Sport Relief: Tom Daley

I have just relieved myself in the name of sport.
Please give generously.

Alan Turing: I Loves You, Porgy

Alan Turing's teddy bear, Porgy, pictured recently.

The Daily Mail: Making Your Mind Up

'They have his good looks! Ricky Martin shows off his gorgeous twin sons in touching family cover shoot for Vanity Fair'
The Daily Mail - they love the gays.
They hate the gays.
They love the gays.
They hate the gays...
Repeat to fade.

Bob Dylan: Idiot Wind

You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

Eric Watson: 1955-2012

Photographer.

David Walliams: Bum

David tweeted this photo, and captioned it; "Me and my boyfriend."
Which led to this story in The Sun; "David Walliams: Fans always ask me if Simon likes men or laydees - BGT judge gives bum steer on Simon Cowell's sexuality."
Bum! Geddit?
David later tweeted; "Today's completely made up BGT story comes from The Sun."
But sadly about a different story.

Kevin Smith: Stay Out Of My Brother's Bedroom, Buddy

Warning: May contain Piers Morgan.

Madonna: To The Finland Station

I'm a freedom fighter.
My show
My songs
My work
... My art
Is all about freedom of expression
Freedom to choose to speak to act
Always with humanity and compassion
I will come to St. Petersburg to speak up for the gay community, to support the gay community and to give strength and inspiration to anyone who is or feels opressed.
I don't run away from adversity.
I will speak during my show about this ridiculous atrocity.

Her Madge on Facebook.
Hope she does...

Private Eye: A Special Relationship

Private Eye.

The Queen: Unspeak

'Get on with it, you Bercow! Cameron looks ratty as Speaker hijacks the Queen's Jubilee address to waffle on about gay rights'

Serial liar about gay stuff, The Daily Mail.
Err, John Bercow did not actually mention the gays.
Beyond talking about people "regardless of how they live, how they look or how they love"
Hardly a rant,
Watch it here.

PS Wonderful self-serving press release from the bonkers Lance Price at the Kaleidoscope Trust here.
Where the Mail got their non-story from. Cheers, SG.

Update: I despair of the fucking Guardian. 

Brian Paddick: Hmm...

"I don't see my husband very often because he lives in Oslo. He arrived about midnight last night and I had to throw him out on the streets because you were coming around.
"Last time, he took two months off to be with me during the campaign. This time, I said to him, 'Look, I'd rather we spent time together when the pressure of the campaign is not on. So today was difficult because I saw him for breakfast and I haven't seen him since and it's now more than 12 hours later."

Brian Paddick, The Independent.
The People claimed Brian and Petter had split up last year...

Pete Waterman: Aitkenwatermanstock

"It's going to be predominantly women aged 30 to 50 and gay men. That's what we do and I love it."

Pete Waterman on the Hit Factory Live in Hyde Park in The Sun.
Pete Burns and Sinitta have cleared their diaries!
Kylie unconfirmed.

NHS: 1948-2012

Government of the millionaires, by the millionaires, for the millionaires.
Cunts.

Fagburn: Just So You Know

Hello.
I am off for the day.
So make your own amusement.
Goodbye.

Dame Edna Everage: Farewell Possums?

A fine tribute by Mark Lawson in The Guardian to Dame Edna Everage, who has announced her farewell tour - though Mark suspects it may not be.
In a sidebar, Leo Benedictus suggests her most transcendental musical moment may have been the 1979 single, Disco Matilda.
I have absolutely no recollection of this record, and was surprised to find that, although it didn't chart, it got the dame on Top Of The Pops.
Genius - but then would you expect anything else? 
Enjoy!

Karl Lagerfeld: No 2 i-D

Saw this in a newsagents' window.
I shan't sleep tonight.
Mummy!

Tony Blair: Gay Rights Can Fuck Off - I'm On Business

Unbelievable.

Norman Tebbit: Tales From The Crypt

'I doubt if Mr Cameron's new-found enthusiasm for “gay marriage” will make it any more likely that he will lead the Conservative Party to a majority in 2015 or add greatly to the sum total of happiness and contentment in our society. I wonder just when the implications of it was discussed in detail by a Cabinet Committee? Why cannot we have some rather better staff work before great policy initiatives are announced?'

