Jan Moir and her Strange, Lonely and Troubling Voodoo Curses

50 sHaDeS oF iDiOcY: pArT 5

Not so long back, as part of the Metropolitan police’s investigation into the corruption of public officials, five senior journalists from The Sun were arrested. The detainees included the newspaper’s deputy editor Geoff Webster, former chief reporter John Kay and the current leading foreign correspondent, John Edwards (not to be confused with the TV illusionist and deluder of the same name who pretends to talk to dead people while his guests’ grief diminishes amid the miracles).

Naturally, following the demise of the News of the World for being a vile, blue-waffled malfeasance, there were rumours that the nation’s favourite red top could also be flushed down the same hole, douched beyond the U-bend, never to return.

If I’m totally honest, I would miss it.

You can't deny that sometimes it is a glory to behold. The complex and purely speculative, illustrated reconstructions of military operations are like the graphic novel battles I've always delighted in. 

Then there are the puntasmagorical headlines such as: ‘Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious,’ following Caledonian Thistle’s shock 3-1 giant-larruping of the Pacers-clad (80s sweets) Glaswegian giants in the Scottish Cup. 

As for the Page 3 models’ insightful ponderings with regard to abstract socio-economic issues, well, they're unparalleled:

Recently, amid the quagmire of our bleak economic landscape, Page 3 lovely Sam (25, from Manchester) quoted from Victorian fiction writer Charles Dickens’ Micawber Principle:

"Annual income £20, annual expenditure £19/19/6d, result happiness. Annual income £20, annual expenditure £20/0/6d, result misery."

As both you and I know, Sam was alluding to Dickens’ novel David Copperfield (not to be confused with the TV illusionist and deceit monkey of the same name who pretends to float over random Wonders of the World, diminishing their majesty into near insignificance beneath his miracles).

So yeah, I would definitely miss The Sun if it self-destructed like the News of the World.

Phone-hacking and corruption scandals aside however, there is one humourless rag that I’d love to see have their offices confiscated and converted into theme parks for transgender Azerbaijani economic migrants. This newspaper goes by the name of…

Don’t bother with the drumroll. Oh fuck it, go on then... Brrrr-rrrrr-rrrr-urgh -

It's The Daily Mail. Obviously. 

And it’s actually fucking despicable.

For a starter, it’s never made me laugh (intentionally) - not once, ever and that's a heinous crime in itself.

In the 1930s, friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Lord Rothermere directed the Mail's editorial stance and praised the Nazi regime's accomplishments. He stated: "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing on Germany." Either he was referring to the violence against Jews and anyone else that didn't fit the Aryan master race ideology or he was a fucking blithering bumblespanner. Either way he was a bottom-drawer prophesier.

But fast-forward to the 21st century and it turns out that the newspaper has a genuine clairvoyant on their hands. A fortune-teller who is so accurate that it can only be rationally explained by the assumption that she dabbles in the ancient witchcraft of voodoo.

From now on, I'm only going to refer to the paper anagrammatically in an attempt to be annoying and provoke temporary confusion.

Here's yet another topic that DIY Himla Tale recently tackled:

The untimely death of Stephen Gately from Boyzone, or Boys Aloud or Banally Blathering Buggernuts - I can't remember the particular band but you know the one I mean?

Vodouist practitioner and My Ideal Hitla columnist Jan Moir scrawled a scandalous assault on Boyzone's openly-gay jigger-abouter Stephen Gately's untimely demise before the poor lad had even been patted into the ground. I definitely wouldn't call it a tribute. It was entitled:

'A Strange, Lonely and Troubling Death...'

Moir opens by warning fans to expect the unexpected from their heroes:

"Particularly if these idols live a life shadowed by dark appetites fractured by private vice."

I don't think she's talking about midnight lemonade slurping sojourns huddled in the glow of the fridge light. But I'm not entirely sure I understand what she means at all? Wasn't Gately's history as a clean-cut idol of hundreds of thousands of 13 year old girls. And my mate Gary.

Then, somewhat suspiciously she writes:

"Robbie, Amy, Kate, Whitney, Britney... We are not being ghoulish to anticipate their bad end."

Well she is being a bit ghoulish, let's be honest. It should be pointed out that when she wrote this article they were all still alive. No doubt when Amy and Whitney died she was rubbing her hands with glee. Either that, or hang on a minute...

Now I'm no Columbo, but if Robbie rolls a 7 in the next few months then Moir should be taken in for questioning, that's all I'm saying. The detectives should probably scour her attic with a fine-toothed comb. I'd be looking for some kind of padlocked antique chest which I guarantee, once prized open with a crowbar, will reveal a plethora of pin-pierced Hoodoo-Voodoo Cabbage Patch celebrity dolls. 

Trust me, I've seen Kill List.

