Diana Watch

“Well, there used to be a bloke called Peg who had a wooden leg. He used to set himself on fire and then jump into the Lido to put it out”

“What would Health and Safety think of that?”

“They don’t let you do anything these days.”

It was announced at the beginning of the week that Catherine Walker had died. She was a very successful fashion designer but differed from many others in her field by shunning the limelight and not doing runway shows.

 She was, however, famous for one thing that interested a certain section of our press. She provided frocks for Princess Diana.

 How did they mark the passing of this talented designer, successful business woman and founder of a Cancer Charity?

 Well, to be honest, most of them were pretty good about it. A short story on an inside page that played up the Diana connection. The Times had it on the front page with an accompanying photograph of Diana that at least Catherine Walker was in,

Not so the Express.

Really that is just a little bit rude. Covering the death of someone on the front page and then having a picture of someone else.

Friday the 1st of October saw the introduction of the much hated (by the Mail, Express and Church Groups, people who really know about bigotry) Equality Act.

 The act aims to provide protection for workers by banning discrimination by employers and covering areas such as age, disability and pay. It brings together 9 different bits of legislation into one easy to follow act.

 Ah, Britain moves, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century. No one can be discriminated against in the workplace on ground of Race, religion, sexual orientation, age and a big long list of other things I haven’t thought of but nasty bigoty types have. A utopia has been reached, we are all equal. No man or woman is above any other. It is Brave New World (but without the drugging) and not 1984. Who could not be happy at such an event?

 Well, entertainingly, both ends of the spectrum.

  British companies don't like the Act. "Businesses are really concerned," said Abigail Morris from the British Chambers of Commerce.

"The government's own impact assessment shows that this is going to cost £190m just for businesses to understand the legislation, and this at a time when we really need them to be concentrating on creating private sector jobs and driving economic recovery."

What she seems to be saying is, “we want to carry on exploiting people, discriminating against older people and paying women less because it increases our profits. Equality=Cost and we don't want that.”

 Well at least we now all know that I suppose. Business cares not for the workers. Is it any wonder that the Unions are getting twitchy?

 I know that some see it as too easy to mock the Daily Mail but some times they make it too easy.

 On Friday they published, on their front page, an article that complained that this was the “Death of the Office Joke”. Now, if you tell a racist, sexist, misogynist or anti-religious joke, you could fall foul of this legislation.

 What's wrong with that? I don't know about the place where you work but we don't tell that sort of joke, it's not very nice.

 They also have a problem with what is called Third Party harassment. According to the paper  “It creates the controversial legal concept of ‘third party harassment’, under which workers will be able to sue over jokes and banter they find offensive – even if the comments are aimed at someone else and they weren’t there at the time the comments were made.” Yep, nothing wrong with that either.

 There is some argument however for a freedom of speech infringement here; do you have the right to offend? Is this legislation attacking your right to be a twat and it is possible that the answer to that question is yes. It is a defence that the paper often uses to defend it's self and did when Jan Moir wrote her awful article about the death of Stephen Gately, but for some reason they decided not to go with that, curious.

 Maybe it is because the nasty Moir woman attacked “Modern” comedy earlier in the week. “This cruel, witless modern comedy is beyond a joke” she said. Her argument seems to be that we are no longer picking on the correct groups of people such as Gays, blacks and non-Christian religions.

 So in Mail-land you should have the freedom of speech to attack anyone you like no matter how offensive you are, unless the Mail thinks you shouldn't. It's no wonder their readers are so filled with impotent rage, they have no idea what they can and can't do because their paper keeps confusing them.

 But how about those that campaign for equality, what do they think of the act? As it is supposed to be anti-discriminatory surely they are as happy as a pig in the sort of thing that pigs are supposed to be happy in. What do, for instance, the British Humanist Association think about it? Well they are not happy either. They say that it gives “excessive privileges to religious organisations”. Oh dear, just when we thought we were getting somewhere.

 I thought, given the coverage in the right wing press, that everyone had to be treated equally in the workplace but it seems not. According to Naomi Phillips, BHA Head of Public Affairs, ‘Through wide exceptions that exempt religious organisations from significant parts of the law, the Equality Act gives excessive privileges specifically to religious groups, permitting them to discriminate against not only gay and lesbian people but against the non-religious and those of other religions.” Bugger. Oh well, it seems that we still have to carry on campaigning for equal rights for EVERYONE. Everyone, religious people, atheists, woman, gays, whoever, treated the same. No one group will be better than another. Please can we make that happen?

