The lowest common denominator mentality is alive and well in Glorious Britain. “Most people” (according to a man-in-the-street soundbite on the BBC News yesterday, so it must be true) now think benefit scroungers are the ruin of the nation and treated like dogs. Truly – the news article used this man to justify the April 1st cuts.
Also, at the last count, over 58,000 would be quite happy for the couple in this screenshot to be strung up, bashed to death in prison, hung drawn and quartered, dumped in the streets of Derby – you get the idea.
Deeply Disturbing Doubts
But this looks really bad to me.
Q. Oh! How so? You saw the telly last night, didn’t you?
Well actually, that’s part of the point.
How is it that just a few hours after the three convictions for parents Mick and Mairead Philpott, and their friend Paul Mosley, how is it that three main TV channels are running in-depth full length investigations into the three and the deaths?
How is it they all have recorded interviews with witnesses and others that knew the threesome?
How is it that the police, weeks ago, released secretly recorded audio of the threesome while the trial was in progress?
How is it that the Daily Mail ties the child deaths and lifestyles of the threesome to the benefit scrounging ethos of the recently introduced welfare cuts?
I’ve Seen It All Before
The media hysteria and manipulation of facts we’ve all seen before. How do the 58k Facebook lynch mob so easily forget this?
Daily Mail Changes Headline After Vile Benefits Murder Comments Backlash
Like the cowards that the Daily Mail is, it punches up nasty headlines to get the sales, gets a backlash, then can’t stand by its own words – so changes them. Here’s how:
Initial Headline and URL
DM Initial Welfare Headline
The URL for this page is http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303120/Mick-Philpott-vile-product-Welfare-UK-Derby-man-bred-17-babies-milk-benefits-GUILTY-killing-six.html- but just try clicking it!
You’ll find that you are redirected to a wholly different page, similarly designed but with a different headline. Click Here to try. The original page that you should go to is on the right.
Redirected page with New Headline
DM Redirected Welfare Headline
If you clicked the link you’ll be taken here, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303120/Mick-Philpott-Judge-hears-good-father-awaits-sentencing-killing-SIX-children-house-blaze.html which looks like this image on the left.
But check it through – most images are intact, their comments and much of the text. Key to the change is the removal of the “Vile” headline. However, a Google search on the headline still pulls the original page from the vaults – and this is when the redirect takes effect.
Daily Mail Sales
Still, it must’ve had an effect on sales, else why else would the two journos and their odious editor do it? The Daily Mail is not without “form” in this respect.
Mr Justice Gage told George, 41, that he was ‘unpredictable and dangerous’ – and said that there was no doubt that the murder was ‘premeditated’. But he added: ‘Why you did it will never be known.’
…the Mail continued in a salubrious investigation into George’s past.
Barry George On DM Website
Now Barry George is a troubled man, having several personality disorders and being of limited intelligence, but, as was proved eight years later, Judge Gage was seriously wrong when he said that there was no doubt thatGeorge committed premeditated murder.
In fact, the whole conviction and the media stories around it were completely wrong.
But let’s thank goodness that Facebook wasn’t around in 2002 so that dishy doll psychos like Michelle Keegan couldn’t spill their vile venom under the disguise of public comment. She now has a more recent one saying “This cunt needs hanging share if you agree”
I Disagree
Obviously. I’m a Buddhist.
Also obviously, the man as presented and as I see him, and the others likewise, are the pits. But this does not deserve a witch hunt with thousands up and down the country baying for their private parts to be burnt in oil. Those doing so should better beware.
Faulty Convictions Abound
Because British justice has a long running habit of throwing curved balls. For the last few decades we’ve seen a continuous stream of high profile murders and atrocities, where;
But at least most of these people didn’t die for the alleged crime. Some, appallingly, never really recovered from their time in jail and died early, sad deaths. For not doing something. Take Sean Hodgson for instance. 27 years inside for doing nothing, then dies three years later.
Philpott et al certainly appear as scum, guilty of the deaths of their children.
But give it time. The spotlight glare into which the case has been placed coupled to the hysterical benefit-loaded media commentary give good grounds for a flawed judicial process.
