Wiki Editing Fun - Theresa May

Somebody has got their crayons out and defaced the wiki page of the UK Home Secretary.

It'll be gone in a few minutes...but a bit of a laugh anyway.

She became a national laughing stock when, at the Conservative Party conference, she said "I'm not making this up" and then promptly went on to make up a story about some foreigner who couldn't be deported because of his cat. As a result, she is now seen as one of the most incompetent Home Secretarys of recent times - even more so than Jacqui Smith, which is quite an achievement.

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Question Time LiveBlog 27th October 2011

Question Time tonight comes from Winchester.

David Dimbleby is joined by Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith - who after the EU referendum rebellion declared yesterday that he will not vote against his Eurosceptic principles again.

We also have ex-GMTV presenter, permanent feature on Guido's political totty reports and occasional Labour politician Gloria De Piero, Deputy Leader of the Liberals in Scotland Jo Swinson (oddly an absentee from those same totty lists), UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Julian Fellowes, As Baron Fellowes of West Stafford he takes the Conservative whip in the Lords.

Two Tories on the same panel? Surely a booking mix-up? Heads will roll.

TheEye can't be here tonight so will leave you to the tender Moderating mercies of David Vance and David Mosque.

It's a 10:30pm kick off. You know where to be. And how much alcohol to bring.

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Trafalgar Day 2011

On 21st October 1805 the Royal Navy, commanded by Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson won a famous and decisive victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar (for an excellent overview try here.)

Trafalgar Day, for the benefit of TheEye's overseas readers, is the annual celebration and commemoration of the triumph.

This evening TheEye will raise a glass and drink a toast to the "Immortal Memory". And as it is Friday..will drink a second to the traditional Royal Navy dedication for that day "A willing foe and sea room".

The original toast of "The Immortal Memory of Lord Nelson and those who fell with him" was used and reinstated by HM The Queen on the 200th anniversary, and is drunk in silence as a mark of respect.

On Wednesday evening TheEye was at the Rock Hotel on the same table at dinner as the splendid MEPs Dan Hannan, Roger Helmer and David Campbell-Bannerman - spending time here in Gibraltar on a factfinding visit. Today in the Telegraph and written whilst he was here, Dan Hannan MEP writes Gibraltarians understand what it means to be British. Do we? and says:

Where better to celebrate Trafalgar Day than in that most demonstratively loyal of all Her Majesty's realms and possessions, Gibraltar – whither HMS Victory limped back after the battle, bearing Nelson's corpse preserved in a barrel of brandy, camphor and myrrh.

So for those of you in TheEye's local area, please join me at the Act of Remembrance at the Trafalgar Cemetery at 12 noon on Sunday 23 October. Members of the Royal Navy will mark the anniversary in the company of the Chief Minister, the Governor and Commander British Forces Gibraltar. The Commanding Officer, Royal Navy Gibraltar, Commander Mark Williams, will lay wreaths on the graves of those who died as a result of the Battle.

There will be other events over the weekend too, so please take part and don't ever let this bit of history fade away.

The Immortal Memory

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Question Time LiveBlog 20th October 2011

Question Time tonight comes from Glasgow.

David Dimbleby is joined by Jacob Rees-Mogg, a rebellious Conservative with absolutely no connection to Glasgow at all, LibDem MP Alistair Carmichael (who dropped out of Glasgow Uni so a tenuous connection at least), local Labour MP Margaret Curran, the SNPs Education Minister Mike Russell, journalist Cristina Odone and a Scottish actor called Brian Cox.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, eh? You might as well scrawl Ambush on the front of the desk.

It's a 10:30pm kick off. You know where to be. And how much alcohol to bring.

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Skydiving

TheEye is back in the office, the sun is in the sky and inevitably a man's thoughts turn to...the legality of skydiving sex.

Indeed.

Local police in Taft, California. were called to a local high school last week after a video started doing the rounds, so to speak, on campus. It "features" porn star Alex Torres and friend Hope Howell taking off - and getting off - for a little in-the-air action.

An interesting variation on the Mile High Club, eh?