I've rambled on again haven't I? Sorry. Let's do some awards then,

The Award for Helping to Make Scientology Look Even Sillier of the Week,

Usually this award would go straight to Tom Cruise he seems to be on a mission (and not an impossible one, sorry, that was awful) to bring Scientology down from the inside by making himself and therefore, by association, his “religion” look ridiculous. This week, however, he has had some help.

 Firstly there was a Panorama programme on BBC1 that had a bit a, admittedly flawed, look at what some may describe as the cult.

 Then Councillor John Dixon, who was suspended from his job after the “Church” complained about him tweeting “I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off”, was cleared of any wrong doing and that he had not breached the councillors' code of conduct.

 The final blow in a bad week came when the Charity Commission announced that it would recognise Druidism as a religion for Tax purposes. This is funny because they have refused to grant the same status to Scientology thereby making sure that it is not considered religion in this Country, well done us.

 Ha, where is your Xenu now hey? Trapped in a volcano or something I think, to be honest I can't be bothered to wonder waist high through the levels of bullshit necessary to find out.

 

The Award for Bad Planning at a Sporting Event of the Week,

Maybe this should go to the organisers of the Commonwealth Games who have had one or two problems in getting ready for the event that starts today in Delhi but that would be too easy and I think that some people have been a little mean to them in recent weeks. No, no, the winner must be the person who thought that it would be a good idea to hold the Ryder Cup in Wales. In October.

 What did they think would happen? Wales is not exactly renowned for its tropical weather and October isn't one of the UK's sunniest months. Surprisingly enough it rained on Friday and play was abandoned. Oh and then it rained yesterday afternoon and play was abandoned. And it’s rained again this morning and play is yet to start (at the time of writing)

 I also heard, through the medium of Twitter so I don't know how accurate the story is, that the US team didn't bring any wet weather gear with them and had to buy some when they got here. Great research there. Planned about as well as the invasion of Iraq. It seems that the motto of America is “I'm sure it will be fine”. This is what happens if you watch too many Hollywood movies.

OK, enough moaning from me, I'm sure you have things to do. Have a lovely week and do try the Dorchester Online Radio Company podcast you might enjoy it, although you may not, it's the risk we take. Have a lovely week.

Diana Watch

If you want an insight into how a society can/will breakdown just turn the power off on a set of traffic lights at a particularly junction.

I think you can describe this as a perfect storm for a Daily Express front page, Princess Diana and weather.

 I don’t think we need to go into the story really do we? No of course we don’t. The Daily Express is rapidly becoming Britain’s answer to the National Enquirer.

Wednesday's Mail and Express both had the same story with the same basic premise, “It is political correctness gone mad!”

 The version that you got from the head and by-lines was that a person was fined £1000 for selling a goldfish. Well, how ridiculous and of course not entirely correct.

Great Grandmother (who is 66! A great grandmother at 66, usually the Mail would have been criticizing that, how young were these people having children?, but they have bigger fish to fry! Ha, see what I’ve done there!) Joan Higgins sold a goldfish to someone who was 14 and this is illegal under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, they have to be 16 or occupied by an adult.  Oh much later on in both versions of the article “a council officer in the shop at the time also noticed a cockatiel in a cage that appeared to be in a poor state of health. A vet found the bird had a broken leg and eye problems. It was later put down.” So more breaking of the law then.

This may come as a surprise to Mail and Express but cruelty to animals is against the law. The maximum penalty for this crime is £20,000 and a year in prison so she, with her only £1000 and 120 hrs of community service, got of quite lightly really.

 This obviously has annoyed these papers, especially the Mail. This paper seems to be pushing for a 2 tier legal system, one for us and, as they would see it, the scummy people and then their readers who they seem to think the law should not apply to. See their offence when “middle class” types are charged with crimes. 

  A second tier of law, ummm, can you imagine the outcry if someone suggested a second tier of law based on say….. Sharia law? Of course you can because someone nearly did and this happened, here, here and here.

 They don’t, however, make a fuss about Jewish or Beth Din courts which have been operating in our country for many, many years, how strange. Is it because they don't know about them? Perhaps someone should tell them. Can it be me? Please?

Science news now.

 The Large Hadron Collider’s power is being turned up (yes, possibly to 11 but is that joke funny any more?) and they have started smashing very, very small things into each other.