At the time of Timothy Evans conviction, a similar media frenzy was in place.
Similarly for the Birmingham Pub (not) Bombers
and Judith Ward the M62 (not) bomber
All of these (and more) have had long drawn out media frenzies where the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade appeared, just as now, like a syphilis from the sewers of unclean thoughts. They should be better than that, better than a killer.
Folks should learn from history. Getting hot and bothered now will not resurrect the dead children.
I’ve just seen a news article today about a man who’s been locked in a jail for about 30 years and no-one knew where he was! He belongs to the world’s largest democracy, India, and has been jailed in Pakistan since 1973! This is the same Pakistan that George Bush has decided is a friend...
Introduction When there’s a war on in one’s country, say WW2 in the Europe, the people unite against the common enemy and accept that some will die so that the war is won and the next generation can continue. If you lived in the UK, the consensus was that you’d be fighting for “freedom” and...
In an astonishing move, HM Government has now enacted a law that allows any government (because it’s now part of case law) to sentence someone for breaking a law that didn’t exist at the time they “committed” an “offence“.
Worst of all, our dear labour Party let HM Gov do it!
So what was “allowed” (as they thinly described it) is now “not allowed”. Legality curiously disappears in this “allowing” farrago, yet some things were and are illegal yet hardly anyone was sent to the clink. Just a few token stooges.
Workfare
So much for our privileged elite.
Not so good if you’re struggling in this artificially enforced time of economic restraint, wholly created by a roulette-based banking and investment class that shares the revolving door world with our politicians.
Now set in case law, the precedent has now been set for any law to be so applied. You can now be penalised for something that was legal when you did it, but isn’t legal now. That’s what it means. Forget (for the moment) the injustice done to thousands of poor folks, fooled and misled into being stripped of their benefits.
The bigger picture is far worse and will have far reaching consequences.
This is really the ghastliest abomination from a whole series of actions where the freedom of the individual has been sequentially stripped over the past decade or so. No wonder they’re all smiling. On top of this they’ve now gagged the press with whom they previously had such a nice cosy relationship. They’ve made it so that if someone wins a libel case, they still have to pay all legal expenses!
Terrorism
Of course, terrorism (or the perception of terrorism through the western filter screen) is at the route of it. The silent majority have let leaders do and say anything for so long that they’ve become accustomed to being scared and placid for so long that they can’t tell right from wrong anymore. But consider this:
It’s always been illegal to trade with certain proscribed countries, organisations or individuals, (call them COI) at a given moment. But it wasn’t always so. At another moment, the list is different.
The precedent now makes it illegal for anyone to have traded with certain proscribed COI in the past even though they weren’t on the proscribed list years ago! This is the bonkers conclusion to this daft legislation. You can dream up any amount of scenarios. All bonkers but now, apparently, all legal.
It’s here on Wikileaks! Text and xls spreadsheet – it’s all here. The Wikileaks site went a bit awry earlier today and then fell over completely (as of 20081119 20:31 GMT). There sure are a lot of people who want to know lives round the corner! ;-) It’s back up now (20081120 20:24) Wikileaks...
Freedom and the Law In stark contrast to the US which still insists on draconian measures against people thought to be bad (the lowest of the low Rumsfeld called them), the UK has had a landmark ruling for common sense in a democratic, freedom-loving country. Nine Law Lords have unanimously ruled it was unfair for...
A performance piece for Dionysian Heights. Part Two: Death
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana
This is a revision of the earlier video with something that I consider more appropriate both to us at the time, the feel of the piece, and how I feel right now. The music is the same and I’ve edited lots of WW2 video archive material to fit, where possible, to the sounds.
Recorded circa 1980-81
The music was created by Crawling Chaos as accompaniment to a performance piece by Zyclon B Zombies called Dionysian Heights, a morbid and gory on-stage blood fest with real offal and copious quantities of ketchup.
