@UKHomeOffice sick joke about Stowaways
The Home Office Twitter account published this today:
Stowaways found by border officials among boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates. What would the ambassador say? http://bit.ly/btuDJk
The press release it points to states:
The stowaways, originally from Iran and Iraq, have now been handed over by the UK Border Agency to the French authorities.
Because Iraq and Iran are such lovely places to live in, that the Home Office can make a joke about them. Haha – look at those damn illegal immigrants, we showed them! Pass the chocolate!
Via Cath Elliott
The tweet has already been called out by Migrant Rights, who said it “mocks immigrants”.
The conference that says the earth is flat!
This is a book that exists. This is a book that exists and is not a joke.
This is a book that says that “Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right” and that the Earth is at the centre of the Universe.
There’s a conference too!
Sometimes I have so much faith in humanity, but times like these I wonder how we’ve managed to survive these 6014 years.
Sunny adds: Perhaps the BBC can invite these guys over for a discussion to present both sides of the debate, as they frequently do with Global Warming coverage.
The Economist contradicts itself in endorsing David Miliband
No modernising voice has yet proposed that newspaper leader writers and editorial boards should have their own section in Labour’s electoral college.
But that idea may now be tempting some in the David Miliband camp – which can now add the support of The Economist to that of the Mirror, Observer, Times and Independent, with the Guardian sitting it out following some unhappy recent endorsement experiences, leaving the New Statesman flying an Ed Miliband banner in an attempt to prevent a media consensus landslide.
However, regular Economist readers may find the Economist’s broad-brush conclusion unconvincing.
continue reading… »
Baker attacks media for spinning LD conference
Norman Baker has said that the media is ‘spinning a false narrative’ ahead of the Liberal Democrat conference.
Mr Baker said that his party was “doing very well at elections” and “membership has gone up”. He said talk of a ‘coalition-split’ was unfounded.
Is the media guilty of running a narrative about the Libdems before conference has already taken place?
Watch the video
Right-wing prayers that the BP oil spill will just ‘vanish’
contribution by BenSix
A couple of months after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill the media proclaimed a near-miracle had taken place. It’d gone! The oil had gone! Up and down the coast, it seemed, trawlers could gather up their nets and birds could spread unblemished plumes. Soon enough anti-environmentalists were forcing humble pie down our beleaguered throats.
Rush Limbaugh savoured in the knowledge that – as he’d blindly asserted – “the earth is amazing regenerative” while James Delingpole crowed over this apparent vindication of his baseless disbelief.
continue reading… »
The BBC is gutting its own future
Just last month the Director-General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, finally did what he and the corporation should have done a long time ago:they came out fighting.
During his MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh festival, Thompson defended the BBC’s unique funding model, mocked James Murdoch and attacked Sky’s increasing media dominance and failure to fund original British programming outside of sports and news.
Sky, despite being the largest UK broadcaster by revenue, spends the equivalent of ITV’s entire programming budget on marketing while putting only £100m into new home-grown features, or about the same as Channel Five does despite Sky having fifteen times the turnover.
continue reading… »
Caroline Lucas calls for environment commission
Yesterday evening Caroline Lucas MP called for the creation of an Environmental Rights Commission – a watchdog to help individuals and communities fight to protect their environment from pollution and over-development.
Speaking at a seminar hosted by the UK Environmental Law Association, Caroline Lucas drew comparisons between the fight against discrimination in the 1970s and 1980s and the fight for environmental rights today.
She said:
In the UK, people’s rights to a decent environment free from pollution, over-development and other forms of degradation are simply not strong enough. But even where we have rights, it can be incredibly difficult to uphold these against developers, businesses and often the Government itself. For many, legal fees in particular are simply unaffordable.
Just as the fight for women’s rights was supported by an effective and properly-resourced statutory body, the Equal Opportunities Commission, so we need an independent body now to help individuals and communities fight for their environmental rights.
That is why I am proposing the establishment of a Environmental Rights Commission. This body would be on a statutory base, with sufficient resources to support legal challenges that would not only help individuals or groups, but also advance the position of the environment at a national level, so benefiting us all.
The seminar was on the theme: ‘What does the Coalition Government have planned for the environment? What are the challenges ahead?’.
Labour must challenge the economic consensus, not bend to it
There has been a lot of discussion about how Labour should frame its approach to the economy, the Coalition’s cuts and the future. This came up last night on Question Time, with Ed Balls and Ed Miliband standing virtually aligned against David Miliband and Andy Burnham.
The latter two believe Labour should talk openly of the need for cuts and how far they would go, primarily because it would re-establish Labour credibility on the economy and help win back voters. The two Eds prefer to focus on how the Coalition cuts will damage the economy (the cuts won’t work) and on growing the economy again, and less on deficit reduction for now.
I’m in the Eds camp for not just economic reasons but political reasons. I’m going to try and respond to points by Soho Politico, Duncan Weldon, Hopi Sen when I get some time (just got back from a few days away) but in the meantime – Ed Balls’ article in this week’s Tribune makes many of those for me.
continue reading… »
Clare Balding wins apology from AA Gill
Sports presenter Clare Balding’s official complaint over an article in the Sunday Times that mocked her sexuality has been upheld.
In July, she complained to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) over AA Gill’s review of her new TV show, in which he called her a “dyke on a bike”. The paper defended its columnist on freedom of expression grounds.
The PCC ruled that some of the words were used in a “demeaning and gratuitous way”. The newspaper defended Gill by saying he was well-known for his acerbic and sometimes tasteless sense of humour.
…
However, the full PCC judgement must be published in the newspaper at the weekend. The PCC ruled that the use of the word “dyke” in the article – whatever its intention – was a “pejorative synonym relating to the complainant’s sexuality”.
Clegg gets giant viagra pill for climate inaction
Seven activists from the environmental group Climate Rush went to Libdem leader Nick Clegg’s Putney home at 6am this morning to offer him a human-size paper-Mache ‘Climate Viagra’ .
On the morning before the Liberal Democrats party conference, Climate Rush had painted across the ‘pill’: ‘Get hard on climate change’.
The reverse of the pill stated: Climate Viagra and a petition stating: We, the undersigned, petition Nick Clegg to re-acknowledge the pressing urgency of climate change as the single biggest threat facing humanity, and to use his position as Deputy Prime Minister to “get hard” on tackling the causes of climate change by placing it sensitively but firmly at the heart of all government policy..
Signatories included: Sue Perkins (television presenter) and Josie Long (comedienne). — Petition here.
At 6.30am police questioned the activists and asked them to leave the area.
Deborah Grayson, a member of Climate Rush who has previously been arrested for superglueing herself to a statue within Parliament to protest against unabated coal fired power stations , said:
We hoped this government would fulfil its promise to be ‘the greenest government ever’, but the withdrawl of support for a ‘Green Investment Bank’; the rumours that government will not commit to developing carbon capture and storage technology; and the cutting of key policy bodies, such as the Sustainable Development Commission, tell the opposite story.
The seven climate activists were wearing t-shirts with ‘Don’t be impotent, be important’ written across the front and all three wore a red ‘Climate Rush’ sash.
Climate Rush : Website / Twitter feed
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