Completely insane

When it comes to Daily Mail comments, there's funny, there's strange and then there's downright insane. This definitely falls into the latter category. I'm not quite sure what Weary, England is trying to say here about Jan Moir's latest piece of rubbish. Something to do with these lessons being a form of brainwashing which will get your kids taken away because mum and dad had a pillow fight.

I think he/she wants an end to MODERATION and then start with more EXCESSIVISM. Or possibly the other way round. 

It's one of the worst written things that I've ever seen. Yes, even worse than Littlejohn.

The Sun on Tiger Woods crashing into a tree - He's having an affair!!

Whereas the Guardian have written a normal article based on facts. The Sun have taken it into their own hands to publish unfounded accusations.

Many other newspapers have covered the story, including the Express, the Independent, and the Times and none of them have given these accusations the light of day.

So where did the Sun get the accusations that firstly, Tiger had a row with his wife and secondly, rather more seriously that he has been having an affair. The Sun claims:

Reports in the US claim he has been cheating on her with party hostess Rachel Uchitel, 34.

“Reports in the US” seems to be a sneaky way to print wild allegations without substantiating them whatsoever.

The Independent also prints the allegations, but unlike the Sun they don’t make them the centre of the story, in the last line printing…

Rumours about the golfer's private life surfaced this week with a tabloid newspaper speculating about marital unrest, but it had little evidence to substantiate its outlandish claims.

Note how a respectable newspaper doesn’t engage in wild speculation and even the claim of marital unrest is said to be “unsubstantiated.” Even though the Independent is a quality paper, if they had found out through sources that they trusted and believed that Woods was having marital problems or even an affair, it would have featured more prominently in the story.

None of the American sources that claim this affair, such as this, this and this have any actual evidence to back it up and the Hollywood Gossip names the newspaper the National Inquirer (which first made the allegations) as “the unreliable tabloid”

Even the Mail and the Express have not gone as far as claiming an affair, with the former claiming an argument, and the latter – surprisingly – having the decency not to print unsubstantiated allegations.

It just makes you wonder, how low will the Sun sink?

Police brutality

Whatever inquiries such as this one say, makes little difference. The sort of brutality dished out at the G-20 protests was not officially sanctioned, it was individual police officers ignoring instructions and deciding that they could do what they wanted.

The inquiry comes up with a number of suggestions such as this one:

The report, published today, called for a softening of the approach and urged a return to the "British model" of policing, first defined by 19th-century Conservative prime minister Sir Robert Peel. O'Connor advocated an "approachable, impartial, accountable style of policing based on minimal force and anchored in public consent".

All well and good, but if the individual police officers continue to act as they did at the G-20 protests, i.e. pushing over a man walking along with his hands in his pockets, there will be no change. The assault of Ian Tomlinson was not done as part of a policing stratagy of brutality, it was done because police officers felt that in the middle of a crowd, protected by removing their ID they could do what they like. Until the average police officer is made accountable to the public this sort of thing will keep happening.

Public order training should be overhauled, with a new emphasis on schooling the 22,500 officers trained for protests in communication and diplomacy rather than riot scenarios. "Time spent on suppressing mass urban disorder should be reduced and time spent on planning and keeping the peace should be increased," O'Connor said.

This and any other measure brought in will have no effect until the police are taken to account and remeber that they (like politicians) are public servants.

And since the Met seem not to like the proposals anyway

Although the Met is expected to endorse today's report, O'Connor's findings will be seen as a damning indictment of a style of policing protest pioneered by Scotland Yard in the last decade. Senior Met officers are known to have lobbied hard against some of O'Connor's proposals, at one stage even hiring lawyers in an unsuccessful attempt to oppose one of his key recommendations.

What chance is there of any change? Only time - and another big protest - will tell. I'm not confident.
 

Can the Sun get any worse? Of course.

Deprived of any real news this Saturday morning, what better than something about kids - SHOCK HORROR - having fun. Yes, that's right, the fact that...

THE youngest son of Professor David Nutt - sacked as government drugs adviser - has posted pictures of himself on Facebook apparently smoking dope.

... is apparently newsworthy in the Sun. Professor Nutt's children's sins include appearing...

ZONKED in other snaps on the site

Maybe he was just tired after a long day. His son also commented on facebook…

"Steve Nutt thinks his dad is probably more famous than he'll ever be, BARRING A TERRORIST ATROCITY THAT IS... "

It's true, and slightly funny. Ok, not very funny, but what has off key humour got to do with Professor Nutt's sacking?

