Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th April & May 1st 2023

[tinyclanger2]

Morning

[tinyclanger2]

Wake up to trivia with TC2

[tinyclanger2]

Oh dear. Another Eurodowner.

Moldova has gone completely over the top with Pasha Parfeni's Scandi-noir-meets-Midsomer-Murders video, accompanied by folk-pop music inspired, somewhere in the distant past, by the likes of Yothu Yindi. The whole rigamarole brings to mind my longstanding mistrust of the tediously hackneyed "dreads, dogs and didgeridoos" types, commonly encountered smoking weed at bronze age burial grounds (and other prehistoric sites) in Somerset.

Clanger rating:
Was it fun: it was ludicrous
Was it dancey: it was not
What would Terry have said about it: Terry, I'm sure, would have been wiping tears from his eyes by the end of it.

[refitman]

Morning

Morning. I've extended your title to include Monday

[tinyclanger2]

Oh god - Bank holidays - I've never ever known when they are.

[AnatolyKasparov]

We've got two holiday Mondays in a row this year!

And then another one on the 29th this month. Never say our betters don't do anything for us

[tinyclanger2]

I guess everyone's got party plans for Charles getting his new hat?

[refitman]

I guess everyone's got party plans for Charles getting his new hat?

I'm in work - it's not a 'true' bank holiday.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

This is absolutely hilarious stuff from Tominey. She saw the way the wind was blowing on QT the other night and spent the entire programme avoiding saying anything right wing. She made absolutely no effort to support Rachel Maclean, quite the opposite in fact, and confined her answers to bland generalities for fear of sharing in the humiliation Maclean was suffering at the hands of a majority Conservative audience. Yet here she is lambasting others for doing exactly what she did herself.

Besides her rank hypocrisy and cowardice perhaps Camilla should think a little more deeply about why Tory ministers are increasingly reluctant to defend Conservatism in public, even in front of their own voters.

Tory ministers have become too scared to stand up for Conservatism - Camilla Tominey

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/0 ... servatism/

Appearing on BBC Question Time is a bit like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you never quite know what you’re going to get.

Thursday night’s episode was filmed in Greenford, west London, which is in the Ealing North constituency held by Labour since 1997. We got an early indication of which way the crowd was leaning when Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling-up secretary, was cheered on the way to her seat, before she had even said anything.

After one man declared: “The Conservatives have no interest in the interests of young people,” and another referred to “13 years of these clowns”, presenter Fiona Bruce felt compelled to point out: “Because Question Time reflects the broad electoral map, we have got more people in this audience who voted Conservative in 2019 than for any other single party. They are not the majority of the audience but more people voted Conservative than for any other party.”

Yet she prompted laughter when she asked whether anyone wanted to defend Dominic Raab on bullying, with only one brave man putting his hand up. Regardless of how audiences may or may not be weighted, the Tories’ biggest problem right now is the ever decreasing number of people willing to go in to bat for them.

I’m not just talking about members of the electorate here, but ministers. Who can blame Conservative voters for keeping schtum when members of the Cabinet are so shy they won’t even put themselves forward for Question Time? Not least when they are so far behind in the polls?

Say what you like about Rachel Maclean, the housing minister, who anyone watching would agree got a right kicking, but at least she had the courage to go on television and stand up for what she believes in.

I understand better than most the perils of facing a hostile TV crowd, but Question Time still has a large mainstream audience. If Conservatives stop making the arguments on the biggest shows, they are going to lose the arguments by default.

[AnatolyKasparov]

The remaining readership of the Barclaygraph is tiny, but also barkingly right wing. The days when quite a few left wing people (myself included) used to regularly read the Telegraph to get a good idea of what "the other side" was thinking are some time in the past now.

[frog222]

[frog222]

Over the past few days I've moved from always wearing a mask even when obviously not in a high-risk situation to not wearing in almost completely empty shops . Still at GP and chemist obvsl , and FFP2 always in pocket !

Official figs from testing are sliding down here, but I expect mostpeople are just not testing with PCR's any more. Elsewhere, in Spain and Italy we see an increase, and Singapore where they have good figures, exponential ones ...



Yesterday I saw a tweet, a newly-qualified young doc was unprotected in 2020 and the NHS had just thrown him on the scrapheap with Long Covid .

While macron and sunak witter on about people retiring too young, they conveniently ignore one major reason for the decline in 'workforce participation' ...



