Fuck me! And watch out for that technicolour yawn!

Town bans swearing in the street in crackdown on anti-social behaviour

Swearing on the streets has been banned by a council in an effort to reduce antisocial behaviour in the run-up to Christmas. Anyone caught uttering offensive language could be handed an on-the-spot fine of £80. The regulation has been imposed by Preston City Council to try to curb drunk and disorderly behaviour in its town centre during the party season.

Chunder!

The council is also planning to 'ban' vomiting in the street. A sort of anti anti-peristalsis law. I'd love to see how that is going to be enforced.

You missed? They missed!

The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008

This year, a historic U.S. election, a catastrophic financial crisis, and China’s Olympic dreams dominated headlines, but some of the biggest stories never made the front page. From the Afghanistan “surge” that’s already begun, to the global warming solution that could be making the problem worse, here are 10 big stories that never became big news.

The 10 Worst Predictions for 2008

Prognostication is by far the riskiest form of punditry. The 10 commentators and leaders on this list learned that the hard way when their confident predictions about politics, war, the economy, and even the end of humanity itself completely missed the mark.

Weird and Wonderful

Bagpuss and Ivor creator dies

Bagpuss creator Oliver Postgate has died aged 83, his family has confirmed.

Mr Postgate, who lived in Kent, created some of the best-loved children's TV series including Ivor the Engine, the Clangers and Noggin the Nog. His work, screened on the BBC and ITV from the 1950s to the present day, was often in collaboration with the artist and puppeteer Peter Firmin.

"Santa's gone home. Santa's fucking dead."

Charlie Brooker on the closure of the Lapland New Forest Christmas theme park

"Santa's gone home. Santa's fucking dead." As theme park slogans go, it's a winner. Sadly, it wasn't the official tagline for Lapland New Forest, the temporary Christmas attraction that was forced to close last week after furious visitors demanded their money back.

Instead, the "Santa" line was shouted at a Sun reporter and a "handful of queuing families" by a member of staff disconsolately closing the gates for the last time.

'Is Nana Mouskouri not in town?'

BBC prefers showbiz over substance

This week I turned on the BBC News and watched one item where the full 10-person shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year was read out. Only a few days earlier a "story" about the first £1m item on the Antiques Roadshow was the third item on the BBC News. Yesterday BBC News reported that Graham Norton was taking over from Terry Wogan as host of the Eurovision Song Contest. BBC News reports that BBC staffer replaces BBC staffer on BBC show. There's a media studies module in there somewhere.

Ban Christmas? Been there, done that.

Christmas came late to Scotland

Christmas itself was until recent times a purely Religious festival and New Year was and still is the main holiday for Scots. Christmas was not traditionally celebrated in Scotland because it was banned for nearly 400 years until the 1950's. Hogmanay was the real traditional celebration. The reason Christmas was not celebrated until recently go back to the time of John Knox in the 1580's as it was seen to be papist in origin - the ban was strictly enforced in law.

Until recently, Christmas was fairly low key. It wasn't even a public holiday until 1958. Up till then, people worked normally on Christmas day, although the children did get presents. Therefore the Christmas 'traditions' in Scotland are pretty much the same modern US version. If you wanted to have a real traditional Scottish Christmas, you should go into work on Christmas day! In 1997/98 and 2001/2002 there were strikes at Scottish banks because the bank staff were getting English holidays rather than the Scottish ones which have more time off at New Year.

Pogroms

United Jerusalem

An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn´t a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there.

Via See also Jeremiah Haber

Update:
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday lashed out at settlers in Hebron who attacked Palestinians and their property in recent days, joining other Israeli figures in branding the attacks a "progrom."

sunday papers 7th December 2008

Whoops! #857

Can't resist linking to this March 14th piece from Beatrix Campbell (the left's answer to Melanie Phillips)

Who do we blame?

Karen Matthews has acted appropriately throughout: she was waiting for Shannon at home; she contacted the police as soon as she had exhausted all the obvious locations. And yet, our eye is drawn to her poverty, numbers of partners, cans of lager going into her household. Everything about Ms Matthews' life has been up for scrutiny.

There has been talk of domestic violence. I can think of several high-profile "human interest" tragedies in which the domestic violence endured by a middle-class woman has been successfully screened from public knowledge.

Karen Matthews has been subjected to a Today programme interrogation that appeared to position the mother as the perpetrator: Sarah Montague asked her seven times about her lifestyle. Her patronising preoccupation was how many men there have been in her life, not her judgment about them. Has any other, apparently blameless mother been so sweetly assailed?

Saturday Papers 6th December 2008

When the US sneezes...

U.S. job losses worst since 1974 as downturn deepens

U.S. employers axed payrolls by 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years and far more than expected, government data on Friday showed, as the year-old recession hammered every corner of the U.S. economy.

U.S. stock markets opened lower, oil prices and the dollar weakened and U.S. government bond prices rallied as the data showed the U.S. downturn was deepening.

"You can't get much uglier than this. The economy has just collapsed, and has gone into a free fall," said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research in New York.

Health 2.0

Patients as Partners

Medicine has always been a top-down affair. Doctors, drug companies, regulators, and researchers are the expert gate-keepers, telling patients what they need to know. Even their own medical records are locked away to protect their privacy. So what would happen if critically ill patients joined together, obtained their personal information, and made it public?

Just such a real-world experiment is under way at a Web-based social network started by the company PatientsLikeMe. The two-year-old venture has already signed up 23,000 participants in five chronic-illness categories—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson's disease, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and mood disorders.