The Daily Mail Digs for Dirt on Patrick Macnee*

If you ignore the hyperbolic and puritanical headlining of this would-be hitjob by the DM on a man who just died, the piece is actually a rather interesting read for any fans of Patrick Macnee and The Avengers.  The man escaped a troubled homelife, found fame and success, and more importantly, he lived.  Good for him.


* Or more accurately, they just mined his autobiography.

Always...Priorities

Around the world, children are starving, children are dying of preventable diseases.  Children are being forced into child-labour, into slavery, even being forced to fight as soldiers.

Meanwhile, in the west, a certain toddler from an ever-so privileged family goes on an outing with his parents...and it's front-page fucking news (in mainstream publications no less).

Look at the little boy rolling down a hill.  Marvel in wonder as he kicks a ball !  See him running with his little toy-car in his chubby little fists...  But it's newsworthy, because one day, if our species hasn't completely destroyed itself before then, the adult this child may one day become could get to wear fancy-dress and pretend-rule over the people of a portion of a couple of small islands in the North Sea.

I will give the Telegraph & Times credit for one thing though: Not being the Daily Mail.  Because they apparently felt this particular combination to be appropriate:

There's a certain .gif out there on the 'ole Internetz that I could post here, that to put it mildly, starts with someone banging their head against a desk.  I'm going to refrain...this time.

The Daily Mail Doing What It Does Best

Evidently no-one's off limits to the DM.  Not that I wouldn't have guessed that, but it's still rather sad.

Super glam SamCam, the bikini babe - but how DID she get beach body ready? As PM courts European leaders she 'chillaxes' in Ibiza

She has spent the past few months travelling the country, sharing her husband’s punishing Election schedule.So there’s one question everyone is asking: just how did Samantha Cameron find the time to get this beach-ready?The 44-year-old showed off her slim, toned figure as she spent a few days unwinding on the Spanish party island of Ibiza. 

Is that what they're asking ?  I'd have gone for how is this appropriate or how is this newsworthy ?  I'm guessing that what the woman who happens to be married to the British Prime Minister was doing was not showing off her figure so much as just spending some time at the beach with her children.  And perhaps hoping for the modicum of privacy any family would wish to have.

But carry on with the breathless speculation about her fashion-choices and obsession over her fitness-regime, adorned with not one paparazzo-shot but four, along with a bonus pic. from 2011 so you can talk about her post-pregnancy figure.  Not at all creepy.  Sigh.

The photos are sure to make husband David a little wistful – far from being able ‘chillax’ himself, the Prime Minister is on a whistlestop tour of Europe in his efforts to reform the EU.

Fuck that guy.  But maybe leave his family alone ?

This'll Sway the Election for Sure

And we needed to know this now...why ?  FFS, first the SNP fearmongering from the Tories, then Ed cynically manipulating the deaths of migrants for political gain, and now suddenly days before the election, after all these years of letting himself be characterised as an atheist, Nick feels the need to set the record straight.

Nick, those who might actually care mostly can't tell the difference between atheist and agnostic, and wouldn't vote for you anyway.  Those who don't care and those who could tell the difference, well they wouldn't vote for you either.

Well, I guess if that Lab/Con. 'grand coalition' thing were to come off, Ed Miliband, while hardly the 'first Jewish Prime Minister', and looking rather less likely to be PM at all as the days wind down, could at least, Clegg having removed himself from contention, be the first Atheist Deputy Prime Minister.

That Ole' Grauniad

I get The Times. I get The Daily Telegraph. I get the Daily Mail. I pretty much ignore The Independent, and the like, if only because they bore me to tears. And then...there's always...The Guardian. That bastion of privileged left-leaning mostly upper middle-class liberal guilt. I read it, I've read it for years, and yet somehow I've never liked it it, never identified with it. And to this date, I'm not sure who reads it, or what their business-model is. If Murdoch hadn't put The Times behind a paywall, I'm not sure that I'd bother much with The Guardian at all. It's almost like they're constantly competing to shorten the distance between the right-wing portrayals thereof as trendy lefty politically-correct bullshit and reality. If there were a meaningful alternative in the slightly-left-of-centre UK media to the Grauniad crowd, I wouldn't waste another second on their site. Sadly...there ain't.  And thus I keep reading, and on some level supporting shit like this.

The evil evil licence-fee didn't pay for this crap, but something did.  And this kinda garbage won't occasion anywhere near the outrage that the average project of the (nominally-)public broadcaster would.  In what kinda fuckin' world do we live ?

Afzal Amin & the EDL: Strange Bedfellows

Protests against 'mega-mosques' and Pamela Geller's buddies, the English Defence League.  And racial incitement worthy of James O'Keefe himself.  British and American politics really aren't all that different after all are they ?

And such a rapid fall from grace. Almost feel sorry for the guy.

Think of the Children

So some paparazzo takes (very boring) pictures of Paul Weller and his teenage daughter out shopping in LA with Weller's twin babies in a pushchair or stroller.  So the Daily Mail publishes some of these pictures, misidentifying Weller's daughter as his wife.  The Weller family sues the Daily Mail, wins damages, and now Weller's wife is pushing for a law in Britain criminalising the publication of non-pixelated potentially recognisable pictures of childrens' faces without their parents' consent.  Common-sense measure to protect children or slippery slope ?

Personally I think it's rather pathetic that there's a market for such pictures in the first place, and the world would be a much better place without paparazzi scum harassing and stalking individuals who happen to be celebrities or friends and relatives of the same.  But must we really legislate everything to this degree ?  Would the measure apply only to newspapers ?  What about street photography ?  And why, if we're going down this road, shouldn't adults be entitled to the same protections ?

In a sane world, surely we'd agree that publications that engage in or encourage this type of activity should be shunned, and that would be that.  But ooh, look...they got pictures of Brangelina at the beach, ooh look at that actress without makeup, doesn't she look old !  Oh look, evidence of space aliens in Hitler's bunker.  I'll just add that to my basket at the checkout and have a nice read later over tea.