Miracle on Merseyside - Liverpool remakes the nativity
The Virgin Mary comes from Knotty Ash, one of the angels used to be in Brookside, and Herod is a woman.
This version of the Christmas story, to be played out on the streets in the centre of Liverpool and broadcast live on BBC3 tomorrow night, has a cast of 300, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, a technical crew of 150 and is produced by the BBC team responsible for last year’s Manchester Passion.
... After discussions with the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones, the script’s writer Mark Davies Markham has modernised the traditional story. Mary, lacking both the traditional blue robe and halo, wipes tables in a Seaforth cafe. Joseph is an asylum seeker commanded to go to Liverpool to renew his visa. Herod is a woman and the shepherds are both homeless and sheepless. But there will still be a star and three magi for the show.
“The traditional story is so familiar that it can just wash over you,” said Markham. “I wanted it still to be familiar but to help people look at it in a different way. If they see it in terms of hope for humanity, that would be good.”
... Mary (Jodie McNee), a virgin who has been saving herself for when the time is right, is a bit surprised but tells Joseph (Kenny Thompson) “it’s the Lord’s baby, it’s sent by the Holy Spirit”. Joseph is unimpressed and angry.
“You’re just having a bit of a domestic,” explains director Noreen Kershaw as Joseph launches into There She Goes by The La’s.
Joseph heads across the river to the passport office. Mary follows on to the ferry and they sing Comedy from The Shack’s 1999 album HMS Fable. When Jesus is born, they duet on Beautiful Boy, written originally for the son of John Lennon rather than the Son of God.
“It’s a brilliant story to tell,” said McNee, whose previous Christmas performances include a role as a turkey in a school play. “It’s about community and loving generosity and about accepting people.”
The man’s a spiritual chav*.
But wait ... from a blog named Stuart’s Short Trousers (with thanks to Troy Southgate for the link):-
Soon after the publication of the Inquiry report into the death of Stephen Lawrence, the Monitoring Group began to receive an almost daily torrent of calls from black and ethnic minority people living in rural areas. The experience of the callers was similar. They had been subject to racist abuse on a daily basis, sometimes for many years, and despite reporting their suffering they had received no support from anyone. It was almost as if the needs of the BME population in these rural had been abandoned.
... The Rural Racism Project, based in Plymouth, aims to pioneer a range of specialist services to meet the needs of those living in predominately rural areas who are distressed or are suffering because they have been victims of racial violence, abuse, or harassment within their local community. The project will be used to provide and deliver a unique, innovative and radical region-wide programme of ‘racist incident victim support services’ for individuals, families and isolated community groups situated within the geographical counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset, including those districts administered by single unitary authorities.
The Project is based in Plymouth and covers the areas of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset.
A chain of fashion stores has been accused of racism over a window display of black mannequins hanging from the ceiling. Branches of All Saints are featuring headless dummies, with chains attached to the neck, dangling with their feet a few inches off the floor.
Police arrived at one branch, in Exeter, to investigate claims that the display was offensive and the Rural Racism Project says it has been “inundated” with complaints calling for it to be removed.
Spokesman John McKenzie said: “These disturbing displays are reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan and the lynching of black people in America. The chains used to hang the mannequins also bring to mind slavery and some of the complainants have commented on this. The overall effect is extremely ominous.
“It is unacceptable and we have received many calls from both black and white people who find it offensive. But the retailer’s attitude has been that the stores are all making a profit, therefore it cannot be offending too many people.”
A spokesman for All Saints confirmed that the display was used at 28 of its 29 stores nationwide.
She added: “The models are not black – they are grey.
Well, quite. Or as John Cleese once said, “This is an ex-parrot .”
Some silly conservatives talk about there once having been a Golden Age of morals. This is nonsense of course, as any Phd in dialectical sociology or contemporary feminist thought knows. Such absolute nonsense in fact that, just to prove what nonsense it is, I’ve decided to look for examples of that ol’ time morality today.
Looking down the Ten Commandments, I discarded the first four as being to do with God, or G-d, or Shiva, or non-culturally specific, non-judgemental deity of your choice. Then we had number five: honour thy father and thy mother. So, I went to google, typed in father and the name of the first pop artist that lept to mind, to discover some modern parable of reverence for the past generations.
LONDON - Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all.
In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine.
“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.