I'm still struggling to see the connection between these celebrities and Stephen Gately. What is the common connection between these 'dark appetites'?

Williams: Bolivian marching powder and pork and pickle pies; Winehouse: smack, crack and booze; Moss: nose candy and looking scrumdiddlyumptious; Houston crack and Brown (not of the heroin variety); Spears: hair-clippers? Gately: Er..?

Stephen had been on holiday in Port d'Andratx, Mallorca with his partner Andrew Cowles when he died suddenly in his sleep. His death was later determined to have been caused by a pulmonary edema resulting from an undiagnosed heart condition according to the coroner. Essentially, he died as a result of a congenital heart defect. 

This however does not satisfy Ms Moir:

"All the official reports point to a natural death with no suspicious circumstances." 

Then the Miss Marple in her bursts forth:

"But hang on a minute. Something is terribly wrong with the way the incident has been shaped and spun into nothing more than an unfortunate mishap, like a broken teacup in the rented cottage."

I'm not sure the Gately family saw their son's congenital heart defect in the same way as Jan Moir's metaphor of a fumbled tumbler in a quaint countryside retreat somehow.

A pathology report stated that Gately suffered from atheromatosis, an undiagnosed heart condition. The report said that the star had died from an acute pulmonary oedema – a build up of fluid on the lungs caused by the condition. The report made it clear that he had not been killed by alcohol or drugs.

Good enough for most people but sometimes it takes a maverick to solve these things:

“Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.”

Post-mortem examinations don’t always go far enough for some people apparently. I always like to get a second opinion from a mouthy hack with no medical training whatsoever, dunno about you?

Jan Moir’s article was published the day before Stephen Gately’s funeral. 

The day before.

She's a bit like the Westboro Baptist Church members in Kansas - the religious zealots who picket funerals and waved banners such as 'Matt is in Hell' and 'Thank god for AIDS' during the funeral of Matthew Shephard, a man murdered for being homosexual. 

Jan Moir's like them but more impatient. Why wait for the service to take place before pissing all over the memory of a family's cherished love one?

I'll let Britney Spears have the final word:

"Don’t you know that you’re toxic?"

Melanie Phillips, the Gay Agenda and her penchant for Cahooning great Whoppers

50 sHaDeS oF iDiOcY: pArT 4

It may have come to your attention that I seem to be thwomping on endlessly about Daily Mail writers at the moment. You probably think they're an easy target for liberal lefties such as myself but you'd be wrong. 

They're even an easy target for barely sentient unicellular organisms such as the amoeba. It's just that these infinitesimal, shapeless protists have yet to muster their collective brains to create a subaquatic, microscopic Water Wide Web where they can vent their anger towards the likes of the Mail's Melanie Phillips and her attitude regarding sexuality. They've yet to achieve this because they don't actually have brains but I know that they're fed up with their binary fission (or cell division) reproduction methods, that don't adhere to heterosexual ideology, being demeaned by the likes of Ms Phillips. They informed me of this through the medium of dreams, the cheeky little tinkers.

Melanie Phillips recently penned an article entitled:

'Yes, gays have often been the victims of prejudice. But they now risk becoming the new McCarthyites.'

Now, if you're like me, you're probably enraged by this 'McCarthyites' reference and over-griddling with disbelief like a sizzling, smoking kielbasa:

Just what the fuck does McCarthyites mean?

It's really irritating to not be clever. It's even worse when the Daily Mail write a headline that you don't understand. I put it down to stupid state school education. Surely the unceasingly hubble-bubble of copious marijuana bongs at the time had nothing to do with my lack of attentiveness in lessons.

Anyway, apparently McCarthyites aren't hippies who regularly indulge in textured vegetable protein Cumberland bangers with sun-dried tomatoes, which, by the way are simply delightful. Especially if you're hungry enough to eat a scabby horse. I doubt Black Beauty would have been anywhere near as delectable.

Essentially McCarthyism is defined as the practice of publicising accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence. It is a term derived from Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy, an American politician who served as a U.S. Senator for the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. His main drive was to state that there were innumerable dangerous Communists, Soviet spies and sympathisers inside the United States federal government that had managed to overcome the obvious cover-blown ruse of trilby-clad agents sitting on park benches with eye-holes bored through broadsheet newspapers as they tried to glean nuclear secrets from passing squirrels.

But still I'm confused. 

How does this equate with the 'Gay Agenda' that Phillips is rallying against? 

She begins:

"Here’s a question ­shortly coming to an examination ­paper near you. What have mathematics, geography or science to do with homosexuality? Nothing at all, you say? Zero marks for you, then. Schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and ­science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda."

I wasn't aware that examination papers were coming near me again, shortly. I thought I was done with all that malarkey when I left uni. I'm not sure which subject's exam paper this question will appear on because it covers Maths, Geography and Science - maybe all of them. I reckon it probably incorporates Humanities, Religious Education, History, Art and Country Dance too.