See http://crawlingchaos.co.uk/1145/zyklon-b-zombies-death/
All music copyright Crawling Chaos
All video and images are in the public domain, free of copyright or under creative commons’ licences. They’re all available here on the wayback machine. These are what I used:
n.b. My dad missed The Battle of Leyte Gulf (some of the footage here) though he was at D-Day and then was part of the British Task Force 57 at Okinawa on his ship, HMS Slinger. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Pacific_Fleet
This piece is dedicated to my dad and folks like him
Crawling Chaos: Zyklon B Zombies Work Back along, Crawling Chaos were asked by Curly Jhon and Mackie to do some background music for a performance they intended to do under their moniker Zyklon B Zombies. The performance was called Dionysian Heights, the name appearing as a band name on the Foetus Products’ compilation Blood Samples...
I’ve cleaned up the above track a bit although it’s still 14Meg in size and lasts quarter of an hour. It’s classed as Crawling Chaos although only two members took part in this version. This version of Zombie Dance is part of a commission given to Rees and Jeff by some chums, Zyclon B Zombies,...
Public Breast-beating Over Middleton Paparazzi Photos
You must understand that there is no news today.
Everything is celebrity, sport and royal in the UK.
Everyone has a media correspondent, a sports correspondent and a royal correspondent.
Reporters just report on the latest twitter feed. No-one searches.
There are several aspects to this boob photos media blizzard.
There’s the mass media almost to a man, fawning and groping at half truths.
There are many ordinary people wondering what’s going on.
We now have several (mainly establishment types) people making exaggerated claims about the camera location. Well, I’ve checked.
The photos were NOT taken “over a mile and a half away”, nor “well over a mile” away, nor “about a mile away”, nor “from a long way off, in private woods”, but about half a mile away. The house is clearly visible, along with the windows, railings and garden stuff that appear in the photos on Google Maps Streetview.
I’ve chosen a point ~ 900m from the building as one of many good vantage points. Go down now to see it.
If I used my hand-held camera taking a shot, I could see the whites of the eyes…. Yes really! To demonstrate — here are two pictures that show the capability of my hand-held Panasonic Lumix, DMC-TZ30.
Be careful when clicking as I’ve uploaded the shots at full resolution. Once loaded, click the little green arrow to see the pictures in all their full-size glory – you will need to scroll both vertically and horizontally to find the yacht when on full-size.
They are hand-held, on a normal day, just like many of my recent shots from my recent French vacation. I have many high-res scenic shots – I’ll have to check them through – who knows what I’ll find LOL.
No Zoom: There’s a Yacht here – Can you see it? Click to see just how really small it is.
20x Optical Zoom of Yacht – Now can you see it? Click and you’ll see a tanker in the background which I couldn’t see at all with the naked eye. These two shots and more are visible at lower resolution here on Christine’s Beach Hut.
If someone was on the yacht, I could see them. The boat is several miles offshore – nearly on the horizon actually! So don’t let the Streetview shot below fool you – the house is a lot closer than it looks, even from the position I’ve chosen here. It is only 900 metres away!
The house is dead centre in this link. So it is a private house visible in public, much like me in my bedroom at night with the curtains open, okay? My camera could have easily shown them doing anything. Easily. Yet if I can be easily seen in my bedroom at night (i.e. clearly a private place as they keep repeating) I can get done for indecent exposure? Right?
Hopefully, by seeing the capability of my own camera in conjunction with a normal Streetview of the area, you can now see how incongruous the claims that this is a private place actually are?
(p.s. pan left – it’s a lovely view!)
But surely, 900m is a Long Way, isn’t it?
The firstworldwar.com website shows the standard issue British rifle in WW1 as having guaranteed accuracy up to 600m. This had no optical scope, just sights to be used by a normal man. This means a kill shot at 600m, not just wounding, which shows the hand/eye/gun precision easily possible from anyone. 900 metres doesn’t look so far now, eh?
I also remember reading in “With a Machine Gun to Cambrai”, the author George Coppard saying that he picked off men at a similar range with just one or two rounds from his heavy machine gun. This is despite the juddery nature of a heavy machine gun.
Again, 900 metres doesn’t look so far now, eh?
A Right to Privacy?
Well almost.
The royals have done very well over the last few years with Elizabeth II’s annus horribalis being mostly forgotten. But let’s cast our minds back, shall we?
