July 2011
23 posts
1 tag
3 tags
2 tags
A Tribute to Amy Winehouse
I thought I might take a day to reflect before I actually wrote a tribute to Amy Winehouse, someone whose music I’ve really enjoyed for a long time, but to an extent has torn me up. On the one hand I feel like we’re wrong to moralise over the use of drugs - especially given all the artists that I like who’ve been really fucked when they made their best work. (The Doors, Pink...
2 tags
6 tags
Alan Bennet and Sexuality
So I really like Alan Bennet, I suppose that probably goes with the territory; pretentious, intelligent (or so I like to believe), gay youth - I’m basically duty bound to like Bennet’s work.
And true to form, I do. It’s funny, charming, sometimes bittersweet, but always thought provoking. And I guess that leads me to my problem with Bennet’s work - his depiction and...
4 tags
Norway and the Press
So first and most pressingly, I’ll join the line of people offering their sympathies to the victims of the atrocities yesterday in Norway. What happened was truly terrible, end of.
But there’s been something really ugly, at least in the British press coverage of it. I went out this morning to buy the Guardian, and the front page of the Sun caught my eye “Al-Qaeda Attack”,...
2 tags
3 tags
3 tags
2 tags
3 tags
Michael McIntyre left award ceremony feeling... →
rebekahbrookshackedmybebo:
I was going to post something sarcastic but I actually feel really bad for him. He is so hated in the industry and I don’t really know why? There are some awful comedians that get support from others on the circuit simply because they’re nice in person and he doesn’t seem like a bad bloke even if his jokes aren’t that gr8
Ahhh Michael. To be honest I think that to an...
4 tags
How can the Metropolitan Police be allowed to...
So this morning the man who implicated everyone from Andy Coulson down in the hacking scandal at the News of the World was found dead in his Watford home. And the Metropolitan Police say that the death is ‘unexplained but not suspicious’.
This is the same Metropolitan police that is so corrupt that in the past few days both the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner have been...
2 tags
4 tags
I'm not sure I feel sorry for the fired News of...
These are people who spent their entire journalistic careers parading their anti-union, anti worker’s rights credentials, campaigning against redundancy payouts, and in the 2010 general election, the News of the Screws supported the party calling for the biggest public sector job cuts.
More than that, these are journalists who week after week systematically misled the public, basically...
3 tags
6 tags
The end of the News of the World isn't the end of...
So recently it feels like I’ve dedicated a lot of this blog to my opinions on the state of the media in Britain today. It has been a really interesting time, and indeed, I would suggest that this latest wave of hacking revelations - of the relatives of dead servicemen, murder victims and the surveillance of police officers, has been one of the darkest days for the British press.
Perhaps it...
6 tags
(Almost) In Praise of Jeremy Clarkson
So I watched Top Gear tonight, and something struck me about a man I’ve previously dismissed out of hand as an arsehole; he’s actually a very talented broadcaster.
But before you wonder what’s happened to me… of course Jeremy Clarkson is a misogynistic homophobe with a catalogue of unsustainable, reactionary opinion, which he has for money. Yes, he’s a drain on the...
Either Rebekah Brooks knew about the hacking of...
4 tags
Journalistic Malpractice (and more)
So it’s been rather a week of bad things happening in journalism - as if the least reputable profession in society could possibly sink further into disrepute… Well of course it can, and has.
In one week liberal-left Independent columnist, Johann Hari is caught - well I don’t really know what to call it - ‘supplementing’ his interviews with quotes from books by his...
4 tags