Now, two thoughts occur. One, did he just have a puff, or did he ‘swallow’? And secondly, how many young people take this travelling circus seriously when they come out with stuff like this.
Under the circumstances, then, I thought it best not to text you with this question: Which one of your brilliant minions dreamt up this garbage? For God’s sake, Liam:-
Labour will get tough on illegal immigrants - by sending them text messages begging them to go home.
Under desperate plans to clear a backlog of 600,000 cases, their driving licences could also be cancelled.
This was just giving Davis an open goal - which, needless to say, he did not miss:-
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “This is a serious admission of defeat. John Reid is effectively giving up on trying to deport the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in this country, preferring instead to spam them with text messages.
“As for removing driving licences, does he really believe that a person who is prepared to live in a country illegally is that concerned about having the correct qualifications to drive in that country?
“Yet again we see another pathetic attempt to grab a headline rather than address a problem.
“Instead of spin and bluster from ministers, the public deserve effective action.”
Condoms designed to meet international size specifications are too big for many Indian men as their penises fall short of what manufacturers had anticipated, an Indian study has found.
The Indian Council of Medical Research, a leading state-run center, said its initial findings from a two-year study showed 60 percent of men in the financial capital Mumbai had penises about 2.4 cm (one inch) shorter than those condoms catered for.
For a further 30 percent, the difference was at least 5 cm (two inches).
So how does the James Bond of Bangladesh cut such a deadly swathe through blonde California? Obviously not by stealing the delicious if brunette Lana Wood’s line from Diamonds Are Forever: “Hi, I’m Plenty ... Plenty O’Toole”.
But enough of that. This is a serious blog. So, erm ... would Phil Rushton agree that Nature’s dispensation of wedding tackle in downtown Mumbai runs counter to r-K?
Stories that begin with the words, “You couldn’t make this up,” abound, I know. But this one has that extra something: swanism.
It began when a gentleman whose home overlooked West Shore boating pool in the seaside town of Llandudno, North Wales looked out of his window and:-
saw Miah, a former restaurant owner who came to Britain from Bangladesh 40 years ago, rolling around on the grass with the swan’s wing on the ground next to him.
The alarmed gentleman called the police who duly arrived to find 52-year-old Shamshu Miah with blood on his clothes and feathers in his beard.
They confronted Bangladeshi-born Miah, who told the police: “I am a Muslim, I am fasting, I had to eat.
“I was hungry, I had to eat the swan. I killed it, I stabbed it.
“I did nothing wrong, it was just a bird, I needed to eat.”
It is forbidden for Muslims to eat during daylight hours over the Islamic month of Ramadan.
One of the officers told Miah it was illegal to kill a swan because it was the property of the Queen, to which Miah replied: “I hate the Queen, I hate this country.”
Psychiatric reports indicated Miah was not mentally ill at the time of the attack. But we must be, to abide with Miah for 40 years.
Michael Richards exploded in anger as he performed at a famous L.A. comedy club last Friday, hurling racial epithets that left the crowd gasping, and TMZ has obtained exclusive video of the ugly incident.
Richards, who played the wacky Cosmo Kramer on the hit TV show “Seinfeld,” appeared onstage at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood. Kyle Doss, an African-American, told TMZ he and some friends were in the cheap seats and he was playfully heckling Richards when suddenly, the comedian lost it.
The camera started rolling just as Richards began his attack, screaming at one of the men, “Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass.”
Richards continued, “You can talk, you can talk, you’re brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger, look, there’s a nigger!”
The crowd is visibly and audibly confused and upset. Richards responds by saying, “They’re going to arrest me for calling a black man a nigger.”
I haven’t seen the video yet. I’ll update this post as I get new info. (I’ve yet to confirm rumors that Richards was responding to being called a cracker, or that he told the negros “that’s what happens when you interrupt a white man")
Michael Richards is taking his contriteness to the next level: he’s hired a public relations expert with deep contacts in the black community.
New York publicist Howard Rubenstein took on Richards as a client Wednesday after being contacted by the actor-comedian. He then arranged for Richards to call the Revs.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
As for reports that Richards shouted out anti-Semitic remarks during another standup comedy routine in April, Rubenstein confirmed his client did, but that he was only role-playing.
“He’s Jewish. He’s not anti-Semitic at all. He was role-playing, he was playing a part. He did use inappropriate language, but he doesn’t have any anti-Semitic feelings whatsoever,” Rubenstein said.
