Diana Watch

“I didn’t get into Vet School so I became a Doctor.”

Has there been a Princess Diana based front page this week? Of course there has,

but the Express also distinguished themselves on Wednesday by completely ignoring the devastation being caused to the Gulf coast of America, the animals and fish that are dying and the peoples whose livings are being destroyed such as shrimp fisherman. They even ignored the rather poor response of BP to the situation, they instead went for the incredibly selfish, self centred approach, how does it effect you pension? 

 Because BP is such a massive company and makes so much money in profit and pays such massive dividends it has a disproportionate amount invested in it by pension companies. If these people had any decency at all they would put pressure on the board of this company to sort their act out, to make safety and the environment the top priorities for BP rather than the pursuit of naked profit, after all shareholders exist to hold the board to account, in theory.

 Despite polluting the Gulf of Mexico and being landed with the enormous bill to clean it up, as they should be, which has all helped to contribute to some of the worst PR that BP has ever had they decided to compound it a bit more by paying a very large dividend to it shareholders, probably to try and keep them quiet.

 BP have made some success this week in trying to stop the oil flooding out of it's pipeline (let's try and stop saying “spill” as I spill a drink and that only makes a small amount of mess, this is a little more significant) by cutting through it and managing to fit a cap and they have started to siphon some of the oil away to ships on the surface but still not as much as is leaking into the sea.

It really hasn’t been the most cheerful of weeks in the news has it, what with Israeli forces attacking an aid convoy and the shootings in Cumbria.

 What we have learnt this week is that real people behave much better than people who work for 24hr news channels and newspapers. On the whole the members of the public that have been interviewed have behaved with dignity and respect and seem not to have a bad word to say about Derrick Bird,  meanwhile those doing the interviewing have pushed for more and more lurid details.

 The levels of speculation have also been at stratospheric levels, I have heard about 5 different reasons for why Mr Bird decided to shoot all of those people none of which seemed to be based on any facts.

 I was surprised that there seemed to be a psychologist’s viewpoint for every newspaper’s pre-existing narrative, which was nice. “Have you got a point of view that you would like reinforcing with the help of a professional? Then call Rent-a-shrink, we will say exactly what you want us to, as long as the price is right.”

 There has also been some awful commentary in pretty much all of the papers with is summed up in this nasty, pointless piece in the Telegraph titled “There's no rush, but can we all agree that Derrick Bird had no business owning guns?” No, no we can’t, hindsight isn’t a clause in the gun licences that he held.

 The thrust of this article seems to be that he wasn’t the right sort of person to be owning a gun and by that, and the fact that the “writer” of this piece felt it necessary to describe Mr Bird’s house as “a mid-terrace house in a not very rural English village”, I think he means not posh enough.

 So we have had people say that he shouldn’t have had a gun licence because he stole something in the early 90’s, everyone should have a gun and then passers-by could have shot him and now, not posh enough to own a gun. Ah the British media, home of reasoned debate.

 Oh and Richard Littlejohn managed to get Eastern European immigration, who he accused of gun smuggling (please don’t click on that link as it is to the Mail’s website and they don’t deserve the traffic), into his piece about it and be rude about the Police Officer who did the Press briefings and Chief Police Officers in general, what a man and by man I really mean uber-twat.

 I really don’t want to go on and on about Israel because someone will accuse me of being anti-Semitic which I am not, maybe a little anti-Zionist but even then I would concede that Israel has the right to exist but it does not have the right to occupy parts of other countries or murder people on aid convoys.

 The Israeli blockade of Gaza started following the Israeli show of strength that demolished a large number of buildings and infrastructure last year. This includes a sea blockade which may or may not be legal which is what the aid convoy was trying to break.

 They were attacked in international waters which many have seen as state-sponsored piracy but if the blockade is legal than they are within their rights to have boarded the ships if they thought that they were carrying weapons etc which is the now standard Israeli Government response to pretty much any situation.

 One of the things that are not being allowed into Gaza is building materials, such as cement. This does seem a little harsh as the Israeli conscription army (that, by the way, is the reason that so many Israeli Army operations go wrong, pissy teenagers with guns, although they claim that it was Marines that stormed the boats) flattened a lot of it but it may fall into the hands of terrorists. Now, if the grumpy Ambassador had pointed out on Radio 4 that Hamas regularly build tunnels for smuggling into Egypt and Israel then at least it would have been a relevant argument but he didn’t, oh no, he said, and I quote, “They could use it for weapons”. Really? Could they? How? Are cement bombs as scary as this man thinks? Probably not if I’m honest. If you wonder around your local arms fair it is unlikely that you will see many hand grenades made of cement. They would sort of look like a pebble. Oh no, wait it all makes sense now!