I'm a bit miffed that Melanie Phillips answers the question for us without at least giving anyone a chance to try and offer some kind of elucidation. So, after deciding that her lack of patience or Quizmastering adeptness should be discounted, I'm going to try and answer the questions, posed mainly by myself. Under exam conditions:

Shush, this is serious and there isn't even anyone sitting next to me that I can copy the answers from. Not like the old days - 

Simon, where are you now? Your muffled 'pssts' and passive, sleight of hand pencil throwing stunts are the only reason I achieved GCSE English grades at all, I'm certain! 

Okay, competition time:

Maths:

1) A gay man decided to purchase three bottles of Amyl Nitrate (or Poppers) on-line because he felt a particular website's offer would work out cheaper than a singular purchase. Plus his sphincter had been tighter than the grip of  a giant squid's tendrils of late. He elected for a 10ml bottle of TNT for $27.00, a 10ml phial of Buzz for $32.00 and a 15ml vial of Jungle Juice Gold LARGE for $42.00 and paid the jam price of $100.00. 

Did he get a bargain..?   

Geography:

2) In which of these destinations would you be most likely to stumble across the most flagrant of vagina-decliner or todger-dodger? 

a) Brighton 

b) Heaven 

c) Haringey

d) 'Bell End' street in Wellingborough

Science:

3) Alan Turing was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. He formalised the concepts of algorithms and computation with the Turing Machine which could be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm and explain the functions of a CPU inside a computer. He is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. During World War II, Turing was head of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, codebreaking the Nazi's cryptanalysis and mastering, before dismantling their settings for the Enigma machine like a simple and enjoyable bounce through Peggle Nights. Following his unparalleled contribution to defeating the Nazis, Turing was charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885 because he acknowledged having a homosexual relationship with a man called Arnold Murray. On June 7 1954, Alan Turing committed suicide. The question is:

a) Was Turing an absolute bufty who probably stuck the gun up his own batty as he rolled himself a seven, just for that very last thrill?

b) Should Alan Turing be regarded as one of the most important and revered  figures of the 20th Century? 

c) Does the image on the shroud (Alan's duvet) kept in the Cathedral of St John the baptist in Italy really resemble him? The carbon-dating seems to go back way further that the 1950s?

Humanities:

4) Does Melanie Phillips display any of the traits usually attributed to reasonable human beings?

* All answers appear at the bottom of this article.

According to Melanie:

"In geography, for example, they will be told to consider why homosexuals move from the ­countryside to cities." 

It's a bamboozler for sure. I mean, I know why heterosexuals move from the countryside to cities - they're looking for jobs, a bit of life, a slice of action. Maybe even a partner? But as for homosexuals, what on earth could their motivations be? As we all know, the backwater village has always been a pillar of acceptance for the more diverse members of the human race. 

She goes on to state: "In science, they [children] will be directed to ­animal species such as emperor ­penguins and sea horses, where the male takes a lead role in raising its young." All mocking aside, she has a good point here. It's absolutely outrageous to look at nature and watch millions of years of evolution going about its own business with the father nurturing its offspring. I mean who in their right mind could find that acceptable, let alone beautiful?

But apparently, according to Phillips:  "It is an abuse of childhood. And it’s all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very ­concept of normal sexual behaviour."

It seems that the gay lobby are somehow communicating with penguins and sea horses. This wasn't something I was aware of but we should definitely be scared. They're obviously some kind of camp amphibious Dr Doolittles with a mysterious 'agenda'. They move into cities and the suchlike or something(?), apparently? Who knows what tactics are being amassed?

"This is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda under the ­camouflage of ­education. It is an abuse of childhood." It appears that nurturing children accurately as to how nature works is somehow an incongruously devious plot. She follows up with:

"It’s all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very ­concept of normal sexual behaviour." 

The sea horses and penguins she mentioned earlier are also apparently not manifesting 'normal sexual behaviour' according to Ms Phillips's ideals.

Are these animals forming lobbies? What could their agenda be? Where are they meeting and why aren't the intelligence services listening in?

Or is it Melanie Phillips's archaic views about certain behaviours that don't constitute 'normality' in her own antiquated, narrow-minded, 1970s Super 8 world in a 21st century digital realm that has clearly left her befuddled?

And she looks like the rustiest of bikes.

* Competition answers:

1) Melanie Phillips is a dipshit dipstick ditzy dingbat

2) Melanie Phillips is a slack-jawed spleenmeisting sausage slurper

3) Melanie Phillips is a nit-witted numb-nutted nicompoop

4) No

All entries to be sent enclosed in the spongy-tissued pouched wall of an impregnated male seahorse to the usual address - roughly about 1,755 feet beneath the Antarctic Ocean. If you've alreay read the answers given above then you will be disqualified from the competition.

