Cable v Murdoch

Vince Cable talks a good war. He declared war on Rupert Murdoch to a couple of undercover hacks from the Telegraph. Then instead of going on the offensive he retreated with his
tail between his legs. The first war in history to be fought by unconditional surrender.

There have been calls for Cable’s resignation from newspapers owned by a certain Mr Murdoch. Now there’s a spooky coincidence.

Those who watched the debate on tuition fees will remember battling Cable’s role in that farce. Cameron and Clegg might as well have been pulling his strings as he mouthed their policies and tried to look sincere.

Interestingly the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio Two specifically asked listeners to call in with comments supporting poor Mr Murdoch. There were none.

Some recalled the lies Murdoch told about the Hillsborough disaster – lies insulting and demonising Liverpool fans. Lies which which the Sun later withdrew.

Others drew attention to Fox News which is a continual right-wing rant rather than a news channel.

Listeners also drew attention to Berlusconi in Italy who used his media empire to silence opposition to his corrupt repressive government.

Another said Dennis Potter had the right idea when he named his pancreatic cancer “Rupert”

Perhaps the best comment appeared on the Sky News own website: “I love SKY. What ever they say, i believe. Tell me what to think next Mr Murdoch?”

Megalomaniac Murdoch

News Corporation - the misnamed Rupert Murdoch empire - is launching a million dollar lawsuit against Skype. The lawsuit concerns the first three letters of its name.

Murdoch's lawyers claim this word is Murdoch's personal property and want money from anyone else who uses it! To quote the Sun - another Murdoch property - "you couldn't make it up."

The inhabitants of the Isle of Skye could be in trouble here and Murdoch's lawyers will have their sights on "The Sky's the Limit", "Blue Skies thinking" and the Skye Boat Song.

So next time you sneak a peak at that thing...you know that blue thing up there...Murdoch could be after your money.

And as for you Trotskyists...watch out!

Banksy at Bristol Museum

Banksy who has gone from being a graffiti artist to the quasi-respectability of having an exhibition at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. His picture of a spiky-haired anarchist having his mask adjusted by his mum probably suggests what his attitude towards this is.

When you first approach the Museum you can see a figure of Ronald McDonald on the facade. If you think another public service has succumbed to corporate sponsorship - the clown cries tears of blood and has a bottle by his side and a clear intention to commit suicide.

Some of the pictures are lighthearted such as the Wizard of Oz picture of Dorothy saying "I don't think we're on Canvas any more."



Others are less so with a KKK member hanging from a tree to comment on the fine old Southern Tradition of lynching.


The exhibition is thought-provoking and interesting and well worth a visit. It is also free.

Most Sun readers think The Sun prints lies

“You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist,
But seeing what the man will do,
Unbribed there's no occasion to.“


(Humbert Wolfe, poet 1885-1940)

Journalists unleash periodic attacks on teachers and
teaching. “Falling standards” every time the exam
results are better than last year, “failing schools” if
the results are not as good and of course “no progress”
if the results are the same. “Failing teachers” become
“greedy teachers” when we put in for a pay rise.

However the public trust in journalists has been low for 25
years at least, according to the nation-wide face to face
surveys carried out by MORI (now Ipsos MORI) since 1983. In
1983 19% of the British public said they trusted journalists
to tell the truth. Now it is 19% again.

At the top of the scale 92% said they trust doctors
Teachers (87%), professors (79%),
judges (78%) and clergy (74%) completed the top five of
those the public rated as the most trustworthy.


In every one of the last six years overall trust in
journalists has been at 18%, plus or minus the usual margin
of error of 3%.

It is worth remembering that government ministers (24%) and
politicians in general (21%) just come ahead of journalists
at the bottom of the table of sixteen occupations measured.

Interestingly only 30 percent of News of the World and Sun
readers say they trust their newspaper to tell the truth
even "somewhat". Rupert Murdoch sells the newspaper on the
slogan “Lots of fun in the Sun” but it is not seen as a
reliable source of information, even by Sun readers.

Ali Piper's website

Ali Piper's website is http://www.alipiper.co.uk and it is currently under construction so watch this space.

The grey gerbil shown in the photograph is actually a microphone.