 As you know, the reason for Jews demanding their own state is because God gave them that land in the Bible and they believe the Bible to be literally true, well the bits that suit them anyway. Also in the Bible is a story where David (tiny little boy who, for the purposes of this metaphor, or is it an allegory, will be representing Gaza) defeated the massively overpowering Goliath (for this metaphor/allegory Israel) using only……..wait for it……… a pebble! As this definitely happened (the Bible is literally true remember) then it seems that the Ambassador may have had a point. They could fashion little bits of the cement into to “pebbles” and use them as weapons!

The Award for Best Direct Action Against Direct Action,

A couple of weeks ago I told you about a protest in a Dorset village that wanted a by-pass. They were using the pedestrian crossing constantly to back up the traffic. Genius way to make a point I thought but it seems that someone else didn’t.

 Superglue has been placed around the button for the crossing so that the villagers can't use it.

  Now that is a little rude as it is not just these protesters who use the crossing it is the whole village on a very busy rude but not to worry, it will be replaced and the protests will continue.

 

 The Award for Being a Really Great Car (although the Beetle is my Favourite)

VW Camper van is 60 years old. I love this car/van, I don't know why.

 My brother and I stayed in one once that we had borrowed of off a friend of mine and we went to the Reading Festival. Coming back from the festival at 6 o'clock on a Bank Holiday Monday morning on a roundabout on the outskirts of Reading and the clutch went. We pulled up into a B&Q car park and made a cup of tea on the stove. There are worse ways of spending time.

 I will own one, one day. Maybe.

The Award for Fake Outrage of the Week,

The Daily Mail does like to be offended by many, many things. It also has certain woman that it is obsessed with, usually because they are successful and they don't approve of that sort of thing. If you combine these to things you have....... Lady Gaga doing her normal stage show.

 On the same night as the Cumbrian shootings she was playing in Manchester. Part of the show involves the character she plays throughout the performance being killed. There does seem to be quite a bit of blood. Oh the outrage! Is this the sickest show ever? Does she not know that even Corrie postponed an episode?

 Well to be honest she probably didn't know that. I think that it is a little unlikely that Lady (oh yes, first name terms you know) spends her time lying on her hotel room bed, dressing gown on, coke cans in her hair, watching News 24.

 And why pick on her anyway? Did they complain about every cinema in the country that showed movies with gun violence in them that night? Like arse did they. Did they complain about the 14 episode of CSI that channel 5 showed that night? Of course they didn't. They only did it so that they could have more pictures of Gaga in their stupid paper.

The Award for Making Excuses and Forgetting That Everyone Playing in the Tournament is Disadvantaged, If At All, In The Same Way,

I am pretty sure that at the last World Cup we had exactly the same story as this. Some people are complaining that the newly designed ball that they are going to be using at the World Cup. It's too light and moves about in the air too much, we did have this complaint at the last competition didn't we?

 The new ball is made from 8 panels of synthetic material that is glued together and is, supposedly, a perfect sphere and this is, apparently, very good.

  To be honest I just want some good games, oh and while we are talking about the World Cup a brief mention for Theo Walcott. He was taken to the last one for some reason, maybe children flew for free on BA, but he didn't get a game and now that he has come of age, if you will, has he been picked? Has he bollocks.

 I hope that you have a good week.

Diana Watch

“Yeah, Significant Other was admitted on Friday evening, yeah, had emergency surgery on Saturday” “Oh really? Yeah I didn’t fell too well on Saturday either”

This is going to be another short one this week as things really haven't improved that much, oh and work was a bit busy yesterday morning when I usually do the shaping of this so I couldn't get much done. Damn sick people with their health needs.

I don't really want to go on about strikes, click here and here for details, because quite a lot of people seem not to agree with me but I would like to say support the workers because one day it might be you that needs their support. When your employer tries to fuck you over and you cry for help, who will listen to you and support you. We must stick together.

If you were going to choose some really powerful Ex-ministers you really wouldn’t go for Hoon, Hewitt and Byers would you? I mean, they were all pretty useless, I looking specifically at you Patricia Hewitt, as Ministers.

 It seems they have claimed that they can manipulate Government policy in return for money. There seems to be little doubt that they said it but these lobbyists clearly don't know that much about British politics if they think that these 3 have any real influence. To be honest I didn't know that they were still MPs so quiet have they been. Oh but there was that short lived plot thing that they tried earlier in the year.

 Why are we so surprised that they have turned out to be self-serving, money grabbing tossers? They had already tried to shaft the Party early this year, they aren't good Party people.

