Aquatic Centre

It is just me?

Or does this look like a giant sanitary pad with wings?

Lucien Freud

Very talented, I s'pose. But if I was that rich, I think I'd be painting people who looked more like this:-

The Last Living Rose

It's rare to hear a contemporary song about England, so here's PJ Harvey, doing it...

Murdoch and Sky

As one of my recent posts might suggest, I'm not a fan of what one of Murdoch's papers have done. I don't read The Times, Sun or NOTW and I'm going to be ditching my Sky box soon.

But I still don't really understand what the big deal is with Murdoch owning Sky.

OK, I can see that someone owning influential media is a big deal, that they can report for or against one party, and perhaps not having them owning all the newspapers is a good idea. Is that affected by Sky? Well, no. He's not going to own Sky News anyway.

Or, if he was doing something that would reduce competition, that might be a bad thing. Is this deal reducing competition? Err... no.

Does Sky therefore have control over say, oil, food or spice? No. It's movies, footie and bought-in US TV shows. Anyone can live without them (as I'm about to do).

So, why is this such a big deal?

Euro Flags

From The Northampton Chronicle and Echo

EUROPEAN officials have been condemned for fining the University of Northampton more that £56,000 for failing to display the Euro flag outside the college.

It has been revealed in Parliament that the university was fined £56,477 for not displaying the European logo on a board outside the college’s Newton Building in St George’s Avenue.
The fine was imposed by European officials because money from the European Regional Development Fund had been used to fund new facilities inside the Newton Building.

And that's the whole point of these projects. To have lots of EU flags around showing off how nice they are by funding things. It's about making you think the EU are the good guys. You could probably burn the money and they wouldn't care, but you'd better have that flag.

The fine has been labelled ‘astronomical’ by the Conservative MP for Northampton North, Michael Ellis, who said the money should be paid back to the university immediately

Tell you what, vote down the EU, join Better Off Out, switch to UKIP, or Shut The Fuck Up. I despise two faced tories over Europe. They'll talk tough until it comes time to act, when they make sure that Britain bends over for Brussels.

Utter, Utter Cunts

From The Guardian

The reaction of Milly Dowler's family to the revelation that the News of the World hacked into messages left on her phone was one of shock and disgust, their lawyer, Mark Lewis, said. "Sally and Bob Dowler have been through so much grief and trauma without further distressing revelations to them regarding the loss of their daughter," Lewis said.

This would normally be for my snarky bit, but I think I'll just repeat what I said earlier:

utter, utter cunts.