Diana Watch

 The Daily Express really does live in a little puddle of its own reality and it has proved it twice this week.

 
  Firstly they were kind enough to provide another fine Princess Diana headline,

 

But early in the week that proved that they have learnt nothing from our lovely financial crisis,

Tossers.

Violence is pretty much always wrong, it is very difficult to justify it without sounding like a bit of a thug but I think we may have a case here where it may just be possible.

 A Saudi Arabian has beaten up a policeman in the eastern Saudi city of Al-Mubarraz. This may just sound like a night out in an English city but this has caused a little bit of a stir as Saudi woman are supposed to do as they are told.  

 The lady in question was walking in a park with a male escort; this act may have been illegal because it is against the law for unmarried men and woman to mix. Now I think that that is going to make meeting someone a little harder but hey, it’s not the worst human rights violation that happens in that country. Anyway back to the story. They were approached by a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, basically the Saudi religious Police, who wanted to know their relationship to each other as this may have been an illegal fraternization.

 The young man collapsed to the ground for reason unknown when questioned by God’s rule enforcer on earth (although God did also tell us to go forth and multiply which becomes a little more difficult if you can’t meet chicks) and at this point the lady, who until recently had been having a nice walk in the park, suddenly attacked the Hai’a. She, apparently, punched him repeatedly leaving him requiring hospital treatment for bruises across his body and face.

 Now, like I said earlier, it is hard to justify violence but how pissed off do you have to be to do this? This is years of institutionalized oppression and misogyny finally boiling over into one action of rage, either that or it was just a bit of PMT! (That was a joke, a joke using irony. It was an ironic joke about misogyny)

 Will this be an example to other woman in Saudi Arabia to rise up and demand more freedoms? Let’s hope so then they to may have proper political representation like we do here, ok we only have 4 woman in the Cabinet but hey, that is one more than Afghanistan so I think the point stands.

President Obama has set up a Presidential commission to investigate the oil leak in Gulf of Mexico. This comes as sheets of oil have started washing up in marshes and on beaches in remote areas of south Louisiana and “experts” (I hate that word) say that BP has massively underestimated the amount of oil spewing from it’s fractured well a mile under the surface of the sea. They say it could be up to 10 times as much as the BP estimate of 5000 barrels a day.

BP also admits that their stop it leaking plans are going less than well. They have been trying to siphon on the gushing oil into tankers on the surface but the amount that they have been able to collect is dropping, from 5,000 barrels on Wednesday to 2,200 barrels on Thursday. Let us again remember that they are losing an estimated 50,000 a day into the sea. They still have no plan to cap the well.

 The way the companies involved blamed each other when they were hauled up in front of a Senate hearing and what we have learned about the contracting and subcontracting is the best argument against privatised Nuclear power that I can think of.

 Would you like a nuclear power plant built and run by the cheapest bidder? Oh and the maintenance carry out by the cheapest bidder who sub-contracts it out to another company, who were also the cheapest bidder. And then remember that all of these companies have to make a profit. Do you really think that corners would not be cut?

 Oh and then the Nuclear power plants will have to decommissioned by a private company, who will sub-contract it out, and the nuclear waste will then have to be stored, which we can’t yet do safely for the long term and by “the long term” I mean the thousands of years until this stuff is safe.

I am try to keep it short now so lets move straight on to this weeks awards,

The Award for Just Being Funny,

Some men, a bouncy castle and an International sailing regatta, what's not to find funny,

The Award for Just Being Funny 2,

It’s not been a good couple of weeks for Princes Charles; firstly his mother still isn’t dead (despite a joke on this very subject from a BBC Radio presenter) so he still isn’t King. Then the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health was closed down because of alleged fraud and money-laundering, oh and promoting bollocks, and now Prince Charles is named in a legal proceeding for his part in interfering in the development of the Chelsea Barracks.

  Lord Rogers (one of luddite Prince Charles’ least favourite architects) designed a really rather lovely conversion for the barracks in steel and glass for the Candy Brothers who where working with a Qatari company all or partly owned by the Qatari royal family.