(A bit of satire on the blacks and whites share 99.9% of their DNA theme):
Stop anti-onion prejudice
The Guardian
1 April 2010
By Millie T. Ant
Despite its commitment to the “War on Terror” and its entirely risible promise to fight discrimination and prejudice at home, the Rice Administration still refuses to extend the slightest protection to one very oppressed and even terrorised group in the USA itself. Horrifying as it may sound, onions continue to be ruthlessly oppressed in the so-called Land of the Free in ways far more cruel than anything dreamt up by the slave masters of earlier centuries.
As B. Arking, professor of Victimology at Harvard and an expert on animal-vegetable relations, points out “it really is impossible to imagine, for the typical, comfortably middle class white, what it is like being an onion in the modern West. I, however, have some statistics here, and moreover am not white but part Cherokee, and so can have a go.”
He goes on to quote a quite terrifying litany of depressing social statistics. The average onion income per annum is just $0, or 0% of the average income for the USA as a whole. Moreover, 0% of executive and professional jobs are filled by onions. Even skilled work is out of the reach of most onions, with 0% of such jobs being filled by them. Where do they find work? I wonder aloud to the professor and immediately wish I hadn’t. His answer destroys what little belief in ‘western’ ‘civilization’ I once possessed. It turns out that the lot of the average onion is to be mass-grown and then eaten.
Thanks to Michael R for this link. The Dutch government has decided to screen a film to all new Moslem wannabee citizens. It challenges their Middle Eastern sensibilities with two homosexuals kissing in a park and a topless woman emerging from the sea and walking onto a crowded beach. Those who can’t adjust don’t make the cut.
This is a big improvement on the old open door policy. However, I can exclusively reveal that the authorities have also been trialling the earliest and most stringent possible examination of Muslim flexibility on arrival at main international airports, and here is a leaked transcript of the proceedings. With apologies to the good people of Holland.
OK guys, my name’s Piet and I am your Tolerance Counsellor for today. During the next couple of hours I’m going to talk to you about what it means to live here in Holland.
First, for my own safety can I ask you all to place your ceremonial daggers in the bin provided by the door? Thank you very much.
What was that you said, sir? Yes sure, body harnesses go in the bin, too.
And your goat, please.
OK, welcome to Amsterdam Schiphol. I hope you had a nice flight and it wasn’t too cold for those of you who travelled in the baggage compartment. And to the others, what can I say? Six and a half hours is a long time to hold your breath. So, a big well done to everybody who stowed in a wheel housing.
A fine example of wysteria-hysteria from the Guardian’s social engineering education correspondent Matthew Taylor appears on-line today. See if you can beat my count of the wall-climbers’ inflations, distortions and outright untruths this flapdoodle peddles.
The rules are simple even for average folks of 100 IQ. A palpable but minor inflation of the facts scores an inferior one point; an old-fashioned, uncomplicated distortion scores a downlow two; but a rip-roaring, black-hearted lie gets the full, Billy Bragg house. Clue: there is more than one of the latter.
The rain licked the pavement like a cat cleaning its draggled freshborn, I mused. It was time to dry off a little. Lucky for me the Hellhole was on this block. Me? I call myself Mace.
Mace Rixer, multicultural detective.
I sidled into the Hellhole like a creeping thing. Siggy Finkelstein was working the bar. He didn’t look happy to see me.
“What can I get you, boychick?” he exhaled.
“I hear you make the best [.......] in town.”
......
Depending on the specific genetic manipulation, the cost to create a custom mouse is usually in the tens of thousands of dollars. Once the line has been established, individual animals can run into the hundreds.
“These mice are not going to tell us everything, and sometimes they tell us nothing. But as a starting point,” Austin said, “mice play a central role.”
If approached in the right way, mice can be surprisingly—shall we say—informative.
The scientific expedition to the “Lost Crater” may have perished. A garbled final message—flown by passenger pigeon—is the only trace that remains of the three researchers. It is reproduced here in its entirety.
I hope I’m not stealing Renner’s thunder by knocking out a riddle of my own:-
Thomas Jefferson sat back contentedly, after a particularly pleasing and satisfying visit to the sugar plantation. Just as he was thinking about self-evident truths and the pursuit of happiness (mainly his own), a most wondrous phenomena occurred. An angel, as if sent by God (although he had of course been sent Life, Liberty and Property), appeared to him, and proceeded to tell him a strange tale. He spoke about London in the early 21st century, and about our ever so cheeky terrorist-sponsorer, Ken Livingstone. Jefferson was most fascinated by this, and wished to know more, so the angel started describing Livingstone’s method of governance. When the divine apparition finally said:"he also will resemble you, in that he’ll have a...” Alas! dear reader, upon hearing the final words, Jefferson became furious, and forbade our narrator, a servant of his, from ever relating it to the world at large.