Norman Tebbit writes for The Daily Telegraph on why 'Gay Marriage Won't Win David Cameron The Next Election'.
In what's for him a relatively restrained piece, Lord Tebbit of Chingford, blames Lib Dem "contagion" and warns of voters defecting to UKIP en masse.
"Within the can of worms that Mr Cameron is determined to open there are several nests of snakes,"  claims the Conservative's former viper in chief.

The Sun: Natural's Not In It

Baffling cartoon in The Sun to accompany some random - possibly drunken - babbling on gay marriage by Trevor Kavanagh.
Note this is a rare tabloid cartoon where THE GAYS are caricatured as masc butch ever-so manly Desperate Dan types, and not wilting pansies.
Just like the "Gay Nazi" one in the Daily Mail last year.
Subliminal message 1: These people are bullying thugs.
Subliminal message 2: These people are totally ridic.
Subliminal message 3: Natural's not in it.
Kavanagh concludes; "Sometimes, logic can drive you crazy."
Evidently. 
This heaven gives me migraine etc etc.

Update: I've only just noticed the cartoon actually shows a bowl of... wilting pansies!
FFS.
Subliminal message 4...

Bradley Manning: Like A Kangaroo

'PFC Bradley Manning, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, has spent more than 660 days locked up while he waits for the government to prepare its case against him. Juan Mendez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, has declared Bradley Manning’s treatment “cruel and inhuman”, but his requests to visit PFC Bradley Manning have been repeatedly blocked by the government. Soldiers have the right to a fair and speedy trial, but thus far the trial has proven to be a kangaroo court, "a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted". 'The judge in fact told the defense that a speedy trial would be impossible if the defense continued to file motions such as the requests to access key evidence and key witnesses that have thus far been blocked, and which are vital to PFC Bradley Manning’s defense. 'Bradley Manning’s attorney insists all charges must be dismissed after the government’s refusal to provide vast amounts of evidence and key witnesses. Criticizing “gamesmanship,” David Coombs said the prosecution “has so hopelessly confused discovery in this case so as to prejudice my client.”
'Unfortunately the judge was unable to establish an expected timeline for the trial, and two motions filed by the defense were denied, and another left unanswered, but the court is scheduled to reconvene for three days at Ft. Meade April 24th-26th'

Bradley Manning Support Network. 

Religious News: Collective Insanity

This is the Coptic Pope.
Yes, there's another Pope!
Or at least there was.
He's dead, but they've propped him up so people can pay tribute to his sheer dead pope-iness.
Brilliant!
In other news, a football player has had a cardiac arrest.
We have been asked to pray for him.
As opposed to hoping advances in medical science can save his life, and thanking the doctors and nurses who are helping him.
I love religion, me.
It makes so much sense.
Yay!

The Sunday Times: I'm A Cliché

'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of an empty diary and a lacklustre wardrobe must be in want of gay. It’s just common sense, right? Nowadays, every sensible person accepts that gay men are unequivocally brilliant, especially at really important stuff like warming up a dancefloor or icing an intentionally kitsch cupcake. Their dress sense is without equal, their hair impossibly velvety, to say nothing of their steady stream of hilarious one-liners, benevolent bitchiness and scatter cushions that are as well appointed as their abdominal muscles. I have sad news. 'The notion that all gay men are fun-loving, emotionally intelligent hotties is a myth — albeit an increasingly powerful one...'

The Sunday Times. 
So some gay men are rubbish/rubbish gays - who knew?!!
Apart from everyone, obviously?
Quite frankly, I'd rather be a gay cliché than write clichéd crap about gay clichés like this crap.
A record-breakingly pointless piece by someone called Giles Hattersley.
That first name again - Giles.
Some people just STINK of public school poshness, don't they?

Christopher Jefferies: A Gift To The Tabloids

"If you think back to end of 2010 and last year, the story was something of a gift to the tabloids. It was a readymade Midsomer Murders script set in a respectable and leafy suburb.

"I was the person who had been arrested and the press seemed determined to believe the person who was arrested was the murderer, and to portray me in as dark and as lurid a light as possible.

"Lo and behold you don't just have a sexual predator, but you have a bisexual predator and all sorts of fantastic rumours were latched on to that I would hold pupils' hands while reading poetry, obviously with sinister sexual motives.

"Journalists will talk to 100 people and if 99 say one thing and one says something they would like to believe or will enable them to write the story they want to write, that is the one they will choose to believe.
"The caricature for me was the lewd figure, a peeping tom, I had apparently spied on tenants, I was a loner because I happened to live alone. A lot of people said some nice things about me but they tended to be buried and not given enough prominence in the articles.

