Speedy Weegee

Some fantastic black and white photos from 30's & 40's photojournalist Weegee in the Mail today.

The sharp contrast gives a moody feel to the crime-ridden days of New York in the early 20th century and, as the Mail tell us, helped inspire Film Noir.

The headline informs us of his startling penchant for arriving at crime scenes before the police. This is beautifully illustrated by the accompanying photo of four policemen at a crime scene. I can only imagine he set up his camera and waited for them to arrive...

The Salvation Army stand guard until the
Rozzers arrive.

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Who's ya Daddy?

Interesting, oh no sorry my mistake, pointless photo story in the Daily Mail today of the Prime Minister carrying his child in a knapsack.

Just out shopping - I'm as normal as the
next person

Obviously for security reasons it's imperative that the child's face is pixilated out. In this case there's a very real threat - this child is not as others. Most babies bear a passing resemblance to former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, but not this one.

This baby explains the ever increasing power and influence of our Deputy Prime Minister in Government policy, and is the reason you'll never see Samantha Cameron and Miriam González Durántez together - they can't stand being within 30 feet (Or 10 metres for the Lib Dem) of each other. See the photo below for the shocking truth!

Big Dave & Little Nick

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Poetry corner

Inspired by The Reverend Dr Peter Mullen's crap efforts at limericks in the Telegraph I gave it a pop.

Georgie's the Chancellor's name,
hookers & coke is his game,
as well as helping his mates,
with favourable tax rates,
and giving the poor all the blame.

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We're all in it together...

Is Dave really not a man of the people or does he have really smelly poos?

Economic woe makes folk bitter,
They moan on their blogs and on twitter,
But our leaders are clever,
And we're all in this together,
Except when they go to the shitter.

Making sure they can't smell his fear

 Tweeted by Mark Stone at Sky news.

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James Delingpole is a tool

I was going to say "of the oil industry" but on second thoughts he really is just a tool. Not a big one mind, more a little pink acorn nestling in a thatch of black pubes.

Certainly bullied at school

He's grasped onto a second tranche of emails from 2007 that he feels undoubtably smash the global warming conspiracy. The fact that they're just bit pieces of emails that could be relating to the University of Anglia's Christmas party for all we know is neither here nor there.

One of the emails compares selling Climate change to the world with selling unleaded petrol to an unwilling public back in the 70's & 80's. This is something I've felt for a long time. I'm not really that phased by global warming, I think it's happening and it's happening because of increased Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere. This is the accepted science by the vast majority of respectable scientific organisations, it's also the line a lot of big corporations are taking - and they won't do that lightly as there's a cost associated with that stand-point. However there are people who are vehemently against it as if it's true it will upset their comfortable existence.

So in order to keep their life on an even keel they pick at the science and scientists through popular press and (nowadays) the blogosphere. You don't have to invest time and money into scientific research in order to demonstrate your point, you can just insert some uncertainty into the science that means you're going to pay more to drive to the newsagent.

This is what James Delingpole does, well he doesn't do it personally, he ctrl c/ ctrl v from other's who have the brains to pick out little "Ah but how do you know?" points in the same way people did (and still do) with lead in petrol, lung cancer from cigarettes, CFCs depleting the ozone layer and evolution. This is what was mentioned in the email he quotes and he knows it's a legitimate point to be put against climate change deniers. So he goes for a direct hit and questions the wisdom of removing lead from petrol.

I know what you're thinking - there's data coming out of your ears that show what a great thing this was - blood lead levels have dropped massively in countries that have taken lead out of petrol and this has had great benefits to the health of children. It's even been postulated that the removal could have had a positive impact on crime rates! But yet still JD bangs on about the cost - £600 on the price of a new car - being too much. It appears you can put a price on your child''s health and it's related to the cost of a Ford Escort.

And this is why he's a tool. He's can't bare the thought that someone knows better than him and will tell him what to do. He can't bare the fact he's wrong about anything and he'll whine and bitch until he's puce in the face that he's right. You just know what sort of spoiled brat he was at school and you've got to feel for his parents.

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Big Dick serves hot air

Littlejohn's latest ill-informed ramblings range from moaning the police treat racism, homophobia and murder as a crime via a complete lack of awareness about the Arab spring to wind farms.

I'll not bother going into his own slow-witted attempt to be a jolly version of James (science is hard) Delingpole as it was one of the comments that made me laugh most (see below).

I like the gall of someone who bitterly complains about the noise and grotesque appearance of turbines and how their heart bleeds for anyone who lives near one when they see it through their car window on the M25.

Unless they were driving round another pretty, quiet and tranquil M25 that people clamour to live next to and I don't know about.

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Flipping the bird

How offensive is it to be 'flipped the bird'? Personally I'm not too bothered, there's often no vigour associated with it, kind of a lazy "I just don't care; jog on". It's certainly not as offensive as someone giving you the rods, something a little more violent about those.

But then I would think that as I'm a fully paid up member of the thought police (Still awaiting my warrant card) if you want to find out what the honest to goodness tax payers think of flipping the bird you need to go to the arbiter of public standards  - Our Lady the Daily Mail. Amen.

Luckily today's Mail has two stories about giving folk the finger (Not in a good way you understand) so we've double the sample size to base our findings on. Let's jump in.

The first story involves a woman, a bus driver and a missing 20p. I don't think the details are that important needless to say it ends up with a shocked woman staring at a single middle finger.

Blimey that's not very nice is it? All she did was scream at him for the duration of the bus ride, he really should man-up and take it on the chin, after all he's got that plastic screen thing protecting him from her spittle. The tone of the piece makes it very obvious that we're not to be impressed by the driver's actions - it's not big and it's not clever. But more importantly what do the readers think? Let's have a look at the top 6 rated comments.

Oooh people aren't very happy with him, and bus drivers in general it seems. So 'Flipping the bird' seems to be nasty. Let's confirm this with digit disgust story number 2.

So this unhappy Russian newsreader seems to have developed manual Tourette's syndrome which means every time she says "Barrack Obama" she has to unfurl the third finger, on the news, in front of 120 million current affairs loving Russians. So does showing off and acting clever in front of twice the population of the UK anger the Mail's loyal readership as much as a pissed off bus driver?

Apparently not.

So there it is, inconclusive evidence on the offensiveness of the bird. Flip it to an angry woman on public transport and it's bad, flip it to a leader of the free world and it's funny. However please keep in mind if you ever meet David Cameron on the bus all bets are off we just don't know what the etiquette is.

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