyed by people dressing up their pets;

I see no harm in encouraging children to keep poultry. However, I do draw the line when a reputable magazine such as this one publishes a photograph of a chicken dressed up in a Santa suit.

You see. This is what happens. It’s all fun and games until your chicken is getting employed by the local shopping centre and forced to listen to god-awful children harp on about which set of Meccano they want this year (Meccano is still in fashion, right?).

One edition not enough? Well you can order back copies of Practical Poultry at the prize of just 4 English pounds! And with such raunchy back-titles as ‘Wet Hens’, it really sells itself.

Naturally with a magazine of this nature, it goes fucking weird, including one column devoted to a talking chicken called Gertrude McCluck. In her column ‘Chicken in Charge’ she address other chickens (or as she refers to them, her ‘Poultry Pals’). Ok, this just moved into Ed Guin territory.

Now that my shanks have thawed from the cold, damp winter, I’m looking forward to running my toes over green grass and munching some fresh bugs again.

Christ, there’s porn that’s less graphic than that.

As with any slightly odd magazine, the greatest parts to it tend to be the adverts near the back. After all, if you’re mental enough to buy this, what other bonkers stuff would you purchase? Some of the highlights include Beryl’s Friendly Bacteria (with the tagline ‘She’s a wise old bird!’) and Chris Ashton’s book Domestic Geese. Chris himself says that;

If you’re a Geese enthusiast [seek medical help?], then you might be interested to learn that there’s now a revised, paperback edition of Domestic Geese!

You might well be, geese fans. You might well be.

Well Practical Poultry was quite a read. Full of tips for breeding poultry and an endless amount of opportunity for cock related crude humour and puns. But if poultry isn’t your thing, you can also purchase the sister publication ‘Practical Pigs’! The essential guide for keeping and rearing pigs! This week it has a spread about Oxford Sandy’s, which are ‘a brilliant first-timer pig!’

Or you could not. Up to you, really.

It’s the 2011 Budget - SIMPLIFIED! (Because together we can become smarter. One lol at a time.) [25/03/2011]

Is that time of year again; THE BUDGET! YAAAAAY….erm….right? Yes it’s the speech where the Chancellor sets out the economic principles for the forthcoming 12 months, which as always descents swiftly into a mire of sound-bytes, arbitrary numbers and hyperbole, which by the end leaves you wondering why you’d even bothered listening in the first place. Osbourne had his ‘turn the bull loose!’ moment when he declared that ‘Britain is open for business!’, which naturally meant fuck all as even the premise that Britain was closed for business at any point is just absurd.

The big story from this year’s budget was that Osbourne had SLASHED petrol by 1p. Yeah, he CHOPPED petrol by 1p. He SLIT THE THROAT of petrol by 1p (that last one was probably a bit strong). The papers naturally bent the specifics of the story to fit their prerogative, with those on the right claiming that Osbourne had saved the country from imminent death and destruction, and those on the left claiming that Osbourne’s budget was so out of line that he may as well of crept into your bedroom at night and given you a papercut with it. And The Mail just moaned regardless of the outcome because, you know, that’s what The Mail does.

The Guardian led with the petrol story, where they used the word ‘lopped’ to describe the reduction in price by a penny. Did anyone guess lopped?

Doing the round of broadcast interviews following Wednesday’s announcement, he told ITV’s Daybreak: “We will be watching like a hawk to make sure that motorists get the benefit of the budget changes and make sure that there’s no funny business.”

“I’m not pretending that this is going to transform the situation over night for families who are feeling the squeeze, but it helps.”

Now what annoys me about this statement is that Osbourne knows that a penny is literally a token gesture, yet he is running with it like he’s some sort of caped crusader, fighting off evil corporations with his petrol pump of justice. ‘Yeah it’s only a penny but it’s YOUR penny. And I will protect it!’.

The Sun essentially claimed responsibility for the 1p reduction, stating that it was the Sun’s demand to give motorists a break – and George agrees!

He said last night: “I couldn’t let Sun readers down - I hope it helps.”

Let them down, George. Let them down. People who read the Sun are idiots and deserved to be punished.

The Sun clarified reason why motorists should be delighted with the change in legislation;

The Chancellor CHOPPED an immediate penny off fuel duty from 6pm last night. He SCRAPPED an inflation-linked 5p price hike due on April 1.

He TORE UP Labour’s hated fuel tax escalator - which would have led to annual rises at the rate of inflation plus 1p.

Instead duty will go up in January, but only by the rate of inflation.

His package means that from next month prices at the pumps will be 6p a litre lower than they would have been.

So he has CHOPPED prices by 1p, but SCRAPPED and TORE UP (I quite enjoy this ‘writing in caps lock’ stuff) the fuel tax escalator, meaning that though it has only gone down by a penny, due to a price freeze it will be 6p lower than it would have been. So motorists have, in a convoluted way, saved 6p a litre on petrol. Fuck me, I’ve never put this much effort into something amounting to 6p. I’ve nicked penny chews as a kid which required less brain-power than this.

So that’s petrol sorted, but what about the rest of the budget?

The Telegraph produced a very lovely winners and losers piece (complete with gratuitous pictures of happy and sad Mr.Men – just in case any of you dribbling plebs couldn’t work out what a winner and a loser was). In the winners section was first time home buyers (£250m of aid made available to people looking to get on the housing ladder, by the government subsidising deposits on new-build housing), low earners (amount that people can earn free of tax will rise by £630 to £8,105 – though still short of the £10,000 figure promised by the Lib Dems pre-election. Cue jokes about Lib Dems and keeping manifesto promises) and Travellers (freeze on air passenger duty). Good news for all you low-earning travellers, looking to get on the property ladder. But wait, if I’m travelling, how can I buy a house? Also, if I’m a low earner, how can I do either of those things? But if I buy a house…

As far as the losers go, according to The Telegraph, they include Pensioners (changing levels of taxation on low earners doesn’t affect them, and higher levels of inflation than expected will significantly reduce their pensions in real money terms), high earners (50p tax rate on salaries over £150,000, removal of personal allowance on incomes over £115,000 and the tightening of tax loopholes), public sector workers (1% increase in  national insurance contributions, 3% increase in pension payments and a later retirement age) and smokers and drinkers (but then they always get spanked by the exchequer. You knew this. Our country is built on the expenditure of weezy buggers and drunks).

The Independent derided the budget as nothing more than spin. They cited it as just broken promises and delay tactics. Despite Cameron’s promise “I’ll cut the deficit – not the NHS”, The Independent stated that;

“In terms of the Government’s pledge to grow NHS spending in real terms year-on-year, this will now be only barely true between 2010-11 and 2011-12.

If 2010-11 spending had not turned out less than planned, there would have been a small real cut in 2011-12.

The Government is sailing perilously close to the wind with respect to honouring this particular pledge.”

And it’s not just the NHS where the Government is on shaky ground, even the chop on petrol prices is being questioned. But wait, what about my 6p?! WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE 6p!?

Labour pointed out that next month’s rise had merely been postponed. Duty will rise in January and August next year, by about 3p on each occasion.

So they haven’t actually cancelled the price increase, they’ve just postponed it? Oh you horrible bastards. So your 6p saving will become a 3p saving next year, but it’s not actually a saving, as it’s only a speculative saving compared against how much you would have paid had the ‘tax escalator’ not been removed by the Conservative party, only to be re-instated later at reduced rate? So in a sense, the Conservatives have ACTUALLY PUT THE PRICE OF PETROL UP? You know what? I’ll catch the tube.

The other major concern espoused by The Independent, was that speculative economic growth was cut for the third time from initial expectation, down now from 2.1% to 1.7%.

The Office for Budget Responsibility said it lacked the evidence to say whether the Plan for Growth, which accompanied the Budget, would lift the UK’s longer-term rate of growth.

It said there was very little the plan could do to improve growth in the short term but that relaxation of planning rules might help in future.

