Yes, that’s it, you’d sack her, so that it got lots more media attention than you want.

Ross Parry/ [...]]]> If you owned a football club, and the woman who dressed up as your mascot posed in saucy underwear – for charity – in a national Sunday newspaper (okay, the Sport), what would you do?

Yes, that’s it, you’d sack her, so that it got lots more media attention than you want.

Ross Parry/ Jonathan Pow

Just to heap on the embarassment to the club, the charity being rewarded for Tracy Chandler’s hard work is the NSPCC, the same charity that Doncaster Rovers have been supporting recently with many other fundraising events.

So we’ve reprinted the photograph here. It’s not x-rated by any means.

How was the poor dog sacked? No, not sent to the vets, but told not to bother turning up again by email. No right of reply, just a simple sacking.

What nice people they must be at Doncaster Rovers!

Update

Pleased to say that enough people caused a furore that Tracy has her job back!

Yesterday I noticed it land in Central London and tracked [...]]]> Whenever I hear a helicopter in the sky, I look up to see what it is, and this little beauty always makes me smile. The London Air Ambulance is an amazingly small craft that can land in the most awkward of places, including Oxford Circus.

Yesterday I noticed it land in Central London and tracked it down to Gordon Square. I knew I was close because a stranger in the street looked at me as I walked past and said:

“There’s a helicopter in the square, it’s got a big Virgin sign on the side. I didn’t know Richard Branson had his own helicopter.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh, or cry. I just acknowledged her, and said thank you.

I stood well back for take-off, as last time I watched it taking off it was on Euston Road and the rotors blew up a lot of mess into my eyes. Strangely I didn’t get any from Gordon Square – thanks guys.

The London Air Ambulance is funded completely from donations. You can donate online at http://www.londonsairambulance.com

An odd day to read the news, Nick Clegg says people should not “write off” the Lib Dems, despite them slumping to sixth place in the Barnsley Central by-election.

“”In truth it was a no contest for any non-Labour candidate,” [...]]]> Yes, it’s time to look at the news from today…

Clegg defiant against the voters

An odd day to read the news, Nick Clegg says people should not “write off” the Lib Dems, despite them slumping to sixth place in the Barnsley Central by-election.

“”In truth it was a no contest for any non-Labour candidate,” … “It was a very safe Labour seat. Labour got a huge majority on an abysmally-low turnout and everybody else was left to pick up the pieces.”

So, if we take that literally, Nick Clegg doesn’t pay attention to what the polls say unless it suits him. I’d rather expect that, as a champion of a new way of politics, he’d take a more measured view of what the people think.

Smith upsets Letts by talking about pornography.

Jackie Smith’s programme about pornography on BBC Radio 5 Live was a hoot. Though I am still left wondering whether her comment that all those shelves of women being objectified and degrading themselves equally means that gay porn is men degrading and objectifying themselves? Barely a smattering of complaints, according to Ofcom, so it went down well, with the listeners at least, but not with Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail. You know the old adage, if you don’t like it don’t watch it? Well, that applies to listening too. Poor old (well, nearly 50) Letts mustn’t have enjoyed listening to “Porn Again”, judging by his reaction in the paper:

“Little Miss Brassy barged her way on to the publicly-funded airwaves last night to present a breathy, oh-so-daring radio programme about pornography.”

“The point of the exercise, purportedly, was to report and inform. Pull the other one. The aim here was titillation and self-promotion.”

“Did the title of the show, ‘Porn Again’, not say it all? A jokey pun, and quest for a second chance. Miss Smith yearns to turn herself into a media celebrity. The BBC wanted to pull in the viewers by having a former Home Secretary say ‘t*ts’ on air.”

Let’s get this right, Letts points out that the programme title should have said it all. I’m struggling to understand how the man who wrote “Bog Standard Britain”, a book about how critical correctness has “crushed the individualism from our nation of once indignant eccentrics” has the gall to whinge when a programme tailored exactly to those eccentrics surfaces.

That same Quentin Letts who wants to flatten town centres, and replace them with houses, because the town centre is ‘dead’.

That same Quentin Letts who is frequently welcomed onto the airwaves of the BBC (particularly Radio Four), to come up with pious shite such as this gem:

“I was just thinking about the Olympics. My feeling about the Olympic Games is that it should be about games, it should be about sport, it should be about men running the 100 yards or the 100 metres and it should be about enormous Russian women putting the shot and it shouldn’t be – at least we think they’re women – and it shouldn’t be – it shouldn’t be about the arts. And it horrifies me when this whole thought of the cultural olympiad gives me a bit of a shiver.”

I’m sure those Russian women putting the shot would love to give you a shiver.

[Any Q’s 25^th January 2008 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/anyquestions_transcripts_20080125.shtml]

More Porn!