The video is a pretty horrific thing to watch (TheEye did so purely to save you the trouble...there is no charge) and mostly shows the pair going at it mid-flight before jumping from the plane and...carrying on.

Local police have declined to file charges, according to KGET-TV. There was no public nudity, as no one saw the early-morning skydiving sex. Torres also posted the video on an age-protected blog, so he can't be punished for distributing low-budget porn to minors.

Still, the Federal Aviation Administration isn't particularly amused. Federal aviation rules don't prohibit sex on private planes, but they do prohibit activity that "distracts or jostles" a pilot - which you'd think this clearly qualifies as.

Except the pilot didn't seem all that distracted - he only looked back once or twice during the entire video, which is fairly typical when skydivers are on board.



*sigh* Surely this we have reached the End of Days.

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9/11 BBC Question Time: The Video

Cross-Posted from the Biased-BBC blog

Many of us watched the Question Time Special immediately following the 9/11 atrocity in utter disbelief as it took a rabid and disgusting anti-American line.

The former US ambassador to Britain, Philip Lader, was almost reduced to tears on the panel as the audience shouted him down and hurled abuse. It was a shameful night for the BBC and prompted thousands of complaints. The BBC underplayed the aftermath here.

Recordings of that particular programme are particularly hard to find anywhere (odd, eh?) but regular contributor here TooTrue remembered that a fellow Biased-BBCer had mentioned having a version. So after a bit of tech stuff, here it is. Our grateful thanks go to both of them.

It's now hosted on EyeTube - my censorship-free video hosting site.

It is disgusting. Don't watch with sharp objects nearby.

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Amish Beard Cutting Crime

With apologies, but this has got to be a contender for Weirdness of the Month:

Four men from Bergholz, Ohio, were arrested this week suspected of an Amish beard-cutting attack.

Authorities say a rival Amish group held their victims down against their will and gave them unwanted cuts to their beards and hair.

Really.

Signs that your Amish teen is in trouble:

1. He sometimes stays in bed until after 6 a.m.
2. Under his bed you find pictures of women without bonnets.
3. He defiantly says, "If I had a radio, I'd listen to rap."
4. When you criticize him he yells, "Thou suckst!"
5. His name is Jebadiah, but he prefers to be known as 'Jeb Daddy.'
6. You discover his secret stash of colourful socks.
7. He uses the slang expresion: "Talk to the hand coz the beard ain't listening."
8. He was recently pulled over for driving his horse and cart under the influence of cottage cheese.
9. He has taken to wearing his big black hat backwards.

The best thing about making jokes about Amish people online is that they don't even know it.

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Question Time LiveBlog 13th October 2011

Question Time tonight comes from London and features a panel so dreadful it will make your eyes bleed.

On the panel we have Andrew Lansley, Red Ken Livingstone, former chief press spokesman for the Liberals Mark Littlewood, NHS-focussed 'comedian' Phil Hammond and deputy editor of the Evening Standard Sarah Sands.

TheEye is away again tonight, so leaves you in the hands of the Two Davids...Vance and Mosque in the moderator seats.

Play nicely!

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UK Citizenship Test Updated

So after much ridicule of the daft, plain stupid and politically "correct" questions in the old Labour government's so-called Citizenship Test....it has been re-written by the Coalition.

Can we expect questions like "how much does the UK waste each year by belonging to the EU" or "name the religion responsible for the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks".

No. Don't be silly.

Instead we get "Why were recruitment centres set up in the West Indies in the 1950s" and "How might you stop young people playing tricks on you at Halloween"

Welcome to the bright new right of centre Coalition world, eh, folks?

TheEye failed. Miserably. Loss of passport surely beckons.

See if you can do any better here.

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Novel Ways To Murder Someone (Pt 73)

First, kill a bear.

A fortnight ago, Clyde Gardner was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison for plotting to kill his ex-girlfriend after a friend he asked to do the job ratted him out to the police instead. The plan involved faking a car accident. So far, so trivial.

But the great part of the story how Gardner originally planned to do it. To put the blame...spectacularly....on a bear.

Take it away, Assistant DA Elizabeth Crawford:

The original murder plot was for Gardner to hunt down a bear on the [acquaintance's] property, then skin it to take off its four claws and its pelt.

