These trousers makes this celebrity look too fat.. but these trousers make this celebrity look too skinny. Also, why is it that young women suffer from problems with body image?
© 2009 Associated Newspapers Ltd
Ha - two wildly abusive anonymous comments on this post from two years ago which Blogger handily moderated into oblivion. Given that my visitor log shows that the commenter arrived here by googling for "harvard cock" and was then driven into incandescent rage..
..well, thank you, crazy misogynist, for making me laugh so hard.
To cut to the heart of Melanie Phillips' latest diatribe:
The underlying agenda behind gay adoption, as it is behind the whole gay rights movement, is nothing to do with protecting the rights of gay people. Were it really so, there would be no objection. No-one should be discriminated against simply on the grounds of his or her sexuality.The gay rights movement has nothing to do with protecting the rights of gay people?
That does not mean, however, that gay lifestyles must be regarded as of equal value to heterosexual households when it comes to the raising of children. To say that anyone who makes such a distinction is prejudiced is to turn reality on its head.
But that is indeed the whole point of the gay rights movement - to destroy the very notion of heterosexual norms of sexual behaviour and the definition of the family so that gay lifestyles can present themselves as ‘normal’.
...been sucking cock instead of denying the existence of Holocaust gas chambers. The former is, of course, unforgivable, while the latter entitles you to be embraced by the hierarchy of the Catholic church with open arms.
It's rather exciting, isn't it? I honestly hadn't considered that - in the arbitrary ranking of "tolerance" - virulent anti-semitism could be trumped by consensual sex between same-sex adults. Support for one - just fine, possibly a bit embarassing, but we'll do our best to ignore it. Support for the other... ah, not so much. Sorry.
Still, at least the Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson (freshly ex-excommunicated by the Pope) isn't some kind of ridiculously cartoonish sexist and conspiracy theorist.
What's that now?
For indeed women's trousers, as worn today, short or long, modest or immodest, tight or loose, open or disguised (like the "culottes”), are an assault upon woman's womanhood and so they represent a deep-lying revolt against the order willed by God.Uh..
Alas, women going to university is part of the whole massive onslaught on God's Nature which characterizes our times. That girls should not be in universities flows from the nature of universities and from the nature of girls: true universities are for ideas, ideas are not for true girls, so true universities are not for true girls.Could you just..
By lies, Judeo-Masonry brought about the first two World Wars. To get Americans to enter the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson told them that it would be the “war to end all wars.” [...]Golly. Isn't this awkward?
By lies, Judeo-Masonry is preparing for the Third World War. As the Depression of the 1930’s necessitated WWII, triggered for the US by the supposed treachery of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, so we see all the conditions created for another much worse Depression in the US, with the supposed treachery of Arabs last year against the Twin Towers in New York already igniting American public opinion to go to war against Afghanistan and now Iraq.
Anton Vowl speaks:
"Bending over backwards to try and appease people who will always hate you" sums up for me the BBC's pathetic stance towards the angry types who will always, constantly, unwaveringly accuse it of left-wing bias even if it painted itself blue, broadcast David Cameron's face on a 24-hour loop and changed its name to the British Conservative Party Broadcasting We Love Tories Corporation.Angry types likes this, perhaps:
The BBC won’t show the Gaza appeal to protect its impartiality. But does anyone really believe it’s impartial?One billion points if you can guess which columnist - who strings together every tabloid-generated BBC "scandal" into one glorious chain of clutched pearls - without checking the link.
Nevertheless, I personally believe that on this occasion the BBC has made the correct decision. For what few in this country are aware of is that Hamas is said to be systematically stealing shipments of humanitarian relief and shelling the aid crossing points. [...]
But the BBC surely bears a far broader responsibility for this row. In particular, its claim that it was anxious to safeguard its reputation for impartiality will have caused a sharp intake of breath among the many who think it no longer has a reputation of impartiality to defend. [...]
Intrinsically unable to correct itself, the BBC thus embodies a frighteningly closed thought system. But the concerns extend more broadly even than its journalism. There is widespread dismay that, far from elevating and educating public values, its entertainment output is becoming steadily degraded.
Today's ZOMGNO story involves the traditional precursor of societal collapse - the single woman:
The number of single women has more than doubled over the past three decades, official figures showed yesterday.That these figures would also indicate a similar number of single men is not newsworthy - at least, not when you need to scare women into marriage. Better to risk unhappiness in marriage than loneliness out of it, right? Because the idea of a happily single woman is an impossibility, right? And loneliness isn't a problem for men, because of the.. the.. uh.. the penis. Yes.Many of these ‘freemales’ have chosen an independent life over having a husband and family. But there appears to be a price as unmarried women risk loneliness in middle and old age.
