Barthnotes on the UK Satanic Panic re-emergence.
Saff on ‘Pulp Fiction’ and whatever happened to Tim Tate’s book?
Tim Tate re-emerges with his reputation intact
Continue reading →Saturday Evening Posts Worth Reading and the 25-Hour News.
Beating the Tattoo.
A perfect spring day yesterday; blossom fighting its way through the bark of the apple trees, not a cloud in the sky – just the day to take the dog for a walk on the beach.
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Even Grimmer Fairy Tales.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
Long, long ago, in a leafy Sussex village, not far from where Piltdown Man was discovered to be a hoax, there came a man who had fallen
Continue reading →Clit-Lit
I know a few of you are…erm…‘getting on’, but if you can dust off the cobwebs and cast your minds back as far as two days ago, you might just recall mention of the ‘Clean Reader’ app,
Continue reading →We've become a False Allegation Society.
A year ago, the head of the NSPCC’s sexual abuse programmes, Jon Brown, claimed that:
Deliberately false or malicious accusations {against teachers} are rare […] I know many teachers, especially men, are petrified of
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Read With Mother
Hands up who sought out the dictionary in the school library to find the ‘dirty’ words. Somehow, their presence in such august pages seemed to legitimise them and also contradicted the stance of teachers when admonishing pupils
Continue reading →What Are Little Trolls Made Of?
Venom and bile and all things vile, that’s what Little Trolls are made of. If only we were talking about those misunderstood monsters of fairy tales, the ones doomed to dwell beneath bridges because they no doubt
Continue reading →The 25 Hour News and You Decide…
OK, it’s the question on everyone’s lips, the most important news item of the week bar none, the issue galvanising the nation into making a crucial choice that will affect
Continue reading →Living in Fear of the Clap.
Feminism and Twitter are unhappy bedfellows.
Twitter is not best suited as ‘a space where Feminists can safely explore intersectionality’, a term first coined by the US Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the differing oppression your average vulnerable
Continue reading →Cum On Feel The Noize Pollution
When The Beatles essentially invented the stadium gig by default due to the sheer numbers desperate to see them on their US tours, amplification was so much in its infancy that the band’s instruments were channelled through
Continue reading →What Would Mr Kipling Say?
As far as I’m aware, ‘Gay Cake’ isn’t slang for some tricky, non-missionary position, but I bow to the wisdom of any readers who know otherwise. The phrase first appeared in the context of an actual cake
Continue reading →Mark Williams-Thomas – 'It weren't me, Guv' – No: 276.
Mark Williams-Thomas has blundered into the bizarre Northern world of Owen Oyston.
Across pages 8 and 9 of the Sunday
Continue reading →Calling All Survivors
It’s not been a great couple of weeks for Britain’s premier police force. Having to apologise for not passing on their concerns to the parents of the three runaway schoolgirls in front of a Parliamentary Select Committee headed
Continue reading →Off the Back of a Lorry in a Shady Car-Park…
Ms Raccoon has been out and about – taking her business to the fat man who works out of the back of a lorry in a secret location. When I say ‘fat’ I am talking a human being
Continue reading →The 25 Hour News and the 45 Year Blues
Exclusive – Jeremy Apologises!
Wonders will never cease. Jeremy has apologised!
Ms Raccoon’s obsession with truth rather than fantasy has paid off. It is but a small victory, but one that gives me great pleasure.
Back at the beginning
Continue reading →Doctors and Nurses
Tuesday May 3 1977 may not be a date many have cause to recall or even remember; but that was the day when the BBC’s TV service for schools and colleges broadcast the facts of life to
Continue reading →Life (and Death) Through a Lens
A middle-class music journalist once asked Sid Vicious if he sang for the Man in the Street, expecting punk’s very own Dennis the Menace to support the scribe’s opinion that the peasants were revolting; however, Sidney rubbished this
Continue reading →All Coppers Are Bastards
Billy Bunter and Simple Simon in their current guises as backbench nonentities desperate to make their mediocre mark can barely contain their excitement, queuing-up to get their ugly mugs on news bulletins by the broadcaster that compares
Continue reading →Maverick Meltdown.
Our mirthless, Eeyorish, lumbering dinosaur of a national broadcasting corporation has finally managed to plant its flat feet firmly in the middle of a contretemps it cannot win.
Astonishing remarks on Top Gear affair as senior BBC
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Spinning Gandhi.
We had a naked man, before a blue cock rose to the occasion, then a pregnant woman…now we honour the barely dressed architect of the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry and the end of the Empire.
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The 25 Hour News and the 40 Year Blues
The Problem Child
The current ‘suspension’ of Jeremy Clarkson and ‘Top Gear’ as a whole is a dilemma for the BBC. They know it’s a popular series that brings in some of BBC2’s largest viewing figures as well as earning
Continue reading →An Open Letter to Max Hastings.
I wish I could admire you more. I admire your writing; I remember you as a reporter on 24 Hours – but I struggle when I try to admire you as a person.
It’s the way
Continue reading →The Senile Majority
Gideon the magician is poised to pull a blue-rinsed rabbit out of his hat come Budget Day in the shape of yet more favourable concessions for those members of the electorate who would never countenance avoiding the
Continue reading →Send in the Crowns
We are often informed that failings in any public body are due to a lack of investment, a shortage of staff, or bureaucratic distractions that get in the way of doing the job. The Police Force has
Continue reading →The Sunday Post: What’s Another Year Zero?
As ghastly as the catalogue of crimes committed by devotees of Radical Islam already is, the sorrowful sight of ancient monuments being bulldozed into dust, ones that have witnessed the rise and fall of endless empires with a dignity above and
Continue reading →The 25 Hour News and the 35 Year Blues
Jumpin’ Jihadi John
One doesn’t have to scratch too far beneath the sophisticated surface of modern man to come into contact with a primitive, deep-rooted desire for the complex matrix of life to be reduced to a Ladybird language understood
Continue reading →Grim Fairy Tales…The Savile Allegations.
I was struck by the number of people – allegators – in the past series of Savile reports, who had contacted Yewtree merely out of a wish to validate other reports of abuse.
In plain English
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