The hired killer was to put the pelt on like a suit and wear the paws like boots and gloves, then maul the woman to death to make it look like an animal had killed her.

"[Gardner had] been watching her from the woods, so he knew exactly when she would take her garbage out, so it was supposed to look like she got mauled by a bear," Crawford said.

"The claws were to be worn as boots and on his hands so there would be only bear tracks, no human tracks."

The one problem with this otherwise foolproof plan...the hit man "said he only had three acres to hunt on, and no bears."

Damn, no bear disguise. So Gardner came up with the car crash idea. He told the other man how to make it look like an accident, something in which Gardner claimed special skill because he is "an experienced demolition derby driver."

Coupled with the fact that he owns a junkyard and has a history of abusive and violent behaviour, we can see why this relationship wasn't going to last.

It took until the second plan was hatched (unsurprisingly) for the friend to realise Gardner was serious and to go to the police. They fitted him with a wire to record Gardner talking about the murder plot.

Gardner eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree conspiracy. He asked for leniency claiming that he had been drunk at the time and had intended to call everything off once he had sobered up. And would you believe it....he had actually been arrested while on his way to the hit man's house to cancel the job? No, and the judge didn't either.

"There is absolutely no proof" of that story, said the judge, calling the grand-jury testimony "chilling."

Which it probably was, except for the hilarious bit with bears in it.

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Not Very Cleverley

Brilliant journalism in yesterday's Super Soaraway Sun.

For a paper specialising in celebrity gossip you'd think that Not-A-Footballer Tries It On is really feeble. And who is Tom Cleverley anyway?

Hat-tip: Matthew Moore

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Question Time LiveBlog 6th October 2011

On the Question Time panel from where the Conservative conference was held - Salford - tonight we have the inclusivity box-ticking Baroness Warsi, Shadow Junior Minister for Drains Andy Burnham, Charles *hic* Kennedy, Hello! and Sun journalist Jane Moore and, returning to our BBC screens after an absence of at least 25 minutes, Billy sodding Bragg.

TheEye is Back and Beautiful tonight, so will rejoin the Two Davids...Vance and Mosque in the moderator seats.

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Knox Escapes

Amanda Knox was in court in Perugia today, protesting her innocence over the killing of Meredith Kercher. She was in tears, speaking in fluent Italian.

Verdict?

Sexy

And so Foxy Knoxy walks free from an Italian court having been acquitted of murdering the person she now seems not to have murdered. TheEye reckons it is now a One-All score draw and is waiting for the penalty shoot-out. But for now, for legal reasons, we have to pretend to believe her.

This year's winner of  'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here',

She was found guilty (again) of being a liar and still nobody knows what she was really doing that night - she claims not to remember. Alcohol is her defence, rather than blood-splattered convenient amnesia.

She accused somebody else falsely of stabby things and was found to have slandered him. That'll now cost her a few Euros, but to be honest she only has to hold on for a few weeks until the Greek (and Eurozone) economy is carried out in a bucket and the Euro will be worth less than tissue paper.

The fact is that if she wasn't so damn attractive, nobody would ever have noticed or cared. The thought of her in handcuffs is, basically, not too shabby at all as an image.

This story will run and run. Half of the space in tomorrows Dead Tree Press will be dedicated to the trial because the Eyeties cunningly delivered the verdict in good time for the first editions. It will also take the Conservative Party conference off the national headlines which may not be such a bad thing. And it will be covered elsewhere at such enormous length that TheEye isn't going to bother raking over the evidence of her complicity here.

Within the hour she will be on a plane to the US and beyond the feeble extradition arrangements with the Italians .... which is ignored and not respected. The appeals process will be pointless.

She might be 'innocent' now, but she'll never get another flatmate....

Knox, Knox...

"Who's there?..."

"It's Amanda. They believed me...let me out!"

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Bad Joke O' The Day

From the BBC:

An ultra-light plane has crashed into a Ferris wheel in a village north of Sydney, trapping four people, Australian officials say.

Some people dream of being a pilot, others simply fail to see the attraction.

Is that my coat? Thank you...

UPDATE: Police say the pilot is slowly coming round

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