Goldilocks returns

A familiar set of stories from the Mail today highlighting the slapdash approach some celebrities take to worming their way into Mr Mail-Reader's online affections.

This pair are too fat;

This pair's too thin;

But this one's juuuuust right, and middle class pushing upper. Phwoarr I bet she's got fantastic property equity.

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Not big or clever

Fear for the future as photo shows man looking older than he did 25 years ago.

Celebrity sparks concerns about a clothing shortage by wearing different clothes to go to the gym and out shopping.

You'll probably have also noticed the interesting decision to spell gym with an n, it seems the Mail's spell checker has had a day off.

And we'll finish off with some mixed messages about 'friends with benefits'. Scientists may believe they're doomed to failure, but it doesn't seem to stop women choosing it as a lifestyle choice. It's obvious the scientists are not seeing any evidence of these benefits.

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A lot of hot air

In an extraordinary weekend of horror in Norway, pop star tragedy, "Right wing nutters" trying to ruin the global economy, Greece borrowing another couple of quid to see them through the weekend and drug addled soap stars finding Jesus it's good to see the Mail keeping its eye out for unusual, but important, world news.

We've this keen eye for a story to thank for the astounding revelation that a man in America doesn't turn on his Air Conditioning. Let me give you a second to come to terms with this - it's a biggie I know.

Stan saves a fortune on electricity
but stinks

Despite Mr Cox living in baking Salina, Kansas he still refuses to turn on his A/C for a variety of reasons including expense, the rise in numbers of fat kids and global warming. Luckily if this story has piqued your interest in life without air conditioning he's published his grumpy old man rants in a book. I can only hope he goes into more detail about his innovative ideas for keeping cool without the use of machinery. Complex ideas such as wearing shorts and sitting in the shade surely need some more explanation as the links between these ideas and my own temperature are difficult to fathom.

Rumours of a string of similar stories breaking around the world are starting to come to light. Apparently there is a 39 year old woman in Baden Baden, Germany who refuses to take an umbrella out  despite being aware there's a 63% chance of precipitation. Where will this madness end? Tweet

Voodoo magic in Shanghai

I'm aware that science isn't the Mail's strongpoint. Their core belief is that any researcher not spending time working on cancer cause / cure is simply wasting their time and your taxes. They also find themselves exasperated by new discoveries that change the way we look at the world, searching for "Now they say" on the Mail gives over 3000 results. How dare they find out new stuff, don't we know enough already?

However their misunderstanding of how photography works is surprising even for these luddites.

Lets be clear Tom Daley is not defying gravity here, it's a photograph. I'm reminded of the Father Ted episode where he has to explain perspective to Dougal.

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Journalism in action

The funniest thing Richard Littlejohn's ever written was in his column this week.

About halfway through his rant against the police - he has got it in for the police for some reason, maybe he's been done for speeding or he's dreading a 6am knock at the door and scrambling to flush who knows what down the U-bend - he pulls this rabbit out of the hat...

"...yesterday when I was checking the facts and figures behind the liquid bomb plot..."

Litllejohn checking the facts and figures. Classic, he's a cad that fella.

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Maybe they'll come out for a biscuit?

Big big news day. Rupert Murdoch stands down his need to own every news and entertainment outlet in the world. For a bit. Vince Cable gets asked what his opinion of the whole News International shenanigans is and manages not to yell out "I 'kin told you this last year and you sacked me for it you bastards!" and his replacement, Jeremy (rhyming slang) Hunt wonders if he'll still get the suitcase full of cash he was promised as it wasn't really his fault it all went tits up. Gordon Brown blows his spuds in the commons - come on man let it all out - and Suri Cruise doesn't always wear a coat.

But the question we've all be talking about round our end is, "Where's all the chubbas gone off of 'telly?" Thank the lord the Mail's all over this bad boy like a tramp on a sandwich.

We're treated to a long line of happy go lucky fatties who've stopped munching chips, started eating cous cous and running down to Holland & Barrett for Milk Thistle.

This can only be good for TV, finally we don't have to put up with our screens being filled with their enormous bloated trainee corpses and instead can enjoy the studio set. Some craftsmen have spent literally minutes knocking that chipboard together.

Or have they spoken too soon? A quick look up the screen and what have we here:

Oh and here:

Better invest in new widescreen TV then. Selfish fat gets. Tweet

Big Dick joins the fight

Earlier this week I blogged about the the schools sports day fiasco as reported in the Mail. Obviously the big swinger himself read this (Ahem) took the theme and ran with it, like the big fat asthmatic pudding his photo byline depicts.

Like most things in his Broken Britain vision of the world kids not running in a race is down to Elf n safety and/or Yuman rites however the local education spokesman wouldn't say which, probably because he wasn't asked. Salt was rubbed into the wound by replacing the Egg & Spoon race with an Egg balancing competition; which is exactly what an Egg & Spoon race is isn't it?