If you correctly scored three or more then you're in line for a prize. Entries will be pulled out of a submerged leather policeman's helmet once we've let the penguins loose on him. [We are not responsible for the competition entries that are stolen by amoebas - they're thieving little blobby motherfuckers.] 

Giles Coren and his Ra-Ra skirt that swishes about in the breeze.

50 sHaDeS oF iDiOcY: pArT 3

Do you know who I've got a bit of a soft spot for?

That Victoria Coren, off of the telly. You know the one I mean?

She recently married QI favourite and comical clever clogs David Mitchell from Peep Show.

For the purposes of this article however, it would seem improper to refer to her on the basis of the dude she's hooked up with - this is merely the underpinning of a far more interesting personality.

You may have been seduced by Ms Coren's mellifluous tones randomly emanating via your speakers from the studios of Radio 4 hosting the talk show Heresy?

There are also the books she writes, the columns she pens and the TV shows she presents.

She's appeared as a guest on You Have Been Watching, Have I Got News For You and Question Time, among loads of other satirical or 'highbrow' shows and she's really funny.

Okay, I'll admit it, I quite fancy her. There's something about her playful smile, compounded by a razor-sharp wit that gets me going. She apparently has a kind of Usain Bolt Deluxe model brain where the electrical impulses zip along the craggy synapses of her cerebral cortex in a speedier fashion than self-styled 'skyfisherman' Jose Escamilla's Rods from the crazy pseudoscience universe of cryptozoology.

Victoria also plays poker. Professionally.

In September 2006, she won the main event of the European Poker Tour in London, scooping a not-to-be-sniffed-at £500,000 after defeating Australian Emad Tahtouh. In November 2011, she finished in second place at the International Federation of Poker's inaugural Table World Championship after losing a heads-up to Spaniard Raul Mestre. For this achievement, she collected $100,000, ($10,000 of which she donated to Age UK).

Somehow she also manages to industriously shoehorn the writing of a weekly column for The Observer and the fronting of BBC Four quiz show Only Connect into her schedule. Damn you Mitchell, she is actually amazing.

I suppose, in some ways, Victoria Coren is something of a femme fatale - a highly intelligent and attractive female. A feminist who can more than hold her own in the daunting intellectual company of the likes of Stephen Fry, Charlie Brooker or David Dimbleby.

She does however harbour something of a dark and most sinister of secrets...

The kind of shocking, shameful, cupboard-dwelling skeleton that occasionally reveals itself to the horror of onlookers. 

And it appears in the shape of a proper boneyfied nitwit.

This closet-creature goes by the name of Giles and it happens to be Ms Coren's big brother.

A stigma-stained sibling of the sort of indescribable entity that H.P. Lovecraft might have dreamt up in one of his 'weird fiction' Gothic horror novels. The kind of impalpable monstrosity that dwells amid the pages, shackled to a beam in the abandoned attic of a dilapidated house.

A gelatin; a slime, yet with shape. A thousand unnameable embodiments of terror. Wretched and beyond all memory or contrivance. With horns. And hooves, cloven.

And, unfortunately, he's also got a laptop.

As it goes, Giles Coren also happens to be a columnist, although his media outlet comes in the far-scarier shape of the MailOnline - a truly hideous manifestation of evil way beyond the imaginings of Victorian horror writers of the like of Lovecraft, Machen or Poe, though his opinions do have something of the 1800s about them.

On the back of the Richard Keys/Andy Gray furore regarding sexism in football, a particularly insightful piece was written by Mr Coren for the Daily Mail entitled:

So why is it all right for women to be sexist about MEN?

It's good that he used those upper-case letters for the word 'men' otherwise I might have overlooked the immediacy of this issue.

You see, according to Giles, the world is all topsy-turvy when it comes to sexism and it's about time we flipped the playing field upside its own stupid head. So, what are his contentions?

Over to Mr Coren:

"You shouldn’t pass unflattering remarks about women behind their backs because it is not a well brought-up thing to do. I would never do it myself. Not because I am a feminist, but because I am a gentleman."

An admirable stance, I think we'd all admit? Apart from the er.. hey, come on, you've got to start an article somewhere so give him the benefit of the doubt:

"To be a man in this country is constantly to have to apologise for oneself and to be ever so careful about every sentence we speak or write which contains any reference at all to members of the opposite sex. At the same time, we ourselves are fair game for women. While sexism from men is the outstanding social crime of the modern world, women can say absolutely whatever they like about us. Make no mistake, sexism is alive and well in this country and applauded in all quarters — as long as it is practised by women. And they are allowed to say the most terrible, terrible things."

..............................

Apologies for the pause, I just needed to clamber back onto my chair from the carpet. He sounds like he might cry. I think I might join him.

Buggering arse-barnacles - my blubbing is making the ink blot across the screen. Hope it's not too blurry to read.