So, what common possession of both Jefferson and Livingstone so enraged the former? (Hint: there is a play on words involved).
You know how it is. A wet Monday morning in unlovely and unloved Croydon. You are behind your window as usual, gazing down the usual room-full of staring, blank-faced applicants. They are bored. You are bored. As usual.
Seated opposite you is the usual unstarved central African female and small, unstarved child. Male. Twenty billion spermatazoa. Just what this country needs.
She is, as usual, very deferential and so soft-voiced you can hardly make out her replies to your questions. Deference isn’t to be scoffed at in your line of work. It has its uses. But not this time. Unthinkable. No way.
You check the date of birth in her passport. You check that she knows what she has supposedly written on her application. You check she knows her tragically deceased husband’s name. You check she is still staying in her council hostel. You stamp her application documents in three places, retaining the bottom copy to which you attach her spare passport photograph. You hand the other copies to her with that massive disinterest only a deeply bored Immigration and Nationality Directorate officer of several years experience can properly communicate. You duly send her on her way to Floor 2 - from whence, Kafka-style, she will be sent ever onward by other equally bored, equally indifferent Immigration and Nationality Directorate officers.
You file your record of her, return slowly to your seat and, resigned to yet another repeat performance, press your floor-button. The next lucky candidate with the same deferential manner and the same depressingly cock-and-bull story shuffles over. Not a woman, not even an ugly one this time. Your boredom sinks to a new level, a chronic one only just above Utter Desolation.
Then young Birch, who sits next to you, leans over and whispers very soto voce but with that familiar enthusiasm of his, “Other end of the room”.
When I saw a reviewer say: ”What follows is a kind of modern Depression comedy - a bit like /Sullivan’s Travels/, set in Silicon Valley. Dick eventually sinks to day labour with Mexican illegals. Jane becomes a guinea pig for dangerous pharmaceutical testing.” I honestly thought Jim Carrey might be going for the jugular with Fun with Dick and Jane. Its good—maybe “great” by Hollywood standards for political satire—but no jugulars were opened. A clue: Ralph Nader made a cameo appearance as himself. But they missed so much potential fun…
I found the BBC’s disparate treatment of the Sydney and France riots instructive. In typical mass media fashion*, we are served spinversions of the truth that result in - to borrow and adapt Justin Raimondo’s favored term - Bizarro World.
I apologize to the dialup users (I’m on dialup myself), but the images are the point.
* I suddenly find the term “leftist mass media” redundant.
Scientists announced on Monday that they had created mice with small amounts of human brain cells ... the researchers created the mice by injecting about 100 000 human embryonic stem cells per mouse into the brains of 14-day-old rodent embryos...[these] mice were each born with about 0.1% of human cells in each of their heads, a trace amount that doesn’t remotely come close to “humanising” the rodents...mice are 97.5% genetically identical to humans..."The worry is if you humanise them too much you cross certain boundaries,” said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Centre for Biomedical Ethics. “But I don’t think this research comes even close to that.” ...But the brain poses an additional level of concern because some envision nightmare scenarios in which a human mind might be trapped in an animal head.
One of the most regrettable consequences of the emergence of New Labour has been the dominance of smarmy, hypocritical and utterly cynical politicians whose sanctimoniusness and PC touchiness makes them intolerable.
In that lot, a few remaining dinosaurs from Old Labour provide some welcome respite and brilliant entertainment. And no one is better at this than Dennis Skinner, nicknamed the “Beast of Bolsover”. Skinner is a law unto himself, shall we say. And in the early years of New labour, he must have caused many an embarassment to the Blairities trying to distance themselves from the hard-edged socialists of Skinner’s generation.
Yesterday, Dennis Skinner let loose another one of his parliamentary gems (hasn’t he so many under his belt?). And it is a fun read (the video is fun to watch too). I’d take Dennis Skinner over the smarmy, sanctimonius Blairites any time. Skinner is lively whereas listening to New Labour’s endless preaching about PC morality bores me to death.