Shockingly, instead of sticking a portrait of himself in his "profile" photo slot like most Facebook users, his image is of an orange labelled "product of Israel" - one half of which is a GRENADE.

I'm still struggling to work out why this is relevant, possibly a little offensive but it makes a bit of a political point. It isn't something put up without any thought.  About Nutt's other daughter the Sun postures that...

Photos show her and girl pals cavorting with a bottle of spirits in hand - and were uploaded two years before she turned 18.

People before the age of 18 sometimes drink shocker.

Meanwhile older lad Johnny, 26, has posted photos of himself prancing NAKED in the snow in Sweden.

Sounds fun... I don't know about you, but I've failed to find anything relevant to Professor Nutt's sacking/resignation or anything that's offensive or abnormal about his kids lives. Maybe this is just another poorly done hatchet job.

What do we want? People to stop taking the piss out of student protest

That means you Tom Harris MP, remember the party whip isn't controlling your blog (or is he?) and the government have no policy of unfair and stereotypical blog posts against students (or do they?)

Quite frankly, this is stereotypical and unfunny and quite what an MP is doing posting it is beyond me. I generally like reading Harris' blog (even though sometimes it is a walking advert for New Labour) but this is an aberration and I hope he'll notice soon.

However this is just part of a general prejudice against student protest, i.e. that they're all a bunch of layabouts who have nothing better to do. In this case protesting against drug policy the implication is that they're all druggies, similar to the idea that anyone who challenges the status quo on immigration is a racist. Student protest however can be a very powerful thing and the party leaders would do well to give it a bit more consideration.

Oh and for the record, the fact I didn't get up until nearly midday today does not make me a layabout. It's the weekend. 

Spot the white supremacist making a youtube video

Oh... here he is, and he's taken to the streets of Peckham to make a propaganda film for the BNP





It's just complete bollocks, I've reported it to YouTube because it's clearly hateful and abusive content, and racist. The content of the video is not the main reason why I've flagged it, the main reason is the text that accompanies it.

A walk through the main shopping street in what used to be Peckham.

Oh, so because there are black and asian people now it's not Peckham.

The Third World has come to London

So, all foreigners are from "Third World" countries. No? Oh, I get it, just the non-white ones.

If I lived in Somalia or Pakistan, I'd be underneath the first lorry coming this way too! 

So all Somalian or Pakistani immigrants come in illegally. Funny that, I have a Somalian friend and he came here quite legitimately.

The indigenous white population have been replaced by a largely African population who buy their goods from Kurds, Afghan and Iraqi Muslims, many of whom ran for cover when they saw the camera. 

Probably because most people, whatever their skin colour don't like to be filmed going about their daily business by some random stranger.

Peckham now has one of the highest rates of HIV infection and street crime in Europe and the schools are 'no go areas' for indigenous white children.

I can't see where the person has got these figures from, or the point they're trying to make. Surely they're not saying that all foreigners bring diseases or that they're all criminals? That's exactly what they're saying. Also note a very BNP use of the word indigenous to supplement white.


All in all, a load of crap, and tagged with 'BNP' and 'Nick Griffin'


Update:The video has been removed from YouTube for 'terms of use violation'. It's good to see that I make a difference occasionally (not through the blog, but by flagging the content)

The Nutt case gets nuttier

The real problem – and it may be quibbling over details – is not that the government ignored the drugs advice, but it’s that they failed to offer any other explanations other than health issues as to why cannabis has been reclassified as a Class B drug.

If Alan Johnson had been able to find a convincing reason why it should have been reclassified there would be no reason why he shouldn’t have. As it is though, he hasn’t and Gordon Brown has crossed the line in pontificating about the science, which he doesn’t understand

In 2007 as Brown came into government saying that cannabis in the form of ‘skunk’ was lethal, something that Nutt denies completely. Nutt was never saying that cannabis isn’t harmful or should be legalised, rather that because the large majority do not have any harm caused to them by it that it isn’t as dangerous as alcohol or tobacco.

Over the years various governments have reclassified and reclassified over and over again cannabis to no effect. The government is legally bound to consult and take into account the council’s ideas, clearly in this case they have undermined its authority and broken the terms of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs act and in this case they have thought that they can pronounce on science better than real scientists.

This whole thing is a complete mess caused by policy that is patently wrong, Nutt hasn’t criticised them for ignoring their advice, he and many others are criticising the government for their policy making lacking any kind of evidence.