Good SMH article, same in US --

" A study by the Brookings Institution published in August 2022 found that more than 4 million Americans were out of work due to long COVID. It put the cost of lost wages in the US at $US170 billion a year (and potentially as high as $US230 billion). "

One completely believable assertion from The Times serialisation last weekend is that the other ministers bloody well knew Hancock had been lying to them about care homes, test and trace, but didn't call him out because he'd make a useful fall guy in an eventual inquiry .

The state of UK being where it is they didn't need to worry about an inquiry !

[frog222]

[frog222]

I don’t have a TV , but it’s interesting to know that talking to it now has Royal Approval .

” Members of the public watching the coronation on television, online and in parks and pubs will be invited to swear aloud their allegiance to the monarch in a “chorus of millions of voices” to be known as the Homage of the People.

People around the UK and abroad will be invited to say the words “I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God”, in a declaration that replaces the traditional homage of peers. ”

A little long so I hope you all start rehearsing NOW !

[frog222]

Simon Case , he's the one who accepted to conduct an inquiry, until ....

" The UK's top civil servant has stepped aside from his role leading an inquiry into Downing Street lockdown parties, after it emerged an event was held in his own office. "
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59701369

Weird times, as what would once have been a sackable offence has now passed unnoticed !

[frog222]

New word (for me) — ” Phenomics is the study of how the environment and a person’s lifestyle interact with the expression of their genes to influence their health and …”

“Complacency is COVID’s friend,” said Professor Nicholson, who has a profound, and personal, understanding of COVID and the damage it can wreak on the health of people when it turns into long-COVID.

Professor Nicholson is not only one of the world’s foremost experts in understanding the mechanics of the virus and how it interacts with individuals, he also observed the impact of long-COVID first-hand.

As one of the first people to contract the disease in Australia, having picked it up at a conference in Italy in February 2020, Professor Nicholson is also one of the first to develop long COVID.

“The week after I got back from Italy, I felt really unwell. I thought it was just terrible jet lag,” Professor Nicholson said.
…

International research has estimated the health costs of long COVID will be in the trillion dollar range globally and recent data reveals that the life expectancy of Americans has been dialled back three years for white men, and six years for African American men.

“All the efforts that have been made in preventative medicine over the last 30 to 40 years have been negated by COVID-19,” Professor Nicholson said
…

For two and a half years Professor Nicholson has been on a rollercoaster of fatigue so chronic he can’t get out of bed due to bouts of illness. While the liver dysfunction finally corrected itself after about five months, the diabetes and atherosclerosis – which carries with it the risk of heart disease – will be with him for the rest of his life.

“That is deeply unfunny,” he said.

New research from the US has shown that even people with a mild case of the virus can still have an increased cardiovascular, dementia and diabetes risk 12 months later.

Even more concerning is that a study from Cambridge University published in January found that an analysis of blood chemistry can identify whether people are likely to be on a trajectory to long COVID, and even predict whether they will die from the disease.

“It’s scary because that is all set even before we get the disease. We can predict if someone is going to die, but we can’t do anything about it. So thinking about how we can intervene with those patients very early to change their life-course trajectory is our current big challenge,” Professor Nicholson said. ”

PS need to see more on those life expectancy figures .

[tinyclanger2]

Should it ever transpire that you're going to a dinner party in the Netherlands, and Mia Nicolai and/or Dion Cooper are on the guest list, make sure in advance that you're not sat next to either of them. Talk about making you want to pull your eyes out.

"Don't know what made me happy before" whinges Dion
"I don't believe in god anymore 'cos where did she go" counter-whinges Mia.

Suffice it to say that this is a gender-correct whingeathon from the Dutch. It's true that I'm a philistine and once described opera as "bloody wailing rubbish". It's equally true, however, that this description is perfect for this moantastic Eurodowner.

Clanger rating:
Was it fun: see above
Was it dancey: see above
What would Terry have said about it: Terry would have been distinctly unimpressed

[Sky'sGoneOut]

A little long so I hope you all start rehearsing NOW !

I have an alternative slimmed down version already to mind which is a lot easier to remember as it only consists of two words.

Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part but I reckon there's the potential for this ridiculous nonsense to backfire quite spectacularly.

[AnatolyKasparov]

It really is so easy to ridicule.

[frog222]

Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part but I reckon there's the potential for this ridiculous nonsense to backfire quite spectacularly.

I suppose it will be shown in some pubs ... ?

[frog222]

Helpless laughter --

The transport secretary, Mark Harper, said he would be swearing the oath, to be known as a “homage of the people” and pointed out that MPs already “pledge allegiance to his majesty” on taking their seats.