The headmaster, Chris Knowles, of the school in question is furious - really furious, not pretend furious like the made up parent that was quoted in the Mail story. He defends the accusations of lazy kids guzzling Irn-Brew, sitting on their backsides and paedo paranoia with a straight bat, but there's one thing that really gets his goat. They only went and bloody used a photo of the wrong school, amateurs.

To deliver his revenge Mr Knowles is releasing the big dogs on the Daily Mail. Some of the kids intend to write to the editor letting him know of their disgust at the way their school's been portrayed. There's a big risk they'll get missed though. The number of badly spelled pieces written in green crayon that pass through the editor's hands every day must be mind boggling.

It's all for nought anyway, as Big Dick points out our chances at the 2012 Olympics are already irrevocably damaged by this lack of competitive sack racing at junior schools. Apparently this definitely means that

If there was a gold medal for cowardice and petty-minded stupidity, Britain would clean up.

And if there was a Nobel prize for shiterature  he'd be in Oslo with a big shiny medal.

PS - Can't not mention the demise of the NOTW. What the hell kind of special services does Rebekah Brookes offer Rupert that mean she keeps her job at the expense of a whole newspaper? Wowsers! Tweet

This really happened...

...it said so in the paper.

A school in Scarborough - terrified that their chubby charges might break out in a sweat - told parents to put away the inhalers their kids were safe.

In fact it's worse than you imagine, the Mail tells us what they actually said to becalm the meaty monsters worrying about hauling their bulk down the race track.

Parents attending a school sports day were stunned by a public announcement their children did not have to take part in the races. 

It added that if the primary pupils chose to spend the rest of the afternoon on their backsides rather than the track families should 'respect their decision'.

The tannoy actually blurted out that they could spend the rest of the afternoon on their backsides. Yeah that really happened - it says so right here in the paper. Not only that some of the podgy little porkers did it, actually sat on their backsides and guzzled - yes you read that right - they guzzled pop. You know it's true because 'one parent' said it and they really exist and they're really furious.

The council didn't help. They refused to comment directly on the farce. Instead they wheedled their way out of it by saying that ''All 425 children at Newby and Scalby primary school take part in sports day." Sly foxes, impossible to get a straight word out of them eh?


As if sarcastic public announcements mocking fat kids isn't bad enough you can't even take photos of the little salad dodgers in case they end up on t'internet for paedos to get their jollies over. This ban obviously assumes there's a big market for chubby chasing kiddie fiddlers  - who knows?

This ban is of particular concern for the Mail reporters and publishers because, as Minority Thought points out, they like to publish a lot of uncomfortably risque photos and stories about kids. Their obsession with Suri Cruise and now Coco Arquette (And Frankie from the Saturdays who, although a grown woman now, did used to be in S Club Juniors and that just makes it weird) knows no bounds and must be flogging newspapers to someone somewhere.

This? Oh this is just to take up space.
No one's suggesting the Daily Mail prints
Weird photos of kids to attract people like
Gary to their website. No, no one's suggesting
that at all.

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Call the cops

The thought police terrify me. The idea that they can listen in on the insane/inane twitterfeed going on inside my noggin and then persecute me for it is gut achingly scary. Well it would be if they existed outside the paranoid rantings of people like perennial victim Melanie Phillips.

Melanie seems to think that exposing her opinions on life to millions of people, who then point out the gaping holes in the logic, logistics or efficacy of them, is the same as having some secret state sponsored Derren Brown types reading your brains by magic or lasers or something. It's not, she's only being persecuted by the shadows in her mind that tell her the world's after her cash or wants to build windmills in her back garden.

In her column this week this victimhood mindset led her to say this:

Nevertheless, it is remarkable that, at the very least, it is becoming possible to have a debate about these propositions. For the terrible fact is that, until now, such a debate has been impossible because the Left-wing intelligentsia has ruthlessly shut it down.

This is true of a wide range of issues — such as immigration, multiculturalism, man-made global warming, equality and anti-discrimination laws, overseas aid and many more — on which only one viewpoint is permitted.

Maybe her paranoia is gin fuelled, maybe she had a bang on the head or maybe as she got more successful and earned more money she was angry about the pounds she was giving to the tax man when she could have been spending them on aga cookers and anti-wrinkle cream - we'll never know. However what is certain is that she writes this nonsense without any thought about the realities of not what you can or cannot say, but of what has actually been said.

Spend ten minutes looking on the Mail and Telegraph website for the topics that Mrs Phillips insists have been shut down by the paramilitary mind readers and you'll find that the unspeakable is being spoken to around 2.7 million people daily.

Immigration

 Multiculturalism

Global warming

 Equality / anti-discrimination

 Foreign aid

So this means one of two things; either the Metropolitan Mind police are so incompetent that - never mind stopping you thinking dangerously subversive thoughts - they can't even stop people writing down these ideas and then flogging them off to 5% of the British public at less than a pound a day.

Or more likely Melanie Phillips can't bear the idea that on some topics what she says is just total shit and, having said it out loud, people have the right to point out what a load of shit it is. Tweet