 The worlds most complicated ever machine is now setting records for the most powerful particle collisions created by man. They are running at seven-trillion-electronvolt (TeV) collisions (no, I don’t know what that means either) which have initiated 18-24 months of intensive investigations.

 This is a good thing. Some people see this sort of thing as a waste of money, science for science's sake, but they are wrong. Do we know where these ground breaking experiments will take us? No, of course we don't, if we did there would be no point in the experiment.

 Did NASA think “what we are looking at inventing is a fabric fastening material and a coating to stop our bacon sticking to the frying pan”? No they didn't. They wanted to put men in space and then on the moon and they found some other stuff along the way.

 “Climategate” was bobbins.

 The Commons Science and Technology Committee has critised the University of East Anglia’s Dept of Climatic Research Unit (which consists of about 3 people) for not dealing with endless Freedom of Information requests for AGW deniers (not overly comfortable with that word but sceptic is the wrong word. Sceptics consider all the evidence not ignore most of it) well enough and that was all.

 The E-mails of Professor Phil Jones of the CRU were hacked and posted on the internet. These were used by some people with dubious motives to try and claim that he had manipulated the data to make it look like Climate Change was happening when it really it wasn’t. The committee said much of the data that critics claimed Prof Jones had hidden, was in fact already publicly available.

 “We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is induced by human activity”.

 Now I don’t know about you but I think that that is a pretty big smack down to the doubters but I don’t think that it will help to change their minds, after all they think that just because it is cold in England right now that this quite clearly proves that AGW is nonsense. That is an ok view for them to have in my opinion because it will be summer soon when it will be hot and by their logic this will prove that Climate Change is happening and then we will all laugh at them.

More architecture this week because London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced that they are going to build a fucking big statue/sculpture type of thing for the Olympic Games.

Now don’t worry if you don’t like it because you aren’t going to pay for most of it. The ArcelorMittal Orbit (odd name) is designed by Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor and £16million of the total £19.1million will come from steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal who owns the company ArcelorMittal, oh that will be where the name of the thing comes from. The other £3.1million will come from the London Development Agency.

Priests raping children update now,

 The Vatican has decided that the best form of defence is attack this week with the Pope describing the news coverage of the church’s of the cover up of decades of sexual abuse as “petty gossip”. In his address on Palm Sunday he said that faith in God leads “towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion”. He didn't refer directly to the scandal but the implication was pretty clear. He managed to ignore it or cover it up when he was a Cardinal and now he intends on dismissing it while he is Pope.

 If they wanted to mount a proper defence they have 2 options open to them; they can either attack the victims by trying to make them seem unreliable which may yet happen or you can attack those printing the allegations about you, which is what the Vatican has decided to do. First there was the “petty gossip” thing and now we have accusing the New York Times of going into “attack mode” for printing a series of articles about what the Pope may or may not have known. Cardinal William Levada, who is doing the Pope's old job (no, honestly, the man defending the Pope is the man whose job it is to cover things up, just like the Pope did) said that the paper should “give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on". No it shouldn't. It should be reporting the news not doing your advertising for you. If your Employees have broken the law, which it seems they have, then that should be reported.

 I thought about making some sort of joke about it's only a matter of time before someone tried to make out that it was “an anti-Catholic” conspiracy but thankfully someone has gone one better. Someone has stepped up and compared asking some questions and trying to get justice for the victims and with....., no wait for this, this is good...........  Anti-Semitism! No really!

 I give you the Rev Raniero Cantalamessa, Pope Benedict's personal preacher, raised this brilliantly distracting but ultimately spectacularly offensive idea during Good Friday prayers in St Peter's Basilica. And there we have it, now we have playing the victim.

 Strangely enough this has not gone too well with those of non-pork eating, foreskin removing persuasion.  Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews, described the remarks as offensive and repulsive. "So far I haven't seen St Peter's burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests."

  It's not wall to wall criticism though; some members of the Church are taking the issue seriously. Archbishops in Austria and Switzerland are appealing to parishioners to come forward with their allegations, and admitting to past mistakes when dealing with claims. They also asked for forgiveness as they tried to repair the damage caused by the sex abuse scandal currently not being cover or investigated as it should.

 Well it's a start, perhaps they could Email (or Tweet) the Holy See to try and encourage him to do the right thing. I know that after all this time he’s unlikely to change his mind but that would be the decent thing to do.