Letters to Lara

There is some renewed interest in the Letters to Lara project. Of course teachers can choose another iconic computer game hero in place of Lara and get the same interesting response.

Bill Hicks on Advertising

Randomly Shocking Monkeys

This is the second randomly shocking monkeys video and based on Bill Hicks' tirade against advertising. It is very good.



Sponsored by the Coca Cola Death Squads in Guatamala - where they used death squads to kill off union activists.

Also sponsored by the Lambert and Butler Cancer Unit and McDonalds Obesity campaign (self explanatory)

And "New Kiddie Arsenic" which is a Bill Hicks invention.....so far anyway.

300

I saw 300 today and the short review would be "don't".

The battle scenes are well choreographed but the cartoon-like violence becomes repetitive when you have seen the fifteenth beheading. I found myself murmuring, "I've had worse than this, this is just a flesh wound." which seemed to send my daughter into fits of laughter.

The dialogue is forced and false. It is a bit of an insult to the Greeks who invented rhetoric to make them sound like neocon yahoos.

And Xerxes was a bit of a stereotype I think. The big bad black guy with an army of rhinos, giants and elephants.

And it is just the film to get Bush baby dropping 300 hundred troops into Iran just to see if it works.


No it was not history. To be fair, historical drama seldom is. Shakespeare (for example) certainly isn't. Having said which this certainly ain't Shakespeare!

Endemol cry all the way to the bank

You would have to be stuck in the Antarctic or adrift in an open boat (lucky you) to have missed the row over the bullying and abuse of one of the contestants in the strangely named Celebrity Big Brother.

Following criticism of the "celebrity" credentials of the participants, a couple of genuine celebrities Leo Sayer and Ken Russell (who were just a little past their sell-by date) deserted the house.

Then a way of boosting the ratings seemed to fall into Endemol's lap with the ignorant racist abuse directed at Shilpa Shetty by multi-millionairess Jade Goody.

It will be remembered that Endermol swore to ensure George Galloway did not use the Big Brother house as a platform for anti-war sentiments. They used the situation to make George Galloway appear foolish - aided and abetted by George Galloway of course.

In contrast, they have continued to defend their broadcasting of racist abuse on the grounds that it is not really racist as such.

In the past there was a term "racialism" which was applied to distrust and hostility towards other races based on ignorance. This was differentiated from "racism" which they defined as the manipulation of racialism to stir up hatred. It seems clear that Jade Goody's abuse is an example of the former rather than the latter.

Under pressure, Endemol have muttered about donating a fraction of their obscene profits from this imbroglio to charity but the set-up of Big Brother ensures they continue to profit whatever happens.

One wonders how long it will be before one of the housemates murders another under the artificial strains imposed on them by the situation and whether that will prove a money-spinner for Endemol as well.

Eyes Wide Shut (contains spoilers)

I can honestly say this is the most unusual Christmas film I have seen. However I watched it on Christmas Eve and the action all takes place during advent. There are some jolly characters in red cloaks but no beards but they are taking part in a somewhat satanic prelude to an orgy and they soon drop the cloaks to reveal that is all they are wearing apart from the occasional thong.


And the viewer/voyeur is sometimes invited to see the nudity through the eyes of a doctor – Dr Bill Harford – first the naked body of an unconscious woman whose life he saves and the naked body of an apparent suicide victim

And for all the nudity, Bill Harford’s sexual encounters are all unfulfilled. His initial encounter with Domino (a name which presages the “fancy dress” masked orgy he later attends – is interrupted by a telephone call from his wife (curse these mobile phones!) He himself turns down the offers of his deceased patient’s daughter and a fancy dress shop owner who offers him his underage daughter “for anything the doctor orders!” And at the satanic fancy dress orgy he sneaks into, he is teased and then caught and sent off with a warning.


The film is also a thriller in the more traditional Hitchcock sense of the term. There seem to be two murders but the good Doctor drops all his investigations and accepts the unlikely explanations of his rich client who turns out to have been behind one of the masks. In the end he is content to go back to his beautiful wife and keep his eyes wide shut.

The dialogue transcript is available here http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/e/eyes-wide-shut-script-transcript.html