At that time, Diana and Fergie had caused much embarrassment with their girlie antics. Charlie’s behaviour outside the public face of marital fidelity was well known and became ever-more detailed as time passed. Phil the Greek was his usual self and scandal after scandal built up until the Castle burnt down. So that was that – then.
Now we have Harry getting his kit off to the amusement of the world (in a €6000 a night hotel suite on a serviceman’s salary, note), but being dismissed as “just letting off steam but must be more careful in future”. And almost synchronously in time with Harry, it now appears, Kate & Wills feel so assured in their new-found popularity that they can do anything. They certainly have the money for it.
But you know – they can’t.
If they want the esteemed position that they publicly project and behind which the combined forces of a fawning mass media enforce, then they must behave like it. They cannot behave like normal holidaymakers and not expect a come-back no matter how “ordinary” Kate was supposed to have been. You can’t be a “highness” and not expect attention? They cannot say and do anything – for one thing, our constitution forbids it!
For another, the public will hate it and they need the public much more than we need them.
Why don’t they all just go away? I won’t mind a bit. Maybe this’ll be a turning point as the penny drops?
Privacy – What Privacy? – added 18/9/2012
The BBC has now leapt onto my referencing Google Streetview as an aid to showing relative privacy. Of course, the devil-in-the-detail of this is not mentioned as I’ve done above.
BBC Copies Me – Chateau d’Autet Click image for BBC webpage
But that’s not my point here, is it? Neither is my point that criminal proceedings are now starting. My point is that for all of us….
Our Own Privacy is Zilch.
We are (or will be):
Subjected to full intimate body scans at airports by faceless private “agencies”
Have our emails and web activity saved and analysed at leisure by faceless private “agencies”
Followed down every street, across every junction, inside every shop by CCTV “security” cameras run by faceless private “agencies”
Have our phones tapped by faceless private “agencies”
Have our shopping habits monitored by faceless private “businesses”
Have our finances, credit cards, driving licences all cross-referenced ad infinitum with our passports, our insurances, our taxes and more – by faceless private “agencies”
…and all of this is done to us while the few that own these “agencies” and “businesses” flaunt their wealth, hide their money, holiday in their tax havens, pay no taxes, are as secret and private as they choose to be, collude to manage information and the law, and then have the audacity to tell us how to behave. Royalty is just the icing on top of a very rich cake…..
Charles & Camilla recently visited the notable tax haven of Jersey on the of 18th July for a day – it cost us £60,000 which we paid to Jersey! The current SE Asia visit will cost on a par with the last Canadian tour which cost the Canadians alone nearly $2m in security.
And here’s where more hypocrisy creeps in as those reversions to type are conveniently forgotten.
As we all know, Charles, William’s dad, was knocking off Camilla his mistress both before and during his marriage to Diana, Wills’ mother. Much like Edward VII & Langtry. All of the UK knows this. Now Camilla is supposed to be “accepted”, according to our fawning press. A few grannies during the jubilee said she looked nice….well that’s it then!
Yet in France, for years the hobbled press kept secret the facts of former President Mitterrand’s mistress and his second family….a bit like secret polygamy, but in a Catholic country….? Yet millions get their kit off in summer all over France?
Clearly, French privacy is wholly different to the British version. I can get done for undressing while forgetting to shut the curtains, but in France my privacy to do this is upheld?
Ye-es I hear Paxman saying again.
Media Guff and Fawn
So how can we accept protestations about “rightness” from these people when nothing is said about actions and happenings either then or now which go clearly against their public statements and media view of their lifestyle?
If the next likely Prince of Wales, Wills, turns out like other former Princes of Wales’, do we wash it away but say that sensationalistic reporting of public/private sunbathing “hotties” is wrong?
Because a “hottie” is what Kate is – she’s smart, apparently intelligent, elegant and (most importantly for the press), hot in a swimsuit – as earlier photos revealed. (Remember the debate in all the papers about who was hotter, Kate or Pippa? Of course you do, but you’d forgotten, hadn’t you?).
The success of the Daily Mail website hangs on her and other sensationalist voyeuristic shots of hundreds of “hotties” – here’s today’s Kate article; note the HUGE list down the right for articles, near half of which are for scantily clad women. n.b. Checking the Mail On-line now shows a huge dearth of the usual skin revealing links.