The links that I have used for this story all come form the BBC and the Guardian, there is a good reason for that. It does seem that a lot of news outlets in the UK are a little quiet on this story, you can click here for a made up Deity's view on this.

The Award for Panic of the Week,

 Why on earth are we banning Methedrone? I assume it is because it has crap nicknames like “meow meow” or “M Cat”.

 The tabloids got really upset about it, wrongly I might add (these 2 boys took Methadone (the heroin replacement, prescription only drug), and alcohol as well as Methedrone) and then the Government asked the , really understaffed, Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to consider what to do with it.

 When I say “consider what to do with it” I don't mean how to take it, I mean ban it. And then it was so. There was very little discussion amongst the council according to latest resignee Eric Carlin. In his letter to Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, he said,

    “Re-Mephedrone; we had little or no discussion about how our recommendation to classify this drug would be likely to impact on young people’s behaviour. Our decision was unduly based on media and political pressure. The report was tabled to the whole Council for the first time on Monday; the Chair came to brief you before the whole Council had even discussed all of the report. In fact, I still haven’t seen the final version.”

 So if you want something banned get some newspapers to make a fuss about it. The Home Secretary will push it through and you will get your way, which is good news for all of us, if we are a right wing newspaper.

I know that it is childish but I want to go and see “Kick Ass” just because it has pissed of the Daily Mail so much. I want it to do well so that they are even for annoyed.

 They seem not to like the film because a child uses a bad word and there is some violence, ah well. They describe it as “Evil” and if that doesn't make me want to go and see the film then I don't know what will. Oh and Mark Kermode gave it a good review too.

I will leave you with this happy little thought, British Chiropractic Association happily promotes bogus treatments even though there is not a jot of evidence.

Diana Watch

Can I apologise for this week’s entry. If it seems a little hurried and cobbled together but there is a very good reason for that, it is. The end of the week has been a little poor for significant other so not had much time to do this but, he says with the utmost irony, the show must go on. I’m doing “jazz hands” now if you are interested.

 Thank you the Daily Express! Your ability to entertain has not been diminished. Thank you. We have a Princess Diana headline from the lovely people at the Express this week and so I thank them. I would also like to thank them because it is one of the stories that the Express reading loons have been allowed to comment on. The Express website is like a London Plague searcher “Bring out you wackos, bring out your conspiracy freaks!” For instance, I give you, oh and I haven't changed the spelling or grammar,

  “I agree that diana should be allowed to rest in peace of course i do. But not when this stuff is still uncovered they cover up everything! and i dont believe diana can rest in peace because she would be up there knowing she was assasinated full stop. I do feel for her boys its not like they would really say what they really think they are memebers of the royal family. I  think we the british public should never let her memory die! and show future queen camilla the DOOR along with charlie boy.”

  I assume that the sentence construction is poor because she was typing though a veil of tears. And from someone else,

“It is apparent to everyone that when any material is repressed in any enquiry there are bound to be suspicions, founded or otherwise. There were a lot more questions after the investigations and reports than before, with good reason. Read more history etc and watch Spooks (Secret Service) etc.,for some ideas of how things work in high places!- to which the nation's peasants are not privy!”

This person recommends watching Spooks, the BBC1 fictional Spy drama, as good evidence as to what goes on. There are so many more,

“Princess Diana WAS murdered so charles could 'marry' his old ugly mistress. Henri Paul was the driver with the intent to kill the Princess, but he was setup to die too.
Yes the Princess should be able to rest in peace, but until her murderers are brought o justice she won't.”

Why is marry in inverted commas? He did marry her, legally and everything, it was on the news, oh wait, I see now, even the news is in on it. This conspiracy goes all the way to the top people! Who is that smoking man hiding in the shadows? Are they adding drugs to my water? How long has that pizza delivery van been parked outside my house? They are coming for me!

Sorry about that, it seems that loony may be catching.

Please go and read the article but, more importantly, the comments. They will be the most fun you have ever had.

 The US has birthers and we have these nutters. I blame the interweb. There are some people who will believe anything they see written down no matter how poorly it is spelt or the argument constructed, how else do you explain the inexplicable, but declining, popularity on the Daily Mail?

For reasons that I still find totally baffling, adverts for sanity products are completely filled with euphemism.  Even the “liquid” referred to is a euphemistic colour, I’m pretty sure that blood is red (except in lobsters or is that an urban myth.) From watching adverts for these products I would have absolutely no idea what they did are where they were, ummmm, placed.