The issue is that a slower rate of economic growth effects job creation, tax revenue and all figures associated with the budget, making the whole process pretty futile if the targets continue to be reassessed so WHAT’S THE POINT ANYWAY?! I would drink to ease the pain, but it’s too fucking expensive these days.

You wouldn’t have found these fears in The Express though, because in their opinion Osbourne is apparently the second coming of Jesus, and his rather dour and uninspiring budget was actually the only thing that has saved the population from a downward spiral into addiction, poverty and death.

GEORGE Osborne last night gave Britain hope that better times lie ahead for all with a “Budget for growth” that slashed fuel duty and cut income tax for millions.

Well, he postponed fuel duty for a year, and lifted the tax rate for a small percentage of the country. But I suppose you could describe that as slashed and cut…

To pay for the package of help for families, businesses and motorists, the Chancellor slapped a £2billion tax rise on the profits of North Sea oil companies.

But then he also,

Cut corporation tax by two per cent from April, along with a host of incentives for firms, which were welcomed by business leaders last night.

So we like it when he taxes corporations, but we also like it when he gives them tax cuts? Jesus, The Express’ rhetoric is about as predictable as a jelly on a Bouncy Castle.

Far more generous than expected, the fuel duty cut was a victory for the Daily Express’s Fair Fuel crusade.

But I thought he did it for The Sun readers? Oh George, you really are a filthy harlot sometimes.

Still confused about the budget? With most of the Daily Mail’s readership being knuckle-dragging lunatics, they described the budget – in picture form!

Say what you want about the Mail, but they know their demographic.

So what have we learnt about this year’s budget? Well; drivers, first time buyers, travellers and low earners should be better off, and the lower fuel prices should have a knock on effect to other areas. Though this may be all bollocks as petrol prices have only fractionally gone down and will reportedly go up next year as planned. High earners, pensions and civil servants will now feel the squeeze, whilst the NHS may also face cuts. Tax increases on oil profits should cover the loss from other sectors, but then tax cuts to corporation leaves us wondering who will make up for this drop in revenue, whilst smoking will now kill you financially, as well as medically. Oh and this stuff may all be irrelevant as if economic growth keeps going the way it is we may have an emergency budget at some point which overrides this one, and we’ll be fucked anyhow.

HERE’S TO ANOTHER GREAT YEAR!

The Kids Aren’t Alright; Nepotism in the Modern Media (15/03/2011)

(Visit us at shoutingatco.ws. We don’t bite……hard……)

Nepotism is just about as British a quality as there is. If you think of the stereotypical hallmarks of British culture, you think of red phone boxes, Bobbies on the beat, taking breaks in sport for a cup of tea, The Archers and Nepotism. We have a Royal Family. We have a class system. Our whole society is set up in such a way that the standard of your life will almost certainly depend on who you were lucky (or unlucky) enough to be born to.

The media is one area that has been touched by the big oily cock of nepotism. The public responses to spoilt children getting an undeserved leg-up in the industry have ranged from searing outrage to ‘…meh. It’s live at Studio Five. The exhumed corpses of Hitler and Stalin could present it and it would still be pretty fucking trite’.

The traits of someone who has got a position due to their name rather than ability tend to be blindingly obvious. It’s a bit like when as a child you return home with a stick man drawing or a potato-prints picture, and your parent puts it on the fridge to keep you happy. Only instead of the fridge, it’s the Tate Modern (though one should add, If Damien Hirst put some potato prints in an art gallery, no doubt you’d get some hipster berks in Hampstead claiming the this was a conceptual study in the organic nature of art, and how its formation has been changed by the technological impact on art and artists. And then their beret would fall off…).

When children of the famous get work in low-end publications and broadcasters, the response is more ridicule than outrage. Chloe Madely dropped out of University after one term to pursue a career in media. She stated that:

“I left Leeds University after a term because I was just so over the whole education thing.”

Which, you know, are the usual phrases to appear in the patois of hard-working, budding media personalities. After stints on Big Brother’s Big Mouth, Live at Studio Five and – quelle surprise! –The Richard and Judy Show, Chole had the nepotism stick wagged firmly at her, but she claimed that she had the talent to make it on her own. To prove this to dissidents nationwide, she felt the best way to get herself across as a credible broadcaster was to strip for FHM, and appear on shows such as Celebrity Quitters (A show were ‘celebrities’ give up smoking) and Dancing On Ice (A show where celebrities dance……on ice). Hmm….

Then you have Georgina Littlejohn. Son of Richard ‘spawn of Satan’ Littlejohn, she was vilified by critics due to her appallingly down-market writing, with pieces such as ‘Make-up free Lucy Davis looks tired and fed up’ and ‘Winehouse shows signs of overindulgence as she lets it all hang out by the pool’, a story about Amy Winehouse looking a bit fat, which contained possibly the finest sentence in the history of the printed press;

She might be drug-free, but Amy still succumbs to Mr Niccotine – ironically, an appetite suppressant

(note – she did indeed spell Nicotine wrong)

The thing with Madeley and Littlejohn is that, though it’s wrong that they have a very basic grasp of spelling and sentence structure and yet get given prominent media jobs, it’s not like they’re doing stuff to make people envious. If it’s not these two doing banal reality TV or sniping celebrity columns, it’ll be two other dribbling tosspots, just sans rich parent.

However, it’s the children of the affluent who have gained exposure through credible outlets that have faced the most intense public scorn. A famous example which saw the Guardian draw widespread criticism was Max Gogarty’s ‘Max, 21, hits the road’, a self-penned article in the Guardian’s travel column by some utterly repulsive hipster twat who was going to document his ‘gap yah’ in India, where particularly highlights were to be;

Debauched beach parties, the dodgy days with “washing machine” tummy, the messy late-night stumblings into bars and, of course, all that bullshit about finding myself.

Now I speak for everyone when I say that, if I want to watch some odious British tourist get pissed on a foreign beach, I’ll pop on ‘Sun, Sea, and A + E’.

The Gogarty article read like a pure satire, like it was a typical pastiche of the ‘Shoreditch Twat’, or the pitch for a Nathan Barley movie. Every single sentence made you want to punch a wall;

Spending any sort of money I earn on food and skinny jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted two-month trip to India and Thailand. Clichéd I know, but clichés are there for a reason.

Are they? Really, Max. Are they?

Some of turns of phrase would make you utterly wince with their deplorable lack of self-awareness.

I’m kinda shitting myself about travelling. Well not so much the travelling part. It’s India that scares me. The heat, the roads, the snakes, Australian travellers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited. But shitting myself.

So a heady mix of racism, xenophobia and scat humour there. It’s what I look for in my daily Guardian.

Suspicious were raised over how someone with this standard of writing could get a column in the Guardian, and then proceed to piss off the entire country in a few short paragraphs. It transpired that Max’s father Paul was a travel writer for them, which caused uproar amongst the internet community.

Despite an editor’s rebuffing that he got the gig due to him contributing script to the TV show Skins, the general consensus is that saying he ‘wrote’ for Skins just made poor Max’s case worse. His blog was pulled and he never wrote for the Guardian again.

However bad Max Gogarty’s writing may have been, never will you read a worse column that this piece in magazine ‘NYLON’ by everyone’s favourite ubiquitous daughter; Miss Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof.

Now before I start spouting hyperbole everywhere , I should add some perspective; I’ve read Liz Jones, Jan Moir, Quentin Letts, Sally Bercow, Max Gogarty, Binkie West, Richard Littlejohn, Peter Hitchens, Sarah Palin, ex-girlfriends’ glossy magazines, birthday cards from 4-year old nephews, the back of toothpaste packets on the toilet, The Da Vinci Code and Nuts magazine’s ‘women’s sex confessions’; and yet even with all this competition, Peaches Geldof’s ‘British Invasion’ column in NYLON magazine is the worst thing I have ever read.