The comments at the bottom, like I said, for the most part, go totally against the fawning theme of the piece. One repeats the mile and a half lie so that mud has stuck again.
Indeed, for those with long memories, the video at the bottom harps on about Berlesconi’s ownership of the magazines and his publication of Diana’s car photos “minutes after the accident”.
Now, maybe you remember that following Diana’s crash, The Daily Mail solemnly pledged never to use paparazzi photos again?
Yet virtually all the links down the right of any Mail page are paparazzi pictures! They have to be – they’ve sacked nearly everyone and the paper would fold without them.
Porn Baron Protests and Threatens to Close Magazine!
It’s the Irish one that’s interesting! It’s co-owned by Richard (Dirty) Desmond, who besides running UK TV’s Channel 5 and publishing the Daily Express and tit paper The Daily Star, also runs porn channels Red Hot TV and Television X. This growth was part financed by selling off his earlier publishing business which included such salubrious titles as Asian Babes and Readers Wives. Notably, his celebrity magazines of OK! and New! are full of paparazzi photos……. like, dah?
Now, to top it all, Desmond has said he wants the Irish paper closed….. – 17 Sep – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19621188 He must be after a knighthood or something because his history shows that prurient disapproval is not one of his strong-points. It’s laughable.
The lady (and Desmond) doth protest too much, methinks. – Hamlet
Mass Media Princely Support, Public Split
Checking the comments following news reporting, I note a two-thirds majority telling Kate to keep her kit on if she doesn’t want to be rumbled. This is despite the media claiming “over-whelming condemnation” or whatever.
It’s just simply not there. Most of the public aren’t swallowing it.
Sooner or later there will be a backlash against the Royals if they keep this up. Let well alone, it’d have blown over, much like Harry’s knob-tastic exposures. But keeping it going, on and on, using their inherited and publicly provided wealth to pursue legal redress shows them seriously out of touch with the common mood, no matter how much the mass media are beefing them up.
The recent Hilsborough revelations show that media collusion is not a new thing.
Tits and Bums
A lot of people are behaving like bums or making a tit of themselves.
Those in “the establishment” are doing what those in the establishment normally do, which is to fawn and whine, pontificate and lie, all to keep ranks under the firm expectation of a gong at some point.
Then there are the “granny types” who all think she’s lovely and that the queen does a marvellous job.
There’s a few who see it as an attack on women, part of the objectification of women that’s happened for millenia and has now gone past saucy postcards, through Page 3 and porn mags (like Dirty Desmond’s) to full on ubiquitous internet porn and the gyrating phone girls on Freeview. (All very valid, but not my gist)
Then there’s everyone else!
These are in two camps, I think;
those that don’t care either way but think the royals should think themselves lucky to get free holidays and trips and well looked after for the whole of their lives
Address removed since it’s been reported as changed, thanks Dan
Kate Middleton Topless Photos – Prince William and Kate Suing Publication
Apart from that, there are loads of others. One that caught my eye was a website called Divided States, a US political site. They had a web-page here, http://www.dividedstates.com/kate-middleton-topless-photos-prince-william-and-kate-suing-publication/ which they’ve now pulled. How coy.
Fortunately, the Google Cache shows us this – the full copy of their original posting – click here or the screenshot for the cache. (full image available on request)
So am I a tit or a bum?
Is Oliver above?
Is Berlesconi? Berlesconi certainly has gripes with the UK following his latin faux-pas with the queen and others….? Maybe he’s publishing just for revenge?
Conclusion
Wills, with his experience, has behaved like a knob. He should have known better. He slipped up, which is a possible explanation for the rapid response unit being thrown into action. It was notably absent following the Harry incident.
But really, what everyone has totally forgotten, is the old adage:
Don’t throw stones when you live in a greenhouse.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. – Hamlet
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Introduction I knew there was something really, really dodgy about that MyBookFace.net crap highlighted in this post the other day. Not only are they connected to some serious malware (as detailed in the posting), but they’ve an interesting line in popups!!! Google Treasure Chest Rises Yet Again! Here’s what to do… Go to http://mybookface.net making...
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