"To complete the character assassination it was alleged that I was fascinated by death, because I happened to have shown on a couple of occasions a particularly important documentary about the liberation of Auschwitz.

"Here you have me, this dark, macabre, sinister villain. And that certainly wasn't the whole of it."

Christopher Jefferies - who was falsely accused of Joanna Yeates' murder - speaking at the Benn Debate, Bristol Festival Of Ideas.*

The only tabloids to cover this were the Express and The Daily Star. 

The Sun and The Daily Mirror, who were both found guilty of contempt of court, have ignored it. 

Here's the Star's heartfelt apology to Jefferies for libelling him.

Jefferies suggested one way this could be prevented from happening in the future; "If we're to avoid statutory regulation then the new PCC must have sanctions at its disposal so severe that compliance to the highest possible standards must be compelled."

* Accounts of Jefferies' talk order the above paragraphs differently. 

Marriage: Too Many Queens

'

'BRITAIN could end up with TWO Queens on the throne if gay marriage becomes law, an MP warned last night.
'Tory Peter Bone claimed the new legislation would throw the monarchy into crisis. 'He said it would mean a lesbian Queen having a Queen consort or a gay King having a King consort. 'Mr Bone has demanded an emergency summit of Commonwealth leaders to discuss the planned changes.
'He said: "They seem to be rushing this through without thinking of the broader implications."
The MP has fired off a letter to Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone warning of possible upheaval in the monarchy.
'And he wants to know if it is the Government's plan to change the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 to allow a same-sex union.
'Mr Bone believes this would make it impossible for the monarch to continue as supreme governor of the Church of England.
'And a gay monarch who conceived a child either by sperm donor or surrogate would raise wider questions, he warns...'

The increasingly mad Peter Bone MP - leading Cunt For Marriage - in The Sun Sunday.
And your problem with this is what exactly, dear? 
Easiest solution to the "problem"?
Abolish the monarchy.
Thanks for asking.

• Predictably the Mail On Sunday is also vexed by the titular and honorific anarchy we may be unleashing; "At present, if ‘Fred Bloggs’ is given a peerage and becomes ‘Lord Bloggs’, his wife ‘Freda’ becomes ‘Lady Bloggs’. Likewise, the wife of a knight of the realm, ‘Sir Fred Bloggs’, becomes ‘Lady Bloggs’...
"In the case of lesbian ‘Dame Freda Bloggs’, her lesbian married partner ‘Fiona’ could be titled ‘Dame Fiona’ or ‘the Honourable Fiona’" etc etc.
Oh noes!
Oh, and the Mail also claim this; "The Mail on Sunday understands that notwithstanding David Cameron’s publicly stated enthusiasm for gay marriage, it will not be in the Queen’s Speech in May when the Government unveils its legislative plans for next year.
"That means it will not become law for at least two years, possibly not until after the next General Election in 2015."
Fagburn wonders if the Mail have got some (gay) thing right for once.

Gay Marriage: Those Gay Celebs Opposed to Gay Marriage In Full

On Channel 4 News on Thursday, Sharon Jones of Cunts For Marriage made much play of how "plenty of lesbian and gay people" had signed her petition for inequality, discrimination and homophobic bigotry.
Jon Snow asked her how many, but she couldn't say - because she couldn't know and had probably just made it up.
There are probably a million or three lesbians and gay men in the UK, so it's not impossible that some have signed up to be denied their rights.
Jones also mentioned "those who have spoken publicly in support of this petition".
Which got me wondering about those gay celebrities and public figures who have come out and spoken out against gay marriage.
Here's that list in full.

1. Christopher Biggins.
2. Julie Bindel.
3. Brian Sewell.
4. David Coburn, cunt from UKIP.
5. Err, that's it.

Hardly a stellar list, is it?
And, as you can see, they are all bigots or barking or both. 
Well done.

PS The Independent's Diary has claimed Gilbert & George are opposed to gay marriage - but the quote they used to illustrate this doesn't really back this up.
Gilbert: "Who wants to be married in a church? Not us in a million years; we wouldn't go near one... For us it is very simple; our motto is 'Burn religion'."
Perhaps they are opposed full stop - but Gilbert is only saying here they don't want one.