Peaches Geldof left independent Queens College, London, with a U in Politics. Though her painfully shit level of education would leave most people cleaning out bins for a living, it was enough to secure her columns inElle Girl, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, ES Magazine and Cleo Australia. It must been a really strong U. Like on the U/F boundary. However, Peaches’ ‘Pièce de résistance’ was an article she wrote forNYLON magazine in 2008 (I should add, ‘critically acclaimed’ NYLON magazine).

Never has a column made me feel as misanthropic as this. At least when reading Littlejohn, you know that he’s a prick that provides shocks for laughs. But with this article, you could only assume that Peaches was sitting there writing putrid metaphor after putrid metaphor, thinking ‘this is fucking gold this is. I’m like a modern day Sylvia Plath’. Opening with the most vomit inducing sentence in the history of digital media;

The sun glows a burned orange as it sinks behind a skyscraper, a car horn screeches irritably, the wind whistles through the acres of willows in Central Park:  New York, the most offbeat and eccentric city in America, is my new home.

the article just goes from bad to worse:

Her high-pitched hyena laugh filling the office as Marvin strums his guitar and dreams up ideas for the next issue.  I feel like I’m part of a movement—a magazine that encapsulates everything cool and strange and interesting.

Yeah, a movement. It’s like fucking Solidarity in there. That’s all Lech Walesa did anyway; wrote in a shite magazine about the latest retro fashion to hit Krakow, and boom; workers had rights. IT’S A MOVEMENT BITCHES!

I grew up there [London], walked its cobbled streets a thousand times, and frequented its infamous haunts.The skies are always grey and the weather is freezing, but the place is alive

The cobbled streets of London? The fuck are you on about? Jesus, someone pass me the sick bag. Or just fucking shoot me in the head.

The whole article reads like a cross between a D level English GCSE paper, and a ‘my first metaphor book’. And that’s just the standard of writing, the content is even worse.

Highlights included buying a sequined flannel shirt in Colorado for a dollar off an old Mexican woman, who told me it was a family heirloom; Max purchasing a James Dean printed metal lunchbox and using it as a makeshift handbag; being chased by a homeless man wearing a Slipknot T-shirt in Iowa; going vintage shopping in a Pittsburgh store where a 10-year-old kid in a 1970s flared pantsuit and fedora sold us the entire stock of clothes for fifty bucks.  (Max loved this store and later changed into an ‘80s red silk evening dress to present the American Eagle music festival in Pittsburgh, to my amusement and his Chester French bandmate’s confusion.)

Well that sounds like a swell day out. You two spongers fluttering about a charity shop, cause, like, you’re just so alterative, yeah? The whole thing could be paraphrased as ‘me and my rockstar boyfriend go clothes shopping with daddy’s money’;

The whole piece is a mess of hackneyed cliché, mawkish metaphors and garrulous language which come together to form this awful mess of an essay. Naturally, the response to the article was overwhelmingly bad. The article got 302 comments, and so much attention that it was written about it in an English paper. Like Max at the Guardian, her weekly column was scrapped, and she now only makes the odd fleeting experience where she say what tracks she thinks are JUST OMG SOOO AMAZIN RITE NOW!

The basic lesson we can learn from this, is that if you’re after a bit of attention for a gutter press column or downmarket TV tit-bit; putting a famous relative on it will get you popularity and hits. However, if you try and use a surname to get attention or as a favour to a friend in a serious journalism column, you will be utterly crucified. So maybe as a rule of thumb, for serious journalism; employ people based on their ability and experience, rather than who’s loins they were sired from.

Just a thought, like.

The Daily Express cares about YOUR rights. And your vacuum cleaner (14/03/2011).

The Daily Express cares about YOUR rights. And by YOUR, I mean; Middle-Englanders who’s rights aren’t remotely compromised. As Britons we love to moan, but the problem is, we don’t really have anything to moan about. In general, we get it pretty good in Ing-ger-land. Even with planned state-sector cuts, rising student fees, rising unemployment; in the grand scheme of things globally, we’re the lucky ones. This however isn’t enough to perturb the Daily Express. They want to make it quite clear that YOU Britons are the real heroes. And by YOU, I mean average folk who have led rather uneventful lives, and done nothing heroic. They love Britons so much that they’ve dedicated a whole section to the ongoing campaign for the rights of you salt-of-the-earth guys.

The Crusader is a section of the website that displays just how myopic the Express content is. It’s an amalgamation of pet peevs, council busybodies and how Britain has gone to the dogs. The spread of stories ranges from parking fines to dodgy cookers. It’s essentially taken all the throw away stories from local newspapers and given them their own section. Top of today’s billing includes a heart-warming tale about Ivan, who bought a vacuum cleaner off the internet which didn’t get delivered when they said it would! But it did eventually get delivered. Yep. So, you know. Quite the scoop.

He paid by credit card and fully expected to get the Dyson sometime before Christmas.

But in early December he received new instructions that, though slightly odd, did not arouse his suspicions enough to cancel his order. It asked him to pay by cheque or bank transfer and as an incentive offered him a further £5 discount.

Ivan complied, taking the transfer route, but his Dyson did not turn up, although from time to time he would get cheery emails assuring him it was almost on its way. “They were always so pleasant, it was easy to believe them,” he said.

Cripes! What a situation! What happened next?

Although we never heard from Utopia Consortium, the parent company, directly, the pressure seems to have worked as Ivan and his wife June finally received their Dyson last month.

“We had almost written the cleaner off so this is a lovely surprise,” they said.

……………….I wonder who’s going to play Ivan in the film?

Ivan’s tale of a vaccum cleaner getting delayed in the post was one of the many hop topics on the Crusader’s front page.  Another story concerned Londoner Elizabeth, who’s cooker broke down and – wait for it – was out of warranty. RIP, sweet cooker.

The appliance was already installed in the London flat Elizabeth bought a few years ago and was out of guarantee.

She says she was disappointed that Baumatic was not more constructive when she called.

Holy shit! So her cooker was out of warranty and therefore they wouldn’t help her? Well I’ve seen some scum in my time, but Baumatic takes the biscuit. How dare they. Her dad fought in the war so she could flaunt contract laws. Did he die in vain? Well?

This appears to be a non-story. Dippy woman’s oven is out of warranty, will have to pay for it to be fixed. Why is this in a national newspaper?

With Crusader monitoring progress, Elizabeth decided there was nothing for it but to shop around for an alternative and eventually chose Domex, a repairer and spares supplier in the South East covering most brands and appliance types.

Instead of the £110 call out charge she was previously offered, Domex provides an on-site diagnosis and three-hour labour for £42 including VAT with parts extra.

“Manufacturers often have higher overheads than us, such as travelling longer distances, they often carry fewer parts which all impact their charges and service,” says Domex director Ross Ganev.

“We recognise householders are concerned about rogue traders, so we try to be as transparent as possible. We stock a high number of parts, so customers can get a good price and most problems can be fixed on the spot or shortly after.

Ah I see, so it was a stealth ad for Domex. Good work, Crusader!

Kim Mullaly and Peggy Bonson had a similarly dull story which they decided to share with the Crusader.

HOMEOWNERS Kim Mullally and her elderly neighbour Peggy Bonson are unable to forget the day a gas company dug up their driveways and laid new pipes.

Ooh, why’s that? Did they strike gold?

Permanent reminders stand out in the shape of large patches of new tarmac – a stark contrast to the existing, weathered surface – and the homeowners are understandably upset.

Of course they accept the upgrade work was essential to maintain safety and a reliable supply, so energy company Southern Gas Networks (SGN), had to have access. But it is the way it was done and the look of what they’ve been left with that’s the problem.

So essentially, they don’t mind that the work was done, their only complaint is that weathered tarmac and new tarmac are different in colour. Should you be taking up your complaint with, I dunno, GCSE level Chemistry?