 What I like about this story is the fact that people are getting so worked up about this, it's sweet. It's nice that we still get so worked up about minor political scandals. In the US, for instance, this is how their law making actually works. My point being that our politics is actually relatively clean, but we must carry on being vigilant and getting stroppy about it so that it doesn't get any worse.

Dorset really doesn't get into the news that so it's nice when it does, although when it does can you please print a picture of the right place please (no, that is Gold's Hill in Shaftsbury not Maiden Castle) or the locals are behaving like, well, locals or extras from Brasseye.

 This week Dorset County Museum in Dorchester has won its battle to save a collection of play scripts and stage set models by Thomas Hardy. They were collected by one of the original Hardy Players between 1908 and 1924 and the Museum has been trying to raise about £60,000 in order to buy them and stop them being taken out of the Country. They should stay here, Dorchester is the home of Hardy, or least that’s what we tell the American Tourists.

If I ever start another “bit” on here with the phrase “A survey says”, or similar, you have the right to poke me in the eye because this will make me as lazy as the journalist that copy and pasted it from the press release in the first place.

 I know that those who write for our papers are over worked, I have heard that they have to write 4 times as much stuff, I believe the correct term is copy, as they had to 20 years ago, but, never the less, printing everything that PR companies E-mail you is just lazy.

 Take this “study” from the Daily Mail a few weeks ago. It is about eggs. It is claiming that the humble egg is a “superfood” (there is a term I could do with never hearing again) but do you know who it is sponsored by? Look there, right down at the bottom. Yes, there it is, the money has come from the totally dispassionate and completely neutral British Egg Industry Council. No, I didn’t know that they eggisted either. Ah hahaha, egg pun! It’s not a “study”, it’s an advert.

 And then we had the Sun giving us a sex survery on Friday. Have a look at the slide show on the webite here and see if you can work out who it is advertising, I mean sponsored by. Now there are plenty of problems with it as a survery but basically, it's an advert.

 The essential problem with this sort of “story” is that some people don't read down to the end of paragraph 4 or 5 to see who has paid for the article and they take it as at face value and as a proper survey, resulting in them being massively ill-informed.

 Whilst this isn't too much of a problem because most of these “surveys” are about pointless things there is a drip, drip effect. One day they are telling you that coffee is good for you and the next that it is bad. This ends up with people not taking any notice of proper dietry or medical advice because they think that “scientists” are always changing their minds, that they don't know what they are on about. No they are not. PR companies are trying to sell you stuff and newspapers are making it easy for them.

Let's have some awards of the week because I've got things to do,

The Award for Looking Fantastic of the Week,

 It's time for another one of those staggering admissions that I make from time to time. I think that Lady Gaga is fantastic. There, I've said. I don't care for her music, although Bad Romance was alright, no, what I like is the fact that when a stylist says to her “I've got this idea, do you want to give it a go?”, she says “Yes, yes I will”. She will wear absolutely anything and take it very seriously. This I like. See, for instance (as long as you are over 16, it's a little saucy and they do kill quite a lot of people), the video for her new single “Telephone” in which she wears, at one point, an outfit made out of “Police, do not cross” tape and in another scene has Coke cans as rollers in her hair. If you can't get on to YouTube because you have an old browser that won't automatically update and you are using Linux and are not sure how to do it manually (only me then?) then you can always look at the Daily Mail website (although I wouldn't recommend it, it will just annoy you.) which seems to be on a commission from Gaga's PR company as they seem to print at least one picture of her every day.

 It seems that I am not alone in my enjoyment of her style as Lady Gaga has now had over a billion hits on You Tube. Now that is quite a lot. I was really happy when my posting about “You and Yours” in the week was linked to by Ben Goldacre and I got an awful lot more hits than usual, can you imagine how happy I'd be if I got a billion hits?

The Award for Some Pretty Top Architecture,

 Ladies and Gentleman I give you Le Centre Pompidou-Metz. It has been built in Metz in France and will be opened on the 10^th of May. It's propose is mostly as an exhibition space but I don't really care about that, see what it looks like,

Now that is what a modern building should look like.

 Now I'm not saying that all the Tea Baggers, sorry, Partiers are tiny minded, racist fuckwits, that would be unfair and I don't want to tar all those nice people with the same brush, but if you don't condemn it then you condone it. Is that what they want?

You may remember that last week I tried to start my own religion (sort of) in order so that we could claim that absolutely anything could be claimed to be a tenet of the religion. Well now we have progress. We had a bit on the Pod Delusion podcast (which is embedded just on the left there, I am right at the end, after the credits), we have a website and shop, a facebook group and a Facebook fan thing. Go on, go and see them all.

I hope you all have a lovely week.