He also told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday that the coronation would be a “fantastic opportunity” and “great showcase for Britain around the world”.

Shabana Mahmood, the Labour elections campaign chief, said it was a “lovely idea to involve the people” and that the oath was a “lovely touch”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ng-charles

[refitman]

Do they think this makes him look good?

[AnatolyKasparov]

I've certainly seen worse on his behalf, plus there is always the possibility that he wasn't being entirely serious.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Moldova has gone completely over the top with Pasha Parfeni's Scandi-noir-meets-Midsomer-Murders video, accompanied by folk-pop music inspired, somewhere in the distant past, by the likes of Yothu Yindi. The whole rigamarole brings to mind my longstanding mistrust of the tediously hackneyed "dreads, dogs and didgeridoos" types, commonly encountered smoking weed at bronze age burial grounds (and other prehistoric sites) in Somerset.

I feel I must speak out in Moldova's defence here, I thought it was great! I enjoyed the whole over the top Wicker Man vibe and who doesn't love a hot chick with antlers?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Should it ever transpire that you're going to a dinner party in the Netherlands, and Mia Nicolai and/or Dion Cooper are on the guest list, make sure in advance that you're not sat next to either of them. Talk about making you want to pull your eyes out.

On this one however we are in agreement. It was excruciating. A sad hairy dweeb in need of a slap around the chops and a Liza Minelli wannabee shouting at each other. Why?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Red Rock West

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105226/

This one gets a review after it was mentioned in a Guardian article last week. It was described as 'one of the best neo-noirs of the 90s'.

We begin with a young, buff Nicolas Cage doing one armed press-ups while grunting on a deserted road. A drifter in search of work he turns up in the small town of Red Rock where the local sheriff mistakes him for a hitman he's employed to murder his wife. Cage plays along with the idea of skipping town with the cash he's been advanced up front, but then the real hitman shows up and it's Dennis Hopper! Sounds great doesn't it? Well it's not, it sucked.

First of all Cage seems to be half asleep throughout the entire film even when people are trying to kill him, the slow Southern drawl doesn't help but he genuinely seems tranquillised. Dennis Hopper is just Dennis Hopper doing the same Dennis Hopper you've seen countless times before but in a half arsed way wearing what looks like a ridiculous black Country and Western fancy dress outfit. The script is banal, the soundtrack monotonous, the cinematography of a standard you'd expect from a TV movie, and the plot requires people to do things so stupid they'd have to be brain damaged.

The person who claimed this pustule on the arse of film-making history was one of the best neo-noirs of the 90s was complaining that it was hard to find because none of the major streaming services offered it. Well maybe that's because it's shit? Besides it took 10 seconds to locate on a torrent site so it's not that hard to get hold of. Unfortunately.

On the Cageometer I'd have to give it the lowest score ever, it breaks even the zero barrier and gets a -1/5. I've reviewed a lot of bad Cage films over the last year or so and this was the worst.

Guardian article here -

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ma-history

[Sky'sGoneOut]

UK households missing out on £19bn a year in unclaimed welfare benefits

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... e-benefits

Millions of UK households are collectively missing out on at least £19bn a year in unclaimed welfare benefits, at a time when many are forced to use food banks or run up debt as they struggle with rising living costs, according to new estimates.

Lower income households are failing to claim benefits and other cash support for which they are eligible, according to a study by the consultancy Policy in Practice. Some families could be forgoing as much as £4,000 a year.

The sheer complexity of the benefits system, lack of public awareness of what support is available for households, and fear of being perceived by others as “benefit scroungers” all contribute to the high level of unclaimed or underclaimed benefits, says the analysis.

I don't doubt it. Just a few months ago I found out my mum was getting the lower rate of Attendance Allowance despite being in a nursing home. According to my dad someone came and assessed her and never told him there was a higher rate and that he had the right to appeal.That situation has since been rectified but it was forever thus. My mother's cousin (who I still call auntie even though she's not) worked for the DSS/DHSS/DWP for her entire career. She's a wonderful woman who I love dearly but she freely admits that most of her working life involved denying people the benefits they were entitled to. Not because she's an awful human being but because that was her job.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Anyway it looks like it's just me here on my own.

Fortunately I have a semi naked Moldovan deer goddess to contemplate (sorry Layla).

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Admittedly her antlers look a bit skewiff.

As a freak human/deer hybrid she would stand little chance of surviving the rut. Which would be a tragic waste of boobs.