In a statement, it replied: “SGN endeavours to reinstate the surface to a similar, if not better, condition than prior to the excavation. SGN will explore every reasonable avenue of resolution.”

So they had no choice, other than to re-tarmac your entire driveway. Which would have been a perfectly reasonable demand…

Other than someone’s vacuum cleaner being delayed, science being a bit twatty and a woman getting her hob fixed at a very competitive rate (remember, that’s Domex – If can find a cheaper alternative for hob-maintenance, keep it to yourself) are there any, you know, actual stories in The Crusader? Well, thanks to Grace Bownass, there are. And this isn’t just any story. This is a Daily Express motherload. It’s got it all. Jobsworth busybodies, parking regulation, the elderly, the disabled, motorists, and (but I’m quite sure how) the economy. It’s the kind of the story that you know Richard ‘Dirty’ Desmond had had at least one tug over. If not two, if he was treating himself.

SHOPPER Grace Bownass paid a car park’s £3 Sunday all-day fee but was hammered with an astonishing £60 penalty notice.

Is it possible to get hammered by a £60 fine? Well poor Grace here is the victim of someone’s competence in their job. Which is just awful for her. So why did she get this fine?

According to operator Excel, which runs the private pay-and-display site in Albert Street, Birmingham, it was entirely the 77-year-old’s fault, as she had not followed its required process and got a ticket within 20 minutes of arriving on January 2.

Oh Grace. What on earth were you doing for 20 minutes?

“It was raining, the new year sales were on and there was a queue at the ticket machines. I stayed in my car, had the cup of tea I had brought with me and listened to the Archers serial on the radio. What an expensive drink that’s turning out to be.”

GRACE! THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING! THE ARCHERS! TEA! OH FOR FUCK SAKE, GRACE!

In reply, Excel’s marketing head Tom Banham said: “It is clearly advertised on signage throughout the car park, failure to purchase a valid ticket at the time of parking will result in the issue of Parking Charge Notice.

“One was correctly issued. Mrs Bownass was deemed not to have observed the terms and conditions, her appeal was rejected.”

However, as “a goodwill gesture” based on “the specific circumstances” of the incident, Excel has cancelled the charge but insists it still wants £10 from Grace to cover its admin costs.

So the firm slashed their fine which they were legally entitled to give her. Even this doesn’t impress the Express’ readers though, with the article’s sole comment entitled ‘DON’T PAY IT!’. For some reason, The Express and it’s readers think that the elderly are sacrosanct when it comes to the law. Fuck it, Grace, rob a bank. You’re 74, laws don’t apply to you….apparently…

So, if any of you out there have a flat tire, or a stain on an item of clothing, or can’t remember what channel BBC1 is on your TV, give the Express a ring. Remember; it’s not news unless it affects you. Or someone you know. Or someone that looks like someone you know.

Cut and Spin; A guide to Conservative policy making. Today’s topic: Smoking (09/03/2011)

The majority of Conservative policy making so far has been based around two principles;

1) Cost-cut

2) Spin

And that’s it. Introduce unpopular policy that no-one wants, then dress it up with such keywords as ‘difficult decision’ and ‘inherited deficit’ and ‘prevoius government’ etc. The latest sphere to be invaded by this this particular brand of decision making is tobacco.

Tobacco and smoking has long been the ‘cash cow’ of poor governments. It causes health problems, people don’t like it; tax it to high heaven. Despite the fact that 1/5 of the tax raised by tobacco products is spent on healthcare for smoking related illnesses (making it a prime earner for governments), the constant rhetoric by governments is to talk-up the problems of smoking, so to wring a few extra quid out of it, and gain a few popularity points. Sorry, I don’t mean to be divisive, but anytime an unpopular government goes after the tobacco industry, I get a bit suspicious of their real motives.

The Conservatives are using the public opinion against tobacco to further implement their ’cut and spin’ shenanigans. Their latest policy is to ban visual display of cigarettes, meaning they have to be concealed from view in a newsagents, and a further proposition to implement blank packaging;

Tobacco displays will have to be kept out of sight in shops in England from April 2012 for large stores and April 2015 for all other shops, the government has announced.

Ministers will also start a public consultation over whether the UK should become the first country in Europe to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes and other tobacco products while insisting they are keeping “an open mind” on the issue.

So the Conservative approach to stopping people smoking is not education on the side affects and consequences of smoking, but just to pretend that cigarettes don’t exist. Brilliant. So how has the response to this been? Are people happy about the Tory’s taking a hard stance on smoking? Well no, not really. Considering how fucking futile it is.

Diane Abbott, Labour’s public health shadow minister, said: “We welcome the fact that [David] Cameron and Lansley are building on Labour’s strategy, but there is widespread concern that the advances in smoking policy may be coming to a halt.

“The Tory-led government has imposed a freeze on mass media health campaigns including smoking, cut the smoking policy team at the Department of Health, and dithered over tobacco displays.”

So this policy is just a veil for the Cons to cut policy elsewhere. Policy teams and ad campaigns = Expensive. Telling some poor sap to stick his fags under the till = very cheap. Tell you what, I’m spotting a pattern here.

Further more, others have claimed that just making cigarettes disapper, isn’t going to stop people form smoking or from starting smoking. It’s like not teaching children about sex as a means of birth control i.e fucking retarded.

Association of Convenience Stores chief executive, James Lowman, said: “There simply isn’t the evidence to suggest that the measure will reduce smoking among young people.

Andrew Opie, food director at the British Retail Consortium, said: “There’s no evidence that forcing shops to put cigarettes out of sight will make any difference. It puts new costs on retailers who are being forced to refit their stores”.

So in summary, it’s a unsubstantiated token gesture to distract people from cuts made elsewhere to smoking helathcare policy. Terrific.

‘Kicked and Humiliated’; how the newspapers covered the Lib Dems by-election performance. (04/03/11)

This week saw the town of Barnsley get the most attention the place has had since Barnsley Town FC’s shock promotion to the Premiership in 1997 (what a team it had though, eh. Eric Tinkler, Neil Redfern, Lars Leese, Clint Marcelle. True greats of the game). The big talking point was the Liberal Democrats getting an absolute hammering in the polls (similar to some comprehensive hammerings Barnsley FC received in that fateful season) finishing in lowly 6^th place (difference being that Barnsley FC would have sold their collective grandmothers for a 6^th place finish in ‘98).

Labour coasted to victory in the Barnsley Central by-election, in spite of the jailing of the party’s previous MP for expenses fraud, with the Lib Dems slumping to sixth place.

UKIP ended the night with a huge rise in its share of the vote and most to celebrate.

The result was particularly grim for the Liberal Democrats whose vote fell sharply despite the party fielding an experienced candidate in Dominic Carman, son of the celebrated barrister George Carman.

Yeah, even with Labour’s previous MP in the area being sent to jail for expenses fraud, it was still a cakewalk for them, which really makes you appreciate how much people hate the Lib Dems right now. Real burning hatred. Turnout was only 36.5%, and of the share of the vote;

Dan Jarvis (Lab) 14,724 (60.80%, +13.53%)

Jane Collins (Ukip) 2,953 (12.19%, +7.53%)

James Hockney (C) 1,999 (8.25%, -9.01%)

Ends Dalton (BNP) 1,463 (6.04%, -2.90%)

Tony Devoy (Ind) 1,266 (5.23%, +3.58%)

Dominic Carman (LD) 1,012 (4.18%, -13.10%)

The Conservatives were beaten to second place by UKIP, while the LD’s were worryingly beaten by the BNP. Bet the Tories are annoyed they didn’t get Darren Gough to run as a candidate now. He is used to being on a sticky wicket. He can cause big swings in unfriendly conditions. He always fends off tough opponents with a straight bat…….that’s it, that’s all the cricket puns…..

The papers were unified in the view that the Liberal Democrats took a heavy defeat, only disagreeing on the semantics and hyperbole.