With good faith, the only factually incorrect part of Coren's opening paragraph are all of the words that he's written. Apart from that, it's a perfectly typical passage of hyperbole from the Daily Mail's bottomless gorge of guff.

You have to be careful about every sentence spoken or written? 

That's pretty much the same line that Bruce Forsythe frothed in Anton Du Beke's defence after he 'slipped-up' and called dance partner Laila Rouass a Paki on Strictly Come Dancing. It's also much the same line that Jimmy Hill volunteered in defence of Ron Atkinson following his post-match analysis of Marcel Desailley's Champions League performance (broadcast around the world) where he described the then-Chelsea captain as "a fucking lazy, thick nigger."

The thing is, most enlightened members of our 21st century masses don't actually 'have to be careful about what they say' whatsoever because it just wouldn't enter their noodle to burble antiquated, offensive bullshit like a circa '73 'Chubby' Brown with terminal Tourette's. Most people can function perfectly capably without the aid of a political-correctness advisor. 

If you're addressing your Asian dance partner as a Paki (to her bewildered face) or describing a World Cup winning captain (who happens to be black) as a nigger, it's very simple - you're a bigoted cunt. A fucking plum. End of story.

The worrying thing about Giles Coren is that he doesn't need these things pointing out to him. That his comments are offensive and inflammatory is something that he's surely only too aware of. He feels that the rest of us have got it wrong and should accept his reasoning. Either that, or he's just taking the piss.

And once he gets on a roll, the results are spectacular, sinister and staggering:

"The great lie. All men want is sex. Not so. If anything, it is women who think only of having it off. Girls on average lose their virginity much younger than boys and have more sexual partners in youth."

In fairness to Coren, he backs these 'facts' up with absolutely no statistical evidence whatsoever. Well he couldn't - he made them up.

Then brutally, aggressively and possibly with a petty, small minded venality he goes on to state that: "Women are far meaner, more brutal, aggressive, small-minded, jealous, petty and venal than any man." And it's hard to argue with that.  

Without doubt, the funniest proclamation issued forth by Littlejohn's understudy regards our health and well-being, particularly 'man flu':

"It is women who make a big fuss about mild discomfort, not men. I have never had so much as a cold in my life, nor claimed to. I even suspect sometimes that the whole palaver about the pain of childbirth is a conspiracy to ride roughshod over men."

Proscribing to the same factual databank as Mr Coren, I can emphatically state that even Iron Man once suffered from a bout of mild nasopharyngitis - his GP told me. He was mates with my uncle and he ain't no bullshitter. He ain't. Fuck you, he ain't, well ring him then, go on, ring him. RING HIM!

Exactly.

Never once has Giles Coren had a cold. The 'childbirth palaver' is purely fiction. Seeriasss guv. Get a grip blud. Pffft.

His sister is amazing though, no lie - fuck's sake bruv, believe.

Coren finishes his piece by equating the unfair male disposition regarding women with:

"If that's not off-side, I don't know what is." 

And he's right. He doesn't know what off-side is.

According to Sky Sports' Soccer AM's Helen Chamberlain:

"The off-side rule aims to prevent strikers from scoring easy goals by lurking around the opposition's goal post. Players are forbidden from standing between the opposition post and the last opposition defender unless the ball is kicked forward towards the goalposts."

Simples. *Squeak
 

Richard Littlejohn and his Interminable Hatred of Women

50 sHaDeS oF iDiOcY: pArT 2

Richard 'Upwards-of-£700,000-a-year’ Littlejohn can afford high class hookers if he so fancies and you'd have thought, for this, he'd be thankful.  

I'm not for a moment suggesting that prostitutes are a luxury that Dicky would want to spaff his filthy lucre on of course, far from it. I mean it's self-evident from his various poisonous prevarications that women from pretty much any background are among the most despicable creatures he's forced to endure, invariably invading his precious consciousness.

Here are a couple of this contemptible crank's jaw-dropping scribbles on the Daily Mail website that are well worth a leisurely perusal. For your delectation, as it were:

Firstly: "Spare us the 'People's Prostitute' routine..." was an article published less than a week before Christmas, 2006 and it outlined Mr Littlejohn's opinions regarding the victims of the Suffolk Strangler (who was still at large at the time). Then in 2011, following justice secretary Ken Clarke's "serious rapes" gaffe, came the execrable: "It’s not only rape victims betrayed by the system." 

The Mail's provocative and intentionally ill-judged editorial decisions to afford this 21^st century Julius Streicher a platform to honk his perverse opinions regarding subjects as sensitive as rape or the murder of young women, wrest you to the degree that you wouldn't even bat an eyelid if this deplorable rag published a free pull-out Home Improvements supplement entitled: "The Fred West Guide to Health & Safety on the Building Site."