They know it, and I know it, but they're too embarrassed to admit it: that's why they end up as single, lying females trying to protect some semblance of their dignity.I hope the message is clear: single women are a danger to themselves, and everyone around them, by refusing marriage. Or rather, the Daily Mail really hates single women.
No, really: "Mgr Celli said the Vatican was launching the channel in part to have some control over the pontiff's image, which he said was already being used on sites, some respectful of the papacy and some not."
Is there a particular reason why animal rights activists who use violence and the threat of violence are referred to as "extremists" and not domestic terrorists? The Mail:
Animals rights activists jailed for reign of terror aimed at testing laboratoryThe Guardian:Seven animal rights fanatics who pursued a terror campaign against a laboratory which used animals in experiments were today jailed for between four and 11 years.
The group blackmailed companies linked to Huntingdon Life Sciences in a bid to close the laboratory down.
Homes of staff, and firms, had hoax bomb parcels sent to them or received threatening telephone calls.
The Independent:Seven animal rights activists who tried to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences by blackmailing companies linked to the animal testing laboratory were jailed today for between four and 11 years.
The activists, considered key figures in the Animal Liberation Front, were sentenced at Winchester crown court for their parts in a six-year campaign involving hoax bombs and falsified allegations of child abuse.
Animal rights activists jailed for blackmailEven when terrorist is the label that the judge uses in sentencing? From The Times:
Seven animal rights activists who blackmailed companies linked to Huntingdon Life Sciences in an attempt to close down the animal testing lab were today jailed for between four and 11 years. [...]
Homes of staff, and firms, had hoax bomb parcels sent to them or received threatening telephone calls. Threats of violence were also used to force companies to cut links with HLS.
Jail for animal rights extremists who waged six-year blackmail campaignWould the press be as restrained - or coy - in their choice of language if we were dealing with a religiously (say, Islamic) motivated campaign of violent intimidation and bomb threats?
Seven animal rights extremists who waged a six-year campaign of blackmail and harrassment in a bid to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) were jailed for between 11 and four years today. [...]
Described by the judge as "urban terrorists", SHAC targeted hundreds of people whose employers did business with HLS, one of the world’s largest animal research companies which has a laboratory in Cambridgeshire.
They received hoax bombs, sanitary towels allegedly contaminated with the HIV virus and letters threatening violence against their children, as well as nocturnal home visits from balaclava-wearing vandals.
Update: blimey, it looks like the internets won.
--
A message from Unlock Democracy:
On Thursday, the Government sneaked out the draft of the innocuous sounding “Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order.” This “statutory instrument” (not an act), if passed, will
“…change the scope of the application of the [Freedom of Information] Act in relation to information held by the House of Commons and House of Lords regarding expenditure in respect of Members of both Houses. This includes information held by either House about expenses claimed by and allowances paid to Members. Such information is no longer within the scope of the Act.”
In short, they intend to exempt the expenses of MPs and Lords from the Freedom of Information Act and thereby close them to public scrutiny. This is to be passed almost a year to the day after the Derek Conway scandal erupted, when it emerged that the MP had been paying his sons as research staff while they were at university, despite not being able to demonstrate that they had actually done any work for him. If the Government gets away with this, scandals such as this will be allowed to continue and we will not be permitted to find out about them.
It is completely outrageous that the Government should seek to do this at all, let alone in such an underhand manner. The Government is planning to put us all on a national identity database, force us to carry identity cards, keep the DNA of millions of innocent people on a database and to read all our emails, phone and internet records regardless of whether we are supposed to have done anything wrong. Their argument is always “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Why, then, is it one rule for us and another rule for politicians?
What’s more, when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, one of his first acts was to publish the Governance of Britain Green Paper which asserted that “It is right that Parliament should be covered by the [Freedom of Information] Act.”
This proposal is going to be debated in the House of Commons this Thursday - we don’t have much time. For this reason I am strongly urging you to do the following as a matter of urgency:
Please, please do this as soon as you can. We can defeat this proposal if we put pressure on MPs this week. In 2007, a group of backbench MPs attempted to get a similar proposal passed. We beat them then and we can beat them again.
With best wishes,
Peter Facey
Director, Unlock Democracy
TEXT OF EARLY DAY MOTION
Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009
Primary Sponsor: Jo Swinson (LD, East Dunbartonshire)
That this House notes with concern the provisions in the Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 to exempt remove the expenses of Members of Parliament and Peers from the scope of the Freedom of Information Act’; notes that this order will single out MPs and Peers in a special category as the only paid public officials who will note have to disclose full details of their expenses; notes with concern the regressive effect of this Order on Parliamentary transparency and the detrimental impact it will have on Parliament in the eyes of the public; calls on Ministers to block or repeal the Order in the interest of MPs’ and Peers’ accountability to members of the public.
It's a superb strategy to diminish any genuine discussion of the Heathrow expansion and ridicule the diverse group of protestors who object: pile onto the "luvvies."
