[Malcolm Armsteen]

Should have been in Tooting in the 60s.

Ace it was. All sorts and great coffee.

[kreuzberger]

Mind you, I would kill for a cheese and pickle sandwich right now. We used to have those when we went fishing in the Bedfordshire brickyard ponds.

These says? No chance.

All this after an evening of feasting on posh bread, stinking Camembert, and wild boar liver sausage.

[RedSparrows]

I was in a service station yesterday. Cheese and pickle was there. England stands.

[Watchman]

Probably more case of “News you won’t read in the Mail”…..actually named in court proceedings


BBC News: Court finds neo-Nazi planned attack at law firm

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8977xy2g2o

[satnav]

The usual piss poor nonsense from Jan Moir.

My Christmas was all the more cheery because the Just Stop Oil protesters are still behind bars. Let's hope the courts keep it that way

Don't know about you, but my Christmas was improved immensely by the cheering thought that the Just Stop Oil protesters who blocked the M25 in 2022 are still behind bars.

Every spoonful of festive sugar made all the sweeter by imagining a grim jailscape featuring JSO ringleaders feasting on gruel and darning mailsacks in their freezing cells.

You'd think they'd be glad of the undeniable climate crisis benefits of incarceration – living communally, consuming fewer megawatts, burning fewer fossil fuels, not driving cars and being exempt from boarding gas-guzzling public transport... but no.

The wretches want out and are appealing their sentences. Now Friends Of The Earth and Greenpeace UK have been allowed to intervene in support of the famous five when they challenge their jail terms in court next month.

But why? Surely the law must concern itself with only the effect, not the cause – no matter how righteous and justified these fanatics consider their actions to be. Few need reminding that for their roles in disrupting traffic on the orbital motorway around London, JSO leader Roger Hallam was jailed for five years while activists Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were given four years each.

You might recall Cressida's mother poshly complaining outside the court that her daughter's sentence 'means she will not be present at her brother's wedding next summer'. Well, that still makes me weep – with laughter.

What a sad old lonely bint she must be.

[Watchman]

I simply cannot get my head round why anyone would actually spend their limited mental capacity to arrive at that mindset……(Author’s note: I do know why!)

[davidjay]

I thought prisons were like holiday camps?

[satnav]

The Mail ran a story this morning claiming that Wayne Rooney had taken a woman back to his bachelor flat in Plymouth implying tat the picture had been taken recently. It would appear the picture was taken in the Summer when one of Wayne's children was actually at the flat and the picture was cropped to hide the fact that the woman was actually there with her partner.

[Youngian]

'Frumpy' Pammy not looking like she did 35 years ago. She's fit and healthy but must be castigated for having work done anymore. Arseholes.

[Boiler]

'Frumpy' Pammy not looking like she did 35 years ago. She's fit and healthy but must be castigated for having work done anymore. Arseholes.

I thought it had been well publicised that she's on record as saying she's not going to use makeup any more?

[Rosvanian]

Pointing out one specific example of Mail cuntery is a futile task. I still sneak a look most days but the claim that it represents the traditional conservative views of middle England is clearly nonsense. Then again, does such a world view even exist anymore? The Mail is now an unapologetically hard right boot in the face of anyone to the left of Farage and the last few days have featured several pieces ghost-written by the him about what he intends to do now that he's got a foot in the door. Judging from the online comments, the majority of readers are roaring him on to stick it to everyone they hate, and boy, the list is long. Needless to say, immigration is the issue that utterly consumes the thoughts of many commentators to so that almost every story, however unrelated, is an opportunity to spout the most extreme bile and hatred which these days seems unchallenged, as if the moderators have given up the ghost. Open admiration for Hitler and the hope that India and Pakistan "wipe each other off the map for the good of the West", being two particulary gory standouts I've read in this week. I still find it shocking but the right has captured the media so completely that any protest seems futile.

[Abernathy]

Excellent assessment, sirrah. And Pamela Anderson looks great, in my view . Much nicer than the pneumatic botoxed Barbie look.

[Youngian]

Pam was once a saxophonist in a jazz band who also did the scat solos. So is probably a more talented musician than her Motley Crue drummer ex.

[davidjay]

I still find it shocking but the right has captured the media so completely that any protest seems futile.

While still claiming it to be infiltrated by lefties. It's quite the achievement.