Staying with Pornography, since it’s topical, an article from the Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362646/Northwest-University-investigate-sex-toy-demonstration-Faith-Kroll.html

It would appear that Northwest University in Chicago has been getting a lot of attention over a sex-display after class, the President of the school is upset, and the right-wing media are setting themselves up to wet themselves over it, but secretly wish they were there, no doubt.

Before we get to the details, the article tells us that the University is one of the top ones, and it charges about 40,000 US Dollars per year to learn. There was a video shown in a “Human Sexuality” class, and the students felt it was not realistic. Thankfully, the guest lecturer, said he could organise a couple to demonstrate a sex toy, and the female orgasm. Attendance was optional, strong warnings on the explicit nature given, and a handful of students left, leaving around 100 behind to watch and behold.

There was a video clip going around the internet a few years ago, where power-tool style sex toys were being used by a woman, and in this case, that’s what was chosen as the tool to display sex toys and the female orgasm.

The president of the University says it was poor judgement. Unfortunately, for many women and quite a lot of men, the education on the female orgasm was worth more than the lesson itself.

Naked Women!

Speaking of Pornography, the newspaper really doesn’t know which side of the fence to sit on, as it displays “Olympic Water Babes” naked, underwater. Their snapper used a Nikon D300, apparently, though I rather expect that any men reading are more interested in the names and ages of the athletes – thankfully the Mail has given a handy key to that.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1362768/Meet-Britains-Olympic-water-babes-whove-shed-inhibitions-costumes.html

And Finally…

Tensions were growing today after the Sun reported from a soldier that the MoD paid £22.51 for a light bulb worth 65p.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/3445710/Ministry-of-Defence-pay-22-for-65p-lightbulb.html

Unfortunately the invoice printed in the paper does not display whether the invoice is for £22.51 or 22.51p. Big difference. Not sure why we only get such a small snippet to make it quite so impossible to give the story legitimacy, either.

Liam Fox was uppity though, lambasting Labour for waste. Yes, 11 months after the general election, Cameron, Duncan-Smith, Hague, Clegg and Fox still can’t quite get their head around the fact that they should have had more of an impact by now. That said, I am worried why the Government are rushing to throw the baby out with the bathwater, without investigating other efficiencies they can make – such as reducing the cost of the bloody lightbulbs!

He’s exacerbated, it’s been a long weekend for him. [...]]]> Home Secretary Alan Johnson certainly lost his cool when being interviewed on Sky yesterday.

Finger pointing and everything! I would assume that the Home Secretary thought he was being clever, and pointing at the interviewer in an ‘oh, I’ll teach you a lesson’ kind of way.

He’s exacerbated, it’s been a long weekend for him. He looks tired. He’s just sacked someone, and two more have resigned. Poor thing, feeling all trapped in the corner like that, he sure tried to come out fighting.

I’m definitely glad that Prof Nutt has said what he has, as now we know that the Government aren’t listening to its advisers, as well as the country. The UK Government recently conducted a paper pushing exercise to reclassify cannabis. The Home Secretary says he took the advice of the scientists, and mixed it with police and medical opinion. The medial opinion has since been disproven, the Police at the time were watering down their approach to cannabis, and the scientists were saying the drug isn’t all that harmful. The only people who were really making a noise about cannabis were the Tories, and Labour pandered to them.

Thing is, I’m not sure who I want to vote for now.

Labour – vote for the party which has become so complacent it doesn’t feel a need to listen to its advisers, and then gives a holider-than-thou interview on Sky News.

Conservatives – David Cameron has got his party into bed with some easter European MEPs, ones who don’t agree with fundamental rights of others to live their lives how they wish. Cameron has also reneged on his promise to rejuvenate politics, he was going to show us how it should be done, but have you seen his mad Chimpanzee impresson on Prime Ministers Questions? Nothing about his style is rejuvenating politics.

Liberal Democrats – as I said previously, they gave partial control of a local council to the Conservatives. The Tories were third, Labour were second. The Liberals discounted a huge portion of votes to get into bed with the also-ran. Why would I bother.

There’s a plethora of others, of course, like the Green Party. I’d rather not vote if that’s my option. Why would I want to waste time watering down the politics between the top three parties.

Was Johsnon Wrong?

From reading the report from the huge inquest that followed the BSE scare, which found that Tory ministers did not take heed of scientific fears that the mad cow disease could spread to humans, paragraph 1300 of the report said:

1300 Everyone agreed that the Government had a problem with credibility. A number of Government Ministers told us that they had lost credibility with the public, so that it was necessary to get independent experts to lend credibility to public pronouncements about risk. Mrs Bottomley spoke of the need for the public to receive information free of ‘political overtones’. She told us that she did all that she could to promote the Chief Medical Officer as an independent expert who could be trusted by the nation.