The Daily Mail claimed that the Lib Dems ‘were HUMILIATED into sixth place’, with voters turning against them because of ‘U-turns on issues like University tuition fees’. The Guardian also went for‘Humiliated Lib Dems’, while in the Telegraph’sview the Lib Dems ‘got a kicking’. The Telegraph also printed Clegg’s response to the aforementioned kicking;

“The result in the by-election last night was obviously a bad result for the Liberal Democrats.”

“I have no doubt that people will try to use this single result to write off the Liberal Democrats. They have done it in the past and we have proved them wrong and we will prove them wrong again…The truth is that it was a no-contest for any non-Labour candidate.”

Which probably explains why he failed turn up and support LD representative Dominic Carman. You know, because it was a no contest. Which he failed to mention before the election. Of course.

The Daily Express described the event as a ‘Barnsley Kicking’, which I believe is a sexual position. Right? TheExpress added that Clegg ‘has insisted he would not be knocked off course’. Call me naïve, but wasn’t it this complete disregard of your electorate’s opinions that got you into this mess in the first place?

The Independent led with ‘humiliated’ also, but focussed their article on the nature of the candidates who beat Carman and the LDs.

The extent of the Lib Dems’ slide surpassed all predictions, with advance speculation suggesting that one or both of the BNP and Ukip might overhaul Mr Clegg’s party.

To be beaten also by an independent candidate with no party machine behind him – unemployed ex-miner Tony Devoy – is particularly embarrassing for the Lib Dems.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage claimed that his party ‘are now the voice of opposition in British politics. The Lib Dems have lost that mantle’. Which is fair enough. As the old fable goes, you take the Barnsley Central by-election, you take the country. Oh wait, no-one says that. In fact, if we’re gonna be reactionary and base the country’s opinion on one electoral seat, then I have as much right to claim that Greens are the real voice of opposition, considering, unlike Farage’s party, they actually managed to WIN a seat. What about that eh, Nige?

LD party president Tim Farren stated that “perhaps the biggest story is that 70% of people didn’t think it was worth bothering.” And you can’t blame the people, really. What are their options? You’ve either got Labour who were in power when we got into this current economic mess, you’ve got the Conservatives who are cutting taxes for the super-wealthy and cutting state provisions for the poor, or the Lib Dems who seem to have a morbid obsession with revoking on their promises. The electorate is hardly spoilt for choice.

There is always the Monster Raving Looney Party, I suppose.

My First Bus Ride Countdown (24.02)

(For more like this, go to shouting at cows. We bring the news, we bring the funniez. You bring the eyes).

I don’t know if any of you were lucky enough/rich enough/middle-class enough to read yesterday’s Telegraph, but there was the most brilliant article by Binkie West yesterday, where she described the event that us normal folk worry about the most; the finer points of our absurdly ostentatious wedding to an affluent beau we met at our local polo club. She really did manage to encapsulate the population’s qualms with her piece, especially in these times of financial peril. Without people like her, who is going to keep the Pol Roger champagne empire afloat?

It made me think of an event that I too will be experiencing for the first time this year; using public transport.

As a young boy, I had visions of being a public transport passenger with a lovely blond tussle fringe with foppish undertones. A bit like an aryan Hugh Grant. In preparation for this, I booked myself in for a wet trim at Supercuts (www.supercuts.co.uk). I don’t want to look like an utter plum-in-mouth, upper class nitwit, so I’ve gone for something that says to fellow passengers ‘yes, I too am one of the proletariat. I’ll happily spend my weekends drinking pints and watching soccerball on the television’. Getting on a bus you want perfection, and I think a haircut that says ‘public school wanker’ is rather lovely.

On Saturday I attended a ‘Using public transport for the first time’ party. My hair looked rather lovely. They couldn’t believe it was £8.95 without a booking! We went to Wetherspoon’s for their ‘Beer and a Burger’ lunchtime deal. It was great to be there with my brother, who will be accompanying me when I embark on this amazing journey. He has ridden on buses before, so Biffo thought it would be a good idea to call him ‘Dole Daniel’, as he doesn’t own a car. Honestly, first time me and Hugo heard that we chunderd so hard. With many of us using public transport for the first time this year, there really is tube fever about.

All this preparation for being ‘down with the ozlone layer’ was stressful, so to relax I went for a game of laser quest with some friends (www.laserquest.co.uk). A few head shots will make me feel my absolute best on the big day.

This week I also sold my car. D-Cam was talking about how as a country we need to go green, so I sold my little runner (www.autotrader.co.uk). I learnt to walk when I was two and have always been a little tusker, so I’m relishing the experience. In preparation for this green-shift, I’ve imported some eco-friendly radiators in from San Francisco, and installed them at a competitive rate (www.Britishgas.co.uk). I just think it’s criminal how other people don’t care about their environment as much as me, and refuse to import eco-friendly home wares in on gas-guzzling freights.

Having left my job as an assistant regional advertising recruitment consultant executive, I’m relieved to have so much more time on hands. Not only are there appointments to fit in, but there is also the ongoing admin. I have to buy the ticket, pick out my outfit (you don’t want to look pompous, but at the same time you want to make it pertinently clear to other passengers that you have a shitlot more cash than them). There are the various questions to ponder over; do I go free plan with some autumnal layers and a simple cashmere scarf, or do I opt for some knitware to appropriate the ‘boho-chic’ look, metaphorically saying to other passengers ‘yeeeeeah, just taking the bus. It’s how I roll. Might go for a jazz cigarette and pint of beer later as well. Just the crazy shit that a man in knitwear gets up to’. I’m constantly planning different outfits, so this morning I visited my favorite little ‘underground’ clothes shop (www.topman.com) to find something hip and unique to make me stand-out on that communal vessel of hopes and dreams.

When I think of all the friends and relatives that might venture down to experience this with me, it makes me wish that I’d picked a double-decker, or even a Megabus (www.megabus.com)! Having said that, I wouldn’t change my first bus ride on the number 6 (doesn’t go past my house during off-peak times) for the world. I always wanted a small, intimate bus ride for my first sample of public transport, and so far everything is meeting all of my expectations. I can’t wait!

Daily Mail: Amanda Platell Hates Women (21/02)

Amanda Platell is my favourite Australian export since piss-weak beer and the Neighbours Christmas Album. She is brill. Platell is amongst the throng of female writers including Liz Jones, Jan Moir, Georgina Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips over at Mail HQ, that would make Emily Pankhurst turn in her grave. This is a special brand of of hate-filled woman -  each has her own target and attacks them without cessation. Like really vile Power Rangers. Liz Jones; hates the poor. Jan Moir; hates the gays. Georgina Littlejohn; hates fat people. Melanie Phillips; hates EVERYTHING. (She’s like the Red Ranger; the boss. Funny story actually, I had a Red Ranger AM/FM radio as a kid. I can never think of it the same way after this metaphor however. If I ever found it, all I’d see is Melanie Phillips looking up at me saying something inflammatory about Palestinians.) Amanda Platell, it appears, abso-fucking-lutely hates women. At least she’s fair though, she hates all women. White, black, European, American, religious, atheist, mothers, workers; all of them; if it’s got tits, she hates it.

Among Platell’s recent articles, we’ve enjoyed character assassinations of Fern Britton;

She is living proof you don’t have to diet and exercise to get slim, you just have to have a gastric band fitted.

The ‘absurdly pointless’ (her words) Jemima Khan;

…who’s famous for ­nothing more than inheriting her father’s fortune and her ­terrible taste in men.

Angelina Jolie’s marriage;

They start and end each day by meditating and reciting a sacred word that encapsulates their union. Is that word ‘money’, I wonder?

Lady Gaga;

Pity when it comes to sartorial judgment, she’s increasingly gaga and certainly no lady.