[Abernathy]

I know we've talked about this before, but I was reminded of it again in Sainsbury's this morning, when I saw another example of the phenomenon in action. By the newspaper rack, and an old-ish (about 67 at a guess) geezer swoops in to pick up a copy of both The Sun and The Daily Mail.

But he didn't just take the top copy off each paper's stack. Oh no - he very carefully picked out a copy of the Sun and a copy of the Mail that were second from the top of each stack. Anally retentive, or what ?

I'm interested in what this says about the psychology or mentality of the average Mail/Sun reader. The top copy in the stack would have been second from top, possibly only minutes or seconds before, so what's the fucking difference? He wasn't getting a better or cleaner copy by picking the one second from top, so why was he doing it?

I've observed this multiple times. I think it must be to do with some sort of feeling of grievance/FOMO common to all Mail/Sun readers - or Reform voters.

What does the Mailwatch panel think ?

[Watchman]

And why would anyone touch the top one and not take it...................probably because he'd see me gob on it!

[Spoonman]

I used to do that on the odd occasion when I was younger - it would be the case that the top of the pile might have a paper tear or crumples on it from being tossed about in the pile by the time it reached the newsagents (I once worked in a now closed newsagents when I was a teen - getting up at 7.00am on a Sunday morning is definitely something I don't miss), so reaching around to getting a second one from the top would be preferable. But only when the top one was damaged, so to say. Sometimes we'd move the damaged copy to the bottom of the pile.

I would say that in Abers' example however, it's probably the idea from the customer that the paper on the top of the pile is "contaminated" with other people's fingerprints or something similarly anally-retentive.

[Boiler]

Definitely something I did in the days of buying magazines from the "free reading room" known as WH Smith...

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment ... r-AA241kRA

Stephen Colbert is an American late night talk show host and political commentator. His show has just come to an end, and here's the Mail to put the boot in.

Finally – finally – after a nearly year-long goodbye in which this failed late-night talk show host transformed his low ratings and CBS' multimillion dollar losses into political martyrdom, we are rid of him.

But not before an endless stream of exit interviews with the likes of People magazine, the Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Tonight, Architectural Digest and anyone, it seems, who asked.

Hmm. Seems like a lot of people are interested in him.

'I'm a perfectly fine fan of me' – how humble, how endearing – 'but I am not of the opinion that if my voice is missing from the national conversation, the republic will turn awry.'

It's ironic self-deprecation, but you know that.

So why on earth would Colbert allow Ryan Reynolds, whose reputation has been destroyed by colluding with his equally odious (just my opinion) wife, Blake Lively

Reynolds has a reputation, an image he plays up to. So what follows is a bit of pearl clutching where the reporter takes a DVD commentary at face value. Onto the sleb guests, headed up by Paul McCartney (past it, boo-ring!).

Same with the other celebrity cameos, who I think of as Duds of a Certain Age: Bryan Cranston, Tim Meadows, Paul Rudd, Tig Notaro.

Hardly the roster of A-listers who bade Johnny Carson farewell in May 1992, after thirty years on the air.

Just fuck off at this point. Carson retired due to his age, rather than political pressure. The media landscape is radically different. Besides, if he's so universally unpopular, surely 'old dad' actors (Notaro is a woman y the way) are the best he can do?

Where was Barack, exactly? Or Michelle, even? The Clintons? A Kennedy?

It seems Colbert, who fancies himself a MAGA martyr, couldn't even attract a fading Dem statesman for his final bow.

And if any of them had showed up, you'd be screaming about a Democrat love-in, ivory tower elites out of touch with the ordinary people.

'The ending of our show aside,' Colbert said, 'which people can speculate about all they want, and I can't argue with their speculations' – code for: KEEP SPECULATING, AMERICA – 'but we're clowns. How much does it diminish the office of the Presidency to even notice what we say?'

He sure didn't feel that way when Obama and Biden were in office. He certainly doesn't feel that way about Obama's social media post, very much noticing what Stephen has to say.

Right, here we go. The fool may point out that the emperor is naked, but the fool remains a fool, and the emperor remains an emperor. For the emperor to realise that the fool has a point is to show humility. For the emperor to go after the fool is to be a vindictive bastard. Strapline is one Maureen Callaghan, who appears to be a sort of American Julie Burchill.