Overall the inquiry found that “scientific investigation of risk should be open and transparent” and that “the advice and the reasoning of advisory committees should be made public”. This is a fundamental link between the people believing the political undertones of ministers.

Since we haven’t heard much from the Government to show that their own drugs advisory council were not giving the same information as the Government were projecting, I think it is safe to say that Alan Johnson failed in his remit, and Prof. Nutt was right to go public, shaming Mr Johnson and making him fight from his corner. Today, Mr Johnson has continued to fight his battle from his corner.

Alan Johnson has been vehemently saying over the last few days that a Government scientific advisor should toe the party line, and should not give his/her opinions. What’s the point of having experts, then? Lets just have a load of elected yet complacent politicians who think they know everything, devising policy on a whim.

In a few years time we’ll have another scandal similar to BSE.

Within the last few hours, Alan Johnson has ordered a review into the ACMD, the advisory council on the misuse of drugs. Alan Johnson needs to remember that the public are watching him. This isn’t an excuse for him to railroad scientific thought out of the drugs policymaking process. Anything less than a stronger, more robust version of the ACMD which reports openly will be a display of infantile behaviour.

These are the few seconds of television which put Frankie Boyle onto the naughty seat.

I’m a bit confused, though. The BBC Trust took its time as usual to decide that this joke went too far. It decided that Adlington had not ‘courted publicity or celebrity status’, adding that there was no editorial reason [...]]]>

These are the few seconds of television which put Frankie Boyle onto the naughty seat.

I’m a bit confused, though. The BBC Trust took its time as usual to decide that this joke went too far. It decided that Adlington had not ‘courted publicity or celebrity status’, adding that there was no editorial reason for including the comments about Adlington.

So, what was the editorial reason? Would it be that she won some gold medals, and courted publicity afterwards, even getting a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes from the Mayor of Mansfield? Adlington had plenty of airtime and column inches to launch her celebrity status. She certainly hadn’t courted celebrity status, but how can we honestly argue that she hadn’t courted publicity, and as much as she or the olympic team could manage!

Just to drive the nail in further, the original judgement was made on 19th October 2009. If you’re that hurt and dismayed by something, why the hell wait until the next month before you seek further publicity by damning the joke once again? Her publicist, Rob Woodhouse has wrote to the BBC trust, advising that they weren’t heavy handed enough. Had things be let to lie, I wouldn’t have been so inquisitive as to the content in question, searched for it on Youtube, and repeated it here. Sometimes it’s better, when the outcome isn’t in your favour, to just keep quiet and let everyone forget about it.

Gordon Brown interviewed on BBC Breakfast

The Sun’s actions, and their timing of their actions, show a bloody good reason why the [...]]]> Yesterday Gordon Brown gave the ‘speech of his life’, and today The Sun newspaper has decided that it will back the Conservative party at the next General Election, whenever that may be.

Gordon Brown interviewed on BBC Breakfast

The Sun’s actions, and their timing of their actions, show a bloody good reason why the press in the UK are dangerous. A single newspaper proprietor, such as ‘Keith’ Rupert Murdoch, born in Australia and with no major interests in the UK besides making money through newspapers and Sky TV, can influence the way the people of Britain vote, purely so that the party which will give him the best chances of making more money get into power.

Why does Murdoch want Cameron quite so much? Cameron wants to shrink Ofcom, the media regulator, and allow more free-market ‘enterprise’. Murdoch would like that, as he can make more money.

So the moral of the story is that the man who owns the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK is forcing those titles to back the Conservative party so he can make more money. Don’t believe everything you read in the paper!

Ian Kerr worked for the right-wing Economic League until 1993, when he continued to operate the blacklist for the construction companies.

He’s been paid £600,000 over the last five years alone by these companies, [...]]]> The man who ran a Trade Unionist blacklist within the construction industry was fined a mere £5,000 by Knutsford Crown Court.

Ian Kerr worked for the right-wing Economic League until 1993, when he continued to operate the blacklist for the construction companies.

He’s been paid £600,000 over the last five years alone by these companies, to help keep workers who may cause a headache out of work – purely because they may organise their Trade Union activities, or, more importantly, pick up on Health & Safety breaches – ultimately raising the cost of construction projects in order to ensure workers’ welfare.

The companies buying the blacklist have questions to answer. The judge in the case contended that Kerr was working for these construction companies, among which is BAM/HBG – ironically a company building a brand new Headquarters for the Trade Union Unison. It’s doubtful that they’ll set up a new list, but they already have the details of thousands of workers who they may choose not to employ – purely because they believe in the rights of the workers.