Sim-O

The above piece isn’t exactly a lie, which is why I’m posting here rather than at The Sun Lies, except that maybe travellers, although outraged, aren’t demanding Lord Adonis cut short his christmas holiday, as most probably didn’t even realise he was on holiday. The reader doesn’t find out, no travellers are quoted in the article, only bods from organisations and the like.

What has pee’d me off about this article is the way that the Sun starts off screaming about Lord Adonis ‘sloping’* off for a ski holiday while the country grinds to a halt.

*From the Suns’ position, that is a fantastic pun. Not only does it fit with Adonis going on the piste**, but it aslo goes with the sneaky, useless Labour government narrative.

**apologies for that one.

The next paragraph carries on the narrative by introducing the bumbling sidekick…

Lord Adonis, 46, left his hapless deputy Sadiq Khan to face the avalanche of fury over cancellations, delays and the road gritting shambles.

That’s the groundwork for the piece laid down: the boss has snuk (sneaked?) off and left his bumbling deputy to cope.
Naturally the shadow local government minister is gonna have pop and say that Adonis should come back, via airports that are closed, to help out with a shovel and a bag of grit.

Once all that is set up there follows a great long list of things that have happened because of the cold, as if it’s Lord Adonis’ fault:

Nine people have died during the cold snap as temperatures plunged to as low as -16C in some parts of the UK.

Two women were killed and almost 50 injured when a coach overturned on icy roads in Cornwall late last night.

In Northamptonshire Paul Litchfield, 30, and Philip Sturridge, 42, drowned as they tried to rescue their pet Labrador from a frozen lake near Ringstead.

Adonis should’ve been handing out thermal underwear, and called the bus company to tell them not to send the driver out and gone onto the frozen lake himself instead of making those two chaps go out on the thin ice themselves to rescue a fucking dog.

In Sale, Greater Manchester, recovery worker Denis Livesly, 60, was killed as he attended to a car in a snowstorm on the M60 motorway.

Malcolm Brown, 32, was also killed in Basingstoke, Hampshire, when a deer smashed through his windscreen during a blizzard.

On the island of Lewis 35-year-old electrician Donald Martin froze to death after locking himself out of his home after a Christmas party.

How could Adonis have prevented Mr Livesly from dying? Deers are a nightmare whatever the weather, is it Adonis’ fault Donald Martin didn’t have the sense to smash a window to get back in his home?

There’s more stories about people trying to save their dogs and people dying after slipping on ice and aeroplanes slipping off the end of runways and trains and the Royal Mail and Asda and Eurostar and roads and… and… and…

If only Lord Adonis was here. The country would be able to stop being so shit at bad weather.

Gordon Brown has written a note of condolence to the family of soldier killed in Afghanistan.

It is full of spelling mistakes and other errors including getting the dead mans’ surname wrong.

People have been defending the PM about this…

Lest we forget, the man is all but blind, and the idea that he – even he – would deliberately set out to insult a grieving mother is just stupid. If he really didn’t give a shit, he’d get his secretary to type the letters and then sign them at the bottom, and none of this would ever have been a story in the first place.

but FFS…

I completely agree but it’s a note of condolence not a shopping list. You get these things right not go ‘fuck it that’ll do’.

The arguement that Gordon is nearly blind and that if someone else had written it or he’d knocked it up on a computer means he doesn’t care just doesn’t stand up.

1. As Justin says, It’s a letter of condolence, even if your writing is scruffy, you at least get the name correct. Nothing says you don’t care more than getting the name wrong, especially when you’re the prime minister with all those people around that are supposed to help and advise you.
2. If Gordons’ eye sight is that bad, why are we expecting him to hand write letters? Did Blunkett get it in the neck every time someone else wrote a letter for him?

What’s worse? A load of unintelligable scrawl or a typed letter with a real signature at the bottom?

At least Gordon doesn’t have rubber stamp to sign with.

Jan Moir is comparing the way people reacted to the death of Michael Jackson and the hysteria, the luvvies and all the glitz of his memorial to the quiet dignity of people stopping in the street whilst two recent British casualties of the the war in Afghanistan as they passed through Wootton Bassett.

These very different types of remembrance tell us much about society and celebrity.

But most of all, they tell us about the quiet, steadfast decency of ordinary British people who, left to their own devices, will almost always do the right thing.

I’m not a sociologist or a psychologist or any other ‘-ologist’, but is talking complete bollox.

I’m sure the Americans don’t have MJ style concerts for their war dead. They probably have quiet diginfied affairs as well.

As for ‘left to our own devices, will almost always do the right thing’, I have one word:

Diana.

A second post mortem has been performed on Ian Tomlinson…

Now a fresh post-mortem examination has found he died of abdominal bleeding, not a heart attack, as first thought.

Now, I’m not a doctor or anything like that, my medical expertise ranges from a couple of ibuprofen for a headache to ‘hair of the dog’ for, ahem, more serious illness, so I could be a little out here.

A heart attack doesn’t neccersarily result in internal bleeding, but a heart attack can result from loss of blood as the heart works harder to keep blood pressure without enough blood.

So, the first post mortem wasn’t exactly wrong, more incomplete because yes Ian died of a heart attack, but is was brought about from abdominal heamorraging, which in turn was brought about from, say, being knocked about.

Incompetence or a cover up, I wonder…

Justin has more