It started with Richard Littlejohn ("Luvvies - dontcha just love 'em!") then spread to Iain Dale ("I note with a wry smile that the latest celebrity to join the anti-Heathrow bandwagon...") , arriving at Geoff Hoon - all without the troublesome recognition that calling for restraint in Heathrow's development is not somehow the same thing as calling for a ban on air travel.
It's a fairly naked display of playing the man, not the ball - make the issue something only celebrities and trust-fund eco-warriers (who supposedly have no sense of the real world, unlike Mail journalists, ahem) care about.
All that said, my favourite part of the story is this:
See? It doesn't matter how many people have to be "consulted" because it's going to happen anyway! Hurrah!The actress Emma Thompson joined a motley crew of green activists in buying a patch of land next to the proposed runway, which will see an entire village wiped off the map. [...]
[Mr Hoon] dismissed the impact of some 10,000 celebrities, scientists, MPs and members of the public who forked out for the football pitch-sized chunk of land.
They include the comedian Alistair McGowan, the Conservatives’ green advisor Zac Goldsmith and Greenpeace director John Sauven.
Mr Hoon added: 'I suppose it adds to the numbers of people who have to be consulted. But frankly I doubt that it would make a huge difference.'
Completely beyond parody - a palm-reader is given space in a UK national newspaper to analyse Barack Obama's future presidency:
So he's stretchy and bendable, but at the same time resilient and self-controlling i.e. the exact opposite. Bravo. Really - bravo for getting this ridiculous nonsense published. And to the Daily Mail, a round of applause for proving that there's absolutely nothing you won't publish.Miss Reid says that his surprisingly long thumb is another indication of his ability as a public speaker.
'It is stretchy and bendable, which reflects his flexible nature but when push comes to shove, this is a man who knows his own mind. The sturdiness of his thumb suggests that he has an intensely strong mind.'
Good news! The vast overspend on the 2012 Olympic Games is now part of Gordon Brown's economic recovery plan!
How very fortunate to have fucked up so entirely in the first place.
What do you do when a survey shows that a traditional tabloid hobby-horse isn't a problem at all? Report the findings but declare the opposite!
1. Study is published showing that very few people are offended by swearing, with the vast majority declaring that bad language is no longer even an issue. It's so clear and obvious that the Daily Mail is able to report:
Britain has long taken pride in a global reputation for good manners, restraint and politeness.Crystal clear: swearing common, not a problem.So it may come as a shock to discover that nine in ten Britons are not offended by bad language. In fact they swear every day.
John Beyer, of Mediawatch UK, said: “This sort of language is damaging our culture and the way we speak to each other. Children as young as four, five and six are copying it and it is undermining our language. There is no place for unnecessary swearing on television.”Beyer's comments are reported prominently, even though it is obvious to the most obtuse moron that he must, logically, represent a tiny proportion of the population who generally don't give a toss about fucking swearing, you big old' bastard, you.
Total f*ckers:
Ministers are poised to exempt all MPs and peers from having to publish details of their expenses, only weeks before MPs were due to be forced to disclose more than 1.2 million receipts covering claims for the last three years. [...]I tend to keep my furious swearing in check, so I'm not sure whether the correct phrase for this particular moment is "venal shitbags" or "pecunious fucktards." I do hope someone is able to assist.The changes will be retrospective and all pending requests for more information under the Freedom of Information Act will be blocked.
The changes will put MPs and peers in a special category as the only paid public officials who will not have to disclose the full details of their expenses and allowances
For the benefit of The Times - the fact that a plane crashed in the Hudson River without any loss of life was not "miraculous": it was the product of training, preparation and a highly skilled pilot (with a helping of luck).
If you're going to claim that an unlikely chain of events is miraculous, then having two engines knocked out by a flock of geese is also a miracle (albeit an unpleasant one.)
Shorter Melanie Phillips: it's unjust that husbands shouldn't be able to murder their unfaithful wives.
At present, the law provides a defence of provocation to the charge of murder in cases where there is a sudden loss of temper or self-control. [...]You have to stand back quite a long way to fit Phillips' supposed morality into view: that rage at infidelity should be treated as a justifiable defence for murdering someone because it's mainly men who do it.
Now the Coroners and Justice Bill says this provocation provision will be scrapped altogether and be replaced with two partial defences - that people have killed because they fear they could be the victim of serious violence, or can prove they have been ‘seriously wronged’ by their victim. [...]
But the fact is that this change discriminates against men, justice and morality. The category of ‘serious wrong’ will apparently not include infidelity. [...]
In theory, the proposed change is gender neutral as the new defence provision applies to either men or women. But in practice, since it is generally men who have used the infidelity defence in so-called ‘crimes of passion’ it is they who will bear the brunt of this redefinition of a serious marital wrong.
