Sepp Blatter believes fans would back restricting the number of foreign players on club teams to five in order to benefit their national sides. Source: Team Talk.
Not this fan, let the England team sink without trace it’s done nothing since 1966, when I was too young too remember and has caused disappointment ever since and that’s regardless of the number of players in top flight English football. Personally, I’d rather watch Premiership football than the turgid England every time.
In the case of Vanity Fair very low, in their next edition Annie Leibovitz has photographed 15-year-old TV and pop star Miley Cyrus in sexually suggestive photographs.
Leibovitz has her draped in a satin sheet, most of her back exposed, in a pose that gives the impression she is topless. The actor looks straight at the camera over her bare right shoulder, her hair across her face. Source: The Guardian.
For those of you who don’t have a 7-year-old daughter Cyrus is the star of Disney TV show Hannah Montana. It is morally reprehensible to sexualise 15-year-old, what was Vanity Fair thinking? Oh, I know circulation. What where her parents thinking? It’s difficult enough to raise children in this world of over-sexualised images, did anyone involved stop to think of the effect this might have on young girls?
I’ve always thought that vitamins and supplements sold by health food shops an others is a lot of mumbo jumbo backed up with little or no accurate science based evidence. And unsurprisingly The Cochrane Collaboration agrees with a report that not only suggests antioxidant pills do nothing to reduce deaths that they in fact increase deaths.
Still, what’s the industries response, rubbish report (here) by wheeling out dodgy celebrities (Sir Cliff Richard, Gloria Hunniford, Jenny Seagrove and Carole Caplin) backing your products. I could write more but it would be pointless instead read Ben Goldacre’s article on his Bad Science website.
At least that’s the view of Glyn Travis, the assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association.
He cited a security breach at the low-security, category C Everthorpe prison near Brough, in East Yorkshire, where he said ladders were used to scale the fence and drugs and phones were delivered to inmates by members of the public.
“These were prisoners who have a history of escaping from lawful custody, and the prisoners did not take the opportunity or plan to escape because, we believe, life is so cushy in the prison system,” Source: The Guardian.
If we must use anecdotal evidence, then you could say that perhaps they didn’t escape, as prisoners were keen to avoid longer jail term on recapture. On the other hand, how about a differing statistic – the Ministry of Justice reports there were 92 self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales in 2007 compared to 67 in 2006 (or a 37% increase if I wanted to be more dramatic), perhaps from this I could infer how harsh prison is. In the end, let’s leave anecdotal evidence alone.
James Murdoch son of Rupert Murdoch and chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia has attacked the BBC over its iPlayer.
Murdoch, fielding questions after delivering the Marketing Society annual lecture in London last night, said that the iPlayer internet TV service was a “big step, a pre-emptive intervention in a marketplace otherwise hugely competitive and moving very fast”.
The former BSkyB chief executive added that he was not judging the iPlayer, for which the BBC has earmarked a budget of £131m over five years.
But Murdoch, who oversees News International and remains chairman of BSkyB, in which News Corp is the biggest shareholder, said the iPlayer is a “big intervention” in the broadband TV market that had “hoovered up” otherwise useful or productive resources and “squashed other competitors”.
“I’m not saying it is a bad product, but I am saying it does crowd out competition and innovation. But we have it now, so there you are,” he added.
Murdoch indicated that his major issue was not with the iPlayer itself, but the way the BBC is regulated, which had allowed it to be launched in its present form, saying this was an “abrogation of accountability”. Source: The Guardian.
An “abrogation of accountability”, the BBC us very accountable when compared to News Corporation which is responsible to just Rupert Murdoch; I know which I prefer. How do people keep such straight faces when uttering such blatant rubbish.
The Guardian reports that a trial for a new cervical cancer vaccine program for schoolgirls aged 12 and 13 is being refused by 20% of parents.
A third of those who gave a reason for refusal said they were worried about the long-term safety, on which there is no data. But some may have concerns that allowing vaccination may promote promiscuity, because the cancer-causing virus which the vaccination targets is passed on in sexual intercourse. Two schools declined to take part for religious reasons. The findings from the pilot study, involving 2,817 girls aged 12 and 13 in year 8 at 36 secondary schools in Greater Manchester, are published by the British Medical Journal today. Source: The Guardian.
To the third of parents rejecting the vaccine on long-tem safety grounds, how many are using this as an excuse. Vaccines are given to millions of us each year and whilst there’s been a lot of scaremongering over vaccines safety particularly MMR in the UK, there’s no actual evidence. How many parents are considering the risks of not vaccinating? That would be cervical cancer. In addition, to anyone who thinks my daughter won’t get a sexually transmitted virus is living in cloud cuckoo land. There’s plenty of good information on the HPV vaccine at the US government’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
To the two schools declining to take part on religious grounds, why? What other vaccines do you refuse? Just this one? Surely, you must recognise that girls have sex and surely, you want to protect them? Or do you think girls who have sex deserve cervical cancer?
When I was a kid (well maybe a little older), I loved BBC’s sci-fi series Blake’s 7. The BBC reports that Sky is to remake the series – I can’t wait.
On Progressive Gold, Martin Wisse has words of warning for those of us who’re customers of Virgin Media, specifically an interview given by Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett.
Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett has attacked the principle of net neutrality, whereby internet service providers do not interfere with or degrade the speed at which content is delivered from websites to consumers, branding it as “bollocks”.
Berkett’s cable operator ranks as the second largest internet service provider in the UK with approximately 3.6m customers.
In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, Berkett said that “this net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks”, and revealed that Virgin is already in talks with unnamed content providers about paying to have their content delivered faster than others.
Feeding into the debate between internet service providers and the BBC over iPlayer, Berkett even warned that public service broadcasters who choose not to pay for faster access to Virgin’s subscriber base would end up in “bus lanes”, effectively having their content delivered to consumers at a lower speed. Taken from Digital Spy.
As Martin says, is this the future of the internet?
What on earth was John Arne Riise thinking when he headed into his own net? Why didn’t he kick the ball? Still we’d better not look a gift horse in the mouth and do the business in the second leg at Stamford Bridge.
The BBC highlights a damning report by Human Rights Watch on the rights of Women (actually no rights) in Saudi Arabia; it makes for chilling reading.
Saudi women have to obtain permission from male relatives
To work
To travel
To study
To marry
To receive health care
Without the written permission of the child’s farther mothers can’t
Open bank accounts for their children
Enrol their children in school
Obtain school files
Travel with their children