Danielle Lineker;

Does she not own a mirror, or is there plastic between her ears as well as on her chest?

Kelly Brook;

I’m sure it was your big personality the photographer wanted to capture whenyou posed for Playboy in 2010.

Victoria Beckham and ‘her Poundland copycat’ (again, her words) Colleen Rooney;

…have proved that they are willing to endure almost any humiliation by their husbands so long as they get to keep the keys to the mansions and the Mercedes.

And this fantastic measured response about large breasted women:

Bra company Bravissimo has launched the mammoth L-cup to accommodate bigger breasts.

It puts the demand for them down to changes in women’s diet and exercise — which is polite talk for the gargantuan bosoms of obese women who stuff their faces and don’t get off their butts.

Get real. The ­elephant in the room is . . . the women needing bras like this.

And these were all stories in the last two months. But the fun doesn’t stop there. In amongst these phenomenal works of journalism, we’ve also had full editorials by Platell, with such titles as;

• A wretched woman who degrades democracy.

• It’s not just me that has switched off middle-aged women.

• Women on top? Not with this lot.

I mean, wow. Just wow. That is devotion to your prerogative right there.

She’s quite an amazing woman really; despises celebrity culture, yet is utterly obsessed with women in the public eye. Particularly vindictive on the subject of larger women, yet repulsed by any suggestion of women going to lengths to change this (should also add, she’s hardly a stick-figure herself). I mean she really is an enigma, wrapped in an Australian flag. That’s been soaking in acid. And piss.

Anyway, The Platster is back this week with a fantastic article on… wait for it… awful women! You would never have guessed!

Figures just out show a sharp increase in the number of women getting pregnant during the recession. Statisticians put this down to the fact that, during hard financial times, couples turn to each other for comfort and support.

What tosh. Nothing divides couples more than money, or a lack of it. The baby boom is much more likely to be down to opportunistic single mums on benefits who’ve clocked that producing another baby is the quickest way to double their income.

Yeah that’s right! Bluddy conniving women, going through 9 months of pregnancy then 18 years of a child’s upbringing for a few extra quid a week. What evil, self-absorbed scum. Platto knows more than the statisticians you see. She doesn’t need ‘figures’. Figures are ‘tosh’. All she needs is her self-inflated sense of importance and a total lack of perspective. Hey, it’s got her this far.

So, to all you women out there thinking about a cheeky bonk in order to sponge off the state; don’t you dare! You know what? You can’t be trusted. Leave the double bed. Saw it in half and plonk your half in the hallway. Actually scrub that, stick your husband/boyfriend on the couch. No wait, live in separate properties. Ahh wait, but then you’ve got a single mother situation, and they are the most opportunistic of all the benefit scroungers. Jesus, tell you what, this rampant reactionary anger isn’t half problematic sometimes.

I have my own theory on Amanda Platell. I have a suspicion that she isn’t really a woman. I think that the Mail paid a guy to have a sex-change, so that they could employ a sexist arse into their Femail department, then all his thinly veiled attacks on women could be defended, as ‘I can’t be sexist; I’ve got a fanny!’. Now there’s no ‘evidence’ or ‘facts’ to back this up, but that never stopped Platell. Statisticians only come up with tosh anyway. Let’s look at a few interesting things;

1. Her name is A MAN da Platell.
2. …..

I don’t know about you, but that’s enough proof for me.

Consider Amanda Platell; Mythbusted.

TV REVIEW: Hotter Than My Daughter - BBC3 (17.02.2011)

(For TV based tomfoolery like this, go to Shouting at Cows. It’s good for your health)

BBC3 is really the forgotten relative of shite TV. When people talk about TV stations where the output is unfiltered dross, they’ll roll off the usual networks like Living TV, Bravo, Sky News etc, but BBC3 is often forgotten, despite its relentless commitment to providing TV of such a low grade that it would make Endemol think ‘You know what? Bit crude. We’re more respectable’. BBC3 seems to mainly exist now to keep the countless members of Atomic Kitten employed, and current show ‘Hotter Than My Daughter’ (which I should add, is on its second series) is no exception.

The basic plot is this; mums are dressing too young, daughters are dressing too shit. They get a makeover, families are saved. It’s essentially a chance to watch a throng of mid-40-somethings slut it up for 30 minutes. Sorry, what sexual deviants out there are that desperate for a wank?

The first gruesome twosome is 46 year old Tracy and 26 year old daughter, Layla. Tracy says Lady Gaga is her style icon, which is fitting, considering Tracy look a bit like a transvestite from the right angle. Most of Tracy’s dresses are either corsets or sparkly numbers, except one lovely garment which makes her look like she’s off to a pagan ritual hosted by G-A-Y. Daughter Layla is 26 but dresses like a 15 year old sk8er (that’s how the kids spell it… apparently). Layla has two kids and fell into the trap that a lot of parents do of putting all her effort into her children’s upbringing, rather than her choice of eyeliner. Pfft, silly sod.

To judge their current look and give them a makeover, they rope together some of ‘Wolverhampton’s most stylish people’. It’s the usual rabble of ‘style experts’; couple of trendy girls with obscene haircuts and a homosexual gentleman in an ill-fitting suit. Because, you know, people who can’t dress themselves and people who can’t get a haircut without re-mortgaging their house are the epitome of style.

Host – let’s just call her ‘blond scouse lady from non-descript pop band’ – delves deep into why Layla wears these ‘trainer’ things. Turns out she was bullied at 14, which made her personality quite introverted. See, with these things there is always a sob story. It can’t just be that she finds jeans comfy or something. It always has to be some drawn-out story like ‘well my dad was strangled by a burgler with an Alexander McQueen ball-gown, and my mum got her head caved in with a Jimmy Choo stiletto, so since then I’ve always worn hoodies’.

The basic summary is that one is frumpy, one is mutton dressed as lamb. Or to be more exact, mother Tracy is ‘dressed like a stripper’, while daughter Layla looks like a ‘little boy gone wrong’. Both are unhappy with the jury’s verdict, Layla wailing ‘I don’t look like a boy, and mum doesn’t look like a stripper’. Err, she does. And, erm, you do. Sorry.

Anyway, it’s makeover time and the women each get a haircut from the doppelgänger of mid 90s Columbian footballer Carlos Valderamma. Which is interesting for fans of the 1994 Columbian football team. The makeover happens and Layla gets the usual Toni and Guy/Topshop look that every other girl on your average high street has. Anyway she’s well happy, so starts crying, as you have to give the Beeb their money shot.

‘All we’ve done is given you a haircut, a nice dress and put some makeup on you!’

What a fantastic use of licence-payer’s money. I feel a bit Daily Mail all of a sudden.

Couple Two! And we’re off to Preston, the home of fashion! (Not really, that was sarcasm.) Mother Tracy is worried that daughter Paris dresses too risqué for fifteen. This is slightly hypocritical when the mum’s dress sense can be best summarised as ‘tits = out’.

‘All the lads I know say she’s a MILF’.

Fifteen-year-old boys in ‘wanting to have sex with anything with a pulse’ shocker.

Tracy isn’t happy with Paris’ dresses sense, wanting her to dress ‘younger’. Paris takes the ‘Swiss Cheese’ approach to dressing; skin tight outfit, with arbitrary holes showing skin (that metaphor doesn’t really work, does it?). Tracey claims that her dress sense has caused problems before.

We were on holiday in France and two guys were looking at Paris. I went over and said “Piss off! She’s only Thirteen!” And after I left the cheeky bugger started looking again! Hahaha!

Ahh, paedophiles. Up to their usual brand of whimsical japery. When will they learn?

The Preston judges’ panel looks just like the cast of Glee. They claim that Paris ‘looks like a stripper’ and Tracy is ‘too much boobs’. Wordsmiths, I think you’ll agree.