What's not to love about this story? The Pope has ordered bishops to root out false claims of miraculous contact with the Virgin Mary:
How delightfully convenient: if a message is decided to be divine (through a selection of arbitray criteria) then there's the loop-hole that allows the Church to keep control of the message. i.e. we're the ones with the direct line to God so no going off-reservation and telling everyone the Jews were right.In some cases exorcists will be used to determine if a credible apparition is of divine origin or whether it is demonic.
The guidelines will come in a "vademecum", or handbook, which is in its final stages and will be published soon by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
It sets out step-by-step instructions on how Church authorities should deal with claims of such supernatural phenomena.
The content of any heavenly messages will also be scrutinised to see if it is harmony with the teachings of the Church.If the visionary is considered credible they will ultimately be questioned by one or more demonologists and exorcists to exclude the possibility that Satan is hiding behind the apparitions in order to deceive the faithful.
The Mail - for when is it ever anyone else? - reports:
MEPs to vote on proposal that 'would guarantee gay marriage and abortion rights across EUIt's the perfect storm: the chance to exhale europhobia, homophobia and misogyny in one breath. Let's see the details of this supposedly outrageous resolution:
Euro MPs will vote tomorrow on a proposed resolution critics say will promote abortion and gay marriage throughout the European Union.
The motion calls on each of the 27 member states to legally guarantee access to 'sexual and reproductive rights'.
Much of the resolution deals with xenophobia and the rights of children and refugees.Oh noes, teh equalities, we can has them. Question: when is it acceptable to vote against the rights of children and other vulnerable groups? Answer: when you might accidentally allow adults access to condoms.
But one part 'stresses the need to raise public awareness of the right to reproductive and sexual health, and calls on the member states to ensure that women can fully enjoy these rights, to put in place appropriate sex education, information and confidential advisory services, and to facilitate access to contraception in order to prevent all unwanted pregnancies and illegal and high-risk abortions'.
It says public funds should be made available in every EU country to ensure 'ethnic minority women', in particular, can have full access to such services.
It also calls on all EU member states to recognise same-sex civil partnerships equally with heterosexual marriage.
John Smeaton, the director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, has called on MEPs to throw out the motion.You heard it here first. The attempt to facilitiate access to contraception in order to prevent all unwanted pregnancies and illegal and high-risk abortions is - in fact - a stealth manouevre to get more abortions. Ever get the feeling that certain social conservatives are convinced that the greatest threat to the health of the unborn child is.. the health of the (potential) mother?
'The resolution should be rejected, because it threatens unborn children,' said Mr Smeaton.
'The resolution repeats the usual calls by the pro-abortion lobby for more contraception, more sex education and more confidential advisory services,' he said.
Why has the Catholic Church begun to freak out with ever greater intensity when adult relationships are discussed? They're losing:
The number of marriages in Roman Catholic churches in Britain has fallen by a quarter since the start of the decade to just 9,950 last year.You might notice that this has nothing to do with the pesky queers demanding recognition for their own relationships - this would be an ordinary majority of heterosexuals deciding that the Catholic Church in particular (and religion in general) has less and less to say that matters to them when it comes to making choices about relationships and sex.
This is a 24 per cent fall on the figure for 2000, when there were 13,029 Catholic marriages across England and Wales.
The rate of decline is twice as fast as the national rate, mainly because the Catholic church does not allow divorcees to re-marry in church.
In total there were 236,980 marriages in 2006 – the fewest since 1895 – but this has only fallen by about 12 per cent since 2000. Only one in three is now a religious ceremony.
What fun - the Daily Mail panics that "sex clinics" will open "in EVERY school so pupils as young as 11 can be tested... without parental consent." Not quite.
Pass the headline, and the screeching lede is watered down to read "sexual health clinics could soon be open in every secondary school and college." Read a little further, and you discover that a report has merely recommended extending the coverage of sexual health clinics to all secondary schools (where, incidentally, some pupils are as young as 11 but the overwhelming majority are not).
Add some third-party concerns about "permissiveness" (clutch those pearls) and unreferenced research, and we're almost done. I personally blame the photo-editorial that accompanies the story for causing confusion amongst young people - where a young woman is depicted leading her boyfriend upstairs, followed by a completely different woman reacting to a pregnancy test.
This is a pretty accurate depiction of the Mail's grasp of reproductive science, where you can get pregnant because your friends are having sex.
The sad and/or stupid thing here is that - beyond the baseline scaremongering distortion of the Mail's reporting - adequate access to sexual health services for everyone is highly desirable. The attempt to make this story about hypothetical 11 year olds on the pill is a paper-thin attempt to (once more) hijack the issue of sex, sex education and sexual health through paranoia and supposedly moral posturing.
Given that adult services have been routinely robbed of funding to make up for shortfalls elsewhere in HCT budgets, any funding to make any sexual health services more available should be supported.
