BY ALEXIA JAMES An extraordinary turn of events over at Impress – the dud press regulator into whose coffers monies from Max Mosley have been fired. Yesterday’s Press Gazette has the story of how Impress has ordered the conspiracy website Byline to cough up £2,500 in libel damages to the trained and professional journo, Mr Dennis Rice. Mr Rice is a former investigations editor of the … Continue reading Rice Reduces IMPRESS To Laughing Stock
BY ALEXIA JAMES To the sensible and sound, the General Election last week was a simple question of mathematics and a totting up of negative facts around the judgment of Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour leadership. The IFS statement about Labour’s manifesto not adding up and documentation showing Corbyn, Abbott and McDonnell supporting the IRA in the past would have been enough to secure a … Continue reading Tories Must Outcool Labour Celebs
BY ALEXIA JAMES The fit and proper person test is being applied right now as part of an open consultation by media regulator Ofcom into Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox’s proposed £11.7bn takeover of Sky. Ofcom have heard claims of alleged sexual harassment by former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, amid pressure to derail the multi-billion-pound deal. Lawyer Lisa Bloom travelled to London with Dr … Continue reading A-Grade BBC Hypocrisy
BY ALEXIA JAMES I don’t buy the Alt-Right. In fact, too often, they seem Alt-Wrong. Just because they are right a lot of the time does not make up for their kookiness which, at times, can be downright inexplicable and unnecessarily offensive. Who do I mean by the Alt-Right? I am talking about the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos (who gave a detailed explanation of the … Continue reading Alt-Right? Alt-Weird
BY ALEXIA JAMES Tomorrow is an important day for the Anti Dog Theft campaign currently pressurising Westminster. Country Squire Magazine has been a massive supporter of this campaign and, to bring down numbers, wants to see perpetrators of dog theft face bigger penalties for their crimes. We are all hoping that the MPs involved are not using the issue of dog theft as some bandwagon. If … Continue reading Dog Theft’s Double Tragedy
BY ALEXIA JAMES At CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) last Friday the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, claimed that left-wing protesters are getting $1,500 a week to deliberately cause violence in response to Donald Trump’s presidency. LaPierre insisted that those protesters are “willing to use violence against us” and that “they want revenge. They’re angry, they’re militant, and they’re … Continue reading A New & Dirtier Politics
BY ALEXIA JAMES A few years ago when people like Stephen Fry publicly complained about my generation’s use of the upward inflection in our everyday speech I laughed off the complaints as those of grumpy old buffers. The upward inflection brought in from California or perhaps the nation’s watching of Australian soaps Neighbours and Home & Away can be annoying in millennials when they oft … Continue reading So
BY ALEXIA JAMES The comedian Joe Lycett is pansexual and on Radio 4 this week he jokingly declared himself “a threat to all of you”. Transsexual Valentina Sampaio (pictured) has just become the Vogue Magazine Cover model. And now Indian cinema is leading the way in accepting transsexual and transgender people as…just people. Actor and model Anjali Ameer is soon going to be the first … Continue reading Will We Ever Get Over Our Sexuality?
BY ALEXIA JAMES Like many Brits I grew up with Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY). I’d watch it with my brother and parents knowing that we’d not need to go down to Blockbusters for a lazy evening’s home entertainment when it was on. I recall my mother having a soft spot for Paul Merton and practically wetting herself when it was his turn … Continue reading Have I Got Snooze For You
BY ALEXIA JAMES You’ve heard of A.C Grayling, right? Plato, Socrates, Descartes, Grayling? Ring any bells? Well done you at the back of the class! A.C Grayling is the Peckham-dwelling University of Sussex graduate with 30 books under his belt on philosophy, biography, the history of ideas, human rights and ethics. For several years, Anthony Clifford Grayling was a columnist for The Guardian (yup, his kids go to … Continue reading Ailing from Grayling?
BY ALEXIA JAMES I was enjoying a meal with friends this week in a Mexican restaurant in West Sussex when the conversation turned to the current crop of talking heads doing the rounds. Several friends – with views from pretty much across the whole political spectrum – were there and the usual suspects cropped up including Katie Hopkins and Will Self. One of the girls … Continue reading An Age of Permanent Markers
BY ALEXIA JAMES Few people tend to remember Tonight. It was a predecessor of today’s BBC Newsnight, which has been on air since 1980. It’s funny how shows which run out of public love and then end up on the TV scrapheap are so easily forgotten. Newsnight was also once the BBC flagship news and current affairs programme. It housed cherished presenters like Peter Snow, distinguished journalists … Continue reading Newsnight’s Inexorable Decline
BY ALEXIA JAMES Friday brought the announcement of the death of the vicious dictator, Fidel Castro. If you have the slightest doubt about what a monster Castro was, look up the poet Valladares who Castro had charged with terrorism – jailed for thirty years in a cell so small he had to stand and ate his own excrement. Google the name Huber Matos, Castro’s once … Continue reading What’s Wrong with this World?
BY ALEXIA JAMES Most people get fat at some point in their lives. Many women get fat during and after pregnancy (yup, me too) and it takes one hell of a lot of hours on the cross trainer to shed those pounds, lose those jowls, tighten that butt and somehow squeeze back into your pre-pregnancy clothes. Some people are happy living with fat. Others hate … Continue reading The Art of Being Fat
BY ALEXIA JAMES Back in April 2015, the then Labour Leader Ed Miliband called for a female James Bond and was shot down in flames by the British press as well as by many on social media. Miliband met actress Rosamund Pike during his failed 2015 election bid and tipped her to make history by becoming the first woman in the role. “I think she’s … Continue reading Wonderman?
BY ALEXIA JAMES Fighting Global Warming tends to be government policy in most nations these days. We are told to recycle as much as we possibly can and save energy to limit our carbon emissions which are fatally destroying the ozone layer and the future of the planet. Billions are spent globally fighting climate change. There are numerous think tanks, scientific research centres and whole … Continue reading “Ice Age” is Here
BY ALEXIA JAMES “To all yoga pant wearers,” wrote Alan Sorrentino, of Rhode Island, in a letter to the editor of the Barrington Times, “I struggle with my own physicality as I age. I don’t want to struggle with yours.” Sorrentino, 63, boldly declared yoga pants the “absolute worst thing” to happen to women’s fashion since the mini skirt. He said that, like the mini … Continue reading Yoga Pants Rumpus