 Makeover number two is on the horizon and Paris is going to be made to look younger, while Tracy is going to be made to look older. CONTAIN YOUR EXCITEMENT PEOPLE! It’s the same shit again for Tracy; haircut, make up, whip round the bargain bin at River Island. Paris is next for her makeover and, Christ on a bike, they make her look abso-fucking-lutely terrible. She looks like a Cabbage Patch doll in an ill-fitting wig.

‘I’m gobsmacked, I look completely different!’

You look like Robert Smith in a dress, love. I should hope so too.

So, what I’ve learnt from tonight’s show is that if you want to make people look older, you have to get them more mature clothing and makeup, and if you want to make them look younger, you have to give them more of a youthful look.

I’ve sent my findings to NASA.

The Midweek Newspapers in 3 minuets; Police crackdowns in Bahrain, Welfare crackdowns in Britain…(17/02/20110)

Inspired by the Egyptian and Tunisian protests, a similar movement in Bahrain against their autocratic government fell victim to an immense police crackdown last night, with 5 people being killed and the destruction of their camp in Pearl Square, central Manama.

Hundreds of security forces used batons, rubber bullets and tear gas on demonstrators who had been camped out in Pearl Square calling for political reform.

“Police are coming, they are shooting teargas at us,” one protestor said amid the chaos. Another said: “I am wounded, I am bleeding. They are killing us.”

The protests are against the monarchy rule of the country, where the Al Khalifa family (a Sunni family) rule over a predominately Shia population.

By the morning, the square appeared nearly empty of protesters. Abandoned tents, blankets and rubbish dotted the area, and the smell of teargas wafted through the air.

One protester said he had driven away two people who had been wounded by rubber bullets.

Clearly, the ruling Al Khalifa family and the military weren’t willing to let what happened to Egypt happen to them, and used an over-zealous response to cut the protests off in their infancy.

“We were asleep and they started slicing through our tent,” said Nabeel Ebrahim, who was sleeping alongside two trauma surgeons from Salmaniya hospital. “They started firing gas from the overpass and attacking us from all directions.”

But it was not just protestors that were clamped down on, ambulances and civilians trying to help also felt the wrath of police, too.

Ambulances are being prevented from arriving at Pearl roundabout to collect dozens of wounded people thought to be trapped there.

They were quickly beaten back by riot police firing sound grenades and teargas as they charged towards the demonstrators, who retreated to the hospital grounds. Several more were wounded in the clashes.

One ambulance driver said he was stopped by police, who violently removed wounded protesters from the back of his vehicle and ordered him at gunpoint to leave.

The police were always going to clamp down hard on any signs of protest following the success of the peaceful demonstrations in Egypt, especially somewhere like Bahrain, were there has been strained relations between the ruling Al Khalifa family and the Shia population, following years of perceived discrimination towards the country’s religious majority. The use of force in Bahrain is likely to be replicated by other autocratic regions facing protest aswell, in particular Libya, where police statements released said ‘that protests will be met by lethal force’.

Other papers were more concerned with the major UK story of the day; welfare-state reform.

Work and Pensions secretary Ian Duncan Smith has outlined new reforms that will be – reportedly – the biggest welfare shake-up in 60 years. These include;

• A single universal credit to come into force in 2013
• Tax changes to enable people to keep more income
• Changes to the disability living allowance
• More details of the back-to-work programme
• Those refusing to work facing a maximum three-year loss of benefits
• Annual benefit cap of about £26,000 per family
• Review of sickness absence level

Response has been mixed to the proposals. Naturally, the Daily Mail and other right wing press were abso-fucking-lutely delighted about it, considering to them everyone without a job is a Burberry wearing sponge with 3 kids.

In an interview with the Mail, Mr Duncan Smith pledged that it would no longer be possible for anyone to choose a ‘life on benefits’, which he says has fuelled mass immigration over the past decade.

Yeah it’s the old ‘people choose to be employed, foreigners come here for hand-outs’ shtick again. The thing is, there is no point incentivising people returning to work and reforming the benefit system, when there’s no work for these people to go into. These reforms are on the back-drop of massive redundancies facing both the state and private sector. 2,000 jobs were axed from Manchester City Council alone, so it seems senseless to spend resources encouraging people to return to work when you just booted them out of the job they already had! (……..and, breath….)

Although an estimated 2.4 million people would be better enough, and estimated 1.6 would be worse off, and as chief executive of the National Housing Federation David Orr states, “To reduce the housing allowance for those out of work means punishing people for failing to find a job in a very difficult job market,”. Taken into account the £2.1bn cost to establish these reforms, it makes you ask the question; why now?

The other issue I have with it is that, is Duncan-Smith’s insistence on the family and his attempt to govern alongside his prominent Christian beliefs, including a cap on benefits paid to single-parent families, and this excerpt from the Mail, stating new plans to give kick-backs to married couples:

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Best Daily Mail reader comment

• Let in a lot more immigrants in and make them do the work and pay tax while the rest of us live on benefits and live a life doing what we would like to do instead of spending our lives slaving away for little or no reward.

- Gaz, n/e, 17/2/2011 2:37

NEWS: Andy Gray sees Red for sexist comments. Was he right to be sacked? (26.01)

(I was going to go with ‘Gray shown Red after offside comments about lineswoman are flagged. Was it a poor decision?’ So be happy you escaped with just one referee pun)

25-year-old Sian Massey, a lineswoman in the Wolverhampton vs Liverpool match at the weekend, was the main talking point following the game. Was it because of her fantastic call to give Merieles on-side for Liverpool’s first goal, a decision that a number of her male counterparts wouldn’t have had the confidence to make? No, it’s because pundits Andy Gray and Richard Keys didn’t think she’d know the rules. You know, because she’s a lady.

Gray and Keys were overheard making deriding comments about Massey on an undetected microphone;

They concurred that female officials “don’t know the offside rule”, with Keys adding: “I can guarantee you there’ll be a big one today. (Liverpool manager) Kenny (Dalglish) will go potty.”

Massey crucially made a correct borderline call in the build-up to Liverpool’s first goal at Molineux.

Keys also went on to remark on comments made by Brady in The Sun on Saturday morning about the level of sexism in football by saying: “See charming Karren Brady this morning complaining about sexism? Yeah. Do me a favour, love.”

More footage from a separate incident involving Gray was later released:

Burton initially described 25-year-old Miss Massey as “a bit of a looker”, referring to comments by another colleague.

The reporter continued: “He (a Sky Sports crew member) says she (Massey) is all right. Now, I don’t know if I should trust his judgement on that?”

Gray replied: “No, I wouldn’t. I definitely wouldn’t… I can see her from here.”

He then swore and added: “What do women know about the offside rule?”

The final nail in Gray’s coffin was a video from the production of a sky sports Christmas special. It shows Gray making harassing comments with a sexual undertone towards co-anchor Charlotte Jackson.

Although he was only initially suspended, Sky came to decision that with the mounting evidence his position had become untenable, and he was formally sacked.

The response has been varied; some claiming that he should be sacked for his discriminating comments, while others believe that it was just a bit of friendly banter.

The fact is that in corporations the size of Sky, you have to have a zero tolerance policy towards discrimination in any form. ITV and Sky took a zero tolerance approach to racism after comments made by Ron Atkinson and Rodney Marsh, and sacked them on the spot. To take one approach to racism and another to sexism, just says to women out there ‘yeah, we just don’t think you’re THAT important’. Women’s football is the fastest growing sport in Britain, and Sky Sports have countless female staff employed in their production and broadcasting departments. It’s an equal playing field now, and you can’t employee people with archaic views.

What Andy Gray said was not light-hearted banter. By claiming she wouldn’t know the offside rule because she female, Gray openly stated that Massey was incompetent at her job because of her sex. There is nothing humorous about that. It’s pure sexism. If you’re going to implement a systematic, zero-tolerance approach to discrimination, then it has to be just that. Gray was right to go, and hopefully this can be a wakeup call for fans and pundits alike, that the game has changed.