Littlejohn is a ‘man’ who, during serial killer Steve Wright’s murder spree in Ipswich, felt compelled to snipe:

"In their grubby little existences [the victims]… death by strangulation is an occupational hazard... In the scheme of things the deaths of these five women is no great loss."

Yep, you did read that correctly. Try it again. It has the same impact the second time.

By about halfway through the Ipswich murders column you realise that it would pretty much come down to the flip of a coin to decide who despised the murdered girls the most – psychopathic serial killer Steve Wright or the shank-brained Mail columnist?

Littlejohn lasciviously dribbles: "These five women were on the streets because even the filthiest, most disreputable back-alley "sauna" above a kebab shop wouldn't give them house room. Some men are actually turned on by disgusting, drug-addled street whores." 

For some reason, somewhat uncharitably, he didn't sign the article off with Yuletide Season's Greetings to the victims' friends and families.

Following the gang rape of two British charity workers on the Carribean island of St Lucia in 2011, the Daily Mail again felt that a subject of such sensitivity would be best dealt with by their most obliging, misogynistic, compassion contravener... 

Littlejohn sets the scene for an odious diatribe by detailing the horrific and prolonged sexual assault of the two women before peculiarly stating that:

"No one would dream of suggesting that because they were camping on an isolated beauty spot overnight they were asking to be attacked."

He's right. No one would ever think that. It did cross his mind though, apparently - the sort of thing that no one in their right mind would ever conceive. It's good that he felt compelled to inform us of a truly awful notion that would have never occurred to anyone in the first place without his help.

"Let’s imagine for a moment that one of these unfortunate women had met a man in a Tiki Bar, got off her head on rum punch and invited him back to her hotel room for a drunken tumble..."

Yes, why not? That seems reasonable. Let’s equate ‘drunken tumbles’ with vicious sexual attacks. And while we're at it, rather than imagining a hypothetical woman, he wants to specifically imagine one of the traumatised rape victims for this disturbing fantasy scenario...

I presume she drunkenly stumbles into said Tiki Bar, hair tousled and matted with deep scratches and weeping gouges -

Apologies Richard, I’m getting ahead of you here. It's your fantasy:  

"The following morning, through her hungover haze, she was consumed by self-loathing. Would she be entitled to cry ‘rape’?"

Jesus Christ impatiently standing in a queue in Halfords clutching a puncture repair kit!

I've just realised that Mr Littlejohn doesn’t understand the literal meaning of the word rape. The contemptuous inverted commas adorning the word in his conjecture speak volumes. To help our Mailman out, here's the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of the word rape:

• noun

  [mass noun]
  • 1the crime, typically committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will.
    
    

Unhelpfully, Dicky goes on to inform us: "There’s a world of difference between a violent sexual assault at the hands of a complete stranger and a subsequently regretted alcohol-induced one night stand."

And d'ya know what? He’s not wrong. The main difference between a violent sexual assault at the hands of a complete stranger and a subsequently regretted alcohol-induced one night stand is that one is a violent sexual assault at the hands of a complete stranger and the other is a subsequently regretted alcohol-induced one night stand. Littlejohn seems to be so confused with the meaning of these very different phrases that I'd be surprised if he doesn't pepper those fucking Go-Compare-The-Meerkat-furry-fuckwits with repeated befuddled telephone calls all day long.

There is also a ‘world of difference’ between a violent sexual assault at the hands of a complete stranger and a violent sexual assault at the hands of a vaguely familiar face that an inebriated girl may have been dancing with at a party throughout the night. Either way, if she decided that she needed to go home because the room had started spinning and her bed was calling, regardless of whether Mr Familiar Face had accompanied her for the trek back and regardless of whether she'd invited him in for coffee and regardless of whether she'd snogged his face off on the sofa for half an hour, it's still her call to say: "Night night" or "Fuck off" if that's how she feels. 

It's her call.   

If said girl is physically overpowered and violated by a sex offender of any subdivision against her will then the consequences are undoubtedly going to be devastating. The perpetrator is a dangerous predator who should be clinked-up and forced to join the Government Facebook register. For good.

Twathead's reprehensible stream of misogynistic gobshitery putrefies, unceasingly:

"To the Boadiceas of feminism ‘rape is rape’, regardless of the circumstances, even if the woman was so sloshed she can’t remember whether or not she consented. These vengeful viragos insist that ‘rape is a life sentence’ in every case. No, it isn’t. In many instances, it isn’t even rape."

Well, it is. In this particular paragraph, the word rape must maintain its actual meaning as it was Mr Littlejohn who constructed the notion in the first place and we are obliged to prescribe to the laws of language in a newspaper article. By conceiving the 'Boadiceas’ ‘rape is rape’' lie, the word rape has to retain its literal definition otherwise the whole paragraph makes precisely as much sense as if he'd typed:

"Each morning, without fail, I ride to work on my bicycle. However, some mornings, it’s not actually a bike because it’s a knitted, turkeymonkey tea-cosy. And I haven’t got a job because I am in fact a slug languishing under a heap of salt, dying obtusely in a thick, gooey puddle of my own disgusting internal biology."