[frog222]

Nice pair of antlers

[frog222]

Persistent decline even when numbers of applicants were pretty stable,

pure sabotage, or what ?

[frog222]

If you have billions, one or two million to a cheaply-bought Bojo or £14mio to a Brexit/Reform party is so minuscule .
It appears Sharpie is one of many in deeper with shysters in the bitcoin biz ?

[frog222]

April 30, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
MAY 1


Thanks to Heather Timmons, White House editor for Reuters, whom I met a lifetime ago in summer 2016 as we tried to figure out what on earth was going on in the Republican Party, I got to hear President Biden’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in person last night. Speaking in the giant hall in the Washington Hilton where the event was held, the president was relaxed and funny, poking fun at himself, entrepreneur Elon Musk, former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson, and House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Finally, he embraced the Dark Brandon meme that suggests he has a laser-eyed alter-ego who ingeniously defeats his opponents.

Biden also joked about his age, most memorably when he said he believes in the First Amendment that protects freedom of the press, and “not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.”

But right now, the First Amendment itself is no joke. A member of the U.S. press corps is in prison in Russia on trumped-up charges of “espionage.” Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was covering Russia’s mercenary military organization the Wagner Group when Russian officials arrested him on March 29. The U.S. State Department has called him “wrongfully detained,” which means the government sees him as a political hostage.

In contrast, around 2,600 people showed up last night to witness humorist Roy Wood Jr. make fun of the president and vice president to their faces. It was theater, but theater that demonstrates an important principle: our government has no right to silence our criticism of it.

The Framers of our government enshrined the right to freedom of the press in our Constitution along with the right to gather together, to practice any religion we want (including none at all), the right to say what we want, and the right to ask our government to do (or not to do) things. After writing a new constitution that created a far stronger national government than existed under the Articles of Confederation, which had created the government since 1777 (although the Articles were not ratified until 1781), the Framers designed the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights to hold back government power.

The power to control what citizens can publish about the government would give leaders the power to destroy democracy. A free press is imperative to keep people informed about what leaders are doing. Lose it, and those in power can do whatever they wish without accountability.

From the beginning of the American republic, though, the press was openly partisan. This meant the president worked quite closely with newspaper reporters from his own party, while ignoring, or sometimes even trying to silence, his opponents. By the 1880s the country had begun to turn against the partisan press and to “independent” newspapers, and the number of papers took off.

No longer advocates for a party position and eager to attract readers, reporters began to look for new, exciting stories. And not much was more exciting in 1886 than a marriage in the White House. On June 2 of that year, 49-year-old President Grover Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom, who had been his unofficial ward, in the Blue Room.

Reporters had dogged their courtship (many thought he was interested in her more age-appropriate mother), and they flocked after the newlyweds, finally prompting the irritated president to ask his personal secretary to keep them away. But while the president was angry at the scrutiny, editors recognized a good story, and by the end of Cleveland’s first term, a reporter had figured out he could just stay at the White House and write columns based on interviews with people coming from meetings with the president. Other papers immediately stationed their own people at the White House.

In Cleveland’s second term, which started in 1893, his private secretary worked directly with the press. Through the next few presidencies, the role of press secretary began to take shape. Theodore Roosevelt relished attention from reporters. When his shy successor William Howard Taft shunned them, they complained he was hiding things.

So, shortly after he took office in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson held the nation’s first press conference, only to complain both that reporters were quoting statements he considered off the record, and that the conferences were a free-for-all in which anyone could shout out questions, often ones Wilson found Irritating (like his opinion about Groundhog Day).

In 1914, rumors circulated that Congress might begin to choose which reporters would be allowed at Wilson’s press conferences. In alarm, eleven White House reporters organized the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA). In 1921, as part of their annual election of officers, fifty members of the growing WHCA held a dinner. With former newspaperman Warren G. Harding in the White House, they were in a celebratory mood, despite Prohibition (which they ignored). Taking their cue from the famous Gridiron Club, which held dinners where they roasted politicians, WHCA members poked fun at the administration and Congress.

While at first the reporters simply wanted access to the president, as the WHCA became an established force it came to work for transparency more generally, recognizing that journalists are the main eyes and voice of the people. It now protects press passes for journalists who regularly cover the White House and assigns seats in the briefing room. It also funds scholarships for aspiring journalists and gives journalism awards; the annual dinner is their main fundraising event.