 When Prince “interfering, unelected busy body” Charles saw the designs he decided to write to the Royal family of Qatar personally saying that his “heart sank” when he saw the designs, this is probably because they look like buildings for the 21^st century and not the 17^th and 18^th, the ones he like the best, what with the power of the Royal family back then and all.

 Lord Grabiner QC, representing the Candy Brothers said “He urged Sheik Hamad bin Jasim to reconsider the plan before it was too late and attached a scheme by a different, classical architect he preferred," That really sounds like interfering to me. 

The Qatari company pulled out of the deal because they didn’t want to openly disagree with Prince Charles with the say-so of the Qatari Royal family.

 Nick and Christian Candy are claiming the Qatari company breached the terms of their contract and must now make the payment that was due when Lord Rogers' scheme won the approval of planners.

 Whilst I am still chuckling to myself about Prince “ooh and nasty looking housing estate will look lovely just here on my land despite the fact that we will provided no extra essential services for these houses” Charles’ little problems have a look at the nominations for this years RIBA Awards, click here to view them, this is the sort of imagination we need in our domestic and public building.

This is a little cheeky but I am, sort of, friends with a couple of members of this band and they are going to re-release their EP so here is an advert for it,

You can buy it on itunes or go to their myspace for more details.

There will definitely be no Diana Watch next week as I will be attending the Hay Festival with significant other. Yes, it is a little pretentious but it is also rather fun. We are camping for 5 days so let’s hope that the weather remains nice. Oh and we are also popping in to the Hay Philosophy Festival just to add to the pretentiousness of our, rather long, weekend. Although to be honest we’re only going there because Robin Ince is playing. Books and walking in the Welsh countryside, who could ask for more?

 Have a lovely week and I’ll be back later.

Diana Watch

I said it before, maybe not on here, but if you don't like MIA (A little more on her later) you are wrong. She is fantastic and her songs are brilliant. Her new video, however, is a little, I believe media types would say, edgy. It has been removed from YouTube because of it's nastiness and oh my, it is nasty.

 Judge for yourself,

 

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on http://vimeo.com">Vimeo.

 I think that I have become a little bogged down in trying to be serious and informative in the last few weeks and I’m not very good at it. I’m trying to be more light-hearted this week.

Those of you reading this the UK have to go out and vote on Thursday (if you can be arsed, which of course you can) but we haven't cover all the parties.

We all know that there are some fringe parties who have as silly policies such as the Cure (Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality) Party, The New Millennium Bean Party and Ukip.

These people are, however, new at this and, therefore, not so practised at the funny. For proper laugh out loud funny ideas I give you the Monster Raving William Hill Loony party (formerly the Monster Raving Loony Party, they are currently sponsored).

 Some of their policies include,

• All socks to be sold in packs of 3 as a precaution against losing one
• Make it illegal for superheroes to use their powers for evil
• Ban all terrorists from having beards as they look scary
• Change the English symbol of three lions to 3 badgers
• School dinners must be regularly checked for radioactivity
• Add the Loch Ness Monster to the endangered species list
• Dedicated pogo stick lanes on routes to centres of work

• And a 99p pence coin to cut down on change.

Oh come on, those are proper funny. That is years of practised writing right there.

Anyone remember Sarah Palin? She once said something sensible and well thought through. Oh no, my mistake, it was “Drill baby, Drill”.

 Like everything that dribbles out of this barely sentient, moose killing, rabble rousing, gleefully, unashamedly ignorant distorter of facts whose lack of understand of science is revealed every time she opens her mouth (some on Twitter said that I should call her a bigot but wasn't sure if if I'd be forced to go to her house and apologise. Alaska is an awfully long way away), it was designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator in Right Wing US politics, now we can see how wrong she was (although to be fair President Obama did say that they would allow some new off-shore drilling).

 Last week an oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico and now the oil that is leaking from the well has started to arrive on the shores of the US.