It just wouldn’t make any logical sense despite being a far preferable imagining.

So here’s a scenario that might help Richard Littlejohn to begin to understand the concept of rape a little more unambiguously.

I think it’s predominantly down to the logistics of the deed that he’s struggling with. I reckon a good way for him to begin to comprehend the damage caused by such a violation would be some kind of a switcheroo-type situation into the victim’s position. It matters not that Littlejohn is a heterosexual male for this to work.

Here’s the scenario…

'Let’s imagine for a moment that an intoxicated Richard Littlejohn got chatting with three muscular rugby lads after stumbling into a sweaty Tiki Bar alone. Out of his tiny squiff-faced noggin on rum punch, he’d invited the trio back to his hotel room for a sozzled scrum down when, without warning, one of the burly brutes seized him by the throat, thumbs crushing his larynx, as the other two violently wrenched his arms behind his back…'

I’ll spare you the horrific details of what ensued and skip to the end:

'…covered in blood in what was a veritable, knuckle-duster-clad, triple-fisting.

The following morning, through his hungover haze, Mr Littlejohn was consumed by self-loathing.'

Would he be entitled to cry ‘rape’?

An Interview with Robert John Godfrey of The Enid

Having been assigned the job of interviewing Robert John Godfrey, I was filled with a sense of excitement and anticipation. I knew that The Lodge Recording Studio was his baby and I also knew that he was the founding member and keyboard maestro behind legendary eclectic prog-rockers The Enid, but not a great deal about the man himself. I had vague visions of a reclusive Syd Barrett type - mysterious, aloof, wizard-like. I was looking forward to hearing what he had to say about the town, tunes and trends. He did not disappoint.

On arrival, I was lead to a studio room upstairs above The Lodge where I found Robert playing a beautiful ebony grand piano that looked like it had been fashioned from Kubrick's monolith. It was the perfect start.

He indicated for me to sit down, and before I'd really finished asking my first question about his upbringing, he very succinctly summed up twenty years or so in about twenty seconds:

'I was born in a castle and brought up by Indian servants. I came from a rich, aristocratic background of the late 40s/early 50s. I er, went to boarding school. Fucked up there. Was put into care. Learnt to play the piano. Went to the Royal College Of Music to learn to be a concert pianist... I then discovered acid and The Beatles.' Phew.

By the age of fifteen he had already performed the Brahms concerto. At RCOM he went on to establish a close relationship with German composer Hans Werner Henze, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten, whilst studying under concert pianist Malcolm Binns. Next, he worked with Barclay James Harvest after hearing them at the Roundhouse in London:

'I was with them for two years and that's where I learnt everything about recording (which is still relevant today) at Abbey Road Studios, where I did two albums with Pink Floyd producer Norman Smith - with whom I went on to have a long association with.'

The Enid was born in June 1973 and they released their debut album 'In The Region Of Summer Stars' on EMI in 1976. They've been described as the biggest cult band in Europe; banned by Glastonbury; investigated by MI5; and dubbed leftists and anarchists.

More recently, Time Out described them as 'The Orb meets Pink Floyd meets The Berlin Philarmonic.' The fatty-boombatty fraternity are twitching with exitement. These are the kind of comments that you yearn for as a group. A mythology that eventually writes itself. The band have notched up several albums and line-up changes since, but throughout their entire history Robert John Godfrey has remained the focal point:

'I formed The Enid in '73, which was the ragtag of the remnants of my care-home. When it closed I thought right, I'm a musician, let's have a band. So I formed the band with the lads there. We hadn't got homes to go to and had to do something with our lives. And I've been doing that one way or another ever since.' They intend to get back out onto the concert platform very soon.

The Enid currently features Robert, original drummer David Storey and a crop of younger musicians. They have a record deal with the Gerald Palmer Organisation (responsible for Spiritualized).

One of Robert's other passions is The Lodge Recording Studio on Abington Square in Northampton, which he runs with Chief Engineer Max Read. It offers excellent facilities, with the latest technology and digital recording techniques sat neatly beside classic equipment. The studio was moved to Northampton in 1993 after being relocated from the outskirts of the town. It was originally established in the Suffolk countryside in 1979 and seen artists ranging from Kim Wilde to New Model Army to Paradise Lost pass through its soundproof doors (plus local bands including The Departure, Orwell Music, Cave, et al).

