Boris Johnson’s Website

Whilst browing this, I came across this photograph. The similarity to his current political situation provided much amusement. But I still like the bloke.

Woman ‘tore off ex-lover’s testicle’ (Guardian)

You have to feel sorry for poor Geoffrey. My favourite quote from this item is this:

Monti initially tried to hide the testicle by putting it in her mouth

Great plan.

Waterstone’s sacks employee over blog (Silicon)

It would appear that Homebase let me off relatively lightly for my posts when I worked there. Then again, they probably just never figured out how to use a computer enough to find the site.

It got there first, it did it best, and now it’s on a roll (Independent)

Nick Pollard explains far more eloquently than I the reasons why I prefer BBC News 24 over Sky News:

[Sky News] is deliberately more concerned with the human interest angle of stories than the BBC: a report about the first baby born in tsunami-hit Sri Lanka in 2005 was unlikely to have made it on to News 24; even if it had done so, such an item would not have ended with a mawkish coda from the reporter “… and she’s beautiful.”

The channel is also over-branded, say some: if viewers are not watching the Sky News Weather or the Sky News Money slot, they are being asked to press the red button for Sky News Active. Meanwhile, the word “Sky” – in brash red, white and blue – is sometimes on screen in three places.

Pollard is unabashed. “You have to stand out. And, in a way, you have to shout to your viewers.”

I don’t want mawkish human interest stories, I want stories that explain the true global impact of events, and analyse them in this light. Why on Earth is the first child born following the tsunami in any way newsworthy?

I don’t want news channels to shout at me, and I certainly do not want to watch a news channel with so little taste that it’s head can say something as frankly disgusting as this:

Sky has had “a good tsunami”. Such a feeling is certainly evident inside the company’s HQ

If someone from the Beeb had said this, there would be resignations.

Abusive calls give BBC chiefs a Jerry Springer moment (Guardian)

Christians complaining about fictional abuse in an Opera screen on BBC Two make threatening and abusive phone calls to BBC Executives, meaning that they now have to be protected by guards? If they’re doing it themselves in real life, why do they complain about it in fiction?

Time to end feud, Brown tells Blair (Guardian)

When I first saw this article, I thought that I had been mistaken in my earlier posts, and that there actually was an awful lot of bad blood between Mr Brown and Mr Blair. Which would certainly be a big story.

But then I saw this, which made me reconsider. This is a case of Brown using the apparent bad blood to make Mr Blair look bad. Obviously, this shows that there is a degree of animosity between the two, which, I dare say, is not helped by this kind of thing. Mr Brown is desperate to be seen as the good guy in all of this, so that he can become the new party leader. But he’s not nearly such a good manipulator as Mr Blair, and he hasn’t realised that pulling this sort of stunt will damage Labour at the next general election: Something for which the party will not forgive him, and that will preclude him from being allowed to ascend to party leadership. He’s being foolish.

I realise now, though, that there is greater animosity between the two than I had at first realised, and this could very well do some serious damage to the party. But was the speech clash part of this argument? I still think that’s too puerile a trick for Mr Blair to pull.

The art of swearing

It would help me a lot in the struggle to retain my sanity if people would kindly wait until they have seen Jerry Springer: The Opera to comment on it. And as for the Christian complaints, doesn’t Christianity forbid prejudice?

The reason I chose this particular piece to link to was purely for the following quote:

The Sun – headlines yesterday included “I had sex with chatline girl – and her boyfriend” – doesn’t always spring to mind as custodian of the nation’s morals, though it does insert asterisks in swear word so readers are not shocked by full-frontal contact with missing vowels and consonants.

I’ll be watching tonight and, no doubt, commenting on it at some point.

And, as a side-note, if you’re wondering about The Guardian’s position on swearing after its criticism of The Sun:

We are more liberal than any other newspaper, using words such as cunt and fuck that most of our competitors would not use.

The editor’s guidelines are straightforward:

First, remember the reader, and respect demands that we should not casually use words that are likely to offend.

Second, use such words only when absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article; there is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes.

Third, the stronger the swearword, the harder we ought to think about using it.

Finally, never use asterisks, which are just a copout.

Ask Belle a question (Guardian)

Just an update on the earlier post about Belle de Jour: The Guardian are now looking for people to put their questions to Belle, the responses to which will be posted on their site next week.

Use of sex to sell alcohol is criticised

Of course: We all know it should be the other way round.

Big Brother: 50K bribe sex shocker! (DS:BB)

Even Channel Four wouldn’t be this pathetic and exploitative. If they refuse to market BB Condoms and Alcohol because they’re worried that it would play into the critics’ hands, then there’s no way on Earth on they’re going to offer money for sex. Besides which, common sense says they wouldn’t be that stupid.

Nice to see that the Daily Mail likes Big Brother again. Can’t imagine what made me think they didn’t like it. Oh, maybe it was this. Or this. Or this. Or one of the hundreds of other articles where they said just that.