  I know what they are for and you know what they are for but it seems that American TV networks don't (or at least they don’t like the words involved.) An advert for tampons, that mocks other adverts for similar products, has been banned by 2 US television networks for using the word “Vagina”. Yes that’s right, “Vagina”. It didn’t say “take this and shove it up your fanny” (although fanny seems to refer to bottom in the US so that is a very different thing), but it is the correct medical term for the area. How sensitive do you have to be to find that offensive? Although I can’t mock those funny Americans to much because I doubt that the advert would be shown over here.

 Now I know that some of you will be shocked by that word and have probably stopped reading. If you have that means I can insult you without you knowing, you are cunts! Ha, see what I did there? Now some of you are proper offended aren’t you? Sorry.

 Both the Express and the Mail were suitable outraged about Polish Women “coming over here” so that they can have abortions. It is almost a perfect storm for them. Non-English people, the NHS and woman choosing what to do with their bodies. Oh and just a brief aside, if you ever start a headline with the word “Now” you are not a proper newspaper, I.E. “ NOW POLES GET FREE ABORTIONS ON NHS”

 Of course they were both woefully wrong as this commentator said,

        “ Okay - I'm Polish and if you look into the background of this poster and the context, it is NOT suggesting that Polish women milk the British system. It is intended to highlight that women in Poland are denied the right to safe abortions. And the price for even an underground abortion is exuburant. This isn't about "go to the UK and get a termination". It is intended to demonstrate how draconian Polish laws are towards women and how much the Catholic church dictates Polish law. Relax everyone. This won't cause an influx of Poles taking up valuable spaces in the NHS abortion queue. Geesh.”

 It seems that someone, somewhere, who reads the Daily Mail website, is quite sensible. I know that it is hard to believe but it seems it is true.

 So the question has to be, did these papers misrepresent this poster on purpose or by accident? I mean, I can’t imagine that the Daily Mail would just make things up or ignore FACTS. Oh now wait, I think I may have mentioned this briefly last week, click here and here for details.

Well, how where they to know, it was written in foreign and they don’t speak foreign.

 To be honest I would be happy if the story was true. If the country in which I live is helping woman from overseas with making an incredible hard decision and helping them though in a safe, supportive, non-judgemental way, it would make me sort of proud.

Now for the awards of the week,

The Award for Brilliant Mocking of Stupid Laws,

If you didn’t know, you can become a Jedi. Well you can join the International Church of Jediism anyway, your Midiclurian count will probably quite low so don’t expect to able to use the force.

 Anyway Chris Jarvis did join he church so when he asked by Job Centre staff to remove his hood he claimed religious discrimination. He has now received an apology. He’s a Jedi! It’s made up! It’s from a film! It’s not a proper religion; it’s made up…… oh now, wait…

 This rather brilliantly makes a mockery of religious discrimination laws. We all know that these laws are unfair and silly, “I believe in a magic man in the sky so I have to have special legal protection”, but this helps in our battle to get them repealed. They are clearly unworkable and don’t even do what they implemented for, although that isn’t really a bad thing.

 I am now thinking for starting my own religion though so that I can have special treatment for believing in nonsense.  Bow down before the God that is Webble Twosh! Oh hail great Webble Twosh. You can’t mock me. It’s a religion and should be respected, oh and us Twoshists don’t have to apologise for the systematic raping of children and for wilfully covering up those crimes.

The Award For Ignoring a Story Because it Doesn’t Fit in Pre-Existing Narrative,

MRSA rates cut in Southampton hospital by 73% over 2 years by screening patients on admission. That’s 73% which is a massive amount in anyone’s books. If that was my hospital I would want this story covering the local press and TV news programs.

 I heard the story in passing on a very early morning edition of my local news program but it has not been referred to since. It is not on the BBC website (or at least I can’t find it) and a Google web search only brings up the hospitals own website. A news search brings up all sorts of stories about people catching MRSA in Southampton Hospital but not this positive story.

 Now, this is interesting because nurses have been blamed for spreading the “super bug” and nothing else has been mentioned but this shows that ¾ of infections may have come from outside. The patients come in with it. So where is the story?

Hope you all have a good week (I’m hoping for a better one, Significant Other is hoping harder mind you) and that the weather is as lovely as it is today all week. I will try and do better for next week.