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TV Review: So was Bruno based on a true story? (Harald Glööckler; Prince of Fashion)

Would anyone notice if Living TV disappeared? How long would it take before you noticed there was a channel missing from your box? Would you sit down one evening and think ‘you know what, I really fancy watching an arbitrary episode of CSI, or America’s Next Top Model’ only for your search to end up ultimately fruitless? So when told to find an odd, late night show to review, I knew that Living would serve up some classic rubbish. Enter Harald Glööckler; Prince of Fashion.

Harald Glööckler is essentially a real life form of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno. A purveyor of extreme fashion that tows the lie between parody and delusion. His apartment is awash with a sea of garish mannequins and jewellery. It’s the sort of fashion that would make someone think the whole industry is an inside joke. Like what Tracey Emin’s unmade bed was to the modern art debate; that but with spaghetti straps.

The basic crux of Prince of Fashion is that Harald has outgrown the German fashion industry, and wants to take his ‘look’ to the UK; because he knows that there are plenty of tits in this country that will lap all this shit up. His day is a healthy mix of narcissism with some luxurious excess thrown in for good measure. He goes to a hair salon every morning; for a hair wash. He nips over to the gym for a workout wearing a low lung slung glittery green vest and enough jewellery to make Jimmy Saville wince, then off for a photo-shoot.

Harald however kills the mood slightly later when talking about his dead mother. It’s not so much the fact that his mother died, but the way he recalls the events – his father killing his mother by pushing her down the stairs – with the same reticence and emotional involvement that one would have if describing the weekly shopping list. Simply put; the guy is as mad as a crab’s cock.

Once we’re accustomed with Harald he heads over to London for his catwalk, fashion show thing (you know the deal, models walk up a long strip of carpet with a look of menace on their faces like they’re about to glass you, then walk back. Repeat). Due to his limited time in London he has an express tour of the capital, visiting the major attractions of Battersea Dog Home, The QVC building and a regression therapist. I am sure there’s a reason that the edition of ‘Lonely Planet: London City Guide’ Harald possessed was pulped.

The session with the regressive therapist (as far I can gather it is essentially someone who tries to communicate with your former self) explains some of the eccentricities of Harald’s character. Under hypnosis, Harald states that he believes he is an 18-year-old, God-like being with club foot, who wears orthopaedic shoes and is married to his sister. The 60s were crazy, but that’s taking the piss. The therapist probes further and Harald states that he believes he is the reincarnation of Tutankhamen, and he is making it his life’s work to reclaim all the gold on this earth that is rightfully his. Either this guy needs to be sectioned, or his subconscious has pulled off an epic merk.

Harald’s fashion show starts and the audience – all 20 of them – look incredibly confused, as if the Living TV producers have bussed them in at gunpoint. The models are carbon copies of The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and the main room is what I imagine Liza Minnelli’s hallway to look like. The selection of clothes is…well, interesting. Perhaps I’m not the best judge, as I spent most of the time watching the display thinking; ‘You really don’t see fabric lampshades much anymore’. The opinions in the room are split from ‘It reminds me of Vivienne Westwood’ to ‘The dresses were awful! The fabric looked cheap and none of the garments fit!’, so if nothing else it raised debate. 

Irrespective of how good the clothes were, how strange Harald was or what exactly a regressive therapist actually is, the one lasting thought I had was this; that was so much more entertaining than Bruno! Seriously, this blew it out the water. Wow; and I mean that.

(for more like this, head over to shoutingatco.ws, where myself and others will attempt to make you chortle, titter, and maybe if you’re lucky a full laugh).

NEWS! Smart University students are actually dumb University students, and it turns out we’re NOT all in it together… (02/01)

New year = New News! Yeah, erm, great…

The Guardian lead with the Ford prison riots;

Two separate investigations will be held into the New Year’s Day riot at Ford open prison where balaclava-clad inmates torched buildings in protest at a clampdown on illegal drinking.

The prisons minister, Crispin Blunt, confirmed today there would be an internal Prison Service inquiry and a police inquiry into the violence, which is estimated to have caused about £3m damage.

It appears that prisoners in this case do, in the words of philosopher Danny Dyer, ‘love a good tear up’. From the outset the protest looks largely pointless. Ford prison is an ‘open prison’, and a place where inmates coming to end of their sentence go. This is the sort of prison that you find Daily Mail readers moaning about, because the inmates are allowed books, tvs, windows etc. In the process of the riots ’accommodation blocks, a gymnasium, a mail room and recreation room with 10 newly installed pool tables were destroyed’ and I’m struggling to get my head round why people with access to half decent facilities, who themselves are nearing then end of their sentence would find the need to riot for being clamped down for taking part in illegal activities, loosing recreational facilitis and jepordising the chance of release in the process.

This has been a long time waiting to happen. Staff have been running around trying to breathalyse prisoners. It’s been reminiscent of the end scenes of The Benny Hill Show - the only thing missing was the music. It’s very difficult when you have a very small staff.

Yeah, just like Benny Hill, from that famous ‘crims go arsonist’ episode. One of my favs. 

…The Daily Mail do the unprescendanted move of criticising the Conservative party. Wait……wait……wait, what?

Senior MPs were accused of ‘highly insensitive conduct’ last night after celebrating the New Year with lavish holidays or by sipping champagne at an exclusive Commons fireworks party.

Among them were Chancellor George Osborne, who defied austerity Britain by taking a luxury break at Prince Charles’s favourite ski resort, Klosters…Meanwhile tycoon MP Zac Goldsmith was reportedly sunning himself at a £8,000-a-week villa in the Caribbean over the New Year

Conservative Mps in ‘saying one thing but meaning the other’ shocker. Despite Osbourne claiming that we ‘were all in it together’, it appears, in fact, we’re not. With VAT increasing to 20% on the 1^st, coupled with tax increases and benefit cuts, luxurious holidays are now something that most will not enjoy. Osbourne remained tight lipped on the issue, but The Mail managed to provide a detailed account of what hospitality various MPs enjoyed. John Bercow, speaker of the house and the man with the most punchable face in Britain, hosted a party with ‘pop singer Duffy, EastEnders actor Ross Kemp, soprano Lesley Garrett and the Speaker’s Labour-supporting wife Sally,’.  Jesus, no coke and stippers or anything. Even our corrupt MPs are boring.

Best user comment 

We brits are always out for what we can get, that is why socialism will never, ever work in this country. These so called toffs are no different than the rest of us. This was the attitude that that built an empire, take, take and take some more, just live with it.

- Richard Scammell, Some minor province of the EU., 02/1/2011 12:15 

What. A. Twat.

… The Daily Telegraph cover concerns over the dumbing down of university grades:

Degree results obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show six out of 10 students were handed either a first or an upper second in 2010, compared with just one in three graduates in 1970.

Rather than examine the possibility that students and teachers may be improving, the first assumption is; dumbing down.

Imperial College London and Warwick both granted 80 per cent firsts or 2:1s last year, compared with 49 per cent and 39 per cent respectively in 1970.

At Bath University the figure was 76 per cent last year compared with just 35 per cent in 1970. 

So you’re telling me that 3 of the best universities in Britain have awarded a massive amount of upper class honours? Well I am gobsmacked.

There are so many factors to examine when looking at the data. More students going to university means a more competitive job market. Then you have to take into account EU labour laws which mean an even more competitive job market. There could also be improving teaching standards, and also the factor that now students pay for education, they have more incentive to do well?

But what do I know. I only went to University and fraternized with other students, rather than sit behind a fleet street desk and twist data to push whatever bullshit prerogative my editor has told me to, so…

…finally The Sun talk about Russell Brand tweeting a photo of self confessed ‘make-up addict’ Katy Perry sans slap.

Singer Katy, 25, appeared pale, greasy and spotty in the picture - and didn’t seem happy to be caught on film.

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