Current residents in the living quarters of The Lodge are upcoming local band The Operatives, and they're causing more than a ripple of excitement in the local music scene at the moment. Robert's praise for the recent Seen Magazine feature band couldn't be higher:

'They came into our lives about five years ago, really as unmanageables. They were chaotic but brilliantly gifted. They have the spirit of Frank Zappa, but from a punky-indie background, with all the imaginative stuff. They need the freedom to develop. They've almost finished recording their first album... They will be massive.'

Robert inspires confidence. It was good to hear such a candid and articulate speaker on issues ranging from his own fascinating past to his in-depth knowledge of the town's history (just not enough room to print it all here), but he speaks most passionately about music and the scene in Northampton:

'I've got to the point now where I believe that this town is bloody brimming with talent but there's absolutely no interfacing whatsoever with the music industry. The town needs a place like The Square in Harlow, which is council-run. They've got a video suite, a recording studio and can stage high profile bands. We've got nothing like that in this town and it's a great pity. I want to do something about it... I would like to send a message to the musical community of Northampton to have more self-belief. There's a cracking potential in this town and it's really happening now.'


I insist you check out more @ http://www.theenid.com/ and http://www.lodgerecording.co.uk/

The G8 Summit: A Success Story?

As the inspiring We're Not Afraid* campaign gathers more and more subscribers at an amazing rate in response to the July 7 atrocities, and July 21 bungled attacks in London, it is clear that al-Qa'ida haven't succeeded in their objectives. What they did achieve though, was to divert attention away from the issues up for discussion at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
The bombs were timed to coincide with the gathering of arguably the most powerful men in the world, including President Bush, UN Secretary Kofi Annan and Tony Blair. The results of the summit were overshadowed by the aftermath of the London terrorist strikes.

So what was the outcome of these discussions?

The G8, (no, it's not text-speak for gate), comprises of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US, with the heads of state or government meeting annually to tackle major economic and political issues facing domestic societies and the international community. They deal with macroeconomic management (obviously), international trade and the relationships between developing countries. Member states act as host on a rotational basis, and 2005 has seen the United Kingdom at the helm, with Mr Blair chairing proceedings.

Top of the agenda at Gleneagles were Africa and climate change. These two issues represent the most serious problems facing the international community, presently and for the foreseeable future. The other pressing issue being peace in the Middle East.

As things currently stand, Africa will not meet any of the Millennium Development Goals. In a continent where 3,000 children die every single day from malaria, action is long overdue.

Concerning global-warming, ice in the Arctic has shrunk by 1,000,000 square kilometres and with sea-levels rising, we have lived through the hottest 10 years currently on record. All occurring since 1991.

So what was achieved? These are some of main promises:

Africa:

• The 18 poorest countries have had their national debt cancelled. There are more than 40 still waiting.
• Annual development aid will be increased by $25 billion by 2010 (as part of an overall increase of $50 billion for all developing countries) - more than doubling the 2004 level.
  There will be universal access to anti-HIV/Aids drugs by 2010.
• Funding to eradicate Polio.
• To reach 85% of people vulnerable to malaria with drugs and bed-nets, with a view to saving 600,000 children's lives each year.
• 75,000 African Union troops (including the 20,000-strong AU Stand-By Force) will be trained and equipped to help prevent and resolve conflict and war.

Climate-Change:

• To promote energy efficiency and to finance clean technologies - coal, diesel and methane, renewable energy, bioenergy and more efficient power grids.
• To promote the research and development of hydrogen-powered vehicles that emit water rather than harmful fumes.
• Not much else.

Peace In The Middle East:

• Support for the Quartet Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement, James Wolfensohn, regarding the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.
• $3 billion agreed for the Palestinian Authority for investment in infrastructure with contributions over the next 3 years to help build the economy.
• A pledge of support for the newly-elected democratic government of Lebanon and urging the withdrawal of Syrian forces there.

So, some promising results have come out of last month's summit, but behind the posturing pop stars and their politician pals' spiel, we need to see some real results. There is certainly a lot more that could have been done.
This year alone, we have seen genocide in Darfur, western Sudan, where the civil-war is ongoing. We have watched all-too-familiar images of famine in Niger which the west knew was coming - there were appeals for food as far back as last November. We have witnessed the demolition of shantytowns in Zimbabwe, rendering 700,000 people homeless, under the orders of dictator Robert Mugabe.

This is while Africa is top of the G8 agenda.

We are now seeing progress in Israel with the dismantling of Jewish settlements, which must be incredibly difficult for all concerned - with Israeli removing Israeli - but this is a huge step forward for the Middle East and they should be commended for their actions.

As for global warming, Mr Bush has refused to budge, having been handed the Kyoto Agreement and blowing his nose with it. He has finally conceded that climate change does exist, and is a genuine problem caused by human activity though, so there is hope for further progress when the G8 meet again in November...

We shall see.

Is it hot in here or is it me? aTcHoOo!

* http://www.werenotafraid.com/ is essential viewing.