Words Dept.: archive

I’ve just watched Andrew Gilligan on Channel 4’s Dispatches present a compelling story about a property developer who donated £5,000 to the Manchester Labour Party a few weeks before being chosen as preferred bidder for a casino in the city. None of the councillors involved declared an interest, although they were subsequently cleared of wrongdoing [...]

Witness the power of hype. This mystery trailer has echoes of Blair Witch Project and is causing similar ripples. It’s a film that doesn’t even have a title yet but is sending YouTube theorists into a frenzy.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Project Slosho/Cloverfield/1-18-08 as it’s variously known, is produced by JJ Abrams of Lost fame – a man [...]

It seems highly likely to me that Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile, is going to pull out of its sponsorship of professional cycling after the conclusion of this year’s Tour de France, in fear of the damage being done to its brand by an association with drugs.
Doping is, as usual, turning into a major scandal [...]

Since Friday, I seem to keep reading stuff about something called Parakey. I can’t quite figure out what it is other than some kind of operating system that “bridges the gap between information on the web and the desktop”. No mainstream news source I’ve so far come across (and admittedly I haven’t looked very hard) [...]

So Stephen Lambert, the boss of RDF Media, has owned up to editing “the Queen tape” and has offered to resign. I’ve said before that I think there are some major double standards going on simply because HRH is involved. But leaving that to one side, Lambert’s comments are totally disingenuous:
These shots did not convey [...]

A millionaire who donated more than £8m to the Conservatives was suffering from “insane delusions”, according to his friends.
Insert your own joke here.
Guardian link.
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The Times today claims that there have been “calls for an inquiry” into how the BBC managed to promote a forthcoming programme on the back of false claims that the Queen got stroppy and walked out of a photo shoot in a huff. Strangely, the tabloid doesn’t say where these “calls” are coming from – [...]

In which the Sun offers Pete Doherty some of the most ill-considered financial advice of all time in an effort to “rescue” him from financial ruin.
Sticks and stones won’t break his bones, but smoking could kill him. It doesn’t help his cashflow and Pete could save nearly £2,000 instantly by kicking the habit.
Removal men [...]

Jeremy Paxman has provoked a veritable explosion of mild outrage in the papers after daring to question the age-old tradition that blokes with grey hair must always wear a tie while at work. His Newsnight blog suggests ties are now the preserve of “dodgy estate agents” (nothing like a 1980s stereotype to start the day), [...]

It’s become pretty obvious today that the media has been guilty of failing to appreciate the scale of the recent floods in Hull. It’s emerged that 30,000 people had to leave their homes as a result of the flooding – far more than anywhere in South Yorkshire, where Sky and News 24 have been camped [...]