 The US Coastguard estimate that 5 times as much oil as first thought is escaping in to the sea. The oil slick currently has a circumference of about 600 miles (970km) and covers about 28,600 sq miles (74,100 sq km) and heading for the delicate eco-systems of the Gulf coast, home to brown pelican, many species of duck, turtles, and whales.

 Many options have been considered for trying to prevent the oil making land fall including booming, literally penning it in, dispersal, spraying chemicals on to it, and, my personal favourite, burning it off. “Mummy can we go and watch the sea burn again today?”

 This disaster has had one very slight upside, the Obama administration has banned any new drilling until a complete investigation in to the explosion, fire and spill. This, however, is seen by the dictionary definition of uber-twat Rush Limbaugh as proof that the Obama people blew up the rig themselves, killing 11 workers in the process by the way, so that they could reverse their decision to allow off shore drilling.

Is Tin Tin racist? Well yes it is. It's depictions of black Africans are fucking awful but should it be banned? 

  Bienvenu Mbutu, who is from the Congo, is trying to get Tin Tin removed from the shelves in it's home country of Belgium because he claims the Congolese are portrayed as "stupid and without qualities".

 No, of course it shouldn't, as no book or film or pretty much anything else should. Yes it is racist but it is of it's time. This is not cultural relativism (I have learned that this was a folly of my youth, well it's ok because it's their culture) but it does show the genuine attitudes of the that period of history and that's the point, it's a historically document. It shows us what people at that time thought. It may offend our delicate, liberal eyes but that was how it was.

 If you ban this you then have to ban many other proper books (I hate Tin Tin), Sherlock Holmes, Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, all of these have poor racial stereotypes in, as do many, many other books. And were will it end? Then anything that offends various religious groups could be banned (and sometimes is in Britain), then Americans are offended by unflattering portrayals and try and get these things banned. Then before you know it the MIA video at the beginning of today's piece is being taken down from Youtube and an anti-bullying charity is saying that it could promote discrimination against gingers! “Quick! We can be offended and get our names on the news despite the fact that we completely missed the point!”

 Do films about the Holocaust encourage bullying of Jews? Of course they don't, these people are just idiots.

Some Awards now, 

The Award for Slightly Obscure British Sporting Success,

We have a European Mens Gymnastic Champion! Now, this may not be the greatest sporting news you have ever heard, obviously that was Bournemouth getting promoted last Saturday, but Britain has never had one before so very well done to Daniel Keatings. He won Sunday's pommel horse final in Birmingham by edging team-mate Louis Smith into second place.

The Award for Things That Are Unlikely To Work,

Hugo Chavez is now on twitter. That is Hugo “Live TV show that goes on for hours” Chavez. This is never going to work. 140 Characters? Him? This is never going to work. Unless, of course, it maybe one continuous message, typed in by some poor IT assistant, that goes on for tweet after tweet. Like Ulysses broken up into tiny, tiny parts.

The Award for Making Me Fell Uncomfortable For Agreeing With Someone That I Usually Think Is A Bully,

 Damn you BBC! Frankie Boyle made a joke in 2008 on a Radio 4 program called “Political Animal”. The joke went like this “I've been studying Israeli army martial arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back. People think that the Middle East is very complex but I have an analogy that sums it up quite well. If you imagine that Palestine is a big cake, well … that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew.”

 One person complained. One person. Not a huge amount of people, this was not Ross/Brand, this was not Jan Moir writing homophobic bile, this was one person and the BBC caved in. For the love of Twosh, what is wrong with these people? 

 The person who complained said that the joke was anti-Semitic, which it quite clearly isn't. Criticising Israel is not anti-Semitic; it is having a go at a Country that is illegally occupying the territory of another.

 Mr Boyle has written an open letter to the BBC on the Chortle.co.uk website in which he describes the broadcaster as “now cravenly afraid of giving offence and vulnerable to any kind of well-drilled lobbying”. He's get a point there I think.

I want to leave you to your bank holiday weekend (only in the UK) with a song. Because I haven’t had to mention the Catholic Church this week, here is a song dedicated to them. It’s childish and it's rude and it is very, very sweary, Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Tim Minchin's Pope Song,

Have a good week.