Foxy Business News

Possibly the way forward for the Wall Street Journal ?

Word on the street is that a number of internal corporate emails are still talking about a merger of equals. Forget it guys, you've been bought by Rupert, he owns your ass, to use an American idiom.

SAS - Safety And Security

To help prevent accidents the SAS have always adopted the most rigorous Health and Safety standards. Here are some rare photographs from the storming of the Iranian Embassy, Health and Safety is obviously a top priority.

Dirty Cloud Seen Over Westminster

They Don't Even Do that Anymore

The people's flag is palest pink
It's not the colour you might think
White collar workers stand and cheer
The Labour government is here
We'll change the country bit by bit
So nobody will notice it
And just to show that we're sincere
We'll sing The Red Flag once a year

The cloth cap and the wollen scarf
Are images outdated
For we're the party's avant garde
And we are educated
So raise the rolled umbrella high
The college scarf, the old school tie
And just to show that we're sincere
We'll sing The Red Flag once a year

They don't even do that now. The people's party is content to rely on dodgy donations and dodgy people. Happy to have a go against people on invalidity benefits, happy to push private education. ore than content to charge students and have them debted out. Presiding over the mass testing of a generation of children, turning them into exam junkies or dispirited drop-outs. All too keen to drag the country into a war on lies. So control-freaked out that they want all the details, every detail on not one computer but three computer super datbases and so smug they couldn't give a fuck about controling the security of the information.

The people's party has been spun out of existence.

Boss of Bosses

Still, who would you rather have as England manager, the special one with his style and elegance and success or the seedy, bunged up looking Harry complete with his brown, very brown coat which looks like he's slept in it for a week. Or there is a school of thought, I use the word thought very loosely, that Alan Shearer should be England manager. Great! now we'll have a monosyllabic block of wood mumbling and grunting cliches and furrowing his brow as his perfect plan of scoring goals by leaning on and then fouling a defender and then with a great grunt thumping the ball really hard at goal fails to make an international dent.

On the Lash

Bloody Noisy Hotels

It's Alright, I'll Give it Back

"Norman Stanley Fletcher you are an habitual criminal who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner...."

"Ah yes your honour errrrr if I give back the DVD player and the television set, it'll be alright won't it."

"Giving back the proceeds of your criminal ventures will not wipe the slate clean Mr Fletcher, where on earth did you get such a fallacious idea?"

"My mates in Nu Labor, innit."

Three Women Walk into a Bar

Sit down and talk to each other about their problems, listening carefully, repeating what the other person said to them and what they said to them and mulling over what they really meant and sometimes being a bit bitchy. Then they go home slightly tiddly.

That's why Women aren't funny.

They think too much, listen too much and take themselves too seriously.

On the other hand Men don't.

Or sometimes they think too much and develop whole political and philsophical and religious movements that require bloody crusades and wars and genocides. Or they listen too much and end up listening to God and carrying out the Missio He's given him, usually with a hammer and against prostitutes. Or they do take themselves too seriously and build cruel and evil empires in which millions exist to serve them. Stalin wasn't a great one for standing around talking about norks and doing "Suit you Sir" impressions (though he did do the very boysy thing of making lists, Top 500 people to execute today) and Hitler's attempts at stand up weren't that good, not many laughs but huge audiences. Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer is not that good a catchphrase.

But these guys and similar of their ilk aren't the real guys. The real guys don't take themselves seriously, ever, that's why there are more funny men than funny women, you can't be serious about humour.

But as Christopher Hitchens points out Women don't need to be funny to get a shag, they just need to be there. Men have to stand up there, with a hostile audience, pitching a line and usually getting shot down. That breeds funny.

The worst comedians are the ones that go round the audience, "Anybody here from Portsmouth?" "Anybody here from Fowey?" That's the variation of the bloke asking "Where do you come from?" "What do you do?" That's flailing around in a nervous sweat about to tip your pint over your groin and to be gonged off with scorn.

Next step on the comedy evolutionary ladder is holding the audience in contempt, attacking them and generally taking the piss. The Darcy approach. Be contemptible and funny for such a long time, then when they're least expecting it, turn on the charm and they'll be like bunnies caught wide eyed and lolly-gagged int he headlights of your charm and ready for a good running over.

The final step on the comedy evolutionary ladder is to be searingly original and funny. That's a bit difficult but there you go.

I never said it was easy being a Man

One for the Patio

Alan Titmarsh signs up for a new 2 year contract for his chat show. Dear God another two years of his bumbling, yokel smarminess. On Ground Force I was pleased it was was only Charlie Dimmock who wore low slung tops, if Titmarsh had.....it doesn't bear thinking about. Still Alan is definately one for the patio, a Brookside patio. Actually thinking about Charlie and her Dimmocks....I've gone all Murdoch...

Ready for Your Golden Shower Mr McClaren

Pissing on McClaren might not be enough. He should be chained to rock like Prometheus and every day the gentlemen and ladies of the Press should descend and rip out his liver, devour it and leave flicking the Vs. Though we can't blame McClaren too much, he was a special ability manager reaching beyond his capabilities. We can turn our fire on the collection of dead beat, arrogant, lazy, money-obsessed, preening little wankers that "play" for England these days.