In the modern era there is plenty of criticism over the glitzy dinner and what seems too much chumminess between journalists and lawmakers. But the demonstration that the government cannot censor the press is valuable. For the four years of the past administration, the president refused to attend the dinner and barred his staff and other officials from attending.

The same president called the press the “enemy of the people,” encouraging his supporters to attack reporters. Angry at negative stories about him from Voice of America, Trump replaced the independent editor of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, with Michael Pack, a close ally of Trump strategist Steve Bannon. Pack set out to turn the channel into a pro-Trump mouthpiece. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell later concluded that Pack’s firing, disciplining, and investigating of journalists who didn’t toe the line violated the First Amendment.

The dance between the government and the press is intricate and full of missteps, but last night, at an event where journalists wore pins that read, “I Stand With Evan,” this historian found the public reminder that the president must answer to journalists, with grace if at all possible, oddly moving."

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/worl ... izens.html
https://www.vox.com/culture/23300286/bi ... -explained
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/press ... s-timeline
https://whca.press/about/history/
https://whca.press/covering-the-white-house/
https://whca.press/news/annual-dinner/
https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-co ... it-1403484

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1RZ28Z

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... the-people

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/p ... rica.html/

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/2 ... war-199799

https://www.npr.org/sections/inaugurati ... ns-request

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/21/business ... index.html

---------------------------------------------------------
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OUCH --

[AnatolyKasparov]

Simon Case needs to be the one who goes next.

[gilsey]

It was always hard to see what the people shovelling money to Johnson were getting in return, now it's almost impossible.

[refitman]

[AnatolyKasparov]

Its almost amusing how Phillips managed to convince so many hacks she is "working class" just because she has a regional accent.

Her mum was an NHS manager!

[frog222]

Its almost amusing how Phillips managed to convince so many hacks she is "working class" just because she has a regional accent.
Her mum was an NHS manager!

And a very senior one too -- " Jean ex-deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation and chair of the South Birmingham Mental Health Trust.
Her father was qualified as a teacher, but iirc not teaching, some sort of bureaucrat ???
They had a holiday house, all references since disappeared, but I copied just this --
" Jul 19, 2011 - There is a beautiful place near our French house called Limeuil, we ... If you walk up the hill it's one of “les plus belles villages de France” but the wonder of it is the river.. . or rivers. .... Dear blog followers Stewart Trainor here:. "

[frog222]

[frog222]

Lovely People --

[AnatolyKasparov]

Its well known those two are not Jewish, and are troublemakers.

[tinyclanger2]

I can confidently say I have absolutely no idea what's going on in Norway's "Queen of the Kings". Euromeme-wise it's got a black, white and red colour scheme and a generally sinister feel. It starts off with a Borg pyramid and ends with a scene from Dr Who (post Christopher Ecclestone) via images of a cross person chained up in a glorified shipping container, or bursting out of confinement wearing a posh frock. The song itself sounds very familiar but I can't bring to mind the thing it reminds me of. I wasn't really thrilled, though coming after the Netherlands it'll cheer anyone up.

Clanger rating:
Was it fun: it was more of similar (if not the same)
Was it dancey: not noticeably
What would Terry have said about it: Whatever

[RogerOThornhill]

Good afternoon.

It's worth - no, really it is - having a look at Spiked right now.

Having gone down the route of edgy populist contrarian stuff and attracted a lot of right wing cranks, they've taken a potshot at Andrew Bridgen...and oh dear, they're getting the push-back from the people they courted. It's pretty funny to see Slater and Furedi propping up Fraser Myers and getting slagged off.

[tinyclanger2]

Moldova has gone completely over the top with Pasha Parfeni's Scandi-noir-meets-Midsomer-Murders video, accompanied by folk-pop music inspired, somewhere in the distant past, by the likes of Yothu Yindi. The whole rigamarole brings to mind my longstanding mistrust of the tediously hackneyed "dreads, dogs and didgeridoos" types, commonly encountered smoking weed at bronze age burial grounds (and other prehistoric sites) in Somerset.

I feel I must speak out in Moldova's defence here, I thought it was great! I enjoyed the whole over the top Wicker Man vibe and who doesn't love a hot chick with antlers?

I had a feeling there might be one or two nesters with more sympathy for Moldova's offering than I had.

[refitman]

You'll never guess what Starmer's dad did, for a living. Find out from 55 seconds

[AnatolyKasparov]

You jest, but I bet a lot of low information voters still don't know that much about his background.

[gilsey]

One focus group thought his knighthood was hereditary, apparently. What can you do.


Great result in that snooker.