All they care about is the money, their wags, driving cars and brushing their hair.

Iconic

Creepy-Crawlies

This is a sea scorpion, part of which they've discovered fossilized. At half-past midnight Richard Bacon, Mr Dim, was smacking his lips at the thought of an 8 foot shrimp. Later at 5.30 in the morning the Wake up to Money program they thought it would petrify anybody who had arachnophobia; fear of spiders?

In Praise of Mighty Organs

A thrust by David Leigh of T'Grauniad against easy, slick, superficial journalism, the detritus of the blogs and shrieks of citizen journalists

"You can get junk journalism almost as easily. But just as there is now a Slow Food movement, I should also like to see more Slow Journalism. Slow Journalism would show greater respect for the reporter as a patient assembler of facts. A skilled craftsman who is independent and professionally reputable. A disentangler of lies and weasel words. And who is paid the rate for the job. Aren't such people essential for probing the dodgy mechanisms of our imperfect democracy, and our very imperfect world?

But the power of reporting does not lie entirely — or even mostly — in the nobility of its practitioners, or their professional skills. Or their celebrity status. It also lies in the preservation of media outlets that are themselves powerful.

When I reflect on the investigations I have been involved in, I realise that the reporter does have influence. We have written about the scandal of tax-dodgers with private jets pretending to live in Monaco, but still working four days a week in a London office. The government now says it will close that loophole. We wrote some rather savage articles about plans to restrict use of the Freedom of Information Act. They dropped the plans. And Rob Evans and I have written scores of articles detailing the corrupting influenceof the defence ministry's arms sales department. The government now says it will shut the department.

There is only one reason why these stories have an effect. I like to think, of course, it is down to our own personal brilliance. But it is not. It is because a story on the front page of the Guardian carries clout. So do reports on the BBC, for example — that's why Andrew Gilligan's stories about alleged sexed-up dossiers caused such panic and rage in Downing Street. That is perhaps one of the biggest dangers of the media revolution. When the media fragment — as they will — and splinter into a thousand websites, a thousanddigital channels, all weak financially, then we will see a severe reduction in the power of each individual media outlet. The reporter will struggle to be heard over the cacophony of a thousand other voices.

Politicians will no longer fear us. And if that day comes, I'm afraid it really will be the end of the reporter."

Illegal Immigrant Shock

The Home Secretary, Jacquie Smith, was last night revealed to be an illegal immigrant. She says she didn't think it was appropriate to tell Parliament and that it was more important for her to get on with her job. But as the truth became known, thanks to the super soaraway Hackery's investigations, Jacqui Smith was dragged kicking and screaming from the Home Office. As she was bundled into a private contractor's van, KickemOut plc, to be taken to an immigrant detention centre she was heard screaming, "Those bastards will beat me up on the way to the plane, help me, help me I'm a Home Secretary you know."

Don't Panic, Don't Panic

There's a fire in East London. Reports on SKYNEWS from witnesses included a well known city gentleman saying the smoke looked like a nuclear bomb; measured, cool reporting there. And then a citizen journalist rubbished the police saying they believed it was not terrorist related and she then began to shout it was terrorist coz she knew, or something like that, they cut her off. Another citizen journalist said the smoke looked like the smoke from the the Twin Towers, no value judgement there then, don't panic, don't panic. Rather more subtly the Sky team said that the area where the fire was thought to be was an area of diverse communities, code speak for muslims?, and then wittered on about a mosque being close by, more code speak for muslim dirty bomb? Still it's only a bunch of old tires or polystyrene now so that's OK.

Olympic Flames

Dick of the Week

It's Them Ladybirds Innit, Coming Over Here

The Day of Judgement

The London Oratory school has decided to drop the Terence Higgins Trust as its nominated charity for a World Aids Day concert because its aims and philosophy were incompatible with Catholicism. In a letter the Oratory says the THT doesn't support christian values, oooooooh you bitch, scratch your eyes out and nail you to a cross.

I'm looking forward to the Aids Day concert and in particular the Oratory's choir's singing of Dies Irae, such magnificent music, such poetry in that magnificent opening verse,

Day of wrath! O day of mourning!

See fulfilled the prophets' warning,

Homos and queers in ashes burning!

And in no particular connection at all I draw you to edifying story of Daddy Manahan and his close spiritual guidance to young boys in Devon.

The Artist to be Known as

Elvis's Barmy

Elvis's Barmy

says

I Don't Want To Go To The UK

@

Do You Know This Man?

A 7-Shot Wonder

Legs

Nuffink to See Here

So...

Hit the Lawyer

The only good thing about the madness of Mushareef is the spectacle of lawyers being hit repeatedly with sticks and then thrown into paddy wagons. Unfortunately, these might be lawyers who have an interest in civil freedoms and the proper rule of impartial laws. If only it were the corporate shysters from the likes of Clifford Chance, Linklaters and all the rest of the puffed up, arrogant, self-aggrandizing little shits that people the world of corporate lawyerdom.

The High of Winning

Early on she became addicted to that winning high.